Yet another tournament at The War Room, Atlanta, GA.
Dec. 19, 1999
Well, time for another tournament at The War Room. We got enough people in
the 15+ age group yo do 2 age groups again, so my opponent pool was only 7
people. The really good players in the age group were me, Steve, Kevin B.,
and Matt W. There were some other new players there, though, so I knew I'd
see a few things I hadn't seen before.
Before the tournament, I had started with a status condition deck which all
my friends online had told me was amazing, but I tried it before the
tournament, and it lost 4 games in a row, and against mediocre decks, no
less. (Kirk Gibson wants me to mention him in here, so I'll say that his
deck, which beat me, was good.) So, with 5 minutes left before the
tournament started, I did all I could: Pulled out my half-constructed
Mewtwomaker deck, and finish the other half of it. Here's how it came out:
The Mewtwomaker Deck
10 Psychic Energy (21 is enough in here,
since Mewtwo can get it back
from the
8 Fighting Energy discard pile. Energy
Removal cards do little against
this deck.)
3 Double Colorless
4 (Movie) Mewtwo (The point of the
deck, really. This card is totally
awesome.)
4 Hitmonchan
(A good pokemon to pick off the colorless pokemon
Mewtwo
can't kill.)
3 Chancey
(In there to cover my weakness to Psychic, and in
case I
decide to switch over to a stalling strategy.)
4 Computer Search (Normally, 4 Oak and 4
Computer Search is too much,
but I
4 Professor Oak need to get
energy in the discard pile fast.)
4 Energy Removal (ER is good enough as
is, and SER combos with both
the Movie
4 Super Energy RemovalMewtwos and the Scoop Ups.)
3 Bill
(Great Card. Ever deck needs 3 or 4)
2 Gust of Wind (Almost not
enough, but with Mewtwo, which does 40,
and
Hitmonchan to cover the colorless ones, it should
suffice.)
2 Item Finder
(Basically in here to get the gamblers in my hand if
I have to
discard them, but I have used it for SERs and
Scoop Ups
before.
2 Scoop Up
(Combos with SER, and if I scoop up Mewtwo, another
can
always pick up the energy he loses.
2 Gambler
(Wonderful card. This thing prevents me from decking
myself,
something that this deck has a problem with.
This card, simply
enough, wins me games all by itself.)
1 Energy Retrieval (Kinda thrown in at the last
minute, in case I
discarded too
much. Gimme a break, I made this deck in
a few minutes...
It looked fairly good to me. No time to test it, though. I finished
just in
the nick of time.
Round 1:
Against a new person to The War Room, "Sissy". I'd never seen
her before, so
I just had to cope the best I could. It turned out she was playing a grass
deck, with Scythers and Pinsirs backing up Nidokings, which she used Oaks to
get to.
The game did go fairly quickly. I started out with a Mewtwo, and I got the
energy in the discard pile fast. I managed to beat quite a few pokemon
with
it, until a Scyther finally beat it, leaving me with just a Hitmonchan
against it. I searched, pitching more energy for a Mewtwo, retreated
Hitmonchan, and let the second Mewtwo finish her pokemon off.
WIN
Round 2:
Against Kevin B., a veteran of the store. He pretty much always played a
deck with Wigglytuff in it, But Matt W. warned me that he had built a deck
which combined my Mewtwo with his Mr. Mimes. This didn't help much, but
before I could ask any more about it, the next round started. It turned
out
that he was using Wigglytuffs, Mewtwos, and Mr. Mimes in his deck.
I got a really bad draw, and I couldn't pump up my Mewtwo. He, on the
other
hand, was able to pump up his, which meant that he could kill both the
Mewtwos and Hitmonchans in one hit. I tried to stall with my Chanceys, and
was able to hold off the onslaught for a while, but he simply gusted up the
Mewtwos and Hitmonchans for Mewtwo to kill, and when I got up a healthy
Chancey, he used Wigglytuff to hit it for 60. I only had picked up two
prizes by the time he got his final one.
LOSS
Round 3:
Against another new player, Steve, the father of Sissy. Another surprise
deck to face. It turned out he was playing a stall deck.
This deck of his was great. It was basically just Chanceys, Kangaskhans,
Snorlaxes, and a couple of Aerodactyls. It took me forever to get my first
prize, but after that, Hitmonchan started rolling. He managed to keep me
away with 4 Scoop Ups, 4 Pokemon Centers, 4 Energy Removal, and 4 Super
Energy Removal. Eventually, I was running low on cards, but the turn
before
I died, I used Gambler to shuffle my 20 card hand back into my deck, buying
me the time I needed to pick up the lastprizes I needed. A very good game.
WIN
Round 4:
Against Steve Yang, another member of Unho's group of elite players. He
pretty much always plays Rain Dance, and this tournament was no exception.
Another Rain Dance deck.
It's wasn't all too fair. He got a horrid hand, and only managed to keep
me
from snatching the win early on with some lucky flips on Squirtle's bubble
attack. He did, finally, get a Blastoise by having to go Computer Search
for
it, but a pair of SERs stopped that threat. His fighting resistant
Articunos
almost turned it into a stall game while he frantically waited for his
Retrievals to come. It came down to the last few cards, and Gambler saved
my
butt again. We weren't allowed to intentionally draw, and I would have
drawn
out first, but I gambled the cards I needed back into my deck, and let
Chancey do his job. He ran out of cards 3 turns later.
WIN
Round 5:
Against another new guy, and I'm sorry, but I can't remember his name. All
I
saw for this game was a few Abras and 1 Chancey, so it's safe to say it was a
stall deck.
He'd gone 0-4 for the day, and I was prepared to make it worse. My
Hitmonchan tore through a Chancey, and despite a pair of Oaks, he didn't find
anything to save himself. I Special Punched a pair of Abras, and ran him
out
of pokemon.
WIN
So, I was in third place. Onto the finals, right? Wrong! I
went up to the
judge, and he told me that since the store was closing soon, they'd only do
the Top 2 for the finals in my age group. But they did the top four for
the
younger age group. Yeah whatever, guys, thanks for ripping me off...
In any case, I feel the need to do both a Props and Slops and a "What have
we
learned from this?"
Props and Slops
PROPS
PROPS to Kevin. Great game Kevin, your deck is a real gem.
PROPS to Steve for playing that awesome Stall deck. Man, that thing was
creative, nasty, and all sorts of things I want my decks to be.
PROPS to all the new players there. They were all really good, and it's
nice
to see a few new decks every once in a while.
SLOPS
SLOPS to The War Room, for many reasons. Splitting the tournament into 2
groups just keeps me from half my good competition. The prizes recently
went
from 10 packs and 5 for best of age to 6 packs, and 4 for best of age.
Finally, I was kept out of the finals for some odd reason. Oh well.
SLOPS to Unho for not showing up. Are you scared of me? (Then again,
he
would have wiped up the floor with me...)
What have I learned from this?
My new favorite card of all time is Gambler. It won me two games in this
tournament, and I suspect it will win me many more.
I need a few more Energy Retrievals in here, as does any deck that needs to
discard so many cards. I was sitting there with not quite enough energy a
lot of the time.
If you're playing Mewtwo, and you know your opponent is too, try your
absolute hardest to pump up yours first. Don't be afraid to dump as much
as
you have to, since then there'll be a bunch of pokemon in his deck you can
kill in one hit.
Well, that's about it for the moment. Merry Christmas to all. No
plans for
future decks, so you guys at the War Room can't plan around me. (You know
who you are!)
See you all later,
Justin Purdy
daihakusei@aol.com