I know what you all are thinking, another dumb state of pokemon

article.  But In This one I won't just be cursing the japanese for

making the game so horrible.

    Pokemon TCG in this day and age is no longer about using trainers to

power up pokemon, and pokemon to beat your oponent.  Though there are

many good decks that do this, the majority of decks that can be given

the status of greatness, are all about controle.  right now the entire

game is all about who's winning on turn 1 or 2.  Who can get the

slowking out, who can get of the trap combo, who can remove the most

energy, who can get that sneasil or wiggly powered up first.  The

metagame of pokemon is based on who is winning before the pokemon

attack.But this is not a bad thing.  The game shouldn't just be about

who has the best pokemon, its about who has the bast pokemon.

    What bothers me is everyone always talking about the "good Old Days"

of pokemon.  Back when all we had was base set.  I remember.  I remember

if wanted to win you either played a haymaker or a raindance. ER was

king, and there was no earthly way to beat hitmonchan.  Now we have

choices, different deck ideas, new strategies.

    Everyone is always bugging on archetypes.  Well,  The truth is, some

pokemon are just better than others.  And if you don't play archetypes,

then you better be on great strategist, and have on very very high skill

level.  Well, heres a list of all the major archetypical pokemon and

deck strategies(forgive me if i forget 1 or 2).

Mp mewtwo

mp entei

hitmonchan

electabuzz

base set dragonaire

blastoise

chansey

scyther

wigglytuff

clefable

ditto

fossil magmar

Dark Riachu

dark vileplume

erika's dratini

brocks likitung

brocks sandslash

tr scyther

tr hitmonchan

tr scyther

lt. serge's electabuzz

erika's jigglypuff

blaines arcanine

blaines rapidash

sneasil

murkrow

steelix

slowking

pichu

elekid

skarmory

igglybuff

scizor

umbreon

tyranitar

houndoom

beedrill

trap

lock

anti-haymaker

stall

Big basics

turbo

blaines fire

raindance

copycat

slowking based

and of course the infamouse haymaker variants.

after looking at that list, tell me that you don't have choices.

Archetypes arent overused, there just good decks.

    And people bashing cards like slowking and trap decks, but those are

just other ways of getting the upper hand.  It's not like there are no

ways to counter them.  If you let them get you down, then you are too

relient on trainers.

    That gets me started on a new issue.  Players are way to relient on

trainers.  If you only put 20 or so trainers in your deck, then these

major threats, arent so bad anymore.  And with the release of neo 1 and

2, The game of pokemon has become more and more like before team rocket

expansion.  Less people play 40 trainer decks.  People are starting to

put 20 to 25 energies in a deck  This balance of pokemon is very

delicate.  with the release of one or two cards, the entire metagame can

change.

    Rockets Zapdos threw off the entire game of weakness and

resistance.  Before it, if you wanted to beat lighting decks, you played

fighting.  you played color to color, type to type. This made people

play varieties of decks.  But Team rockets zapdos is not only a great

card, but it is also completely imune to weakness and resistanse.  the

only pokemon that have resistance to lightning are fighting, so the two

usually stalemate.  There are very few lightning resistant pokemon that

can hurt tr zapdos, but zapdos has no problem hitting over 30. I don't

even cosider electebuzz and Zapdos to even be the same tye. there as

different as sneasil and skarmory.  That brings my next point.  psycic

pokemon were always off in la la land during the whole matagameing

thing.  You wanted to beat mewtwo, you used mewtwo or colorless

pokemon.  if you wanted to beat colorless pokemon, you used fighting.

but then dark pokemon came along, that threw that balance out the

window.  Sneasil is another card immune to metagaming.  I know unknown D

weakens him, but sneasil still clobbers right threw that.  murkrow is a

different story, but his metagame invoves mostly trainers. sneasil is

not easily stoped.  There are many ways to stop him, but those usually

are long hard combos.  But even those are stopped  Tr zapdos is eaten

alive by clefable, and sneasil kissed wigglytuff's dust, but they still

altered the game.

    All that I've really been trying to say in this article is that

there is not Card or combo that is TOO GOOD.  Pokemon right now is at

the highest level of strategy it has ever been.  With dark and steel

added, there are all new combinations in decks.  pokemon right now is

the best its ever been, and it will probably only get better.

Whatever, Cya

Matt "the man" Haithcock