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 Let’s be honest here:  I’m not really sure what I’m writing about.

I was going to pen yet another one of my “Plight of the Older Player in a Small Town Playing Solitaire Without Working Gooey to Let Me Play Online” pieces, but I’m not in the whining mood.

I was going to write an article in defense of Grass in response to one of the May TCG Strategies by some kid named Justin who really ticked my off by speaking out against MY COLOR.  Then I reformatted my hard drive and lost the draft.

I was going to complain about Wizard’s treatment of Pokémon, but why bother?  We all know they’re screwing the game over. (*cough cough*Rocket Misprints*cough*)

I was going to complain about the fact that I can’t build these dream decks because I honestly don’t have the money to buy forty rares to complete the perfect deck.

Then I just quit and started playing a game with my favorite deck.  It won (again, but the win didn’t count.  None of my wins count, I only get to play Solitare Pokémon with myself as both sides because no one will play with me and the local card shop told me I would scare away all the kids in the tourney.) and that cheered me up a little.  I started to think about all the good things that come out of this game.

I knew then that I had my article.

Well, you’ve kept reading this far, right?  You must care about what I have to say.  I won’t disapoint you, I hope.

Really, there are a lot of great things about knowing that I can’t be in any serious tournaments or participate in the League or play against real people.  I get to build decks that are fun to play with.  I get to experiment with new cards, see if I like them.  I mean, I build a deck (the above-mentioned favorite deck) one day because I was thinking maybe I should become my own little Team Rocket and actually try to intimidate little kids instead of just being told I would intimidate them by Gym Leaders and tourney organizers.  I built a deck based around a single theme:  Koffing, Arbok, Vileplume, Meowth, Lickitung.  No great strategy, no big combo, just the Pokémon Jessie and James play with.  And with some tweaking it became a very strong status-altering deck.  Rocket Oddish, Base Koffing, Fossil Arbok, Jungle Gloom, Full Heal, Full Heal Energy, all sorts of cool stuff.

And my other deck—a weird, non-tourney worthy Bench Destruction deck with Dark Raichu (yes, I have one, and he’s 1^st Edition, heheheh), Fossil Raichu, Jungle Electrode, and Gengar—it’s not anything normal.  It does some really strange stuff, but it’s fun to play with because when it works, it works well.  This deck showed me that I really do like Rocket Voltorb.  Sure, it’s got low HP, but it does 20 for L, has a low retreat, and just looks cool!

And then there’s my latest creation—energy denial without Dragonair and Poliwraith because I don’t have any of those.  It’s in a state of flux right now;  it used to be Water/Psychic, now it’s Water/Fighting with Dark Dugtrio, Jungle Mankey, and Rocket Ratatta, and it’s about to become Water/something else because it doesn’t run well.

Of course, I keep my Fire Beatdown deck laying around.  I don’t know why, I just like having four decks.  Fills up my boxes, I guess.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking—“This guy has no point.  He’s just rambling on and on.”

I have a point, honest.

Really!

You don’t have to be International Pokémon Grand Master Pooh-Bah or have that unstoppable Raindance deck to enjoy the game.  That’s what’s great about Pokémon!  It’s a simple enough game you can play it alone, or with friends, or in tourneys, but it’s got enough depth to it to make it interesting.  Look outside the “Box” of the main deck types, and you find incredible new options that are just fun to try.  Don’t stress over “Oh, I have to win this tournament!”  Just enjoy the game.  That’s why we plop down $3.00 a booster ($2.75 at the card shop downtown :-P ), isn’t it?  We want to have fun.  So next time you get that urge in the middle of the night to build a deck, don’t just tweak that tourney winner.  Build a “fun” deck!  Count yourself lucky that you have something like this to enjoy.

Plus, what can be more of a stress-reducer than beating up on cute, fuzzy little animals (Pikawho?) with a big giant flower (Vileplume Rocks!)?  I have a Pikachu squeezey stress-reducer thingy that my ex-roommate’s girlfriend gave me for Christmas (ok, it was really a “please don’t kill the boy I love, I know he’s strange but I love him” gift because we had issues and I really did threaten to kill him) and I get more relaxation out of crushing his cute little face in than anything I know of!

Questions?  Comments?  Pika?  Email me at ericwilliamson@hotmail.com.

And yes, I do know that this will never get posted anywhere on Pojo.com.  I needed this to make me feel better, sorry it came at the expense of the free space in the Inboxes of Pojo.com’s server.