The only downside of the Facility upgrade process was the fact that it took two weeks to complete; as such, without access to my projects, I knew that I would go crazy, er…crazier, in a short span of time; thus I decided to fill that void with…
"FUCKING GIVE ME GOD DAMN CHA****RD!" Brenden’s screams could practically be heard outside…and the reason was pretty much what you’d expect it to be.
Since we had nothing to do, and thousands of P**emon card packs were sitting collecting metaphorical dust in my inventory, I decided it was time to fulfill a childhood dream for not only Brenden but myself as well.
I mean, come on, how many of us DIDN’T want to pull the rarest card in the collection? Unfortunately, even after going through an entire case of 6 boxes, we had yet to pull even a single one.
Ala***am, Bla***ise, Gy***dos, we had pulled already, a few times over, in fact…I even got a Me**wo, but still no Cha****rd.
To make matters even worse, with each pack we opened, Brenden got more and more agitated.
Meanwhile, I sat there holding a Mac**p with a reminiscent smirk on my lips. Funny enough, this was actually the first P**emon card I ever got, so sitting here on the floor opening packs, every time the card showed up, I would have a small moment to myself of pure nostalgia.
In comparison, Brenden didn’t have any of that, considering he was too young back in the Origin Timeline and barely had any memories of opening packs.
Then…it finally happened.
Three boxes into the second case, Brenden, with trembling hands, fell uncharacteristically silent, enough to make me glance over and figure out why.
"Oh, look at that. You finally got one, and there are only seven more to go for our collections." I said teasingly, earning me a glare and huff.
"I let you have your damn moment with fucking Ma***p; let me savor this once-in-a-lifetime memory." Holding the card close to his face as if it were the most precious item on the face of the planet, Brenden was visibly filled with glee.
’So simple, haha,’ I thought while flipping pages in my binder to fill out the 3rd of four Hit****han cards I needed to complete the four-of-play set.
Eventually, after having made his little memory with the shiny card, Brenden sleeved it in a protective card sleeve and slid it carefully into the fourth row of his binder.
"Heh, ok, three more to go," smacking his cheeks, Brenden ripped off the cellophane wrapping on a new box and began ripping open packs.
"Do you think we should play the game? Like, I know neither one of us ever did, but tournaments should be starting up relatively soon, so once we finished doing the Columbine shit, wanna make a run to become world champions?" I asked while casually opening a pack, pulling a Cha****rd of my own, and placing it in my binder without any fuss.
"I mean, we could…but what would we play? You were the card game wizard growing up; I fell off in middle school, whereas you went on to play other games and make it to nationals, then World Championships in what three different card games." Tearing his eyes away from the Cha****rd I had pulled and placed in my binder without any fanfare, Brenden asked.
"Well, every game has "Meta"…and this game isn’t any different," closing my eyes, I accessed my Imagination Library. I found the section about card games before walking over to a certain book from a random video I had watched during a boredom binge.
In the book was all the info about the early Meta for the card game, and by the time I opened my eyes, I was already on the move.
"Base Set’s Meta Revolved around Hit****han and Ele***buzz, who were a little TOO op for the time, so they are the basis for most of the Meta decks."
"Now, you have two choices; you can run the Rain Dance build, which uses a bunch of Water cards, or what I’ll be using what was called the Haymaker Build; it uses both Hit****han and Ele***buzz, along with a shit ton of trainer cards and is super aggressive when it comes to beating down players."
"While there is a limited selection of what we can make thanks to the small card pool, you basically have those two options, Rain Maker and Haymaker." With a shrug, I went ahead and began building my deck.
"So…I cant use Cha****rd…" With a slight frown and a whiney tone, Brenden inquired.
"I mean, you could, but if you wanna wreck everyone but me and get hella free shit, I wouldn’t recommend it. Basically, if you wanna run it, you’ll need to use the lower evolutions flooding your card count, plus they are easy pickings for my Haymaker deck."
"At least, until June, when the meta shifts because Jungle comes out; that’s the second set, anyway; once that comes out, you can use a S***her deck; I know you always liked that P**emon."
"Also, there’s fire support, so THEN you’d be able to make a deck that utilizes your beloved Cha****rd."
For the rest of the day, I continued explaining how the game worked while the two of us continued filling out our binders and opening packs.
From how the game mechanics played out to what cards were better than others and, of course, how to win, I explained it all in a manner that my meathead little brother could understand.
For the next two days, the two of us talked about the game nonstop until our binders were finally complete, and we each had master sets of the original set of cards.
Once that was done, it was time to begin playing the game against each other, and with my brother having a low Intellect stat when compared to me but extremely high when compared to the Basic humans of Earth, I didn’t doubt he’d be able to destroy the competition.
And while I would swap decks around during our matches so that he could get a feel for the game, he had yet to beat me even once, regardless of what I played, until the question of the first big tournament came up.
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"GenCon, it’s in August, and that will be the proving ground. Based on how you’ve been playing, I don’t see a reason why the finals wouldn’t be you vs. me."