cattdreams
New Member
Once again, on my mission to help new players to enjoy their first experiances with pokemon leagues (and therefor hopefully be enticed to come again). I'd like to take a few moments to mention the often overlooked, but imo, vitally important deck med-kit.
So often I see new players come in with a sucky deck that league members are usually happy to help them with via suggestions, maybe a card or two. but generally leaving them with the over all conclusion that they're going to have to buy alot of special cards to trade for other special cards and that their deck is useless untill they do so.
Situations like this is where it's handy to have a deck med-kit. that is, a bunch of cards that you carry with you that are effectivly things you are willing to donate to fix up a deck. not lame throw away cards, but not ness, the best cards in the bunch. I dont know a single player that hasnt at one time wound up with a bunch of not too bad stage ones or stage two cards that they're not going to use.
A few examples that I've thrown into my medkit are skyridge venomoths, I love that card, and it can be really good in a nice rogue deck, and for some reason, I wound up with about 12 of them, I put some in a deck of mine, I gave a few away, I traded a few, and still had some left over, so poof! they went into the medkit, same thing with swamperts, for some reason I got a ton of those too, so some went into my medkit, then there are cards like this one butterfree I had, good card, though I wasnt going to use it, and it wasnt really good trade fodder as it was non holo and I had accidently stepped on it, it was still in good playing condition, but not mint trading condition. so off that went into the medkit.
The objective of a medkit should not be to build new players be all- end all decks, but to patch up a bad deck into something workable with easier goals to shoot for. For instance, a new player comes in with a slapped together water, fight, fire, electric deck, noticing that it's mostly water and has a 1-1-1 line of mudkip,marshstomp,swampert I check my kit, and notice I have 8 mudkips, 5 marsh and 3 swamperts, so I pull out 2 mud, 1 marsh, and 1 swamp, giving him a 3 2 2 line, it's not perfect, he could definatly use one more of each, but it's much better than before and now he has a minor goal to shoot for (tring to trade for one 1 swampert is much easier than tring to trade for 2) maybe throw in a solid line of some random, but still good, fighting or water pokemon the new player walks out with a better deck than they had, and smaller, less daunting goals to shoot for to improve their deck. (btw, those of you who think swampert decks are lame, please remember this is just an example)
as far as how many cards to spare, well thats upto the person who makes the medkit, maybe you can get a large lot by taking up a collection from league regulars, or perhaps you have a large collection in which case, you can set aside maybe 5% of your cards. I personally set aside about 2 percent of my modified legal collection, which it turns out, is a surprisingly large ammount of cards.
Giving new players goals that are easier to reach in the begging makes the game more enjoyable for everyone. and before you know it, they'll be regulars at your league, trading like crazy just as the rest of us to build their second deck all by themselves.
So often I see new players come in with a sucky deck that league members are usually happy to help them with via suggestions, maybe a card or two. but generally leaving them with the over all conclusion that they're going to have to buy alot of special cards to trade for other special cards and that their deck is useless untill they do so.
Situations like this is where it's handy to have a deck med-kit. that is, a bunch of cards that you carry with you that are effectivly things you are willing to donate to fix up a deck. not lame throw away cards, but not ness, the best cards in the bunch. I dont know a single player that hasnt at one time wound up with a bunch of not too bad stage ones or stage two cards that they're not going to use.
A few examples that I've thrown into my medkit are skyridge venomoths, I love that card, and it can be really good in a nice rogue deck, and for some reason, I wound up with about 12 of them, I put some in a deck of mine, I gave a few away, I traded a few, and still had some left over, so poof! they went into the medkit, same thing with swamperts, for some reason I got a ton of those too, so some went into my medkit, then there are cards like this one butterfree I had, good card, though I wasnt going to use it, and it wasnt really good trade fodder as it was non holo and I had accidently stepped on it, it was still in good playing condition, but not mint trading condition. so off that went into the medkit.
The objective of a medkit should not be to build new players be all- end all decks, but to patch up a bad deck into something workable with easier goals to shoot for. For instance, a new player comes in with a slapped together water, fight, fire, electric deck, noticing that it's mostly water and has a 1-1-1 line of mudkip,marshstomp,swampert I check my kit, and notice I have 8 mudkips, 5 marsh and 3 swamperts, so I pull out 2 mud, 1 marsh, and 1 swamp, giving him a 3 2 2 line, it's not perfect, he could definatly use one more of each, but it's much better than before and now he has a minor goal to shoot for (tring to trade for one 1 swampert is much easier than tring to trade for 2) maybe throw in a solid line of some random, but still good, fighting or water pokemon the new player walks out with a better deck than they had, and smaller, less daunting goals to shoot for to improve their deck. (btw, those of you who think swampert decks are lame, please remember this is just an example)
as far as how many cards to spare, well thats upto the person who makes the medkit, maybe you can get a large lot by taking up a collection from league regulars, or perhaps you have a large collection in which case, you can set aside maybe 5% of your cards. I personally set aside about 2 percent of my modified legal collection, which it turns out, is a surprisingly large ammount of cards.
Giving new players goals that are easier to reach in the begging makes the game more enjoyable for everyone. and before you know it, they'll be regulars at your league, trading like crazy just as the rest of us to build their second deck all by themselves.