Part 20: Ghosts of Card Games Past

TCG Island



It's all because of my great support that you defeated Team GR, you know! Feel free to thank me, Minto!



Alright, postgame, there was barely anything last game and while everyone's kinda settled into their roles from that postgame, there's a bit more in this game! We won't be doing most of it, but it's there, and that's the important part!



Your bravery and Villicci's will to accept his mistakes opened our eyes. Everyone who loves Pokemon cards is a friend to us. This is a sincere moral we've all learned from our bouts with Team GR. No matter what, just keep that love and tolerance in your heart...

That's deep man. Anyway there is something to the Pokemon Dome, not that we'll see, because it requires Link Battles! After you win 10, then the Grand Masters Cup will be available, it's an elimination tournament against the Club Masters, with the finals have you fight a Grand Master. If you win, you can pick any TWO Promos in the game, aside from the Bill's Computer ones, Imakuni? or GR's Mewtwo. If you win FIFTY Link Battles, you'll get the Raichu coin, which Ronald uses and is one of the many awfully grindy coins I'll be showing.

GR Island



Anyway, that's enough of that lame place, we'll be on GR Island for the rest of the update, oh no what a shame. Oh? I've got postgame mail!



It's a marvelous machine constructed by the famed Dr. Mason. Please stop by and try it out -- it's lots of fun! If you earn 50 wins in a row, you'll be awarded a new rare coin! It's the coveted Gengar coin! Please do your best to earn it. Team GR King Villicci (-_-)



Yep. These are still things, there's one on TCG Island as well in Dr. Mason's lab, same as the previous game, but hey there's actually a reward for grinding out FIFTY fights, TWICE! Wow, what a waste of time, here's some shitty coins.

And since we're in the Challenge Hall, like the previous game's postgame, there's a chance there will be a new Challenge Cup when you start the game up to get more Promos. If you beat Challenge Cups on either island 10 times, you'll get a coin! Wow! What a load of garbage grinding again!



Mr. Ishihara has an awe-inspiring library of books about card battles. As a top Executive, I need to study new and interesting duel strategies. Oh, is that why you're here, too? ...well, that's fine. Let's have a rematch sometime soon. I won't lose next time! However, it's better to do it at GR Castle than right here... I'll see you later, Minto.



There's still a few trades to do with Ishihara, but there's only two Promos left in the game we haven't seen yet! And you won't see them normally because it's Card Pop! exclusive like Mew and Venusaur last game.



Alright, onto the main meat of the postgame... fight Villicci... again.



Would you like to have a casual battle or two with me? As before, we'll fight to two total victories. I'll be having fun using my four specially crafted decks! Then let's have some fun! We'll use 6 prize cards.

GR King Duel



We're back here again, yes we do need to beat Villicci a second time to continue with the postgame, it's riveting I know, but hey, we could potentially see his other 2 decks this way, isn't that exciting???



Since he had a Dark Venusaur deck, then you can expect the other 2 Dark starters, thankfully Dark Charizard isn't too bad to face, since the AI will only give it extra energy when it really has nothing else to give it to. 2 energy is still 100 damage, but come on what are the chances of-



Ah goddammit!



Well whatever, since this game isn't difficult, we can pull out a tricky deck like the Lockdown fossil deck to beat the final boss. Would be nice to get Aerodactyl out, but it's not a massive deal against some decks.



I tried.



Even we can't Absorb past Poison damage...



It's time for Clairvoyance Omanyte to take the stage and not because I haven't drawn into an Omastar yet!



Here's the trade evolution Omastar, don't think I used it last time, it's alright I suppose.



Little tricky due to Dark Charizard, but not a bad deck. We saw everything he used, he uses the Neutral Damage Mr. Mime in every deck, thankfully it's not the Invisible Wall one... he just gets Dark Charizard out and shields it somewhat with Dark Clefable, drawing with Kangaskhan and side attacking with Magmar, nothing really out there, few Defenders, 2 Energy Retrievals, it's a deck that chugs along and is simple enough for the AI, which is all you want.



Ah dammit the Dark Venusaur deck again... well I'm sure we'll be fine.



Uh oh, Intro Bulbasaur can do 30 damage for 2 energy, which is always scary early game!



Alright let's stop this evolution nonsense, I say putting my only way of doing that in danger.



Oh hey we're weak to Grass. Shit.



Still, we're able to save Aerodactyl and since Villicci is low on energy, there's not much left to this fight, thank god.



Ah shit, well anyway the last deck we didn't see was Dark Blastoise, surprise surprise. Since he also doesn't use Blastoise, it's not as effective but he uses Dark Clefable again to keep it around to stack energy, though the AI doesn't do that too much. With 3 Super Potions and 3 Breeders, he can get a healthy Blastoise up quickly and can supplement its fewer Water energy with Pluspowers. Also has Scyther that can't use Swords Dance, mainly due to 18 Water energy limiting what he can do. Also has Fossil Lapras for side attacking, alright deck, not as effective as the others.



No, no! I lost again! No matter, though! I thoroughly enjoyed our battles, Minto. I think that fun was worth giving you another special card.




Poke Power: Dark Wave: Whenever 1 of your Pokémon with Dark in its name does damage to any Pokémon with an attack, flip a coin. If heads, flip another coin. If the second coin is heads, that attack does 20 more damage. If the second coin is tails, that attack does 10 more damage. If you have more than 1 Great Rocket's Mewtwo in play, use only 1 Dark Wave for an attack. This power stops working while Great Rocket's Mewtwo is Asleep, Confused, or Paralyzed.

Dark Amplification: Flip a number of coins equal to the number of Pokémon with Dark in their names on your Bench. This attack does 20 damage plus 20 damage times the number of heads.

Now that we're not at the end of the game, we can talk about GR's Mewtwo. This was physically released in 2001 as part of the Special Edition Celebi Game Boy Advance bundle package and was updated slightly to that era. In its debut game, Dark Wave randomly increases a Dark Pokemon's attack by 0, 10 or 20, so it's very useful in the postgame to passively boost your Dark decks and can deal some damage depending on how many Dark Pokemon you use, but it lives and dies on the coin flip, so it could do up to 120 damage. Or not, and that's its main issue. You can get as many copies as you want by beating Villicci, but we'll use 2 cause fuck that. Pretty alright card, but not amazing and thankfully the last Mewtwo card we need to go over!



You're welcome in our castle any time you wish to have a card battle. I shall also give you permission to enter the Sealed Fortress. There are formidable decks contained within that building's halls. They are deck even I, the GR King, am afraid of confronting. It's your choice to investigate it or let such power be. ...either way, be careful, their power is unpredictable and fierce. All I wish is for everyone to have fun with their Pokemon cards!



Woo, credits, onto the Sealed Fortress!



Now my collection of Legendary Flying Pokemon Cards is complete!

Sealed Fortress




Our power was so frightening that we were all locked inside... fate has brought you to this place. Why not indulge its hosts' requests? Have card battles with us, you will learn the power of your deck. Speak to the statue of the player you wish to challenge. We are all skilled at card combat, choose your opponent wisely!



Before we can fight, you must sit at the duelling table.



Let's start the duel already! Set down your 6 prize cards. I'm going to show you my prized "Everyone's Friends" deck!

Sealed Fortress Duel



So this is how we'll end the LP, we started going around our island fighting locals for medals and end fighting ghosts sealed in a fortress by an evil king we befriended through card games. The usual fare.



Out of the 9 fights in this fort, we'll use a GR Mewtwo and Dark Golduck deck for 5 of them, there's some extra variety if you use Water energy, but I'll use solely Psychic energy for a Psychic deck that doesn't immediately get walled by Colourless decks!



3 energy for 50 damage is good, but a potential extra 20 on top of that makes this deck very nice, remember this is Water damage, despite requiring Psychic energy.



GR's Mewtwo will have to pick and choose its fights due to endless Colourless mons, but with enough Dark Golduck on the bench it can be pretty good. Can.



Let's have Mewtwo do something in its debut fight.



Do The Wave, still good after 2 LPs.




But phew, that's the first Ghost Master down, Axel had a very clear archetype, all of them do, in a light Haymaker, though with no Grass energy Scyther can only do so much damage. With 4 Gust of Wind and 4 Pluspower, he can pick and choose who to knock out and because he's got a bunch of easy Basics, he can slap them down for Wigglytuff, damn dangerous deck, but energy is a little thin. That's the only issue with this deck, 4 Bills, 3 Oaks and 3 Computer Errors finally give the AI some useful draw support, took long enough. Hopefully the other 8 battles won't have decks this tough!



Your deck is certainly a tough one after all, I must admit. See ya later!

You get 1 Present pack for beating these guys, which will contain any cards, which doesn't help you get specific ones, but a nice bonus.



UGGGGGGHHHHHH this fukkin guy



Our card battle will be a full game with 6 prize cards. Allow me to show you my "Invincible Pokemon" deck.



We're switching to the Dark Raticate deck again for a very good reason.



Ah, the Damage Swap Chansey combo. It sucked when Murray had it in both games and it super sucks now, especially since he gets Alakazam up as soon as possible and has the tools to do that quickly, unlike Murray. I hate this guy so much, especially because my best damage option is Hyper Fang, Drill Dive is way too slow and Dark Fearow doesn't resist Psychic anyway.



Thankfully he only has one Neutral Mr. Mime, so it's not too likely he'll be able to overpower your Colourless deck, which I don't like using, but in this specific case, fuck this guy!



And now the most miserable part of the duel. God this is a bad deck to use against this bad deck, but I have my plan and I'm sticking to it. Also this is the last coin we haven't seen, gotten after ONE HUNDRED LINK BATTLE WINS! Great.



You have to use a deck that deals some small damage otherwise his 3 Mr. Mime walk all over you.



Also the Fossil Tentacool can remove 2 damage counters from the bench the turn after you put it down, nothing too crazy but every little helps.



Yo, this is our chance, since Chansey is gone, there's a good chance Alakazam won't be able to remove all of its damage counters in one go, unless he has a Scoop Up maybe.



Okay, I think we've got an opening here, of course that Kadabra is a walking time bomb, shame it has 60HP, otherwise it'd be easy bait.



ESPECIALLY when this mime comes out, need to nip that in the bud immediately, we cannot let Kadabra deal dam-



Uh, Alakazam deal damage, due to the confusion chance as well. Absolutely miserable to face, I hate this archetype so much.

Still, I spy 2 more snipes that will secure us the game!



Oh.




Always have a Plan A folks, cause Plan B was actually getting all prize cards lmao. So yeah, completely miserable deck to fight but thankfully only 2 Chansey and Mr. Mime aren't too bad to deal with if you have a 20 damage card. But with 4 Nightly Garbage Runs, you might face 2 more Chansey if you're unlucky but hey, ONLY 2 Centers! I don't wanna talk about this archetype anymore...



Here, take this gift. I reward all those who defeat me... you have my deepest thanks for a truly memorable battle. I'll be leaving, now...



Still, let's move on to the next one.



Let's go! 6 prize cards! Our fight will be to 6 prize cards! You won't feel so hot when you fight my "Sealed Trainer" deck!



Alright, let's see if we can deal with these before we get Dark Vileplume.




Alright, cool! I'm glad that went quickly, Dark Vileplume is miserable to face since Trainer cards are kinda all I do at all times, but it also hurts him, so I guess it's not the worst thing. Due to only having Psychic energy he doesn't use Dark Vileplume to attack so that gets him stuck faster than he'd like, but with 4 Traders, 4 Bills, 3 Oaks and 4 Bill's Teleporters, I'm really surprised he didn't find what he was looking for over the like 7 turns it took to beat all the Dark Gloom. Not complaining! Otherwise he uses Vending Haunter to deal more damage since your hand contains all these useless Trainers and Dark Golduck for good damage. Effective, but definitely fallible.



Tch!! I guess it was inevitable. Here, take this booster pack. Mark my words, kid: I won't be defeated next time! 'Bye!



Alright, what random deck will I choose next? After this we'll skip to the 6th statue, save the middle for last after all.



6 prrrrize cards! Leeeeeet's boogie!



There was a gap in recording Villicci and some of the Ghost Masters, so didn't mean to use the Fossil deck twice in one update. Oh well!



This will go like usual for this deck. I'd love to use Omastar, but if it doesn't pop up, what can ya do?



While Foxfire made Aerodactyl a little stuck until a Switch, Fossils are great bait so we can get back to slaughter.




Easy enough to sweep from there, Pierrot doesn't have many tricks, just a pure Fire deck that deals a lot of damage with Defender and Potions to keep them around for longer. Only 3 Energy Retrieval, so he'll run out of energy if he keeps his cards around, especially since Magmar is the only light attacker he has, Base Ninetales and Arcanine are pretty damn slow, so as long as you burn off the energy, you should be mostly fine. That's about it, simple deck, simple to stop.



Hopefully after the miserable second fight the rest are gonna be nice and smooth. Seems to be going that way, but we're getting kinda lucky!




Straight to the point, like a lightning bolt. Funny that.



Thankfully he lead with Zapdos, or we would've been hurting a tad.



He's hurting for energy and that isn't really helping, if a little annoying.




Well since he didn't draw another Pokemon, Promo Gengar will fuck him up. Not too surprising, he only has 12 Pokemon in his deck, which is weird for the AI. Base Chansey to absorb the GB Zapdos hits in case it goes pearshaped and then... GB Ditto.


Pound

Morph: Remove all damage counters from Ditto. For the rest of the game, replace Ditto with a copy of a Basic Pokémon Card (other than Ditto) chosen at random from your deck. Ditto is no longer Asleep, Confused, Paralyzed, Poisoned, or anything else that might be the result of an attack (just as if you had evolved it).

Exclusive to this game due to Fossil Ditto being a pain to program, Ditto works in this deck since it either becomes a Chansey, always nice to have, or gets Zapdos out to drop the thunder. Of course it needs 3 energy, so it can be sniped beforehand but it's a way to accelerate a specific mon, especially ones that require 3 energy. Still, it's up to you whether you just want to build that Pokemon on the bench, or this fragile one. Nothing a Computer Search can't really handle. Regardless, Frank has Defenders and Scoop Ups to keep everything around, as well as Energy Removal so you can't remove Zapdos before it removes you.



I'll be here waitin' for you! Challenge me again sometime! I'll be seein' you!




This game has no shortage of weirdos...



Wow, a second Colourless deck, fuck off!



Mewtwo isn't completely helpless with 3 Dark Golduck behind it, mwahahahaha!




Mmm, that felt good, especially because he's using the exact same deck! With Dark Dragonair to set up and Dark Clefable to reduce damage, Masquerade uses Dark Golduck and GR's Mewtwo to deal lots of damage quickly and effectively. Unfortunately I was faster, even though they have 4 DCEs and 4 Recycle Energy to get Dark Clefable attacking quickly too. 4 Bills but only 1 Oak make it a little trickier to get what they need and of course if you don't get Dark Dragonair it becomes harder to amplify GR's Mewtwo. Definitely a deck to watch out for, but seems I keep getting lucky with all these quick kills, not complaining!



Three to go, can't wait to see what reward I get for this!



Good afternoon! Do I finally have a customer? I'll gladly take your order if you have a seat at the table!



That's a relief, I haven't had any money all LP!



Time to take down this waitress with some bad dragons, I'm sure we'll have a great time! ...what?



I was getting unlucky to begin with, but a Breeder usually fixes most problems.



Still, I imagine I'll use up all the energy on the wrong thing and use the Dark Gyarados in the back.



Hmm, I've been using the perfect amount each time, but of course I need to roll 2 to take out Dark Clefable, and any Sleep will spell certain doom for Dark Charizard.




Alright well that was a great sweep! Yet again we had Dark Clefable, but Anna had an interesting mix of cards, from Jungle Exeggutor for all 4 DCEs to Dark Gengar pushing your Active so Exeggutor has more time to set up, to Intro Jynx which, well, doesn't really do much aside from padding. There's not much cohesion with her deck, having very few Trainers and even 2 Grass energy, despite Exeggutor not needing any for Big Eggsplosion. I guess this is a chaos deck, cause I can't figure out what the theme is!



Thank you very much for the battle! I'll be waiting for you to return!



Hiiiii! Hello there! You wanna battle, right? Then go sit at the duelling table!



It's great to have a card battle after waiting for such a long time! To get the most enjoyment out of it, let's play to 6 prize cards!



Of course we couldn't escape this archetype, after all I used a pretty similar one towards the start of the LP. My how far we've come.



Okay we get it, you have Articuno.



Before we even deal with Blastoise, Intro Wartortle ain't a slouch either, 30 damage for 2 energy.



Alright, phew, she's mostly out of energy. Gotta get Blastoise out quickly if you want to use big, slow legendaries.



Still won't give me a break after all this time, huh game.




Easy enough! You know, when you don't let Blastoise come out. The deck is exactly what you expect, Blastoise, Lapras, Articuno, along with 2 Breeders, 3 Traders and 2 Computer Search, so getting Blastoise out shouldn't have been too difficult. 22 Water energy to seal up and even 2 Potions just to make sure, it's terrifying, but without Blastoise, Articuno is slow and Lapras can only do so much. Maybe I'm lucky, or maybe I'm just really good at this game.



Thanks so much for playing cards with me. You'll play again, right? Goodbye for now!



One Ghost Master remains, the leader, I can only imagine what deck this guy has.



Hmm, maybe Dark Muk? Dark Venusaur? Nidoking Toxic?




Peck

Poison Horn: The Defending Pokémon is now Poisoned.

Ah of course, the deadliest lead! You might think I'm joking, focusing on Vending Weedle as one of the last cards of the LP, but guaranteed Poison is pretty nasty on turn 1 and will usually net you a kill if they don't retreat. I'm also highlighting it because this is its final form, Toby has no Kakuna or Beedrill cards.



Please kill this next turn thanks.



Well that's fine, I still use Pluspowers just in case GR's Mewtwo lands 0 and in this instance it did, so I'm glad I had a backup.



Otherwise, gotta keep knocking these Scyther down before they can reach Slash.



Oh yeah, we deal Water damage, I nearly forgot.





Psychic: Does 10 more damage for each Energy attached to the Defending Pokémon.

Wave Splash

We'll finish up with the Vending Golduck that didn't see too much use, but was very useful against the high energy mons like Comet Punch Kangaskhan and various legendaries. Not too useful overall, the AI doesn't stack energy as much as it should, but I suppose it properly fears these attacks! I guess you can use the second attack, depends which one you want to ignore, since Water and Psychic usually don't mix outside of Golduck.

Oh yeah, Toby, despite being the apparent leader, he's actually a joke, intentionally of course, his Japanese name is literally Tobichan. His main attackers are Scyther and Magmar, since he has Kangaskhan for draw and Weedle or Charmeleon otherwise. He gets stuck easily due to 2 Bills and makes up for his lack of power with 3 Pluspowers, but otherwise his split energy doesn't help much and even his best attackers don't do much damage. But at least we're done!



Heh heh heh... well, that's that. Prepare yourself for your next duel. Hopefully we'll meet again, Minto.

Ishihara



I believe I've finally collected all of the cards I've been looking for.

That's the last of the trades done! But yeah, that's it for the Sealed Fortress, you don't get anything for beating all 9 Ghost Masters. Getting the Lugia coin would've been cool, but whatever, see if I care! Now there's just a couple of little things to take care of.



Constantly restarting the game and reloading Ishihara's Villa got old pretty quick, but it's the fastest way to progress in the trade sequence.



Thanks to you, I've collected all of the cards I've wanted at last. Thus, I no longer need to trade any more! Now I can use my cards to have some exciting battles. What do you say, Minto? Would you like to battle me? Thank you very much, Minto. I hope our battle is most enjoyable. If you would oblige, we shall play with 6 prize cards.



Okay, phew, we're past the hardest part of the game! Ishihara is the final opponent we'll face in this LP and his deck is full of Promo cards we've been traded throughout the games. It's mainly Colourless Promos, of course, but has Marill, Base Gyarados and Surfing Pikachu, so it has predominately Water energy. I'm saying this now because it's not much of a challenge and I can use this time to mention the last few things left to go over.



Oh yeah Promo Electabuzz doesn't require specific energy aside for Light Screen, so it slots in quite nicely.



Due to only having 2 evolutions, this deck is pretty fragile, but let's talk Dark Pokemon. We encountered a fair few throughout this game and I'm pretty happy we talked about most of them. There are just a few we didn't encounter or weren't suggested, so let's go over Dark Flareon and Dark Rapidash, mainly because we didn't use many Fire decks!



Shame we didn't really encounter this one, cause it's not so great! Either you do 50 at 10HP or 50 if you discard an energy, which is alright, but man this thing is so fragile that setting up Rage is super not worth it, while you can chain the second attack pretty easily, or you can just use Rage at 20HP, up to you.



This one seems perfectly fine if really uninteresting, like hey 30 damage for 2 energy is cool. I guess if you have a lot of energy in the hand you can add another 10 on top, but it'll take quite a few turns to be effective. Still, maybe you could soften up the bench so that a 50HP mon following a 60HP mon is KOed in one hit. Otherwise it's so whatever.





Since we've got a dangerous Magikarp out, might as well cover the dangerous evolution. Gyarados works really well in a Blastoise deck and Dragon Rage is a solid attack, while one extra energy for some extra utility is pretty cool. Decent card, weird Grass weakness still and has solid HP, hey wait why didn't I use this card???




And there we go, not particularly difficult. Even Cool Porygon and Super Energy Removal can't help this deck from being a jumbled mess! There's just 2 more cards to talk about and then we'll have covered everything I wanted, man, another LP is over? Well, that's fine, card games can only be so interesting before they get just a liiiiiitle repetitive. So it's Card Pop! time!



Woah, is that an anime reference??? I kinda forgot this card was a Promo cause I've been using it in every deck lmao. You only ever need 1 and it's super useful, just knowing what Prizes are what is great, so what if your opponent also has that advantage, you at least know what cards they're picking up! It's also interesting in that it's one of the first Holofoil Trainer cards and the first Super Rare card.


Aeroblast: Flip 2 coins. This attack does 20 damage plus 20 more damage for each heads.

And here's the final card in the game, Lugia, pretty fitting. Included along with the game in Japan, it's... meh. Future Lugia cards were definitely more impressive. Hmm, kind of a lame note to end on, but what do I care! I don't really know why I highlighted 160+ cards and talked about them and made this LP longer, is there something wrong with me? Well while I figure that out I should move on to my next LP.



However, it was a truly fun battle. Here, take this as your prize. Please use the cards you just received to make a new deck. I'll be more than happy to challenge your new creation, too! In any case, Minto, you're welcome to return at any time.



What an adventure! While this side project went on a little longer than I would've liked, I'm still super happy I could show off these two gems, especially the wacky sequel. Thank you very much for watching, but don't just sit there, we're off to the Big Applin in Pokemon White, damn the games just keep getting better!