pacostames101
New Member
All right so I'm pretty new to the TCG (been playing since Emerging Powers) and this is states was not only my first but my 3rd tournament all together. (I had gone to a cities and a battle roads, both of which I went x-3 and missed top cut) but I was determined to change that today! I was and still am convinced that eel is the best deck right now, it just has so many options and even though it is not as fast as celebi, the consistency that it brings throughout the course of the game is amazing. Anyway since I had spring break this past week I play tested a bit more than I usually do against the decks I thought would be there (eel, celebi, terrakion, durant, reshiphlosion, mew) and felt very comfortable using eel for the tournament. Celebi worried me a though and the consistency of my friends list made me consider changing the night before but I didn't have celebis and usually if I could manage to survive with a decent position after three turns I could usually pull out the win. I did however make a last minute change and decide to use 2 dual ball and 2 collector and I swapped my zapdos for a tornados. I loved zapdos but I felt that tornados helps a bit more in the terrakion matchup and hurricane could help accelerate a zekrom if I had no eel out and zapdos would just snipe tynamo in the mirror match, something that catcher and tyrogue could do rather nicely. Anyway! after taking the bus and crossing a highway like an illegal mexican we arrive in the venue and the tournament starts around 11:30. Sorry if I forgot some names, if you see this and recognize it’s you let me know. My name’s Tristan.
Round 1: eel vs terrakion
Oh great, first round of the tournament and I have to play my hardest matchup. I get to go first thankfully and even started with tornados and a lightning, DCE with a collector for tynamos and the brolic mewtwo. He gets a heavy ball off for a 2nd terrakon and an exp share and attaches. He crushing hammers my energy though which wasn't fun since I couldn't attack him next turn. I draw oak and just attach DCE and play oak and ended up passing. He lost removers the DCE and attaches rescue energy and catchers and kills a tynamo. I evolve into eletrik next turn attach another dce to mewtwo and hit terrakion for 80. Next turn he retaliates and hits me for 30. I attach another energy and catcher the other terrakion and hit it for 80 since I want to kill the one with rescue last and the one with exp share first. He has switch though and hits me with land crush. The next turn I catcher his terrakion and knock that one out and he only has the one terrakion left. He plays an oak and doesn't draw heavy ball, terrakion, or junk arm and just land crushes me to my joy. I have an energy on tornados and junk arm for level ball to get shaymin to win the game and..... it's prized.... so I have to fish for an energy off juniper but luckily I get it. GG. Mewtwo too good.
1-0
Round 2: eel vs eel
Cool, a mirror match! By far this is the matchup I am the most comfortable with because the two people I play test the most with play this deck. I win the dice roll and he starts tynamo and zekrom. I dual ball and get tyrogue and tynamo and proceed to knock out his tynamo for an early 5-6. The game goes in my favor after that as I get an eletrik out first and zekrom/thundurus go to work. After he revenges me with his zekrom however I feel he doesn't have mewtwo since he didn't collector for it after he saw me collector for my own mewtwo. So I revenge his zekrom with my mewtwo just to put a lot more pressure on him. He manages to bolt strike my mewtwo but I just retreat and revenge with my own zekrom. The game goes on that he has to flip with cleffa but I have catcher anyway and win. He did have a mewtwo but knew it was too late to play it so he opted not to search for it and couldn't access it when he needed to revenge my mewtwo. He did place in the top 16 though which was nice for him.
2-0
Round 3: eel vs celebi (Patrick Robinson)
Ah, 3rd round only and I have to play a friend of mine? no bueno. The last time we played was at cities I believe and he absolutely murdered me with ZPST so I was hoping the same wouldn't happen here today. He starts Tornadus and I start with mewtwo sadly. (If this was eel I wouldn't mind at all but oh well). I have a godly hand though and proceed to dual ball, junk arm for dual ball by discarding two electric energies, and play it again while hitting 3/4 heads and then play juniper. (reasons like this I switched to dual ball to begin with). I knew I had to get a fast start because the mewtwo was just a liability at this point so I got a first turn thundurus and charged after playing switch. He dual balls for celebis and junipers as well if I remember right plays sky arrow bridge and passes. Next turn I catcher evolve into eletrik and knock out a celebi. I don't remember much of the next few turns, I just remember he made a big shaymin play and he ends up killing my thundurus with terrakion. I have to stall a turn and hit his terrakion with tyrogue and luckily flip tails. He has no catcher response and I kill terrakion with bolt strike next turn to take my 4th prize. I draw N for the prize which wasn't going to help me at this point. He benches a mewtwo which I'm happy about because I have my mewtwo on bench, he's at 3 prizes and I have a mewtwo DCE for the revenge and win if he decides to go after it. He junipers so I'm even more confident sine he can't disrupt my hand. And then he benches smeargle. He retreats and portraits and my now 7 card hand is a 2 card card hand, but I drew pokegear thankfully. He has to pass as he doesn't have a switch and I pokegear into juniper and catcher and an x-ball win me the game. GG definitely a fun and difficult match but really enjoyable.
3-0
Lunch break and then they raffled prizes away which takes forever. Round 4 starts after what feels an eternity.
Round 4: eel vs terrakion
Oh yay another terrakion! >.> He mulligans 3 times and we begin. I open tynamo and immediately dual ball for mewtwo since I have a DCE. He pokegears into an oak and plays it but draws no lost remover or terrakion. He passes and I play my hand down to 2 and attach and hit the terrakion for 60. Only 30hp to go if he doesn't draw anything. He stares at his hand and is forced to play copycat (a reason I learned in testing to play your hand down if its not too much of a liability) and draws 2 cards, looks at his hand and offers the handshake. GG
4-0
Round 5: eel vs mew lock
I start and see he's playing mew and an oddish on bench and I just go first turn thundurus charge. He sees off unefazant I believe its called? I read it and realize fly with trainer lock won't be fun at all. (I had only playtested against the jumpluff variants) I immediately kill mew after I bench 2 tynamo and a zekrom and he sends out relicanth. He collectors and draws his 3 and catcher his other mew and kill it. I have a junk arm for the next mew. By the time he gets vielplume out I have taken 4 prizes and I kill off his relicanth. He is forced to send out cleffa and eeks but flips heads and offers the handshake shortly after. First time Thundurus ever took six prizes. GG.
5-0
I am really happy at this point because I should be guaranteed top cut even if I lose my next two matches, I was still determined to play hard though because seeing 7-0 and your name on top of the sheet is a small victory in itself.
Round 6: eel vs donphan/mewtwo (Frankie Durso)
Another friend and player at my league, oh joy. He goes first and flips over phanpy and I say to myself “well maybe I’ll go 7-0 at NY states” He passes first turn without doing anything; just one phanpy in active and bench. I have a pluspower so I go thundurus charge and pass. Next turn he plays donphan fighting energy and oaks I believe and I lose my thundurus. I send out tynamo and retreat to zekrom attaching an electric energy as I go and threatening the KO with outrage if he hits me. Sadly he had plus power and I’m two prizes down. I don’t remember much after this honestly, except that my tornadus was prized >.> and I’m forced to drop mewtwo and then he collectors for three mewtwo. I kill one of them the donphan and phanpy? I think I was at 2 prizes to his 1 when I dropped mewtwo the second time. I prayed for an N top deck or junk arm to try to pokegear for it because he didn’t bench the two other mewtwo he searched for and he’d be at 2 cards in hand after his draw, but no luck and he revenges me for the win. GG
5-1
Round 7: eel vs eel
Now this was actually the 3rd round in a row I had been paired down. I found this strange and talked to a judge about it and he said there was nothing he could do the software chooses the matches. He said I should be happy I have “easier” matches, but I honestly feel I can play toe to toe with anyone here so I don’t really care about that; I do care about my tiebreakers though which I thought would be pretty terrible if I lost when I was paired down. And the person I was about to play apparently lost the first two rounds and was at the last table at one point and had won out the last 4 rounds. Anyway match starts and I open up with zekrom to his zekrom ex. My hand is decent although I generally hate starting with zekrom without a switch. I had a dual ball and an oak with an energy so I was ok. He plays N and I end up drawing 5 energies and a junk arm. I draw my next card and its another energy. 10 lightning energy and 6 are sitting in my hand; I laughed to myself. Anyway he has a DCE and juniper so I’m staring down a glinting claw zekrom ex turn 2 with eels in the back and a 7 card hand. Things didn’t look good. I topdeck a collector and try to power up a mewtwo but can’t one shot the zekrom ex so he hits me for 150 and I kill it and then he kills me next turn. At some point I know I lost a tynamo to glinting claw but I can’t remember when. Eventually I drop another mewtwo when he’s at 1 prize and he has a juniper which gets him mewtwo with DCE and dynamotor for the win. GG.
5-2
So overall a good record, and I should make top cut even with my losses and being paired down and I make it in with 7th place. Top 16 starts about a half hr later after deck checks.
Top 16: eel vs eel (Raymond Wong)
I felt good going into this match and also wanted a re-match against him for when he beat me with trainer lock at my first tournament. Really cool guy and a fun game to boot.
Game 1: He starts and collectors for tynamos I believe. I think he started Zekrom EX and searched for tynamo and smeargle. Sorry I don’t remember exact details for game 1. He plays switch and tries to portrait to no supporter in my hand. I believe I had dual ball instead of collector haha. Anyway my turn comes and I search for tynamos and zekrom. He tries to play super scoop up next turn and fails and portraits and fails again. The rest I don’t really remember. I know we zekrom traded a few times and it came down to my mewtwo killing his zekrom ex and his mewtwo killing mine and I had the revenge in my hand. GG. (Raymond if you read this and remember game 1 can you please contact me so I can accurately update it).
Game 2: He starts and I only have mewtwo. He collectors for his own mewtwo and two tynamo and banks on the fact that I won’t have DCE and plus power to revenge. He hits me for 80 and passes. I have the DCE but have to fish for plus power. I play level ball for tynamo and oak and draw pluspower on the 3rd or 4th card. If I hadn’t I just would’ve revenged with tynamo since I drew collector =) tackle is a pretty good attack. He sends out a zekrom to stall a little and threaten with outrage if I hit him since I’m only at 90hp. I collector and find out my other tynamos are all prized and sigh. At least shaymin isn’t so I can work with something later on if I have to but I just grab zekroms and start manually attaching while a catcher and mewtwo kills a tynamo. I end up losing my mewtwo to his zekrom when he evolves eels but he doesn’t have anything in the discard to dynamotor so I catcher around with zekrom and kill an eletrik knowing he wants me to kill his zekrom so he can set up zekrom ex or any other attacker in general. He responds in kind and I still don’t have any more tynamos from my prize area. I send out tyrogue which I searched for only to have free retreat and level ball for shaymin. I attach eviolite to my other zekrom and shaymin my three energies from the zekrom with 40 damage to the full hp one and bolt strike his zekrom. I draw my 4th prize and finally get a tynamo. He benches zekrom ex with DCE and dynamotors to it and kills my zekrom. I attach a DCE to zekrom and outrage putting it at 120hp and making it my prime target to take my last two prizes with. He kills me off next turn and between mewtwo pluspower junk arm juniper and an eletrik I kill zekrom ex the turn after and push my way to top 8. GG.
Top 8:
eel vs donphan/landorous (Christian Ortiz)
Game 1
Another league member! And my 4th pure fighting match up for the day. Game 1 I don’t remember too much but he went first and had landorous out. I have tornadus out and try to hit things with hurricane but I need a few turns to set up because of lack of DCE. He hits a few donphans around turn 4 or so and starts catchering around tornadus and when I have to drop mewtwo he has an exp share on his own mewtwo and a fighting energy waiting for me along with plus power. GG.
Game 2
This game was disgusting. Like he gave me knee pads and did terrible things disgusting. I don’t draw anything and am forced to tyrgue hit for 30 here and there and he gets 3 donphans set up by turn 3. After he takes 4 prizes I can finally kill a phanpy haha. And I kill a donphan later on with two zekroms I think it was. The most painful thing I had to say today was “Bolt Strike for 80.” Anyway I mewtwo him after that and he just mewtwos me back for the game. GG. This game reminds me why I played Donphan when ThunderDome was running wild.
I was really happy with my performance and opening my 9 packs I got a FA shaymin ex and a mewtwo! So a very nice consolation prize for not taking home the gold, but I have a second chance in NY this Saturday. See you all there!
I believe the top 4 standings after the tournament and decks were:
1) Frankie Durso (Donphan/Mewtwo)
2) Justin Bohkari (Landorus/Terrakion/Mewtwo)
3) Jimmy O’Brien (Celebi/Mewtwo/Tornadus)
4) Christian Ortiz (Donphan/Mewtwo)
Round 1: eel vs terrakion
Oh great, first round of the tournament and I have to play my hardest matchup. I get to go first thankfully and even started with tornados and a lightning, DCE with a collector for tynamos and the brolic mewtwo. He gets a heavy ball off for a 2nd terrakon and an exp share and attaches. He crushing hammers my energy though which wasn't fun since I couldn't attack him next turn. I draw oak and just attach DCE and play oak and ended up passing. He lost removers the DCE and attaches rescue energy and catchers and kills a tynamo. I evolve into eletrik next turn attach another dce to mewtwo and hit terrakion for 80. Next turn he retaliates and hits me for 30. I attach another energy and catcher the other terrakion and hit it for 80 since I want to kill the one with rescue last and the one with exp share first. He has switch though and hits me with land crush. The next turn I catcher his terrakion and knock that one out and he only has the one terrakion left. He plays an oak and doesn't draw heavy ball, terrakion, or junk arm and just land crushes me to my joy. I have an energy on tornados and junk arm for level ball to get shaymin to win the game and..... it's prized.... so I have to fish for an energy off juniper but luckily I get it. GG. Mewtwo too good.
1-0
Round 2: eel vs eel
Cool, a mirror match! By far this is the matchup I am the most comfortable with because the two people I play test the most with play this deck. I win the dice roll and he starts tynamo and zekrom. I dual ball and get tyrogue and tynamo and proceed to knock out his tynamo for an early 5-6. The game goes in my favor after that as I get an eletrik out first and zekrom/thundurus go to work. After he revenges me with his zekrom however I feel he doesn't have mewtwo since he didn't collector for it after he saw me collector for my own mewtwo. So I revenge his zekrom with my mewtwo just to put a lot more pressure on him. He manages to bolt strike my mewtwo but I just retreat and revenge with my own zekrom. The game goes on that he has to flip with cleffa but I have catcher anyway and win. He did have a mewtwo but knew it was too late to play it so he opted not to search for it and couldn't access it when he needed to revenge my mewtwo. He did place in the top 16 though which was nice for him.
2-0
Round 3: eel vs celebi (Patrick Robinson)
Ah, 3rd round only and I have to play a friend of mine? no bueno. The last time we played was at cities I believe and he absolutely murdered me with ZPST so I was hoping the same wouldn't happen here today. He starts Tornadus and I start with mewtwo sadly. (If this was eel I wouldn't mind at all but oh well). I have a godly hand though and proceed to dual ball, junk arm for dual ball by discarding two electric energies, and play it again while hitting 3/4 heads and then play juniper. (reasons like this I switched to dual ball to begin with). I knew I had to get a fast start because the mewtwo was just a liability at this point so I got a first turn thundurus and charged after playing switch. He dual balls for celebis and junipers as well if I remember right plays sky arrow bridge and passes. Next turn I catcher evolve into eletrik and knock out a celebi. I don't remember much of the next few turns, I just remember he made a big shaymin play and he ends up killing my thundurus with terrakion. I have to stall a turn and hit his terrakion with tyrogue and luckily flip tails. He has no catcher response and I kill terrakion with bolt strike next turn to take my 4th prize. I draw N for the prize which wasn't going to help me at this point. He benches a mewtwo which I'm happy about because I have my mewtwo on bench, he's at 3 prizes and I have a mewtwo DCE for the revenge and win if he decides to go after it. He junipers so I'm even more confident sine he can't disrupt my hand. And then he benches smeargle. He retreats and portraits and my now 7 card hand is a 2 card card hand, but I drew pokegear thankfully. He has to pass as he doesn't have a switch and I pokegear into juniper and catcher and an x-ball win me the game. GG definitely a fun and difficult match but really enjoyable.
3-0
Lunch break and then they raffled prizes away which takes forever. Round 4 starts after what feels an eternity.
Round 4: eel vs terrakion
Oh yay another terrakion! >.> He mulligans 3 times and we begin. I open tynamo and immediately dual ball for mewtwo since I have a DCE. He pokegears into an oak and plays it but draws no lost remover or terrakion. He passes and I play my hand down to 2 and attach and hit the terrakion for 60. Only 30hp to go if he doesn't draw anything. He stares at his hand and is forced to play copycat (a reason I learned in testing to play your hand down if its not too much of a liability) and draws 2 cards, looks at his hand and offers the handshake. GG
4-0
Round 5: eel vs mew lock
I start and see he's playing mew and an oddish on bench and I just go first turn thundurus charge. He sees off unefazant I believe its called? I read it and realize fly with trainer lock won't be fun at all. (I had only playtested against the jumpluff variants) I immediately kill mew after I bench 2 tynamo and a zekrom and he sends out relicanth. He collectors and draws his 3 and catcher his other mew and kill it. I have a junk arm for the next mew. By the time he gets vielplume out I have taken 4 prizes and I kill off his relicanth. He is forced to send out cleffa and eeks but flips heads and offers the handshake shortly after. First time Thundurus ever took six prizes. GG.
5-0
I am really happy at this point because I should be guaranteed top cut even if I lose my next two matches, I was still determined to play hard though because seeing 7-0 and your name on top of the sheet is a small victory in itself.
Round 6: eel vs donphan/mewtwo (Frankie Durso)
Another friend and player at my league, oh joy. He goes first and flips over phanpy and I say to myself “well maybe I’ll go 7-0 at NY states” He passes first turn without doing anything; just one phanpy in active and bench. I have a pluspower so I go thundurus charge and pass. Next turn he plays donphan fighting energy and oaks I believe and I lose my thundurus. I send out tynamo and retreat to zekrom attaching an electric energy as I go and threatening the KO with outrage if he hits me. Sadly he had plus power and I’m two prizes down. I don’t remember much after this honestly, except that my tornadus was prized >.> and I’m forced to drop mewtwo and then he collectors for three mewtwo. I kill one of them the donphan and phanpy? I think I was at 2 prizes to his 1 when I dropped mewtwo the second time. I prayed for an N top deck or junk arm to try to pokegear for it because he didn’t bench the two other mewtwo he searched for and he’d be at 2 cards in hand after his draw, but no luck and he revenges me for the win. GG
5-1
Round 7: eel vs eel
Now this was actually the 3rd round in a row I had been paired down. I found this strange and talked to a judge about it and he said there was nothing he could do the software chooses the matches. He said I should be happy I have “easier” matches, but I honestly feel I can play toe to toe with anyone here so I don’t really care about that; I do care about my tiebreakers though which I thought would be pretty terrible if I lost when I was paired down. And the person I was about to play apparently lost the first two rounds and was at the last table at one point and had won out the last 4 rounds. Anyway match starts and I open up with zekrom to his zekrom ex. My hand is decent although I generally hate starting with zekrom without a switch. I had a dual ball and an oak with an energy so I was ok. He plays N and I end up drawing 5 energies and a junk arm. I draw my next card and its another energy. 10 lightning energy and 6 are sitting in my hand; I laughed to myself. Anyway he has a DCE and juniper so I’m staring down a glinting claw zekrom ex turn 2 with eels in the back and a 7 card hand. Things didn’t look good. I topdeck a collector and try to power up a mewtwo but can’t one shot the zekrom ex so he hits me for 150 and I kill it and then he kills me next turn. At some point I know I lost a tynamo to glinting claw but I can’t remember when. Eventually I drop another mewtwo when he’s at 1 prize and he has a juniper which gets him mewtwo with DCE and dynamotor for the win. GG.
5-2
So overall a good record, and I should make top cut even with my losses and being paired down and I make it in with 7th place. Top 16 starts about a half hr later after deck checks.
Top 16: eel vs eel (Raymond Wong)
I felt good going into this match and also wanted a re-match against him for when he beat me with trainer lock at my first tournament. Really cool guy and a fun game to boot.
Game 1: He starts and collectors for tynamos I believe. I think he started Zekrom EX and searched for tynamo and smeargle. Sorry I don’t remember exact details for game 1. He plays switch and tries to portrait to no supporter in my hand. I believe I had dual ball instead of collector haha. Anyway my turn comes and I search for tynamos and zekrom. He tries to play super scoop up next turn and fails and portraits and fails again. The rest I don’t really remember. I know we zekrom traded a few times and it came down to my mewtwo killing his zekrom ex and his mewtwo killing mine and I had the revenge in my hand. GG. (Raymond if you read this and remember game 1 can you please contact me so I can accurately update it).
Game 2: He starts and I only have mewtwo. He collectors for his own mewtwo and two tynamo and banks on the fact that I won’t have DCE and plus power to revenge. He hits me for 80 and passes. I have the DCE but have to fish for plus power. I play level ball for tynamo and oak and draw pluspower on the 3rd or 4th card. If I hadn’t I just would’ve revenged with tynamo since I drew collector =) tackle is a pretty good attack. He sends out a zekrom to stall a little and threaten with outrage if I hit him since I’m only at 90hp. I collector and find out my other tynamos are all prized and sigh. At least shaymin isn’t so I can work with something later on if I have to but I just grab zekroms and start manually attaching while a catcher and mewtwo kills a tynamo. I end up losing my mewtwo to his zekrom when he evolves eels but he doesn’t have anything in the discard to dynamotor so I catcher around with zekrom and kill an eletrik knowing he wants me to kill his zekrom so he can set up zekrom ex or any other attacker in general. He responds in kind and I still don’t have any more tynamos from my prize area. I send out tyrogue which I searched for only to have free retreat and level ball for shaymin. I attach eviolite to my other zekrom and shaymin my three energies from the zekrom with 40 damage to the full hp one and bolt strike his zekrom. I draw my 4th prize and finally get a tynamo. He benches zekrom ex with DCE and dynamotors to it and kills my zekrom. I attach a DCE to zekrom and outrage putting it at 120hp and making it my prime target to take my last two prizes with. He kills me off next turn and between mewtwo pluspower junk arm juniper and an eletrik I kill zekrom ex the turn after and push my way to top 8. GG.
Top 8:
eel vs donphan/landorous (Christian Ortiz)
Game 1
Another league member! And my 4th pure fighting match up for the day. Game 1 I don’t remember too much but he went first and had landorous out. I have tornadus out and try to hit things with hurricane but I need a few turns to set up because of lack of DCE. He hits a few donphans around turn 4 or so and starts catchering around tornadus and when I have to drop mewtwo he has an exp share on his own mewtwo and a fighting energy waiting for me along with plus power. GG.
Game 2
This game was disgusting. Like he gave me knee pads and did terrible things disgusting. I don’t draw anything and am forced to tyrgue hit for 30 here and there and he gets 3 donphans set up by turn 3. After he takes 4 prizes I can finally kill a phanpy haha. And I kill a donphan later on with two zekroms I think it was. The most painful thing I had to say today was “Bolt Strike for 80.” Anyway I mewtwo him after that and he just mewtwos me back for the game. GG. This game reminds me why I played Donphan when ThunderDome was running wild.
I was really happy with my performance and opening my 9 packs I got a FA shaymin ex and a mewtwo! So a very nice consolation prize for not taking home the gold, but I have a second chance in NY this Saturday. See you all there!
I believe the top 4 standings after the tournament and decks were:
1) Frankie Durso (Donphan/Mewtwo)
2) Justin Bohkari (Landorus/Terrakion/Mewtwo)
3) Jimmy O’Brien (Celebi/Mewtwo/Tornadus)
4) Christian Ortiz (Donphan/Mewtwo)
.