My roommate and myself decided to pick up Pokemon after our game died out. Unfortunately the games we played were always made by Score Entertainment (Dragon Ball Z, Bleach, etc.), who’s parent company Donruss was recently bought out by a European company. They decided they didn’t want a gaming department, and scrapped Score Ent. There go the games we’ve been playing the past 7-8 years.
We weren’t ready to stop playing card games, so we had to make a decision, what do we play? The only long lasting choices were Warcraft, Magic, Pokemon, and Yugioh. I play WoW online, but the card game is really just a crappy version of Magic, and UDE tends to off their games without much notice. I wasn’t ready to pick up Magic again. I did well, lived off of it for a while, but with the ridiculous prize support, I found myself being too competitive, thus not having nearly as much fun. I won’t do that again.
Yugioh… no. Too many first turn decks, and I just don’t like the games mechanics. Pokemon? At first I didn’t want to play. What 27 year old would want to pick up Pokemon if he hadn’t been playing it since childhood? I decided to have an open mind and give it a chance, and what do ya know, I love it.
On to the present. Being the gamer I am, I’ve already done infinite research on the meta, and had settled into a few decks I enjoy. My first deck was Kingdra; I loved Dragon Pump. That deck died out to me when Donphan was printed. I saw 120 HP Stage 1 that reduced damage, and also had a 1 cost 60 attack. Over the past month I’ve tested many variants of Donphan with my roommate. I’ve done the Manectric/Bench Shield, Nidoqueen tanking, and Mesprit early disruption. Then I got my first Luxray. I knew I needed one. It’s more than likely going to be legal for the next 2 years, and the price will more than definitely go up before it goes down.
As I’ve always done before events, I stayed up until 3 hours before we had to leave. I had Shuppet and Donphan ready. Shuppet is fun, and fast, but I feel it’s a gimmick deck. I was only going to play it if I saw a lot of Gyarados and Kingdra, since those are near auto losses for Donphan. We head out on the drive from Tuscaloosa, AL, to Columbus, MS. I saw a lot of water when we walked in, but it wasn’t either of those decks, people were running Feraligatr, which I was fine with since I felt I could out speed their setup.
Here’s the list I played:
|
4 Phanpy 4 Donphan Prime 2 Baltoy 2 Claydol 2 Crobat G 1 Luxray GL 1 Luxray GL LV.X 1 Uxie 1 Azelf 1 Unown G |
4 Roseanne’s Research 3 Bebe’s Search 2 Cyrus’s Conspiracy 4 Super Scoop Up |
7 Fighting Energy 1 Lighting Energy |
Pretty Standard for the most part in my opinion. Cyrus was a last second addition. I had tried quite a few other Supporters in the place of the 2 Cyrus and Lightning Energy. Buck’s Training seemed to clog my hand and made my Claydols less useful. Looker’s Investigation was great against Shuppet and SP. Oak’s New Theory was great as I loved the +1 card over Looker’s in most matchups.
Once I started playing with Cyrus, I loved it. The possibility to be attacking with Luxray out of nowhere was fantastic. Most of the time I preferred it over the others as it got me an energy and a Poke Turn, which was often more important than any Pokemon that Bebe’s/Roseanne’s could get me.
Round 1 vs. Torterra
When I opened my hand I saw a Crobat start. Not what I wanted for my first round of my first Pokemon tournament. Luckily I had Roseanne’s and going second. Before we flipped over actives, I had already decided on getting Phanpy and Baltoy. I had a Poke Turn and a Scoop Up in hand, along with energy. I’m all of a sudden staring at his solo Uxie start. He hit’s me for 20 and I change my mind and go for Uxie/Crobat with Roseanne’s. Making the ballsy move of trying for the first turn (20 from Psychic Restore, 20 from Weakness, 3 damage counters from Crobat, Poke Turn, Scoop Up.).
I whiff on the Scoop Up, so I decided not to play the second Crobat or Poke Turn. Hit for 40 instead, thinking he will setup, which wasn’t detrimental to me as I drew decent off of Uxie and could start getting my setup rather quickly if needed. He Life Herb‘s Uxie and hits me for 40. Hmm… still a solo Uxie. I draw for turn, Expert Belt. Crobat, swing for 60. We play another game for fun after that, and I win pretty easily as Torterra is too slow to deal with Donphan.
1-0
Round 2 vs. Mightyena/Skuntank
Not much to say about this match. Pretty much his entire deck is weak to fighting.
2-0
Round 3 vs. Machamp/Donphan (My roommate.)
His deck is solid, but if he doesn’t wreck me early game, I can usually pull out the win. Fortunately for me, he gets an Uxie start. My start wasn’t stellar either, starting with Baltoy after a mulligan. Attach an energy, Psychic Balance. He gets nothing on his turn. I empty part of my had and get an Uxie, which starts my setup, he scoops.
3-0
Round 4 vs. Tangrowth/Nidoqueen/Sceptile
This ends up being the first real game of the day. Two second turn wins, and a matchup where I’m severely favored didn’t really show me a whole lot about how I’ve come along in the past month. I get a quick start setting up a belted Donphan early, but drawing nothing after that. She gets a Tangrowth X setup and Confuses my Donphan. I end up going 4 for 5 on heads for KO’s through the Confused. Three of those turns were draw attack. I was drawing energy and Poketurns. All I had on my bench was Uxie.
After 3 KO’s, I finally start setting up getting 2 Claydol’s going. She gets me to 130 damage on Donphan. I’m at the point where I really need to attack through confused, even if it means there’s a 50% chance she will get 2 prizes out of it. I had another 3 energy built Donphan on the bench, so losing the active one wasn’t a big deal. I get 2 straight heads as she can’t do more than 20 damage since I keep killing her attackers, and that’s negated by Exoskeleton. Luxray had been on my bench for a while, but I decided I’d wait until I was 1 prize away to Bright Look for the win.
4-0
Top 2 vs. Mightyena/Skuntank
He ended up beating my roommate as Shaun had yet another solo basic start with Baltoy. The guy got the turn 2 Mightyena/Skuntank out for the kill. He really shouldn’t ever win against Machamp/Donphan, except in a situation like that.
He ends up conceding the finals too me, not even wanting to play it out as he and his friends had to leave. I don’t think it would have mattered much anyways since I 1 shot everything in his deck.
I’m happy I went undefeated in my first Pokemon tournament (Especially since I didn’t even lose 1 prize the whole day.), but it was bittersweet. I won 2 games due to opponent’s bad draws, leaving them with 1 lonesome basic out. I really wanted this event to be one where I get some real experience. Instead I get to play 1 good game all day, that’s it. Granted I didn’t lose a prize to the Tangrowth deck, it was a great learning experience. I did have to figure out the right way to get setup, and my draws were pretty bad having just the 1 Donphan for the majority of the game. In the end, Donphan showed that he could tank with the best.
I won’t say Donphan is beyond amazing. It was overhyped when it came out, but I still feel it’s better than people give it credit for. It does have some terrible matchups, which are currently the better decks out there (Gyarados and Jumpluff are terrible matchups, and Kingdra is almost as bad.). But it also does have some phenomenal matchups, and is an overall just fun deck to play.
Overall fun day. Learned a lot, and met a lot of great people.
