Random Stuff #57

So this past weekend was pretty uneventful.  I hardly played card games at all; I was mainly working on my Pokemon.  I also didn't get to go to the Kaijudo tournament, since I was stuck doing homework all day.  It's alright though, since I'll be able to go to at least two Kaijudo tournaments in December, maybe three, depending on how much I have to prepare for finals.

I want to try making a new Kaijudo deck before I go to another tournament, but I can't really think of anything.  The Skyforce Champion deck I have right now is neat, but it's not that great.  I'll probably have to build a more aggro deck or a Queen Kalima deck.  I could try using Megabugs again, but Herald of Infernus didn't stop being a thing like Bottle did, so I'm hesitant to use them again.  The problem is that everyone at my locals plays something different, so I can't really make a meta call.  There will be at least one of each type of prominent deck there, from Eternal Haven to Dragons to Rush, so I have to prepare for everything and hope I draw the right cards at the right times.

Regardless, I haven't been able to put much thought into a new Kaijudo deck because I used my free time over the past week to finish a Doubles team for Pokemon.  However, none of my friends have finished theirs yet, so I haven't gotten the chance to try it out.  I'm not sure exactly how well it would work, but it is a weather-based team, so I feel like it wouldn't be that great.  It has some tricks that other weather teams wouldn't normally have, but I doubt that'll be enough.  We'll see, though.

In working on my Doubles team, I was able to breed a couple of new Pokemon for my Singles team.  I was breeding a bunch of Sewaddle with Chlorophyll, so naturally some of them would have Swarm.  I ended up getting a 4V Sewaddle with Swarm, so I trained it for my Singles team.  It seems pretty good; Leavanny actually has better defenses than the Starmie I've been using, but it does have more crippling weaknesses.  I'm just trying it out, since I already had it ready, but it does actually seem pretty good.  It makes my team weaker to Fire than I'd like, so I'm going to try and fix that.

I was thinking about changing my physical and special tanks, Trevenant and Mega Blastoise.  They're both neat, but they're not all that practical.  I think that I would want something that could heal, like Flygon or Gliscor, as my physical tank.  And as nice as Mega Blastoise is, it's nowhere near as good as Regice at walling special sweepers.  But, since I can't have Regice for another month, I was considering Tentacruel or Dragalge.  I'm considering those two because they're Poison-type, meaning that they can use Black Sludge to heal.  The Leftovers is reserved for Aegislash, which will remain as my mixed tank.

It just occurred to me that most of this won't really make sense, since most of you don't know what my team is at the moment.  If you've read my previous Random Stuff post and have been paying attention to this post, then you could probably guess what the six members of my Singles team were before I finished that Leavanny with Swarm, which ended up being the seventh Pokemon I've made for my Singles team.

Either way, I don't think it's worth describing every single Pokemon on my team and haven't gotten the chance to upload any Pokemon videos.  Aki has only uploaded one 3v3, so you probably don't have that good of an idea of what my team is like.  I could try to upload Pokemon videos, but I've only been able to play against Aki and Ray.  I don't want to upload any of the videos I played against Aki, since he'll probably want to upload them.  And when I play against Ray, he plays pretty poorly.  He's used to playing Triples, which is generally much easier than Singles or Doubles, so he doesn't really prove much of a challenge, meaning that it's not worth uploading the videos.  I hope that he'll get better as we play more, but I'll just have to wait and see.

So, if I do start uploading Pokemon videos, they'll probably be Doubles videos.  I find Doubles a lot more interesting than Singles, since Singles is mostly just about trying to make a team that counters as many specific threats as possible, at least for competitive play.  I've read a little about the current meta in X and Y, and all people talk about is how everyone uses Wash Rotom, Mega Kangaskhan, and Talonflame and what they use to counter them.  That's boring.  I don't want to make a team just to counter specific threats.

Doubles is a lot more interesting because there are so many more interactions to account for.  I'm not that experienced at competitive battling, but I haven't heard anything about specifically countering Pokemon in Doubles.  If one of their Pokemon walls one of yours, you can just attack the other one, which is part of why dedicated walls are practically unheard of in Doubles.  You can't just make a team to counter what everyone else plays; you have to make a team that has synergy.  Doubles just seems a lot more challenging in general, which is what makes it more interesting.

This may sound hypocritical, since I'm using a weather-based team, but it's just something I wanted to try out.  There's one huge weakness that I hate about weather-based teams, and it's that they're based on weather... Seriously, if the sun stops shining, then my Leavanny would be all slow and probably die really quickly.  Charizard needs the sun for his Solar Power, too.  And I don't want to be playing "Protect the Ninetales in case I need to set up Drought again," since that seems really tedious.  But, I'll see how it works before I decide what to do.

I want to try making a "good stuff" team, but it's really difficult.  It would be like trying to make a Yu-Gi-Oh deck for the Yugilo Format or a Vanguard deck for the Snogal Format.  Every Pokemon on the team would have to have synergy with every other Pokemon on the team.  That's incredibly difficult.  I still have no idea of where to start, but I'll probably just choose one Pokemon and start choosing other Pokemon to support it and each other.  I'll probably start with a Rotom, but we'll see.

I think that's about it.  Most of this was just my current thoughts about Pokemon, but yeah.  Once I finish with my classes for the week, I'll probably look for ideas about how to build a good stuff team for Doubles, but I probably won't get the chance to make such a team for a while.  I'll just have to make due with my Sun team for now.

Announcement

I've decided to stop posting weekly tournament reports.  They're not all that exciting, since most of it is just my friends and I beating the little kids who play Vanguard.  That's not really worth talking about; I was really only doing Vanguard tournament reports so that I'd have something to write about, but it seemed rather pointless.

Because of that, I'm not sure what else I could use this blog for.  Although most of my free time is now being spent on Pokemon X, I don't plan on going crazy with competitive Pokemon battling, so I wouldn't have much to talk about.  I'm working on a Doubles team right now, since I like Doubles a lot more than Singles, but that'll take a while to complete.

I did make a Skyforce Champion deck in Kaijudo for fun, but it's not really worth discussing.  My schoolwork will probably take up any time I would have to go to Kaijudo tournaments, so I'm not going to make a competitive deck until after my classes are done for the year.  I should be able to attend Kaijudo tournaments throughout December, so that'll be cool.  It's a good thing, too, since the December Duel Day promo is interesting.

I do miss how this blog used to be about Yu-Gi-Oh.  There were so many ideas to explore.  But, as time went on and the game became more broken, for lack of a better description, I lost my motivation to play or post about it.  I still miss playing Yu-Gi-Oh, but whenever I think about it, I immediately realize that there's no way that the game as it is now can compare to what it once was.  Oh well, these things happen.

I feel as though I would write more about Kaijudo if I had the same drive for card games as I did before.  Kaijudo is an amazing game, but playing Yu-Gi-Oh for all those years has been a disillusioning experience.  Although I was able to make an impact on the people I met playing Yu-Gi-Oh, it didn't really last because the game has changed so much.  Because of that, I don't feel as motivated to discuss any card game as much as I used to.

So that's about it for this blog.  I don't really have much to discuss with regards to Kaijudo or Pokemon, and there's never anything interesting to talk about for Vanguard, so I can't think of anything to use this blog for anymore.  I will probably post Kaijudo tournament reports, but since I can't go to those regularly, there won't be a regular schedule for such posts.

By the way, I know that this post sounded kind of depressing since I was mostly wallowing in the sadness that is the current state of Yu-Gi-Oh, but I hope I didn't depress any of you too much.

Question About Tournament Reports

Just a few quick questions: Do you guys even enjoy reading my tournament reports?  I did get to go to locals both days this weekend, but I don't think it's worth posting about unless you guys actually want to read about it.  I mean, it hardly affects you to know what goes on at my local card shops, but do you still want to read about it?

If you do, I'll make a post about this weekend sometime tomorrow, probably.  Otherwise, I may spend that time instead making Pokemon videos.  I haven't gotten very many responses on whether or not I should start uploading Pokemon videos to my YouTube channel, so I still haven't decided on what to do for that...

Random Stuff #56

I did go to the morning Vanguard tournament yesterday, but do you really want to read about that?  Well, they changed it to best-of-three, so now it's better, but everyone there is still really bad at Vanguard.  I used my Seal Dragon Kagero deck, which I had made last weekend and was one card away from completing it.  It didn't really matter, though, since Dauntless Drive Dragon is still good, even though it's no replacement for Blockade/Inferno.

I went undefeated and got 1st place, having played against a bad Nova Grappler player, a bad Gold Paladin player (the one who hates Team Snogal), a bad Narukami player, and a bad Liberator Gold Paladin player.  I pulled a Blockade Inferno, so that replaced the Dauntless Drive Dragon to complete my Seal Dragon deck.  Aki was there too, but he didn't win anything.  I was able to get a third Machining Armor Beetle, though.

That's it for Vanguard, since we went to the other card shop, but didn't play in the tournament.

Instead, I spent my time playing Pokemon X.  I used up most of my free time over the past couple weeks chain breeding a competitive team.  It took me an entire day to find a Starly with Reckless as its ability; Starly is already a rare horde encounter, and having to use Sand Attack on every single Starly in each horde didn't make it go any faster.  In fact, it took so long for me to find a Reckless Starly that I found a shiny male Nidoran first.  Unfortunately, its IV's suck, so even though it has a good nature (Jolly), it's probably going to be pretty bad.

I also couldn't catch any Rotom except on Tuesdays, so when I finally caught one on this past Tuesday, I spent the following two days chain breeding it to get one with perfect IV's.  I wouldn't normally waste my time like that, but it's Rotom, so I'm okay with it.  Not only that, but I ended up with so many Rotom with nearly-perfect IV spreads that I could make an entire team out of Rotom, one in each of its six forms.  That's probably the next thing I'll be working on.

Other than Staraptor and Rotom, I'm trying not to make any Pokemon that I have already made in Platinum.  With the Staraptor, it was justified, since the other two Staraptor in my copy of Platinum serve different roles.  One is a physical tank, and the other is a shiny sweeper.  This new one is also a sweeper, but it has Reckless instead of Intimidate, so it's better at sweeping than the shiny one.  It also has better IV's...

Either way, I wouldn't be able to chain breed to get perfect IV's if it weren't for that Friend Safari mechanic where every Pokemon in the safari has two perfect IV's.  Luckily, Aki has a friend whose safari has Ditto, so he has been helping me get Ditto to chain breed with.  Of course, he has also started chain breeding to get Pokemon with perfect IV's.

So, since I spent the past week chain breeding my team, I spent yesterday EV training them.  It's very convenient to be able to EV train multiple Pokemon at the same time so quickly using the EXP Share and horde battles.  After that, I had to win BP at the Battle Institute so that I could get the proper items for my team.  It's nice that the Battle Institute levels up your Pokemon for the battles if they're below Lv. 50, as opposed to the Battle Maison.

Anyways, so that's why I haven't been posting or uploading videos.  Vanguard is Vanguard, Pokemon takes up a lot of time, and Aki and I are waiting for the new Kaijudo set.  As usual, when that is released (on Friday), I will be going to get two boxes.  I'll probably also get a set of the Choten's Army starter decks because Aki and I want to try out Corrupted decks.  Until then, there won't be any Kaijudo videos.

But, Aki and I were able to have a couple of Pokemon battles today, since I was able to finish my team, more or less, this morning.  He is planning on uploading battle videos soon, but there are a few issues.  He doesn't have a 3DS capture card, and given how difficult they are to get, that's completely understandable.  So, he'd just have to record the top screen of the 3DS, which isn't uncommon.  The other problem is that his game is in Japanese, so he'd have to add subtitles for everything on the screen, which seems like it would be a lot of work.

Regardless, I wouldn't object to uploading my own Pokemon videos sometime when I don't have anything else to upload.  It would certainly be better than Vanguard videos... So, I was just wondering what your thoughts were on Pokemon videos.  Now that I have a team, I could probably do random online battles and such.  It is somewhat difficult to stay connected to the online server, though, so that may be an issue.  I just kind of want to have something to upload, since I haven't been able to record any videos recently.

So, let me know whether or not you want to see Pokemon videos on my channel.  Aki will probably upload Pokemon videos regardless of whether or not I do, meaning that I would concentrate much less on them than he does.  Of course, I wouldn't have to subtitle every single video, so that helps.  And, it's pretty simple for us to record Pokemon videos, so even if we both start uploading them, there will probably be enough for both of us.  Not to mention that we could also narrate over the videos, so if we upload the same battle (as in, a battle between the two of us), we would have different narrations over them.  So yeah, just let me know what you think.