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  After having a successful run in the last SUM-LOT tourney with Blacephalon, I decided to use my pet deck for this tournament: Quagsire DRM/Naganadel LOT, or QuagNag. Although it wasn’t on many peoples’ radar until the tag team sets, I believe QuagNag is underrated in this format for several reasons.    For one, it’s basically stall-proof. Stranding an undesirable Pokemon active and energy denial strategies won’t work as any pokemon in the deck can be an attacker thanks to the killer combo of Charging Up and Wash Out. The lack of reliable ability lock in the format is also a boon to QuagNag.   Secondly, the deck has a wide variety of attackers that can vary in effectiveness depending on the situation. Naganadel can hit psychic-weak Pokemon and swing big with Turning Point, Lugia-GX can OHKO Tapu Lele-GX and even send Pokemon to the Lost Zone, and of course Quagsire has an unlimited damage ceiling.   The deck isn’t without its weaknesses, however, as...

(The following writeup is for the Sun & Moon - Lost Thunder format tournament held in the Old Format Pokemon TCG Discord server held in June 2022) My friends and I have always played the tcg on and off, with most of our experience being in the Sun & Moon era, and the announcement of the Sun & Moon - Lost Thunder side tourney at NAIC this year sparked our interest in building decks again. We aren’t able to travel to the actual tournament, sadly, so we played in one of James’ SUM-LOT tourneys instead. This era of the tcg (Fall 2018) was right around the time we stopped keeping up with the game competitively, so things were pretty familiar to us. Me and my friend Kyle both played Blacephalon and my friend John played VikaRay. I chose Blacephalon because of its well rounded matchup spread and consistency, helmed by numerous search cards and strong draw support. Oh yeah and it can go absolutely DIESEL with Beast Ring online. I felt my list could’ve been honed better but was stil...

The EX format is some of the most fun Pokémon I’ve ever played. The sheer number of viable decks can be overwhelming at first, but you learn very quickly the ins and outs of the format. And as with any format, there are always a crop of decks that rise to the top. In a format where decks can break the game wide open by harnessing the abilities of different Poke-Powers to attach additional energy cards and search for individual cards in the deck, the variety of boardstates is astounding. But with powerful cards comes ways to keep them in check. Commonly dubbed "hate cards", there are a multitude of cards in the EX format that restrict the abilities of others, like Battle Frontier, Cursed Stone, Desert Ruins, Crystal Beach, and Cessation Crystal, among others. But there is a dichotomy of how these hate cards restrict the traits of others: this is through prohibition, or cost. Cessation Crystal completely shuts down entire decks just by being attached to a Pokémon. Hate cards th...

Pokemon TCG matches are best when two players of equal ability, playing skillful decks of equal strength, battle it out to the end using all the tools at their disposal. Queendom, most commonly known as the winning 2005 World Championships deck, exemplifies this completely. The origin of Queendom as a deck begins in the EX FireRed & LeafGreen set, debuting in the U.S. in August 2004. EX FireRed & LeafGreen was the first set released after Worlds 2004, after which the Modified format rotated from Expedition-EX Hidden Legends to EX Ruby/Sapphire-On. FireRed & LeafGreen (RG) was themed around the titular games, and such only contained Pokemon from the original 151. Many of these iconic Pokemon received powerful, flashy ex cards, like the starter trio, the legendary birds, Gyarados, Gengar, and others. With the excitement over the new set, one single-prize Pokemon held a relatively low profile before showing up unannounced at Worlds 2005. The secret deck originated by Jeremy Ma...