About me

My name is Esa Juntunen and I live in Finland. You may have heard my name mentioned here and there but it may also be that you may have never heard of me. You may also know me under a name of "badganondorf" or TheDeckOut in several forums on the internet.

First of all, the reason why I write this blog is to share all my knowledge about Pokémon TCG with everyone. This is also a huge challenge to myself because English isn't my native language and producing high-quality content in a foreign language is challenging and demanding at the same time. However, I can also learn a thing or two while writing this blog. At least my English skills will develop while writing this blog.

To write high-quality material about Pokémon TCG I need to know something about Pokémon TCG. I should've also accomplished at least something and played a long time competitively. Well, to be honest, I wouldn't be writing this blog if I didn't feel like I have something to give to everyone in the world of Pokémon TCG. So, to give my blog some credibility, here are some of my top accomplishments in Pokémon TCG.

19x City Champion
12x Regional Champion 
6x National Champion
3x World Championships Top32
1x World Championships Top8
2x Builder and co-builder of World Championship winning decks
2x Judge at Finnish National Championships


I want to share my knowledge and ideas for the whole Pokémon TCG community for free because I often hear how the quality of free competitive Pokémon TCG knowledge is low. Sadly, I must agree. I remember the time when the best of this game wrote great and long articles to pokegym.net and shared their ideas of even new decks to the public. Thankfully there are few websites nowadays that do offer great content for free but still I think there is still demand for more high-quality Pokémon TCG content. I will try to offer you regularly competitively valuable content for free – that is my mission. Of course this takes a lot of time, which I could spend on school or work so that's why I write for SixPrizes UG as well - to keep this blog free for everyone.

The greatest challenge and fun in this game - in my opinion – is deck building. I have always considered myself more as a deck builder than a player even though I have had a great amount of success as a player as well. Still, I think my greatest achievements are the decks I have built during my 9-year World Championship history. That’s why in this blog I’ll mostly focus on decks and cards that are playable. I won’t be having things like “card of the day” because over half of the cards I would be analyzing would be rubbish.

Then what will you be seeing in this blog? I will be updating my blog 2 times a week (sometimes 3 times a week). Here is a list of things I’ll be covering in this blog. Remember - if you have a request of something you'd like to see me blog about or if you just want to ask something – you can always e-mail me to: thedeckout@gmail.com or contact me via comment field. I will answer each question and request personally.

- Eye on Japan – article series covering the Pokémon TCG scene of Japan
- Full deck lists, skeleton deck lists and tech options for every metagame deck
- Whole new fun and competitive rogue decks you can’t even think of
- Secret deck analysis as soon as one is brought up
- How the new sets  and cards will affect the format and analysis of every new playable card
- Metagame analysis for every tournament series
- My own tournament reports
- Interviews of notable players worldwide


When I started this blog, I had no plans for the reader amount. First, I was happy with 500 readers daily but I soon understood how much the blog could grow. I didn't understand what I started when I started my blog. The popularity this blog has gotten has caught me by surprise. The growth of viewers has been incredible to see and I want to thank every follower of this blog very much. Every blogger writes only for their readers so I'm very happy to write for a growing audience. Without any of you, I wouldn't be writing this blog!Anyways, even though all the things are written 100% by me and I have only gotten a few featured writer so far, I have back-up people who have greatly affected my blog's content.

First, there is Ukinin-san. He is kind enough to answer any of my questions about Japanese Pokémon TCG and thanks to him and his blog, I've been able to provide the metagame breaking decks like 6-corners, Cobalion/Kyurem/Eelctrode and Thundurus EX/Deoxys EX. All the info for Eye on Japan has also come from him so I think everybody (including me) should be very grateful for him as well.

I also want to thank Adam from the SixPrizes.com.

Adam has been a great help while establishing my blog in social media and all over the internet and it's been great discussing him about websites and techincal issues.

I'd like to also thank everyone who has been reading my blog and has given me encouraging comments!

The Deck Out on Facebook
The DeckOut on Twitter
E-mail: thedeckout@gmail.com

Thanks for reading my blog.

- Esa Juntunen