First off, I hope everyone enjoyed following along with the Twitter updates the past 2 days! It was pretty cool to be able to send updates in after every round. I apologize if my updates weren’t as detailed as doeiqts, my phone is extremely basic and takes me forever to type anything out; I am guessing he has a keyboard on his phone. If you want to send in Twitter updates, just let me know and I’ll get you hooked up.
Anyways I guess I will go a little more in depth as far as what I played and what I played against.
Saturday I played Gengar
I finished 3-2 on the day; not stellar, but I was fairly pleased with how I played and how my deck functioned. I lost to Frank Diaz using a Gengar / Kingdra deck, as mentioned in the Twitter updates, and also to a Blaziken FB / Blaziken PL variant (he got a turn 1 Blaziken FB LV.X via Level Max to OHKO my lone Relicanth).
The game against Frank I made a misplay, not realizing that Machamp can still do 40 with “Takedown” to an evolved Pokemon with an Unown G attached, but I think he had me regardless. His deck was very original and ran like a machine, though I do not think this was the first time he has used it at an event. I don’t know his exact list, but if anyone is interested here is something close to what he ran:
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Pokemon-23 3 Gastly SF 1 Haunter SF 3 Gengar SF 2 Horsea LA 1 Seadra LA 2 Kingdra LA 2 Uxie LA 1 Baltoy GE 1 Claydol GE 1 Relicanth SV 2 Unown G GE 4 Unown R LA |
Trainers-27 4 Roseanne’s Research 3 Bebe’s Search 2 Luxury Ball 4 Rare Candy 2 Broken Time-Space 4 Poke Radar 4 Poke Drawer 1 Palmer’s Contribution 1 Night Maintenance 2 Warp Point |
Energy-10 4 Psychic 3 Water 3 Multi |
You’ll have to try it out for yourself to see how it works.
Top 4 in the Masters on Saturday included 2 Gyarados, 1 Palkia Lock, and the Kingdra / Gengar. The Gyarados met in the finals and Ben S. prevailed. I have no idea what won in Seniors or Juniors.
Sunday I decided to run my Gyarados
I had made that list after playing only about 6 total games over Apprentice. I don’t even know if I had tested that final list out, but I made major changes after each game I played so that I could quickly figure out what worked and what didn’t. Seriously guys, make lots of changes to your list after every game and you’ll stumble upon a solid list before you know it.
The whole Warp Point and Cyclone strategy was killer all day; once I got 3 Magikarp in the discard I was knocking something out nearly every single turn. It’s just too difficult for your opponent to keep the Pokemon on their bench built up enough to avoid Gyarados’ wrath.
The only changes I would possibly make to the list would be to take out 1 Unown GE and maybe 1 Call Energy and the VS Seeker for PlusPowers (but I don’t know if I would necessarily do this). 4 Warp Points and at least 3 Cyclone are necessary. I wasn’t sure how Regice would work out, but it was great vs SP’s, and I contemplated playing a Night Maintenance over the lone Time-Space Distortion, but the Time-Space Distortion was easily the better play.
4 Broken Time-Space and 4 Gyarados are also musts in my opinion, but I am a known stickler for going for consistency over techs.
My only loss in swiss was to a surprisingly good Porygon deck. I had never played vs Porygon before, but this dude’s list was solid. It didn’t help that I had 3 Magikarp and my Regice prized, but I was able to stay in the game for a while. I thought I had swung the momentum in my favor when I was able to OHKO a Porygon Z with 5 tools attached, but then he played 2 Marley’s Request the very next turn (1 via Porygon 2′s Pokemon Power) to get 2 Technical Machines back and was able to throw down 5 TM’s on his next Porygon Z to OHKO me.
My 4-1 record put me in 3rd place and I was matched up against a very good Flygon / Machamp. I think the list was nearly identical to Sami’s second place list. I lost game 1 as he was able to get EVERYTHING out. Game 2 he was not able to get anything out and he eventually scooped. Game 3 time was called during my opponent’s turn, and he was able to tie the game up at 2 prizes remaining each. My next turn I was able to draw one of my last 2 Cyclone Energy off a “Cosmic Power” to snag the go ahead prize and win the game.
I conceded the finals immediately after that because it was getting late and I really needed to get back to school. I would have played versus Frank whom I beat in swiss, but he got terrible draws that game. I am not sure how the finals would have turned out, but I am fairly certain it would have been 3 long games.
If you have any questions about anything, like any of the decks mentioned in the Twitter updates, just let me know and I can try to make sample lists to post later this week.
Thanks for reading!
