Hi.
I attended a Pokemon tourney on 11/26 and thought I’d share my
experience (good and bad) with all the Pojo readers.
The tourney was held in Mansfield, Ohio and put on by Comic Adventures.
We’ve experienced a flux in gaming in Mansfield.
Magic used to be king, but the store we normally played at had a fire
and the owner decided that organized tourneys were too much of a pain (funny
though he always liked the money). The
other gaming store in town (that would be Comic Adventures) has been trying to
boost the gaming scene by holding tourneys for all CCG’s still being
supported. This was their first
Pokemon tourney and I was interested to see how many trainers would show up.
The owner told me that he was limiting the field to 40 just in case.
To begin with, I’ve played Magic for 5 years and have become burned
out on all the garbage about the Pro Tour and Wizard’s ridiculous attempts
to prove a card game can be a purely intellectual sport without any luck
involved. I like Pokemon for the
simple rules and the variety of decks that can be fielded.
I’m also 22, which I’m sure raises some eyebrows.
Isn’t Pokemon supposed to be a game for kids?
I’m still wrestling with the fact that most opponents I’ll face
will be under 16, and, of those, most probably not even teenagers yet.
I think it’s an interesting debate on whether or not it’s fair to
allow older players to play much younger opponents…but that’s not the
purpose of this report, so moving on…
I played the new version of Haymaker.
This deck is solid and could be the best on the tourney scene right
now. Since I’m just getting
into Pokemon I figured I’d go with the easiest (and fastest) deck out there.
Here’s the list:
4
Hitmonchan
(probably will be obsolete soon)
4
Fossil Magmar (this guy’s just tight)
3
Scyther (I’d be hard pressed to find a better Basic)
1
Farfecth’d (only here because I didn’t have a 4th Scyther)
4
Energy Removal
2
Super Energy Removal
4
Bill
3
Prof. Oak
4
Plus Power
4
Gust of Wind
2
Item Finder
1
Energy Retrieval
1
Computer Search
6
Fire
4
Double Colorless
Nothing new, just plain old Haymaker, I guess.
There were 10 players in all. I
figured there would be more but I guess Comic’s idea of advertising is to
hope all the Pokemon players’ radar will just guide them to the store.
My best friend Mike was there playing a straight Fire deck with
Charizards as the big guns. Charizard
may not be the tightest Pokemon out there but he makes you think when he hits
the table. Mike’s younger
brother Jon was also there. He
was playing a Venusaur deck. Problem
was he only had 1 Venusaur so the deck was not as tuned as it could have been.
Still, I was afraid of it since Venusaur + Pokemon Center = good combo.
The judge was Ryan. I like
Ryan, he’s pretty knowledgeable…about Star Wars.
He said the owners asked him to judge the tourney and he agreed.
He really didn’t have any idea about how to run a Pokemon tourney.
He figured the owners would give him any info that he needed but they
were pretty clueless since this was their first Poke tourney.
Luckily, I knew how to do Swiss so I set up the pairings and got
everything organized.
Round
1: Kyle w/Psychic Fire
I think he was only using Psychic and Fire but there could have been
more. This was a pretty good
match. I got out an early Chan
and had enough Removals to keep him from getting a fully charged Pokemon.
I had dumped about 6 Energy into his discard and then he dropped the
movie promo version of Mewtwo. That
card is some good. I Gusted it up
and Slashed with Scyther. He
didn’t have any Energy, so next turn I Item Findered for a Plus Power and
Slashed for 40. After that he
couldn’t mount an offense.
Record
1-0
Round
2: Dustin w/Haymaker(using Electabuzzes)
He asked if I was playing Haymaker and I said yes but the new version
with Fossil Magmars. He had to
mulligan 3 times before he got a Basic, which gave me a nice lead on card
advantage. I started a Magmar and
he started a Buzzie. I
Smokescreened, he used Thunder Shock and paralyzed my Magmar.
I had enough Removals to keep him without Energy until I built up my
guys. He never Oaked so I was
able to get all six prizes by using Smog a lot.
This match also had some, uhm, questionable moments in it.
I don’t want to accuse anyone of cheating but Dustin was doing some
things that were suspicious to say the least.
I’ll list them and let you draw your own conclusions:
1). He would draw after I
knocked out a Pokemon and then, when it was his turn, ask “Did I already
draw?” This could be an honest
mistake except he played Mike’s brother Jon first round and did this a
couple of times. Since Jon
hadn’t been paying attention he couldn’t say if he had or hadn’t drawn
so he let Dustin draw again. I
was watching him so I told him “yes” and we moved on with the game.
2). He Gusted up one of my
Magmars, so I placed a Fighting Energy on it and retreated.
He tried to tell me that I needed a Fire Energy since Magmar was a Fire
Pokemon. I said no because
retreats are covered by any color Energy.
This could be a mistake too, but anyone playing a top tourney deck like
Haymaker should know the rules better.
3). He used an Energy
Retrieval and tried to get back a Double Colorless Energy.
This really isn’t all that suspicious I guess since I only recently
found out that DCE wasn’t a basic Energy.
4). This one is the real
kicker. He has Scyther as his
active with no Pokemon on his bench. The
Scyther has 4 damage counters on it. I
have a fully charged Magmar and I Smog for 40 (since Scyther is weak against
Fire). OK, he has no Pokemon so
game over. Instead, he draws a
card (it’s a Hitmonchan) and lays it claiming that he just drew it so he’s
still in it. I correct him saying
that he can only draw on his turn, and he already lost since he had no Pokemon
in play. He says ok and that’s
game.
I
can forgive the first 3 but nearly everyone knows that it’s game over when
you have no Pokemon. I like to
think that these were all mistakes but a word of caution, know the rules and
if there is a dispute, call the judge immediately.
I think it’s sad when kids start breaking the rules, and it’s worse
when the kid they’re playing doesn’t even know they’re being cheated.
Record
2-0
Round
3- Jon playing Venusaur.dec
I asked Jon if he wanted to draw but he wanted to play since even with
a loss we would both make the top 4. We
both had to mulligan so instead of both of us drawing the 2 extra we just drew
another 7. I got a Chan active.
To be honest I don’t remember much of this match.
I’ll tell you the reason in a second.
All I remember is getting enough Removals to clear his Energy and then
getting a Chan and a Scyther active, which cleaned up my prizes.
Record
3-0
OK.
The reason I was a little out of it is because of a dispute that
erupted in between rounds 2 and 3. Since
I was doing the pairings, the judge, Ryan, started playing Star Wars with some
other guy. After the 2nd
round, I had heard 2 guys arguing about who had won their 1st round
match. One guy said he had won,
and the other said he won but the guy wrote the results down wrong.
I figured the kid would say something to me but he didn’t.
After the 3rd round started the kid got his dad.
Uh-oh, a PokePop to cause trouble.
I’m sorry but this guy was a jerk.
He got on Ryan’s case because he thought his kid was being cheated.
True, Ryan shouldn’t have been playing Star Wars, but the kid never
said anything until after the second round.
You would think that when he got his scorecard at the beginning of the
second round and noticed that it was marked as a loss he would say something.
I was going to say something to the dad, but since Ryan was technically
the judge I let him handle it. This
guy was on a roll to. He started
by saying he was a level 2 judge and had been to so many tourneys and the
other guy was cheating. Then he
said his kid was 2nd in the world in Battletech and his son would
never have gotten so high if he was a cheater.
To finish it off, and this is really good, he said “I’ve got 2
Charizards”. That’s about the
funniest argument I’ve ever heard. I
felt like saying “Oh, ok because you’ve got 2 Charizards we’ll overlook
the fact that your kid had plenty of opportunities to correct the error, if
there was one, and let him slide in”. What
an idiot. I felt like I was at a
little league game and the punches were about to start flying.
In the end, Ryan changed the result, which I don’t think he should
have done. I talked to him about
it afterwards and he said other players had told him the kid had won, so the
other guy marked it down wrong. I
would have let the result stand. If
the dad was that upset about it then give him a refund (by the way the entry
fee was $3 so, you know, big loss). It’s
sad but I figure soon Pokemon judges will start carrying billy clubs to
protect themselves from angry PokeParents.
I would:)
Top
4 included:
1)
Me-Andrew
Fournier playing Haymaker
2)
Mike
Johnson-playing Fire
3)
Kid
who didn’t deserve to be there-who cares what he was playing, his dad has 2
Charizards!
4)
Jon
Johnson-playing Venusaur.dec
So
I played Jon again.
Semifinals
We did the double mulligan thing again.
I got a near perfect hand with Hitmonchan, Scyther, Energy Removal, 2
Fighting Energy, DCE, and Prof Oak. I
started the Chan and had Scyther on the bench.
Jon had Tangela active with Pinsir on the bench.
He went first, laid Energy on Tangela.
I laid Energy on Chan, Removaled his Energy, Jabbed for 20.
After this I was able to remove his Energy enough times that he never
got his deck moving. He almost
got out Venusaur but I KO’ed his Ivysaur with a Plus Power before he could
evolve it. I think Jon could have
taken the tourney if he had more Venusaurs.
I think that deck easily stands on tier one with Haymaker and
Raindance.
Mike
crushed the kid with the PokePop backup, oddly enough with Charizard.
So much for living your Pokemon dreams vicariously through your son,
huh guy. Mike and I split the $30
store credit but we decided to save it, as all they had were the Fossil
pre-cons and I have both anyway. All
in all it was an OK tourney. Hopefully,
next tourney will be bigger (and better run).
Props:
-Me,
for basically running the tourney
-Ryan,
for knowing it was better to let me run the tourney
-Mike,
for building a non-Pojo deck and taking it to the finals
-Jon,
for not making any playing errors just having bad luck
Slops:
-Me,
for being unoriginal and playing HaymakerJ
-Dustin,
sorry guy but you made too many suspicious mistakes
-Kid
with the PokePop, if you think something is wrong speak up, don’t get your
dad
-The
PokePop, it’s people like you that make Pokemon a scary game
-The
guy who wrote down the wrong result, you should’ve been booted
-Comic
Adventures, sorry guys but if you’re going to run a tourney you need more
advertising than a little sign by the street.
Andrew
Fournier