My girlfriend and I have recently gotten two of our friends from UMass into Pokemon, so after dragging ourselves out of bed after a nice Saturday night at college (   :]   ) we went over to Bruegger’s Bagels for breakfast in Amherst before heading to the Hadley Mall.  After copious amounts of caffeine, sugar, and bagels we made it over to X-9 games for all the paperwork of getting our friends POP id’s and such.

I’ll throw my decklist here, but for the record my girlfriend was playing Leafeon/Sceptile, and our friends were playing semi-thrown together rogue decks- Palkia G / Honchkrow G / Garchomp C and Manectric / Starmie / Regigigas.  Basically my deck aimed for a quick set up of Porygon Z and a bunch of TM’s, my girlfriend’s deck went for massive Leafeon LV.X damage, and my friends’ decks aimed to spread and snipe (Regigigas was for the “why is that in there?” factor).

I would have had two Claydol, but with only 2 Claydol for 4 decks, it gets tough :]  I was a little afraid of FlyLock, so I threw in 3 Warp Points, and the Dusky DP was to try to help against Speedrill, which I shockingly didn’t even see in Masters.

Sorry for the wait, here are the matches! (As best I can remember, I don’t think I’ll post any names since I don’t remember all of them.)

R1: Promogon vs. Swampert

I met this guy at league 2 weeks prior to the tournament, and he was just starting out.  I think I saw him borrowing some cards from some generous guys before the tourney started, so his deck was a little slow and he was still a little new to the game.

I got a decent start with Porygon active and stayed in control for the majority of the match.  Like I said, his deck wasn’t the most competitive and he was a little new, so I took the win 6-0 on this one.  I do remember catching him a little off-guard with a “Dark Palm” from Dusknoir to shuffle in a Marshtomp with a bunch of energies attached, which solidified my victory and kept me ahead for most of the game.

Overall a chill guy though, so hopefully he’ll stick with it!

1-0

R2: Promogon vs. Magmortar / Togekiss

I got a Porygon start to his Baltoy I think.  I was a little slower than I’d have liked, and by the time I got out a bunch of TM’s he KO’d the Porygon Z with all of them on there.  We ended up trading prizes a whole bunch, and I got in a couple key “Dark Palm’s” since he was having trouble keeping his bench low.  Thankfully he was having trouble lining up Togekiss energy acceleration with his Magmortars, and since my Porygons only need two energy to do big damage, he lost steam while I kept cranking out the damage, leading to my win.

This deck wasn’t anything new, but it was pretty consistent and would have been trouble had he had better energy accel. at the right times.  I was just thankful I got to play him rather than my girlfriend’s Leafeon :]

2-0

I think there was a VERY small lunch break here, but none of us were all that hungry after breakfast at 10 am and just hung out in the store.  This cool kid with a lot of old-school cards (and some cool rare looking promos).  We all reminisced on the “good old days” of Pokemon cards and he gave me a sweet holo Cool Porygon Promo card (thanks again!).

R3: Promogon vs. Blaziken FB / Magmortar

We both got decent starts, with me being a good boy and attaching Unown G to my Claydol and active Pokemon to make sure “Luring Flame” wouldn’t do much, but the OHKO’s from Blaziken FB and Magmortar’s burn damage combined with my inability to get the TM’s out in time that I needed kept him in control for pretty much the whole game.  I kept cranking out Porygon Z’s consistently (boy did those 3 Upper Energy come in handy!), but his prize advantage and damage output (as well as a key tails flip on burn damage) gave him the win.

I don’t feel as bad, though, since he went on to get second place and all :P

2-1

R4: Promogon vs. Abomasnow / Metagross

I saw some of this deck in action from sitting next to it during round 1, and saw it take out a fellow Porygon Z deck from a good player, so I was a little nervous for my poor virtual Pokemon.  He starts with the lone Beldum in his deck, me with a Porygon.  He got horrible draws, while I had the TM and rare candy to get the donk by T2 or T3.  I felt pretty bad, but it happens I suppose.

We decided to do a rematch for fun, since we were done really quickly and I wanted to have a better match against an Abomasnow deck.  Apparently I was a bad luck charm, because he ended up starting with his lone Beldum again, though this time he got off to a better start and could follow through.  He got out an early Metagross and got a double prize pick up in one turn with some crafty Crobat G plays, leaving me without a Claydol and a solid way to find enough TM’s for the OHKO’s on his Abomasnows.  As soon as I went to draw my first prize I realized I had forgotten to put out prize cards (which he said I should have done the first time lol), but we just played it out, obviously putting my top 6 cards as prizes.  It was a really long match, but my early Claydol loss and his seemingly endless supply of Poketurns gave him the unofficial win.

3-1

We only had 15 players (1 short of a Top 4 Cut), so I was done after that.  After waiting for the last match to end, which didn’t take too long after our two matches, I ended up in 3rd place (losing to the right person helps!), winning a solid 2 packs of Supreme Victors and my first significant placing at a tournament!

Afterward we went over to Whole Foods and had a nice lunch after gorging ourselves on free samples :D

I got a Garchomp SV in one of the packs, so it wasn’t a complete waste to win 2 packs from that set.

Top 4 decks:
FlyLock
Blaziken FB/Magmortar
Porygon Z
Luxray/Magnezone (this was a cool deck, utilizing Luxray LA and the Super Connectivity ‘Zone for big damage, especially if your opponent played a LV.X i.e. every deck not named Scizor/Cherrim)

Hopefully my Manectric/Starmie/Regigigas friend and I will be able to make it to another BR next weekend!

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The strategy is extremely straightforward: get Technical Machines in play and attack with Overload for a lot of damage (up to 200 with 8 TMs attached). This strategy is heavily aided by Porygon-Z LV.X, who lets you search your deck for any two cards and put them on top via its “Decode” Pokemon Power. These two cards are then easily drawn that same turn with Claydol’s “Cosmic Power”. Essentially, you have have a double Computer Search at your disposal every turn.

Porygon 2 also helps with set up and speed via its “Download” Pokemon Power. This Power can also be easily used to take advantage of some Supporters that you may not normally play, just because of the 1 per turn restriction.

Examples of Supporters that would be good to take advantage of could include Marley’s Request, Cyrus’s Initiative, Lucian’s Assignment, Buck’s Training, Team Galactic’s Wager, etc… There is room for creativity here, so Porygon can be played a bunch of different ways, it just depends on your personal preference.

Here is a sample list based of the version I played against last week:

That list is admittedly very vanilla, but it will at least give you some structure to work with if you want to tech it out and make it your own.

I want to note that this is in all likelihood the ONLY time I would ever use Marley’s Request. It actually is decent here because you can make your opponent choose between TM TS-1 and TM TS-2, which are essentially the same card.

I would really like to test Porygon (along with like 20 other decks), but I have just been so busy lately. Once I do get a chance to fool with it, I will post an updated list and some matchup analysis.

What do you think about Porygon-Z? Do you have any suggestions for the list? How would you play it? Let’s get some discussion going. :)

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