Hey SixPrizes readers! I’m hdubbz aka Harry Weintraub and I’ve been playing the TCG since last January. I had never really been too interested in the TCG throughout my Pokemon life (which is pretty much as long as my literate life), but my friend Adrian got me into it.
This past spring, my friend Adrian and I both played in our first premiere event, a Battle Roads, and we brought semi-serious decks, but not anything meta. For instance, Adrian brought a Leafeon/Roserade/Magmortar and I brought Magneboar which I made completely HGSS-on (except I had to take out an Emboar for a Luxury Ball since the other Emboar I had ordered didn’t arrive on time) because I wasn’t going to invest in the passing format just for Battle Roads.
Seeing as we didn’t play any staples for the format that everyone else had, we had a tough time. Anyway, we felt much more comfortable for this format with a summer’s worth of testing and research under our belts, and we brought a couple more friends to this tournament, Stuart and Andrew.
At the tournament, I kept telling people about my night, because I thought it was funny and deserved a mention. I slept in a box the night before. Yup. It was quite possibly the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever gotten.
And no, this is not an article pandering for money because I need a place to live. I was partaking in Let’s Shack Up! an event run by Habitat for Humanity in which you form a team and make a home for the night with just old cardboard boxes and duct tape.
I always hear people talk about their morning in their tournament reports so here it goes:
- Wake up at 3, my girlfriend moved in her sleep. And now I realize that this box design isn’t necessarily the sturdiest. I’m cold.
- Wake up at 4. I’m just cold. I look around to see where all the air is coming in from. I could list all the walls, the door, and the roof in 3 places. The ground is freezing too.
- Still awake at around 4:30 and hear a thud against the wall. I hear “Nice throw!” from outside. I immediately get out of “bed” and go outside to try and see who threw what. I couldn’t find my glasses while inside the box so I go out blind. No luck in finding the perpetrator.
- Doze off and then wake up at 5:30. I’m up for the rest of the night until I convince my friends to leave at 7:30 when we still have to take down our lovely home.
- I figure I can sleep until 9:15 and still shower and get ready to go. Set an alarm, and then promptly ignore it.
- Roll out of bed at 10:15, registration begins in 15 minutes. Solid.
- McDonalds for breakfast and I feel in no way ready for this.
Now that you’ve heard my story, I have to say, this event is actually for a great cause. There was an option to not sleep in the house at all, and just tear it down after the judging was finished, so my complaints about being uncomfortable were actually my fault, but we slept there last year without much of an issue.
Anyway, Adrian and I played what we had been testing with over the summer (we lived together over the summer so we got a lot of playtesting in) so we had a lot of matches under our belts with our respective decks; Reshiphlosion and MewBox.
On the flip side, Stuart hadn’t played much over the summer and had just got back into play and finished his deck the day before Battle Roads. His deck was essentially Stage 1s, but he had a thinner Donphan line and an Ursaring line as well as the MegaZorD staples (Donphan, Yanmega, and Zoroark).
Our other friend, Andrew, played the least with us while we were at school, but wanted to come anyway so we built him a really weak BlastZel deck and he played with it once before the tournament.
Just a note on my deck: I’m not going to post a list, but I will say that I played Aipom UL, Jirachi UL, Zoroark BLW, and only 1 Jumpluff HS. I felt going into the day that this was the most consistent and I was really hesitant to cut down my Jumpluff from 2 to 1, but eventually I gave in. The Jumpluff I found really only useful in the Gothitelle matchup which wasn’t going to be every deck, so it wouldn’t matter most games where I found it prized.
With the night behind me and a long day ahead of me, I get registered
and settled in after deck checks.
Round 1 (Nick B with Donphan/Magnezone/Samurott)
To start the day, I’m playing a deck I hadn’t tested against at all. I look at his set up and, well, I couldn’t peg really what he was playing. I saw a Magnemite and a couple Phanpys (Phanpie?) and I ask him what he’s playing. He constructed it as a meta-game counter deck and after seeing the Samurott BLW #32, I get the strategy of the deck. Unfortunately for him, my deck was one he said he hadn’t played against at all in testing.
I go first and play my hand down to nothing with a Mew start. I attach an energy to Mew after playing down Oddish and Judge with my 2 card hand. I hear a reaction from his side, he said he had a turn two Magnezone/Donphan which would have completely rolled right through me. I then do my usual turn 1 and See Off a Muk UD.
Off my Judge, he gets a Rare Candy, 2 Communications, and something else which was relatively useless. He attaches a Rainbow Energy to Phanpy and Flails for 10. I then See Off a Jumpluff and all I need to do to be completely set up is to get out my Vileplume. He gets his Donphan this turn and knocks out my Mew. I Twins for a Sunflora and Rare Candy and get my turn three ‘Plume.
From here on out, he gets another Donphan on the bench (a misplay from not playing the Mew matchup ever) and a Magnezone with a Double Colorless Energy and a Rainbow on it. I sludge drag up the energy-less Donphan and snipe around him with Yanmega hitting hand size after hand size. Eventually he scoops because there was not much else he could do after he had only taken that one prize, which let me Twins, and I had taken five.
1-0
Round 2 (Sam P with MagneBoar)
I shuffle and draw my hand and I get an Oddish and a Sunkern start. I run one Sunkern and I had it in my opening hand. I was really annoyed. Anyway, I go second this time and he doesn’t do much before passing over to me. I look at my hand and there’s not much to do.
I attach a Grass Energy to Oddish and then Judge on the first turn again. In my new hand I had a Collector and a Sunflora so I use Find a Friend (which is really not the worst move in the world) with Oddish and flip heads and get a Gloom.
Next turn he attaches and evolves his Magnemite to Magneton and passes. I retreat my Oddish and evolve to Gloom and Sunflora. I Sunshine Grace with Sunflora to get a Yanmega, promote Mew and attach a Psychic Energy and See Off a Muk.
He attaches his third energy to Magneton and Eeeeeks his hand away. He flips tails so I feel safe enough for another turn to See Off a ‘Pluff and then I Sunshine Grace for Vileplume and now I’m set up. He wakes up and Eeeeeks again, stays asleep, so I Linear Attack the Magneton with the energy with Yanmega.
He wakes up, retreats into Magneton and Tri Attacks, flipping 2 heads so I nearly avoid the knockout. I then Sonicboom his Magneton for the knockout enabling him to use Twins. He sees that his lone Pignite is prized so he scoops.
2-0
After this round we break for lunch. The convenient part of this is that we were playing in a food court and out of all my options, I chose to go with Subway. And I won a raffle! A deck box, 100 sleeves, and new dice, which I needed because I didn’t have transparent dice before this.
Round 3 (Michael Z with Magnezone/Yanmega/Donphan)
I was watching Michael play the round before because I finished early and he was playing my friend so I had an idea what he was running. I never feel confident with a Donphan matchup, but I feel confident right now at 2-0. He goes first with a Phanpy + Fighting Energy start with a Phanpy benched.
He passes over to me and I again get the turn 1 Judge. I was worried that he would have the Donphan next turn, but after he drew his cards, he sighed and continued turn after turn drawing nothing.
I don’t remember much about this game other than it went down to 2-1 in my favor even after I got completely set up. I had thrown Muk and Zoroark into the Lost Zone this game and I Foul Played his Heavy Impact for 70. He knocks out my Mew with Earthquake. Next turn I play down Jirachi, flip 1 heads for Stardust Song and Time Hollow his Donphan to knock out his Phanpy.
3-0
Round 4 (Chris with Reshiphlosion)
This was the matchup that I feared all day. I was hoping that people would be deterred because of the presence of Gothitelle. Well, I was wrong because there was a 3-0 Reshiphlosion which freaked me out. In all my testing, I win very few of these games and I consider it one of Mew’s toughest matchups next to Stage 1s.
I draw and we talk about how the day has been going for both of us so far. My opening hand yields just a lone Oddish and this is not the ideal start I was hoping for in this matchup. Fortunately for me, he doesn’t get off to a roaring start by any means either.
I’m not entirely certain about the rest of the details of the game other than I eventually LZ (Lost Zone) a Muk and get a turn three ‘Plume off a Twins. The turning point of the match however was when he Afterburner-ed to his active Reshiram while it was poisoned and confused from Sludge Drag instead of his Typhlosion. Without the intention of attacking that turn he should have attached to Typhlo to deter me from dragging it active.
I take advantage of this misplay by dragging up the fresh Typhlo and I then snipe around it constantly matching hand sizes with Yanmega. I can tell he wasn’t used to the matchup when he tried to Afterburner to the status-ed Typhlo and I reminded him that he couldn’t do this while under the effect of status condition. Eventually I remove all of his support and he scoops.
This game made me sweat the most of all the games I played (I think I had to discard Zoroark off an early Sage’s Training and my Jumpluff was prized so I had no real attacking power). I was very obviously exhausted after this match because I had to account for his low retreat costs and how he is relatively unaffected by Trainer lock. All in all, this felt like a really sloppy game between both of us, but a win’s a win.
4-0
Round 5 (Roger L with Reshiphlosion)
Between rounds, I try to find out how many other undefeated people there are left to see if I need to win my next round to hit Top Cut. I think that the only match last round with undefeated competitors was my match and the match next to me between two Team Warp Point members. However, I found out that there was another 3-0 (soon to be 4-0) as well who played down in his round.
The pairings go up for the last round and I’m paired down to a 3-1 and this annoys me, because this means if I don’t win, I’m not going to make it into Top Cut on resistance. So geared up for the must win game, I find that I’m playing another Reshiphlosion. Great.
We get to talking while setting up and he has a good shot to Top Cut if he wins this matchup, so I know I’m in for quite the tough game. Contrary to all of my other starts, I don’t get the turn 1 Judge to mess with my opponents’ hand, but he gets the early Judge.
I had most of what I wanted on my bench and I was fine with resetting my hand. I was surprised that a Reshiphlosion player would play Judge without a Ninetales set up because I have heard nothing but “an early Judge screws up a Reshiphlosion player” for the past couple months.
I get fairly set up off the Judge and drag up a clean Reshiram and snipe out all the Cyndaquils I see on his bench leaving him without any sort of support for his Reshirams. His active slowly dies as I maul his bench and finally hit a Judge on an awake Cleffa and Sonicboom for the win.
5-0
I made Top Cut! I didn’t really think that this would happen considering my only other tournament ever I was destroyed at. I also find out when the judges ask for decks for deck checks that my friend Adrian had made Top Cut, which was improbable considering his round 1 bye and round 2 loss. I was really happy for him since we both went 2-3 at that first Battle Roads last spring.
Top 4 (Evan Baker with Yanmega/Cinccino)
I have seen Evan Baker before, never in person however. I watched him interviewed by The Top Cut at Nationals, so this was incredible! Of course I was nervous; I was playing someone with a name that I could recognize, that was freaking sweet.
I get to talking to him and Chris Fulop (a judge at the event) about how I wished I had played in the SP format and they both recited fond memories of those days come and gone. It was really cool to hear the two of them, with interjections from other Team Warp Point members, talk about it.
Anyway, onto the match!
Round 1
Not much to say here. I had an awful start and for the first time of the day, I couldn’t play out of it too well. Eventually, he was up 6-3 in prizes with a Cinccino active ready to blast away at anything with Do The Wave for 100. I thought about LZ-ing something, but I really couldn’t do it safely and retake the lead later on in the game. I play down an Aipom and attach to it, retreat my active Mew and Tail Coded the DCE to his benched Yanmega just as a stalling tactic. Chris Fulop called me out here saying that I had to have played SP to be Tail Code-ing which we all laughed about.
Unfortunately, he had a DCE in hand and attached to Cinccino to knock out my Aipom, so I scooped.
Round 2
I get a really fast start taking the first two prizes, but then, everything sort of…slowed down. A lot. He ended up controlling his bench size really well to cap the damage I could do by using Mass Attack while he put enough on his bench to Do The Wave for prizes. He also would not let me attack with Yanmega because his hand size control was incredible using Night Sight with Noctowl HS, plus I could not draw into a single hand evening card or, for a while, a Grass or Rainbow Energy.
We get down to a prize a piece and I’m on the wrong side of the prize exchange. He finishes me off with Do The Wave.
Final Thoughts
Good game!
I’m not too upset because I did get third overall for my second tournament ever which I was definitely pleased with.
So a couple notes from the day. The only Reshiphlosion to hit Top Cut played no Ninetales. This is just a small sample size, but I think people will start to steer clear of Ninetales in Reshiphlosion and see it as unnecessary. Gothitelle/Reuniclus is definitely a good deck and a deck to beat in this format. A lot of people are teching in Black Belt which does help, but it’s still really difficult to beat if you can’t swing for more than 130, or if your opponent is smart and does a great job of prize management to make sure that you can’t use Black Belt.
I was really pumped to meet a couple members of Team Warp Point, they were really cool guys and they definitely have a sweet gig going on in Detroit. It made me want to get a bunch of people together like they did and just enjoy the card game.
Another thing that was good to see was the Top 4 consisted of 4 different decks. I think, someone may have to correct me on this, but I think Evan won with his Yanmega/Cinccino, second was Gothitelle/Reuniclus, third was me with MewBox, and fourth was Adrian with Reshiphlosion.
I think that’s pretty sweet that the metagame has so much diversity now. I understand that it is Battle Roads and that people bring not-so-serious decks to the event just to test an idea, but still, the top 4 gives you an idea of what the top decks are.
That’s all for now, I may be going to another Battle Roads this Saturday, we’ll see how schoolwork and everything pans out, but until then, I hope you enjoyed the report.
