Ash Ketchum is once again wandering around the Pokémon-filled wilderness on his way to some battle or other when he and his mates Brock and Dawn decide to call in on Crown City where the Pokémon Backer World Cup is taking place. Crown City is a beautiful place to visit with lots of green spaces and architecture, but all of that is soon spoiled…

Ash is intrigued by a creature that he has never seen before as he explores the city. It turns out it‘s called Zorua, a type of baby fox. The poor Pokémon is upset as it has lost its friend. Of course, before too long Ash has offered his services to find the lost friend.

Just as Ash and his chums are setting to work to find Zorua’s mate, all hell breaks loose in Crown City! After a 20-year absence from the place, the Legendary Pokémon Celebi returns with no warning. As if that wasn’t strange enough, an entirely new menace rears its ugly head – the evolution of Zorua is called Zoroark and can transform itself into any Pokémon it wishes!

Terrorising the citizens of Crown City, and of course making Ash, Brock and Dawn feel a bit sick too, Zoroark transforms into Raikou, Suicune and Entei. As if that wasn’t terrifying enough, the evil fox then goes on to create an evil version of Ash himself!

Luckily, Ash and his mates are not alone in solving the problems of Crown City as a guy called Kurt turns up. He is a newspaper reporter and wears a similar cap to Ash, only with a bat symbol on it! Is seems that time travel might have something to do with the plot of the movie, with Celebi travelling back in time to stop a future problem with the Legendary Beasts!

The movie gets even more mysterious with the arrival of an airship and some evil cackling blokes! What on earth could be going on?

One thing’s for sure – Zoroark is not going to be a pushover for Ash to sort out. This evil fox means business, and those teeth look nasty!

The Many Transformations of Zoroark…

The new Pokémon Zoroark has the ability to transform into any living creature and cause havoc! As Ash, Brock and Dawn look on in horror, they witness the evil fox transform into three Legendary Beast Pokémon before having a go at becoming Ash! Then the strange creature returns to its normal form…

It’s Evil Ash!

When Zoroark starts to terrorise Crown City by transforming into Legendary Pokémon, there is one extra trick the evil fox Pokémon has up its hairy sleeve – it transforms into an evil version of Ash! How will the citizens of Crown City be able to tell the real Ash, who is out to help them, from the evil version? This movie could get very confusing! Of course, they could always just look out for the Ash who has an evil grin and then avoid him!

Human Stars of the 13th Pokémon Movie…

It’s been 12 years since Pokémon the First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back hit cinemas for its Japanese debut. And now, 13 films on, Ash Ketchum is still on his never-ending quest for Pokémon battling supremacy, and he has his trusty chums with him for the ride. Take a look at who is starring this time…

Ash Ketchum
Wherever there is Pokémon trouble, he is always there! With Pikachu not far behind. Will Ash ever complete his journey, we wonder?

Brock
Just like we wonder whether Brock will ever open his eyes! Brock has his Croagunk with him to keep him away from the ladies.

Dawn
Ahh, the lovely Dawn. She carries her little Piplup with her for comfort, and also keeps the boys in check!

Kodai
The arch-villain of the movie, he’s the president of the large Kodai Network company and not someone to be messed around!

Kurt
This chap is a newspaper reporter from Crown City and he always has a camera ready to snap away. He wants to discover the secret of Kodai.

Rioka
She is the secretary to Kodai. She is always cool under pressure and makes sure Kodai has plenty of hot tea and biscuits!

The Two New Evil Foxes…

And there we were thinking that 493 Pokémon were quite enough to keep us all busy when The Pokémon Company goes and invents two more! These two are the first of the fifth generation of Pokémon that will star in the 13th Pokémon movie, and the new videogames coming later in the year. We know next to nothing about them, except that Zorua is the basic Forme of the Pokémon and it evolves into Zoroark. How exciting eh? Just imagine what other weird monsters there may be waiting in the wings. Why not draw what you think they may look like and send it in to Design-A-Monster?

Click on a picture to see the full size version…

Video ©2010 Pokémon. ©1995-2010 Nintendo / Creatures Inc. / GAME FREAK inc.

Video ©2010 Pokémon. ©1995-2010 Nintendo / Creatures Inc. / GAME FREAK inc.

Video ©2010 Pokémon. ©1995-2010 Nintendo / Creatures Inc. / GAME FREAK inc.

Video ©2010 Pokémon. ©1995-2010 Nintendo / Creatures Inc. / GAME FREAK inc.

To start off our collection we have 380… yes 380 wallpapers for you. These include classic scenes from past Pokémon Trading Card sets, brilliant group shots from videogames and some rare wallpapers from other countries including some very interesting Japanese ones. Just click on an image in this gallery to call up the full size wallpaper, then do your usual keypresses or mouse selections to set the image as your wallpaper. Enjoy!

London State Championships Win for Nicholas Fotheringham!

Nicholas Fotheringham didn’t let his move up to the Masters age group affect his play as he battled hard over five rounds of Swiss and two knockout rounds to claim the title of London State Champion. Last year Nicholas won UK Nationals in the Seniors age group and made the top four players in the Seniors at Worlds 2009, finally finishing in third place.

Nicholas is again proving to be a tough player to beat and we have to wonder can anyone stop him? National Champion and Worlds number two Sami Sekkoum has yet to face off against Nicholas this season; when they do finally meet to battle, it is sure to be a great game.

Meanwhile Luke Burke won seven of the nine games he played at the Benelux Championships and went on to finish in second place in the Seniors age group. He decided to protect the Premier Points he earned there and dropped from London States after a first-round loss. With places at Worlds 2010 up for grabs, protecting your Premier Points is a sensible thing to do. Players across the globe all face the same dilemma about playing on and potentially losing points or dropping quickly to save your rankings place.

Freddy K was in residence at London States too. Here he is pointing out that Gyarados was the Pokémon that won him his fourth place trophy. And second place Master Tom Hall must be cursing his slip of the pen that put 4x Expert Belt into his decklist by mistake.

HeartGold SoulSilver Unleashed – 12 May

12 May is the scheduled release date for the next HeartGold SoulSilver set… Unleashed. It will see the return of Suicune, Raikou and Entei as combined Legends Cards and it promises to be just as sought after as HeartGold SoulSilver.

We expect that Prereleases will be scheduled for the weekend of 8-9 May and will go on into the following week or two.

Spring Battle Roads started in April

The Battle Road series is designed to provide players with small, entry-level events on a local scale. Battle Roads Spring tournaments give players another opportunity to work on their Premier ratings, potentially earning an invite to Worlds 2010. Look out for one of these special events at a League or Tournament near you soon.

Ditto picks the decks that caught his eye at the 5th Benelux Championships and the London State Championships…

February and March have seen two of the big Pokémon events in Europe taking place and Ditto was there to get you the his hot picks from both of them. First up was the 5th Benelux Cup on 21 February in Utrecht, Netherlands. This large European Tournament is fast becoming a must-go-to fixture for the best Pokémon Trading Card Game players across the continent.

From the Benelux Championships comes Ditto’s first Hot Pick, which is a resurrected Gardevoir/Gallade Deck that uses a combination of Spiritomb’s ‘Keystone Seal’ Poké-BODY and ‘Darkness Grace’ attack to accelerate the evolution of Gardevoir/Gallade whilst stopping either player from playing Trainer cards. Spiritomb can use ‘Darkness Grace’ to evolve any of your Pokémon lines and the attack will search the deck for the next evolution and attach it to that Pokémon.

Poké-BODY: ‘Keystone Seal’
As long as Spiritomb is your Active Pokémon, each player can’t play any Trainer cards from his or her hand.

You could use ‘Darkness Grace’ to go for an early Gardevoir, Gallade or Claydol – which could help you draw into your deck using its Poké-POWER ‘Cosmic Power’. When working alongside Gardevoir and its ‘Telepass’ Poké-POWER, Claydol can help you overcome the downside of ‘Keystone Seal’ that stops you and your opponent playing Trainer cards.

Poké-BODY: ‘Darkness Grace’
Search your deck for a card that evolves from one of your Pokémon and put it onto that Pokémon. (This counts as evolving that Pokémon.) If you do, put 1 damage counter on Spiritomb. Shuffle your deck afterwards.

Now factor in your Gardevoir attacking with ‘Psychic Lock’ each turn and you start to see why the deck is fun to play: it can draw the cards you need with Claydol, with the Supporter cards it has in the deck, and it can use Gardevoir and the Telepass Poké-POWER to copy any one of the Supporters from your opponent’s discard pile each turn. Meanwhile an active Spiritomb can frustrate your opponent and limit their ability to play Trainer cards and once up and running, Gardevoir will be hitting them with ‘Psychic Lock’ for 60 damage each turn and will prevent them from using any Pokémon Powers, including Claydol, during their next turn!

Graceful Gardevoir Deck

27 Pokémon Cards
4 x Ralts (Platinum #89/127)
2 x Kirlia (Platinum #51/127)
1 x Gardevoir (Platinum #8/127)
2 x Gardevoir (Secret Wonders #7/132)
1 x Gardevoir LV.X (Secret Wonders #131/132)
1 x Gallade (Secret Wonders #6/132)
1 x Duskull (Stormfront #SH2/100)
1 x Dusknoir (Diamond and Pearl #2/130)
2 x Luxray GL (Rising Rivals #9/111)
2 x Luxray GL LV.X (Rising Rivals #109/111)
2 x Baltoy (Great Encounters #60/106)
2 x Claydol (Great Encounters #15/106)
3 x Spiritomb (Arceus #32/99)
2 x Unown G (Great Encounters #15/106)
1 x Azelf (Legends Awakened #19/146)

21 Trainers/Supporters/Stadium Cards
4 x Bebe’s Search
3 x Rare Candy
3 x Team Galactic’s Wager
4 x Roseanne’s Research
2 x Moonlight Stadium
2 x Expert Belt
1 x Night Maintenance
2 x Warp Point

12 Energy Cards
7 x Psychic Energy (GS)
4 x Double Colourless Energy (GS)
1 x Lightning Energy (GS)

The deck is also loaded with some of the now familiar tech cards such as Luxray GL and Luxray GL LV.X – with which you can control which of your opponent’s Pokémon are Active – and Dusknoir, which can take Pokémon and cards attached to them from your opponent’s Bench and shuffle them back into their deck. So combine Luxray GL LV.X and Dusknoir and you can shuffle any large threat away whilst choosing your opponent’s least threatening Pokémon as their Active Pokémon.

Moonlight Stadiums give your Psychic Pokémon free retreat and Gardevoir LV.X with ‘Teleportation’ lets you switch out your Active Pokémon with itself should you get a Pokémon locked in place or affected by a Special Condition.

Poké-POWER: ‘Teleportation’
Once during your turn (before your attack), choose one of your Active Pokémon or one of your Benched Pokémon and switch Gardevoir with that Pokémon. This power can’t be used if Gardevoir is affected by a Special Condition.

And of course Gardevoir LV.X can always attack with ‘Bring Down’ which, for two Psychic Energy, will knock the Pokémon with the lowest hit points in play out of the game; just remember, that includes your Pokémon too!

CurseGar Deck

27 Pokémon Cards
3 x Gastly (Stormfront #62/100)
2 x Haunter (Arceus #41/99)
2 x Gengar (Arceus #16/99)
1 x Gengar (Stormfront #18/100)
1 x Gengar LV.X (Arceus #97/99)
4 x Spiritomb (Arceus #32/99)
2 x Baltoy (Great Encounters #60/106)
2 x Claydol (Great Encounters #15/106)
1 x Duskull (Stormfront #SH2/100)
1 x Dusknoir (Diamond and Pearl #2/130)
1 x Mewtwo (Majestic Dawn #9/100)
1 x Mewtwo LV.X (Legends Awakened #144/146)
2 x Mr. Mime (Mysterious Treasures #30/123)
1 x Relicanth (Supreme Victors #79/147)
1 x Azelf (Legends Awakened #19/146)
1 x Unown G (Great Encounters #15/106)
1 x Unown Q (Majestic Dawn #49/100)

21 Trainers/Supporters/Stadium Cards
4 x Bebe’s Search
3 x Roseanne’s Research
3 x Team Galactic’s Wager
4 x Rare Candy
2 x Warp Point
1 x Night Maintenance
2 x Expert Belt
2 x Moonlight Stadium

12 Energy Cards
7 x Psychic Energy
4 x Call Energy
1 x Fighting Energy

Shadow Skip
(60 Damage)
Does 10 damage to one of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon. (Don’t apply Weakness and Resistance for Benched Pokémon.) You may switch Gengar with one of your Benched Pokémon.

Next up is a deck that is seeing increasing play: CurseGar. It can be used to counter decks that are Trainer-heavy like Gyarados. It uses Spiritomb to keep Trainers in your opponent’s hand whilst evolving up to Gengar from Stormfront, which will do 30 damage for each Trainer, Supporter and Stadium Card in their hand!

The ‘Curse’ part of the deck comes from the second Gengar being played from the Arceus set, which has the ‘Curse’ Poké-POWER. This allows you to move a damage counter from one of your opponent’s Pokémon to another of their Pokémon. And with two working together it is possible to line up a Pokémon for a One-Hit Knock Out or even Knock Out two Pokémon in one turn, by moving damage counters around on your opponent’s Benched Pokémon.

Poltergeist
(30 Damage)
Look at your opponent’s hand. This attack does 30 damage times the number of Trainer, Supporter and Stadium cards in your opponent’s hand.

And Gengar has another trick too: if the Stormfront Gengar is Knocked Out by damage from an attack, you flip a coin and if it’s heads, you Knock Out the Attacking Pokémon as well! So your opponent will be wary of Knocking Out Gengar, just in case they lose their Active Pokémon to ‘Fainting Spell’.

The real key to the deck is Arceus Gengar and its ‘Shadow Skip’ attack; this does 60 damage to the Defending Pokémon and then lets you switch Gengar with one of your Benched Pokémon, ideally a Spiritomb. You then attach an Unown Q from your Bench to Spiritomb or use Moonlight Stadium to free retreat and repeat Gengar’s ‘Shadow Skip’ attack.

The result is a very frustrated opponent who is again effectively locked out of playing any Trainers whilst you are protecting your main hitter, Gengar. Because Luxray GL LV.X can effectively break the lock, the deck also plays Mewtwo LV.X and Mr Mime, shutting down low-Energy-count attacks and attacks from Basic Pokémon.

That is it for Ditto this month. Why not give one of these Tournament-winning decks a whirl and see if you have what it takes to master one of Ditto’s Hot Pick decks?

You will need…

To create your egg cosy you will need the following…
1 LARGE PIECE OF BLUE FABRIC
For the body and the outside of the ears.
1 SMALL PIECE OF RED FABRIC
For the inside of the ears, plus the mouth.
2 BUTTONS OF THE SAME SIZE
For the eyes.
SOME BLUE COTTON
Used to sew it all together.
SOME FABRIC GLUE
To stick stuff on in case you don’t want to sew it.
LEVEL: EASY
TIME: 30 MINUTES

1. Draw around the template for Marill’s body onto a piece of paper. Ask an adult to cut that out. Then place the paper template onto the blue fabric and draw around it. Put the template on the fabric again and draw around it. Get a grown-up to cut both pieces out so you have one for the front and back of your Pokémon.

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2. Next our Marill needs a pair of ears. Repeat step one, but this time with the bigger circle template on the blue fabric. Ask an adult to cut these out and place to one side. Repeat this to make the inside of the ears, but this time use a smaller circle paper template on red fabric to do so. Get a grown-up to cut these out too.
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3. Take one of your bigger blue circles and put a smaller red circle on top of it to make Marill’s ears. You can sew these on, or just pop a bit of fabric glue on to stick them in place. For Marill’s eyes, take two buttons and put them onto one piece of the body fabric. Ask an adult to sew these in place – or you can glue them on if you want to.

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4. Now we’re going to fix Marill’s body together. Take the two body pieces and line them up. Make sure that the buttons are facing outside. Get a grown-up to sew along the edges (but not the bottom).

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5. All that’s left is for you to stick your ears onto the body. Plop a bit of glue where you’d like his listeners to be fixed and wait for it to dry. You can even add a mouth if you like with a scrap of red fabric. Put it on top of a boiled egg and you’re finished!

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You could make a Marill egg cosy as a gift for a friend… or yourself!

We’ve been pretty excited since HeartGold and SoulSilver rocked up in the office. Perhaps a little too excited, seeing as how we saw fit to take on this month’s challenger using only Pokémon we’d just captured and started raising in the new games. Had we put enough time in to come out victorious with such a fresh squad, or would our newcomers be trampled? If you think you have what it takes to beat us, email us at pokemonworld@imagine-publishing.co.uk with your Friend Code!

Team Lukémon

Feraligatr
Water

Ampharos
Electric

Dragonite
Dragon/Flying

Decent Pokémon but all still with untapped potential.

Team Adam

Hitmonchan
Fighting

Gengar
Ghost/Poison

Garchomp
Dragon/Ground

A beastly team that doesn’t pull any punches.

FIGHT!

We’d simply grown too attached to our new HeartGold/SoulSilver team to go back to Platinum for this issue’s challenge, so fearing the worst we decided to brave it with the new guys. They’d done pretty well against the Trainers of Johto and Kanto, but it didn’t take long for us to be reminded that competitive battling was a whole different ball game!
We decide to open with Dragonite, which the opponent answers with Hitmonchan. Knowing how unprepared we are, we’re in two minds whether to flee, fearing the off-chance that Hitmonchan had learned Ice Punch, but we decide to risk it. This turns out to be the first of several poor decisions on our part and as our Dragon Rush attack goes soaring wide of the mark, the frosty punch comes as an immediate response and lays out the dragon in a single blow. Not a good start. Not wanting Feraligatr to suffer the same fate, should Chan know Thunder Punch, we opt for the comparatively safe option and put Ampharos up. An early Thunder Wave gets us off to a good start and despite the lack of super effective attacks, we manage to Discharge a fair few times before Hitmonchan can even break his paralysis. But by then, it’s too late for him – he’s hurt Ampharos a fair bit, but a final Discharge and the punchy Poké goes down for one a piece! Out comes (the annoyingly resistant) Garchomp, forcing a switch on our part since that Earthquake is all but inevitable. It does indeed come, and Feraligatr switches into it for a fair chunk of ineffective damage. He next tries to power up with Sword’s Dance, but it’ll be his undoing – Feraligatr’s Ice Fang lands hard for quad damage and down goes the big hammerhead. We could win this yet!
Gengar arrives last and we’re ready with Crunch, but disaster strikes as a critical (and presumably Choice Specs-boosted) Shadow Ball tears through Feraligatr for a shock KO! Begrudgingly, we put out our already weakened Ampharos, but he too suffers the same fate – we’ve forgotten how quick and deadly Gengar can be and paid the ultimate price! A win for Team Adam as the reigning champs go down! Congratulations!

THE FINAL WORD

Our first loss of the year! Heartbreaking as it is to see our new friends shot down in flames so easily, we do have to wonder if even some of our better squads could have stood up to this relentless onslaught. The opposing team was obviously well trained and there was no way for our relatively untrained Pokémon to pull through. Next time we’ll be ready…

by Anja Parker, age 11, London

“Arghh!!” groaned Torterra as he fell back from Walrein’s Ice Fang attack. Just then, Infernape quickly countered with his Close Combat attack while Torterra was recovering, and brought the battle to an end.

“Another narrow defeat,” muttered Empoleon. They continued through the dark dungeon that was located in the underworld. The team knew that there were more strong Pokémon to defeat, however they did not know that Weavile, who was a spy working for the dungeon boss Giratina, was watching them from overhead.

Empoleon was trailing behind the others when Weavile swept down and in a flash, kidnapped Empoleon! Eventually, after a few battles, the remainder of the team noticed that something was not right. When they realized that Empoleon was not in their presence, Infernape and Torterra instantly started to shout…
“EMPOLEON – COME BACK HERE!” at the top of their voices. Suddenly, Weavile appeared with an unconscious, captured Empoleon.
“Since you’re all too weak for your own good, you can have your friend back!” he taunted.
With that, he hurled Empoleon at them and vanished in an instant. Empoleon landed with a crash on top of his team, and they all regained consciousness within a short time.

“Come on! we still have to find Weavile and Giratina,” commanded Infernape.

After some time they reached the end of the dungeon. Weavile was there, however he did not flinch at their presence, the Pokémon only chuckled. Then Giratina appeared as quick as Weavile could have ever done.
“This is not only the end of the dungeon, but the end of you too!” he growled in a deep voice.
Instantly, an earthquake took place and realising they had no choice, Infernape, Empoleon, and Torterra used their escape ropes and fled from the terrible disaster.

As for Giratina, he is believed to have been destroyed. However, Weavile still managed to escape and abandoned his master.