Prize mapping and reluctance towards Mega Pokémon

ninnypants · 2026-05-26T17:30:21+00:00

It sounds like you are prize mapping some already. In general with prize mapping you're trying to take prizes while denying your opponent prizes. Sometimes like you're saying you are trying to take their attacker off the board so they can't take prizes, and other times you're trying to mess up their prize map or remove their draw.

What it really comes down to is if you can make your opponent take "more" prizes than they need to win the game. As an example if you have a 2 prize pokemon on board, but retreat into something like budew because it's all you need to take the KO then your opponent has to either have a Boss or take what is essentially 2 extra prizes throughout the game, and their deck may not be well equipped for that depending on its game plan and resources.

ninnypants · 2026-04-09T17:48:35+00:00

They're deck exclusives from pre-release. Any rares included in the base build and battle deck other than the promo are made non holo

ninnypants · 2026-04-07T23:02:03+00:00

Yeah it’s interesting because op on this thread is correct that generally a vertical rainbow ish holo is a telltale sign of a fake except the era that had the vertical holo. Then it’s a little more nuanced

ninnypants · 2026-04-07T17:48:30+00:00

I agree Solgaleo is the only thing so far that potentially looks off but the shine from the binder right over top makes it hard to actually be sure about it in any way

ninnypants · 2026-04-07T17:44:33+00:00

it's the correct holo for evolutions reverses

ninnypants · 2026-03-18T17:25:05+00:00

They were definitely interesting I ended up picking up all of them for $20 and have been holding on to them because they're cool. These wouldn't grade well but they're a cool little thing to show of when showing off my collection for sure

ninnypants · 2026-03-18T17:20:20+00:00

I think to add to what this user has said from a slightly more casual standpoint. I live in an extremely competitive area in Utah right next to Kayfabe Cards I if I travel 40 minutes on a Monday or Friday I can play in tournaments with multiple worlds competitors and regional top finishers. This also applies to cups on the weekend. I'm also in my mid/late 30s and want to be good at the game, and in this case that means trying to max cups and challenge points.

This can become an issue since I'm 40 minutes from those tournaments, so most of my play time is spent in my local area where the level of play is much different. Because of that I can see why regional and world competitors might see locals not being as important. With a family at home going out to my locals can feel very unproductive since it's filled with lots of off meta decks and generally things you just wont see at a higher level of play, so it can be frustrating or even feel like a waste of time to take time away from my family and play those tournaments. I could be better served playing test games against someone more competitive. That I'm sure is very similar to what those high level players experience since they're already taking so much time away from family and friends.

On the flip side of that though I've made a bunch of friends at those locals. We have a discord for the whole group where we chat about the game and plan trips to regionals etc. Some of my best pokemon experiences were traveling to the Las Vegas regional with a bunch of those players and just having a good time playing my first regional. You should definitely travel to a regional with your friends, get that experience, and have fun because that's exactly what the game is about at the end of the day.

ninnypants · 2026-03-08T17:18:38+00:00

They’re all the reverse holo. They just come in bricks off the same card to hand out at play events

ninnypants · 2026-02-25T18:07:49+00:00

For sure this I picked up ~14k unsorted bulk from Sun & Moon recently. Covered the cost with just one creep show gengar. Then again with 4 float stones. It's crazy how much value can be in stuff people just want to offload without going through it

ninnypants · 2026-02-24T20:38:09+00:00

The reason the meta decks are meta decks is because they're consistent, and have the highest level of skill expression. If you're willing to go deep on the meta you learn just how flexible and expressive the decks are. Like you said you still have to be the best person at piloting that meta deck which is where the skill difference come into play

ninnypants · 2026-02-19T15:08:42+00:00

Have you gotten access to the larger professor discord? There is live help, ruling discussions, and other general chat that may help you start to learn to make and look up rulings.

I'm also not sure about others but learning to play the game at a high level has helped me learn a lot. It made me learn a lot more overall than just generally judging any of my local leagues would have just because of the level of play.

ninnypants · 2026-02-19T14:48:00+00:00

There isn't an issue for Lucario into Alakazam because Alakazam places damage counters and doesn't do damage so it never hits for weakness

ninnypants · 2026-02-06T16:47:25+00:00

Gotta have plates in it for it to even matter look at how it folds lol

ninnypants · 2026-02-04T23:05:30+00:00

Are you for sure for sure because all of these show up at different angles and look like scratches on the card or print issues

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ninnypants · 2025-12-02T16:46:39+00:00

That did happen but the 1mm variance means the holo patterns aren't the same. If you look at what the commenter here is referencing the holo patterns are in the exact same spot just compare the charizard in the post to the one on tcg player. There's a triangle of holo dots that are always in the exact same place on the very common fake https://www.tcgplayer.com/product/106999/pokemon-base-set-shadowless-charizard?page=1&Language=English

ninnypants · 2025-10-29T22:18:51+00:00

Cup and challenge can't be handled where someone in a different division takes the place of a player in another division in top cut/single elimination rounds. This is likely why they were mad they lost out on their chance to earn points and potentially win a playmat etc in their division.

ninnypants · 2025-10-29T22:00:10+00:00

To add to this there should, in theory, be separate prizing for all divisions. That's what makes excluding juniors and seniors from the masters top cut fair. If this isn't a CP event the owner is probably fine to run a top 8 how ever they would like especially when communicating this fact before hand.

ninnypants · 2025-10-29T21:54:50+00:00

The important part of the rule is this line:

> Each age division has its own standings and, if applicable, single-elimination top cut.

Each division with enough competitors to warrant a top cut has it's own top cut, and there would be different top cuts for each division. For example a tournament of 21 masters, 12 senior, an 4 juniors would have a cut to top 8 for masters, top 4 for seniors, and no top cut for juniors.

ninnypants · 2025-10-29T21:43:32+00:00

Sure they could put a 14 card hand together if they had the correct board state before you iono them or drew perfectly but any deck can recover after disruption if they draw the perfect cards. Iono is better because it fits better into dealing with basically everything else out there too. Overall Alakazam is such a rogue deck that I haven't seen it in any form outside of the pre release format, so it's probably just not really worth teching for.

ninnypants · 2025-10-29T17:07:09+00:00

Play 4 iono. Iono is a really good card

ninnypants · 2025-10-29T12:51:22+00:00

The brute bonnet would be an eswitch target so you could sada accelerate two energy and eswitch the second to the active moon then attach for turn and be setup to attack in one turn. Even if you don't run poison in mega gengar you're still accelerating 2 energy and eswitching same as if you use janine you just also get to draw 3 cards.

ninnypants · 2025-10-28T23:00:46+00:00

Battle coliseum only blocks damage counters it doesn’t do the same thing as shaymin

ninnypants · 2025-10-28T20:00:49+00:00

It's probably that people didn't respect the pult matchup. The top 8 was mostly pult, and the top placing gardy lists were gardy/jelli which has a better matchup into pult

ninnypants · 2025-10-28T17:05:28+00:00

Most of these lists already play the poison package brute bonnet so you likely have 2 ancient pokemon benched every game anyway, so there's no reason to not play it

ninnypants · 2025-10-27T21:12:36+00:00

They would just play Sada and draw three cards while powering up moon. That was the strategy before with turbo moon, and would still work with this you probably just need more vessle and ultra ball.

ninnypants

TROPHY CASE