--{title}--
                    HOW TO GET SIBLINGS TO PLAY
        aka "What to do when a person refuses to play against you!"
--{summary}--
        This hopefully helpful advice "column" provides tips to help you
manipulate people into playing the Pokemon Card Game against you using the
Inter-collection Deckbuilding Challenge.

--{begin}--

    Siblings.  Sometimes you want to kill them.  Especially when they're
brats and won't trade with you or won't play with you.  I think I have found
a way to fix this.

    My sister thinks she has lousy cards because I have more rares and more
holofoils.  For the past few weeks she's been complaining that her cards suck
and she constantly refuses to play against me.  Her cards actually are not so
bad, but strategy is her problem.
    Most siblings have delicate egos and find it hard to refuse a challenge
if they think have a chance of winning.  My problem was that I keep beating
my sister, intentionally or not, and she was sick of it.  So I made her a
challenge she could not refuse.  I told her that if I could build a deck
using her cards, she could build a deck using mine. Normally this would not
be a good idea, but my sister is 14 and I trust her with my cards.  Naturally
she jumped at the chance to use my "fancy" cards!
    Remember that dinosaur-ish saying about walking through Disneyland in
someone else's shoes to understand their bunions?  Well, it took trying to
build a deck with my sister's cards to understand her biggest problems.  She
does not have enough cards of any single type for a decent solid-color deck,
but she does have good cards for two-tone decks, particularly water and
grass.  In the past she always tried to toss in her three fire pokemon or
include a bunch of fighting pokemon (although she only has 10 fighting energy
cards) 
    Due to my extensive study of deckbuilding, I managed to tie a bunch of my
sister's cards into a decent deck.  I won't go into detail on exactly how it
works but it easily beat the deck my sister built with my cards!  Hopefully
now my sister has learned to respect her own cards!
    Later, when I looked at what she built from MY cards, I began to see
where her strategy can be improved!  Thanks to this little insight I'll know
where to direct her when I make her sit through Deckbuilding 101 (older
siblings' right; to do things to their siblings for their own good! 
Unfortunately this does not include physically harming the sibling, but then
again it is not a perfect world! *wink*)  I think the end result of my
challenge will be a worthy opponent who beats me half the time, the way it
should be!

--{closing comments}--

    If you are faced with a friend or sibling who refuses to play cards with
you because they think they can't build a deck (they call themselves
"collectors"), they don't know how to play (they call themselves
"Kindergarteners," "First/Second/Third Graders," or "Adults"), or they think
their cards are lousy (they call themselves "Unlucky"), kindly challenge them
to the inter-collection deckbuilding contest.  You, the experienced player,
can teach the poor sod how to play, how to respect his/her own cards, and
hopefully hook those *cough* losers *cough* who don't want to "ruin" four of
their ten Gyarados!

--{end}--

        If you read the above and liked it, if it worked for you, great!  I
don't need to hear about it though!  If you want to know why, read the
following.  If you don't want to know why, don't read the following
disclaimer, you might find parts of it slightly offensive!


--{disclaimer}--
    Anything said above does not necessarily reflect my personal values and
if you feel the criminally insane urge to send hate mail to me, ha ha my
e-mail address is not here!  If you want to embarass yourself by complaining
about free advice which I state now may or may not work, depending on your
indivudal situation, then feel free to post it to Pojo... though please watch
your language, more children are going online for the first time every day so
I doubt that Pojo will post crudely phrased drivel! 

--{okay these are my last comments, regarding Gooey}--

    Considering the kind of language I've been seeing on the Pojo's Gooey
room, I think the Pojo should get itself an IRC channel (like on the
Undernet) where such infantile behavior can be removed... just set up a few
trustworthy Pojo people (deck mech's, professional contributors, good friends
of The Pojo, etc.) as Operators who have the power to kick and/or ban those
losers who feel the urge to do such horrendously offensive things like A:
Flooding,  B: Using profanity, or C:  Advertising! 

--{okay so who wrote this giant puddle of nonsense?}--
        Rainy, the Furry Blue Mock-Dragon!