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Pokemon Tournament Reports
Pokemon- Local City
Championship Hey everybody! I hope you all are having a great week and having a great time at your city championships! My local city championships in Anderson, SC took place this past Saturday and I thought I would let you all know how my trusty Salamence deck performed. If you don’t remember, I finished in 3rd at my local Battle Roads running a Salamence/Kingdra variation, so I was excited about Sal’s chances with some of the cards added to the deck from the Arceus set. I no longer run Kingdra (although I really like it) but I just run Salamence as my main attacker now. I recently got back into the game after a 5 year sabbatical, and I reconnected with 2 of my old friends Alex and Andrew. So Alex, Andrew, and I spent the night at Andrew’s house and play tested until like 4 am the night before the tournament which turned out to be extremely valuable. Alex built a Gardevior Gallade deck just to practice around with (although it is not the deck he runs), Drew runs Flygon, and we built an SP deck to test against as well. All three would turn out to be valuable practice games, as I would face all three decks in the tournament. Well, after filling up on some Taco Bell (which is obviously good brain food), we headed on over to the tournament to play some good ole’ Pokemon. Round 1 vs Mike with Dialga G/Garchomp C Mike is the player that I lost to in Battle Roads when he ran a BlazeRay deck. He is one of the best players around, and SP is not exactly Salamence’s best matchup, so I knew this was going to be a difficult game. I can’t remember exactly who jumped out to an early lead,
but I do remember that my Spiritomb trainer locked him for
about 5 turns while I built up my Salamences and Delcatty. I
believe he took the first prize, but I was able to claim the
lead as I played the lv. X Salamence to claim two prizes. I
believe I took one more to go up 3 prizes to 5 before Sal
got knocked out. If my memory serves me correctly, somehow
the prize count got to 2 prizes left for me, and 4 prizes
left for him. He knocked out something of mine (ugh, bad
memory again) with a Honchcrow (leaving him with three
prizes) which forced me to bring up my shoot through
Salamence (battle rush is my main attacker) with 3 energies
on it, as I had no other attackers left on the bench. I had
one energy in my hand, an expert belt on the Shoot through
Sal. Honchcrow is resistant by 20 to Sal, so an Expert
belted Shoot through or Dragon Claw would not have knocked
it out. I used my Night Maintenance to get the X back in the
deck earlier in the game, and if I could top deck or
Claydoll out my Premier Ball, a Bebe’s Search, or my Sal lv.
X I would have attached the energy, dropped the X, hit the
active Honchcrow for 100 damage (after expert belt and
resistance) and Double Falled for the last 2 prizes of the
game giving me the win, as long as he did not have a power
spray. I felt good about my chances when he did not Power
Spray the Claydoll, but unfortunately I did not draw any of
the cards needed to get the X out. He knocked out the
Salamence next turn with Garchomp X and a Lucario GL on the
bench (I think….again, bad memory). I sent up Nidoqueen, as
I had nothing left on the bench that could stall or attack.
He then knocked out my Claydoll with Garchomp C for the
game. 0-1 Round 2 vs some strange Medicham/Corpinch deck I made a mental mistake by playing a Bebe’s Search rather than my Cynthia’s feelings after he knocked out my Spiritomb, which ended up slowing me down to the point where he claimed 3 prizes during this match rather than only 1 or 2. Anyway, he ran a TON of trainer draw cards and a Speed Stadium instead of Claydoll for the draw engine. I ended up taking all 6 prizes with Sal and he had taken 3, so it was a fairly easy win, but the mental mistake was a wake up call to me. Don’t let your guard down against a non-tier one deck! The deck may be a little strange, but most likely the player knows how to play it well. 1-1 Round 3 vs Bill with a Crobat G/Honchcrow G/Spiritomb/Giratina spread deck This game was sort of interesting. Anything SP is a tough match up for me, but the Giratina activated my Battle Rush power. For some reason he did not have any Power Sprays in the deck either….which besides Garchomp C and Luxray GL is the reason why Salamence struggles against SP. I let him knock out 2 Spiritombs while I got totally set up. If I remember correctly, I knocked something out with Nidoqueen to take a prize, then warp pointed away his Giratina and sent up the Salamence Battle Rush to drop the Sal X and take 2 prizes, putting me up 3 prizes left to 4 left. Time was called during my next turn. If we had gone into sudden death my Nidoqueen would have knocked out anything on the field, so I would have had the game anyway, But none the less, it was a close one. 2-1 Round 4 vs Jessica with a Fossil build One of my friends runs a Fossil deck, so I know how the deck runs, but Jessica ran it a little bit different. She and Kabutops and Hariyama with Aerodactyl. Anyways, I let a Spiritomb get knocked out by a Makuhita while I set up, and then managed to knock out all of her Pokemon with my Salamence X. I took the game 3 prizes to 1. 3-1 Round 5 vs BlazeRay – for a spot in top cut I knew what I was up against in this match up, as this guy had already beaten my first round opponent, Mike (who was most likely the favorite to win the whole tourney). BlazeRay is another horrific match up for me, but it is a tad bit easier than Dialga G/Garchomp C. We drew our cards to start the set up. I saw that he laid only one basic down. I drew a Skitty, Bagon, Cynthia, Expert Belt, Water energy, Memory Berry, and some other card. I said to myself….if that is a Garchomp C, Skitty can one shot it with Expert Belt if I go second. So I placed Skitty as my active. We flipped the coin…he went first. His start was Garchomp C…..he didn’t top deck a Pokemon, and did not have a call energy. He attached a lightening energy and passed to me. I started to mentally freak out at this point because I knew what had just happened. I attached my water energy to Skitty, Expert belt to Skitty, attacked with Take Down for 20+20 with Expert Belt totaling 40 damage, double that for Garchomp C’s weakness to 80 damage. Game over. Expert Belted Skitty turn one donked a BlazeRay deck. The whole tournament paused and then erupted in laughter as he yelled out, “I just got turn one donked by Skitty!!?” I shook his hand, walked outside, and proceeded to pace the parking lot for about 15 minutes while I called everyone I knew who played Pokemon to tell them what just happened. It was at this point that I figured destiny had her fingers tightly laced throughout my deck. 4-1 I finished in 4th place and made the top cut. Luckily, my friend Andrew made top cut as well running his Flygon deck. Unfortunately (and only because the cards he needed were prized in one crucial game) Alex finished 3-2 and did not make top cut. Also luckily for me, the SP decks did not top cut either (and they were good too). The top cuts were Flygon, Salamence, Gardy/Gallade and something called Hope, which was basically a bunch of techs. I drew the Gardy/Gallade match up first. Game 1 vs Jon with Gardy/Gallade/Weavile I started with Nidoran F, Nidonina, Bebe’s Search, Rainbow energy, Broken Time Space, some other Pokemon, and like a Roseanne or something like that in my hand. So I basically got a turn one or two Nidoqueen hitting for 40 plus weakness. This allowed me to take a substantial amount of prizes before Nidoqueen got knocked out by Gardevior. It also allowed me to set up my Salamences. I ended up taking this game something like 6 prizes to 2 or 3. Game 2 I think we both had bad starts in this game. It’s tough to remember what happened, but I forgot to say “I’m going to use the double fall power” when I attacked with Sal X during the turn I played it, which cost me one of my two prize card draws. Anyway, he ended up winning this game 6 prizes taken to like 3 or 4 by me. Game 3 I got another good start and managed to get totally set
up very quickly. I basically knocked anything and everything
out to win the game 6-0 or 6-1, I really don’t remember. On
to the finals!! Finals vs. Andrew with Flygon Andrew and I go WAAAY back to like 1998 when we used play Pokemon in another part of town at a store called Let the Games Begin/The Outpost, which has been closed for about 5 years (coincidentally, the same amount of time that I have been out of the game). I was so happy he won his semi-finals match. I remember back in the day when I would run Typhlosion from the Neo set, or Arcanine from base set, and we would meet in the finals at that store 2/3 of the time (in which he would beat me 2/3 of the time as well). This was such a throwback game with one of my really good friends, so I really didn’t care what happened because one of us would win the championship anyway. But as usual, the games were pretty epic! Game 1 Game one was a little bit difficult. I ended up winning 6 prizes taken to 4 prizes taken, but his Palkia restructure/everyone-is-free-retreat-because-of-Flygon is pretty difficult to deal with. I apologize again for not remember any other details of this match. Game 2 Game two was fairly nice. We both had semi-bad starts but I managed to get set up nicely. I did however; have to attack his Unown G with my Bagon to avoid getting hit for 50 damage, if that tells you anything about the start for both of us. One critical moment in the game was when he restructured with no psychic energy or fighting energy on his Flygon, and had a Nidoqueen and Claydol on the bench. Basically, he had one of the two energies in his hand and I had to guess which it was by choosing the Queen or the Doll. I looked through his discard pile and saw that there was one psychic energy there, so I chose the Queen, which was a good decision, because he did not have a psychic in his hand. At this point, I had four prizes left and he had 6 if I remember correctly. It was my turn. I was getting tired but I said to myself, “Come on Guy, you are four prizes away from winning this thing, lets do it.” I had Salamence active with an expert belt on it, I dropped the lv. X, remembered to say that I am going to use Double Fall’s power, and knocked out the Nidoqueen to take 2 prizes. I knew I had the game won right here. He brought up Flygon as expected, knocked out my Expert Belted Salamence for two prizes as expected. I brought up my Accelerator Salamence with a water and fire energy on it. I accelerated an energy to the active Salamence using Delcatty/Salamence, attached for my turn, and used Premier Ball to get the lv. X from the discard pile. I played the X, knocked out the Flygon with Steam Twister for 2 prizes, and the championship was over! 6-1 I had such a good time, but I was so tired at the end of this thing. I won the 18 packs, the medal, and a cool Giratina binder. I was also glad to have won this Cities since it is my local league that I play in. I played in a city championship in NC the following day, and went 3-2. So over all (counting battle roads) my Salamence is 12-4 in premier events. I’ll take that any day!! I had such a great time, and can not wait to play in some more premier events!! Props to: Slops to:
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