 |
|
|
|
|
|
Pokemon-E
|
|
|
|
You'd be forgiven for thinking that Pokemon had Pokegone, what with all the spiky haired young tearaways making a name for themselves by trash talking and duelling each other. Compared to Shobu and Yugi, Ash's adventures training his pets to fight each other in gladiatorial combat seem wholesome. Well, apart from the Team Rocket cross dressing incident, Brock's obsession with young girls and the central animal welfare issue of pitting a tiny electric hamster against someone elses firebreathing Charizard. Pets corner was never like this at my school!
Mechanics: WoTC's first attempt to make a junior Magic, with energy cards instead of mana-producing land and a slightly reduced complexity. Summon your creatures into the arena, then blitz your opponent with special attacks until his pokemon retires exhausted. Energy cards power attacks as well, so every deck is packed half full of 'em. There's plenty of zaniness - card flipping, coin tossing and the ability to 'evolve' your Pokemon in the field (something Charles Darwin would almost certainly dissapprove of) - but the game is way too complex for it's pre-teen target audience.
How You Win: Each time you knock out an opponent's Pokemon you take one of six prize cards into your hand. Win all six, and it's Champion City all the way. Otherwise if your opponent is out of Pokemon and/or cards at the start of their turn you win by default.
Deck Archetypes: Haymaker variants using Hitmonchan used to be all the rage; these days you're more like to see decks featuring the likes of Swampert and Groudon.
Organised Play: There's a Manchester Pokemon League that meets locally. From September we'll be running our own Pokemon league events in store on Saturday mornings.
Website: Now Nintendo own the CCG rights again, your first Pokeport of call should be here.
Roleplaying Plug: Wizards of the Coast released a short introductory Pokemon roleplaying game at the height of the Pokeboom, but it never took off.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
