Oklahoma State Championships Report

The time is 8:30am; the location is a little place called Norman Oklahoma. After making the three hour drive all the way across Oklahoma we had finally arrived just as registration for Oklahoma States was starting. I unloaded the 7^th and 8^th grade students out of the SUV and we proceeded to deck check and tournament registration.

You see I work at a place called Marble City Public School and around 5-6 months back I was asked to teach the Pokémon trading card game in the after school program. Upon doing some research I agreed and ever since that day I have been doing everything I can to do good in OP and to get my 7^th and 8^th grade students started in Organized Play as well.

Unfortunately by the time I had felt they were ready to play in a real event the only one taking place was Oklahoma State Championships. Regardless of all of us being relatively new to Pokémon we had high hopes of having fun and we all were secretly hoping to do well even though we all knew the odds.

After registering I told the boys to work out any nervousness they might have in their systems by finding someone in which they had never played before and asking them for a warm up game.  A little apprehensive at first they made their way through the crowded building and eventually found opponents. I decided it would probably be best if I took my own advice and found myself a warm up game as well, so that’s exactly what I did.

The person I ended up playing was a guy by the name of Len Deuel. I have actually played Len before online several times, he is a very strong player and I knew he was playing Gyarados, a deck in which I was most apprehensive about. I ended up doing really well against it and probably would have won the match but the masters list was going up so we decided to sack the game and make our ways to our first match’s. Low and behold who my first match was… None other than Billy Kettler. This was already looking bad for me.

Match #1 – Billy Kettler with Gyarados:

                As soon as I saw who I was playing I already knew it wasn’t going to be easy and boy was I right. He started with a Sableye and I started with Spiritomb and a Gastly. My Spiritomb ended up locking him for like five rounds and I was really surprised he hadn’t killed me off by that time. Eventually I retreated it and we started trading off prizes. In the end it came down to a coin flip on a feinting spell and I lost the flip, had I gotten the flip he informed me there was no way he could have recovered and things would have ended much better for me, but regardless of the fact I lost, Billy was a pretty cool guy and I very much enjoyed our match.

0 – 1

Match #2 – Charizard AR with Typhlosion Prime and Ninetales:

                I started this match with Spiritomb and he started with a Cyndiquill. I had my things set up really early with the exception of my Nidoqueen, I ended up having to lose two Spiritomb in order to establish a fully charged Nidoqueen but I deemed it was worth it, until I realized my opponent was trying to stall me out on time. He had a two prize lead on me because of my Spiritomb and he decided to make his turns last 20 minutes a peace, after I caught on I asked him several times to please hurry his turns up and he informed me he wasn’t slow playing just trying to make sure he didn’t make a mistake. I could have understood this if he had actually done something with his turns but he didn’t do anything except stall. Near the end of the match I had two minutes to try and play catch up with prizes and I just couldn’t do it, instead I misplayed, I lost the match due to time and him having one prize left and my only having two. I was severally irritated with this but it was my own fault for not calling a judge.

0 -2

Match #3 – Nikki with AMU:

                I started this match with a crummy hand and she set up her pixies really quickly and was hitting my with 200 damage before I could set anything up, but I realized I needed to just sacrifice prizes in order to establish a Dusknoir and a Gengar so I could level her down and Dark Palm her to eliminate her ability to hit me for 200. I did this and took the win because of her in-ability to recover after I leveled her Azelf down, Dark Palmed her Uxie and KO’ed her Active Mesprit Lv X. All in all she played really well and I really was quite sure she had me in the beginning. Excellent game Nikki!

1 – 2

Match #4 – Feraligatr Prime with Gyarados G and Floatzel GL

                This match was a real surprise for me, I had never encountered a deck like it and I thought it was really quite clever. It hit really hard and set up rather quickly. I misplayed about halfway through it and forgot to level down the Floatzel GL Lv X and so when I KO’ed the active Gyarados G he simply scooped it up promoted his Floatzel GL Lv X set Gyarados G back down and Rained Danced all of the energy back onto it, retreated, promoted and hit me hard again KO’ing my active Gengar. I then night maintenanced my Gengar Lv X back into the deck, then Bebe’s searched, leveled up my other Gengar, leveled him down and started to turn things around after that. It was a really cool match and I very much enjoyed playing against a deck I have never played against.

2 – 2

Match #5 – Dunsparce Donk with Donpahn:

                This deck was uber strange and I didn’t really know what was going on, the guy playing it was running cards that belonged in a Shuppet deck and I was wondering what the fighting energy was for until he pulled out a Donphan late game and started using it. It was close near the end I had a belted Nidoqueen on the bench that only needed 30 more damage to be knocked out and he couldn’t manage to do it so I Compound Pained and took my last three prizes. Despite my rough start I took the win.

 3 – 2

Match #6 – Gardy Gallade:

                This was such a crummy win, we both started with Spiritomb’s and he had a benched Mewtwo as I had a benched Nidoran. I simply set up a Gengar, Nidoqueen and a Claydol and all he drew into was energy. I retreated my Spiritomb and KO’ed his, then afterwards I took out his only benched Pokémon, Mewtwo, for the win. I hated winning that way but he was really understanding, and we ended up playing another match afterwards. He wanted to test a Tyranitar deck against me and I ended up winning against it as well. Very nice guy and an excellent player as well, glad to have shared the experience.

4 – 2

So I fell shy of making top cut but I had allot of fun, I got to meet a lot of people I play against in Redshark and Apprentice (Austin Baggs, John Kettler, Len Deuel, ect) and it was an excellent experience. My 7^th and 8^th grade students did really well also, a few of them just barely missed top cut and so they are all readily awaiting the next chance to compete in OP.

I also would like to take the time to thank Austin Baggs for sending me the Claydols and Uxies necessary for my 7^th and 8^th graders to have consistent decks and a better chance at playing. Without them I’m afraid some of my students wouldn’t have had as good of a chance at drawing what they needed. Your contribution was much appreciated.