Focus, young grasshopper.
Hey errybody, Kenny Wisdom back again with another Underground article. Firstly, thanks to everyone for the massive amount of support you’ve shown me. Without you, I wouldn’t even be given the chance to write Underground articles in the first place, so never forget how important you are to the vitality of the writers, and SixPrizes in general.
Getting into my actual article, I don’t really have a super-focused topic for today. I’ve been racking my brain over what to write about as I really wanted to give you guys a solid few thousand words on a specific topic, but at the end of the day I just couldn’t pin point it. I think it’s because we’re at a weird stage right now — Cities are almost over, but still relevant enough that they need to be written about, and on the other hands, States and Regionals seem so close, but are actually several months away.
Because of this, I’m going to be touching on a lot of different topics today. I’ll do my best to go in-depth into each of them to give the level of quality that Underground articles are known for.
Cities Overview
As I said up top, even though a lot of us are thinking ahead to the release of Next Destinies and to the eventual States and Regional tournaments that will take place in an HS-NXD format, it’s important to remember that there are still two weekends of Cities left. For most players this means that there are four events to attend and that’s a whole lot of points to be earned, so you absolutely have to stay on focus during these times.
For those who have been following my non-Underground articles, you’ll know that I haven’t had too much success during Cities. I’ve yet to make a single top cut or earn a single Championship Point from the event series, even though I’ve attended multiple (I do have one point from Regionals for making the top 64 though, so yay for me). I’ve delved into why this is in past articles so I’m not going to rehash it here, but I thought it would be important to look back at the events I’ve entered, how I did, and what ended up winning.
(As a sidenote, I find it pretty awesome that the Pokemon website now has the complete standings for each tournament listed on your player profile. The site certainly has more than it’s share of problems, but laying out a table like this is something I never would’ve been able to do before the upgrade. Big ups to TPCI!)
CC #1
Place: 22nd/36
Deck: EelZone
Winning deck: David Cohen’s Zekrom
I can’t exactly remember all that happened in this tournament, but I do know that I played a decent but unrefined list, and went 2-3 losing to Tyler Ninomura’s Chandelure, Jerin Head’s Stage Ones, and Jeffrey Barasona’s Truth.
The Chandelure loss was to be expected as the match-up is pretty awful, and the Stage Ones match was very close, but my ultimate downfall was very quick Donphans out of my opponent. The Truth match was kind of silly, as the game got to a point where I believe I could’ve won on time, but my Cleffa just wouldn’t wake up in time. Again, I don’t remember all of the events of this tournament, so I apologize if I got any of the details wrong.
As an aside, the finals of this tournament were the most hilarious in recent memory. It was a match between David Cohen vs. Tyler Ninomura, and between misregistered lists, missed donks, missed Tropical Beaches, and dreamcrushes, it was quite the sight to be seen.
Aaaand it can be seen here, thanks to Green Star Gaming on YouTube:
(That’s me in the red jacket :D)
CC #2
Place: 13th/44 (4-2)
Deck: EelZone
Winning deck: Tyler Ninomura’s Chandelure
This tournament, like many of the others on this list, ended with me wiffing the cut with a cut-worthy record. I don’t remember all of the details, except one…
I was playing against a local player named Dario in what I thought was my win-and-in (apparently I calculated wrong. Math is hard). He’s playing Tyranitar Prime, and the match goes pretty well for me, mainly because he runs cold throughout. He manages to bring the game down to 2-1 prizes in my favor. My board is an active Magnezone with another Magnezone and a Thundurus on the bench. His is a lone Darkrai & Cresellia LEGEND without enough energy to attack.
I have 2 Energy on Zone with another in hand, so I’m pretty certain no matter what he does it’s game over for him. Until that is, he attaches an Eviolite, bringing his DCL to 170 HP. Long story short, I draw and pass until I hit the fourth Energy to KO his DCL for game, and then realize one thing…
Eviolite doesn’t work on LEGENDS!
I had just been jedi mind tricked, and even though I walked away with the win, it felt pretty terrible. I’m a Professor and sort of pride myself on having a fairly deep understanding of the rules, so I’ve no idea why that one slipped by. Ugh.
Anyway, I separate my deck, excited to play in a cut that I believe contained mostly favorable match-ups, until it’s announced that my calculations were way off, and I was at the end of the bubble at 13th. Feels bad man.
CC #3
Place: 25th/27
Deck: Chandelure
Winning deck: David Cohen’s Zekrom
All apologies, but I really can’t remember anything from this tournament. I know that I didn’t do well, but unfortunately all of the rounds are escaping me. I’ve even done a little digging around on various sites that might have this information and I still can’t bring up anything, all apologies.
I decided to play Chandelure after seeing Tyler win with it last week and deciding that it was well-positioned in our meta. I can’t remember the exact list I played for that event, but if I played Chandelure today it would look something like this…
