"ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHH!!!!!"

That was my reaction when I found out that Wizards of the Coast had inexplicably decided not to put any Fire evolutions into Gym Heroes. I have no idea why they did this. The mystery will die with the various employees who threw the darts at the dartboard to decide which cards to put in the set. Fire has always gotten the short end of the stick it seems, but this is a new low. In Base, we got Ninetales and Arcanine. In Jungle, Rapidash. In Fossil, Magmar. In TR, Dark Charizard.

In Gym...

-Blaine's Magmar (a piece of crap)
-Blaine's Moltres (worse)
-Some weak basics, which are undeniably cute but which won't be able to legally evolve for a few months

And of course the sole bright spot:

-Rocket's Moltres

Having been planning my Brock's Ninetales deck for some time, I was greatly distressed. Despite pulling a Blaine's Vulpix from the freebie advance pack a guy at a local shop gave me, I was not mollified. My frustration built until I could take no more. "Screw it," I said, or words to that general effect. "I'm gonna build my deck out of the Japanese cards. And so what if I have to wait for it to be legal."

There were changes, of course. The deck became a Blaine deck, because I had only 1 Brock's Ninetales but had traded for my third Blaine's the day before. Other than that, it went together like a charm. Thinking up a catchy name stopped me, so eventually I just decided to name it as a sequel to Cinder, which in a sense it was. And thus I present to you...

CINDER TOO v. 1.0

4 Blaine's Vulpix
3 Blaine's Ninetales
3 Magmar (F)
4 Scyther
1 Kangaskhan

3 Bill
4 Oak
2 Computer Search
2 Item Finder
4 PlusPower
4 Nightly Garbage Run
2 Energy Removal
2 SER
2 GOW

16 Fire Energy
4 DCE

This deck is still very much in the testing stage. The Trainer configuration may change. In particular, I plan to go all ER or SER as soon as I decide which one works best. My Vulpixes are a haphazard bunch-- I have one 50 HP Japanese, 2 40 HP Japanese, and 1 40 HP English--and I'm also testing these to determine which is best. The single Kangaskhan is a metagame choice for my area--Psychic Evolution decks are popular, and many are quite well thought-out. It's great to be able to search for Kanga, slap it down, and watch the kid with the Gengar cringe. Finally, 3 of my NGR's are proxied, as the stupid things are nearly impossible to find. Grr.

The deck has done pretty well in its two online encounters so far--once against a Sponge and once in sort of a mirror match. It's 2-0 so far, although it got off to a pretty slow start against the Sponge when my sole opening Oak got RSA'd.

Just wanted to post this up, because I know some people are always interested to see what I come up with. Feel free to send *constructive* comments, questions, and/or suggestions to spike@pojo.com.


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