Naki Feralkin
New Member
After last weeks 2nd place debacle, I figured I needed to make up for it and go for broke once again. I originally was only going to hit up one battle roads this weekend, but plans changed and my girlfriend managed to get off work on Sunday, so I actually got to go to two this time.
If you followed me last week, you'll know that I did relatively well with Gothitelle/Reuniclus, which I ended up going 6-1 and 2nd place with. I decided to continue this play today, despite me reading silly comments on 6P about Reshityphlosion having its number and Gothitelle will never be a good deck.. Yeah..about that...
Anyways..
Day 1 - Parkersberg, WV.
West Virginia is always a nice change of pace from the heavily competitive Ohioan metagame and I know a couple people from this northern WV city, so its very laid back and casual down here. I got to talk to a few friends I made down here from the previous tournament when I judged it (Morgan Smith and her boyfriend, Mike) before starting the tournament. The tournament had a much increased number from last time, knowing full well what championship points bring, and players flocked from Columbus and the northeast Ohio regions to get their game face on.
My play? Gothitelle, once again. I got deck checked and ready to rock.
Round 1 Vs. ???? (I need to work on this name thing.) (ZPST)
This was a mess for me. I had a really good looking hand with the potential lock coming out relatively quick, I had Gothorita on the bench and was one turn shy of finishing the lock, however, due to me not playing devil's advocate for one game out of a million, I took a risk I shouldn't have and decided to not lock him early to force him into it sooner. Due to it, my benched Gothorita was catchered and wiped out.
Following this, I saw an endless swarm of catchers which pretty much ended me. ZPST, you can do it to anyone, even Goth. Can't say I'm startled by this sweep.
0-1
Round 2 Vs. Heather Hollins (Gatr/Lanturn/Blastoise)
Heather is the daughter of one of my league's pokeparents and the sister of two kids who I've been teaching to be better in their specific divisions (one in Juniors, one in Seniors), and I've played her in quite a number of tournaments, including this one.
Heather looks to be drawing dead for quite some time, she opens with a lone Chinchou, and thats where it stays.. For a long time. I get set up and she just can't use any trainers by the time she has other pokemon set up, games already over. By the time it becomes a Lanturn Prime, my Gothitelle is active and a Reuniclus is benched and I wash over the potential threats with catchers.
1-1
Round 3 Vs. ???? (????)
All I really remember here is it was a 3 turn win. One turn for energy drop on Gothita, Two turn for evolve into Gothorita, energy drop, Three turn for energy drop on evolution to Gothitelle + Energy = game against his lone Mareep.
Sorry bro, just how the game rolls some time.
2-1
Round 4 Vs. Stacia ? (Stage 1's)
I forgot the last name, but I remember the first! This is a woman from the Columbus area league who did pretty well for her second major tournament and it was amusing to see how many players have been hopping into this game of late.
Stacia starts out with a lone Phanpy, Mostly remember in this game that I was getting set up decently before she judged me away and that I kept this Donphan Prime active for a while before she does what my opponent from last week did when my Goth hit the field, begins to swing with EQ till she knocks a large abundance of her bench out.
The trainer lock carries me past Stage 1's once again.
3-1
I figure I have a good chance going in, but my first round opponent ended up going 2-2 with his round 4 loss against Reshityph, I hit up 5th place and get bubbled out for this tournament. No biggie, for those interested, the top cut looked like this at the end of round 4.
1st- Morgan Smith (Reshityph)
2nd- Jason M. (Blastoise/Gatr)
3rd- Jimmy Gurney (Reshityph)
4th- Michelle Hanslik (Reshityph)
This was a pretty.. interesting top cut, needless to say, Blastoise/Gatr ran off with it, which was impressive, the locals carried this tournament off.
In other news in this tournament, Seth and Kyle, the two kids I've been teaching walked away with their very own first place Victory cups, so I have to say this was an overall success.
(Gothitelle Record after today 9-2)
So not so bad, we drive home, I hatch eggs trying to set up my rain dance team for fun (gogo Poliwag gogo) and I make a couple of silly errors in the process since I haven't EV trained in about 43893485327538494373974fg93394853849758 years, but I finally walk away with a couple decent Poliwags before getting home.
I sleep, find out girl can go to a tournament the next day and I help her get a Goth build together also, so we head up to Chardon with Dolphins jersey's on (only to now witness Tony Sparano's inevitable execution from the Dolphins) and I roll Gothitelle once again.
I'm looking at the field and I'm a bit nervous. It appears my showing from last week made the Cleveland area very sold on Gothitelle, and including my girlfriend, at least 4 other people were playing it as well. I'll admit, I haven't even bothered to playtest the mirror, and I was going to have to learn it spur of the moment. Fun times.
Round 1 Vs. David Davies (Reshityph)
This round one reminded me vaguely of my previous week 1 round. No draw cards for a year and I have to keep feeding him prizes in order to stay alive. I eventually get a Gothitelle set up, and a Reuniclus not soon after, however I did manage to lose BOTH of my Dragons in the process, which really sucked a lot. This mostly occured due to the fact that my lone draw pokemon (1 Cleffa) was in my prize cards and I had to find my Cheren's or my PONT's, which I didn't see in a while.
However, once I got the Gothitelle, once again, did this Gothic psychic nutso arise from the ashes and began to trade prizes back. I was down 4 prizes with a decent amount of time left, and I had to fight to earn this win. I finally managed to press back from behind with a single Gothitelle and forcefully had to evolve additional Gothitelles just to have the 130 HP walls to move damage to. I was getting Max Pots, Junk Arms, everything. It came down to just one thing though as I knew he was building up for a Black Belt and I had previously placed 110 damage on a Typhlosion trying to keep my psychic energies down, so in order to seal my victory, I used Jirachi for the first time in 3 tournaments to de-evolve it to Quilave for the win.
1-0
Round 2 Vs. Corey Goss (Reshityph)
Corey ended up not seeing any draw power or fire energies for at least 3 turns, I had my cleffa this game and was able to start my lock up early. We traded prizes mostly because I wanted to control whether he could black belt or not (I was killing my own pokemon with Damage Swap). On one occasion, I even put myself down a prize to activate a twins just so I could control the game further. Once I ran him out of threats, I pulled myself ahead to finish the game.
Round 3 Vs. Henry de Groh (Cobalion/Klingklang/Steelix)
Resistance. Oh come on. Psychic resistance + Special Metals. Talk about agonizing.
The deck looked like it prided itself on moving metals around and utilising max potions. I know he showed me a Max Potion jokingly during the trainer lock, so it looked like it could have had a lot of massive potential had I not locked him early and took away his threats quickly.
Needless to say, I was unable to do any serious damage for a little while, I had to add more energies than I liked to knock out Cobalion's, and on one occasion, he even moved energies to Klingklang to gamble a few turns. (Those were very frightening moments indeed, 160 damage for two heads? Thankfully, that never happened, but my heart was on edge each time)
On two occasions, I knocked out low HP pokemon to get my Dragons on the field and eventually overran his psychic resistance, noticing when he scooped he had 7 trainers in his hand with nothing to do with them.
3-0
Round 4 Vs. Jake Hanna (Mirror)
Oh goody. Mirror. He started Gothita to my Gothita, puts me to sleep, I don't wake up, but I also attach an energy. His next turn, he sees nothing but an energy to put on his Gothita, which now has two. I respond to that by evolving my Gothita to a Gothorita, DCE it, and actually wipe out his Gothita for 100 damage. He was surprised by this sudden turn and I manage to get the trainer lock going before he does, ending it relatively fast.
The game went on for a while, but he threw it once he saw the setup.
4-0
Sooo this tournament ended up a Top 2 cut despite having 19 players. We had 15 at the end of registration, but 4 people came in late and screwed up the Top 4 for the other two players. Regardless, my girlfriend Heather (secretsof2113) walked away with a 3rd place victory cup, so it was all good in the end.
My opponent? Same from Round 4, Jake Hanna and once again a mirror match.
Round 1:
I set up, he sees nothing and in a matter of 3-4 turns, I have Goth and control of the board. He scoops ridiculously quick.
Round 2: Almost a repeat of the first, but I just can't put this away fast because I can't get past a Zekrom wall because of one major thing.
MY TWO REUNICLUS ARE BOTH PRIZED.
Yeah, that was an annoying mess. I manage to wipe out a gothitelle and a gothita, removing them from the threat list before they became annoying, but I couldn't put the game away due to losing my potential trainer lock from a dead gothitelle because I couldn't move damage anywhere! I had to pick my fights carefully. Eventually, he actually knocked my Gothitelle out with an energised Reuniclus, which I traded my prize off with another Gothitelle active. Once again, the Zekrom wall came out and I needed to soak Outrages until I got to 60, seeing a Jirachi on his bench. At that point, I had to call away the lock to keep it alive, cleffa'ing instead. I get a mysterious case of deja vu once again as I constantly am reshuffling with PONT's and cleffa's, this time for a junk arm to get one of my two Pokemon Catchers back from the abyss,
I eventually see it, and after taking FOUR prize cards, I finally see one of my Reuniclus and I can finally put this game in the record books.
I must say, I love this deck. I don't see why people are hating on it as much as they are as it is amazing. It really has no truly bad matchups except for two, the first one being Yanzone. Yanzone can work around the damage placement with snipe and one shot Goths really fast. The only problem it has is that once a Zone comes out to attack, it needs 3 turns to recharge, or a switch to start the aggression with Yanmega, plus Yanzone has really good matchups across the board.
The other one is obviously Mewpile, which I lost to last week, which I am still skeptical of. I like the deck, but I don't know how strong it is in this ADD meta. It does beat Goth down pretty hard, but Goth can beat the vanilla list by merely teching a Mew Prime to Muk up its Vileplumes while setting up second Goths. The list I ran against last week played a much different variant which was far better suited to play against Goth, but I'm unsure how its other matchups were (I don't really know who he played against, so I can't just assume he auto won or auto lost any matchups)
I've never had issues with Reshityph. The deck can play Black Belt, but you can control the matchup so you can work around it by placing damage counters to KO things to prevent your goths from dying until you rid yourself of the major threats. It can't pluspower, or catcher anything, so the only thing it has is Black Belt aggro, which is even controlled if you keep the prize count tied. So, to those of you on 6P saying it loses, think again. Please.
Stage 1's is even easier, It relies so heavily on trainers that once Goth stays active, you can't really respond with 60 damage to the active. The big threat is obviously Yanmega, but if I see that dude, its usually catchered up and killed quickly. The biggest threat from this deck is an early Judge, which is a massive drawback, but sometimes this even hurts S1's more than it does Goth. That being said, Judge is one of the biggest threats to Goth early on. If you get this, oh my god, does it stall me out.
At any rate, I'm anticipating the metagame in Ohio to grow even more in favor of this deck. One week I do well, and 5 people are now playing it, now 3 people placed in the Top 4 in this tournament with it, and I expect it to only grow more. I'm not really including a deck list as between the two reports I've put together, I'm sure you can piece together a lot of different things from it. Its very frightening when played right, and I would definitely think this to be a Tier 1 deck for sure.
I find it amusing also that I changed my good luck charm to something different for Parkersberg. I had my Pokecenter Serperior last week with me, and it got me second, I changed to my UFO Dragonite and only got 5th, this time, I went back to Pokecen Serperior, and well, here we are.
Props:
- Watching a couple of kids I trained continue to do well in their respective divisions.
- Pesto Chicken Sammich at the Parkersberg Venue
- Girl being able to play in a tournament and coming in 3rd!
- More Championship points!
- Goth, again.
- Seeing a lot of friends I haven't gotten to see in about 3 months
- Lotsa time for EV training!
Slops:
- The Miami Dolphins
- Me for being a dumb and hatching eggs of a pokemon I already had the right nature for
- Not having a Top 4 cut at Chardon
- Other stuff I'm not remembering
Well, I'm not gonna be playing for a couple of weeks, actually have a weekend to myself next week to kinda kick back, but I intend to play in two tournaments towards the end of the BR season, so maybe you shall see more from the Naki soon!
Till next time, Keep Gothing.
If you followed me last week, you'll know that I did relatively well with Gothitelle/Reuniclus, which I ended up going 6-1 and 2nd place with. I decided to continue this play today, despite me reading silly comments on 6P about Reshityphlosion having its number and Gothitelle will never be a good deck.. Yeah..about that...
Anyways..
Day 1 - Parkersberg, WV.
West Virginia is always a nice change of pace from the heavily competitive Ohioan metagame and I know a couple people from this northern WV city, so its very laid back and casual down here. I got to talk to a few friends I made down here from the previous tournament when I judged it (Morgan Smith and her boyfriend, Mike) before starting the tournament. The tournament had a much increased number from last time, knowing full well what championship points bring, and players flocked from Columbus and the northeast Ohio regions to get their game face on.
My play? Gothitelle, once again. I got deck checked and ready to rock.
Round 1 Vs. ???? (I need to work on this name thing.) (ZPST)
This was a mess for me. I had a really good looking hand with the potential lock coming out relatively quick, I had Gothorita on the bench and was one turn shy of finishing the lock, however, due to me not playing devil's advocate for one game out of a million, I took a risk I shouldn't have and decided to not lock him early to force him into it sooner. Due to it, my benched Gothorita was catchered and wiped out.
Following this, I saw an endless swarm of catchers which pretty much ended me. ZPST, you can do it to anyone, even Goth. Can't say I'm startled by this sweep.
0-1
Round 2 Vs. Heather Hollins (Gatr/Lanturn/Blastoise)
Heather is the daughter of one of my league's pokeparents and the sister of two kids who I've been teaching to be better in their specific divisions (one in Juniors, one in Seniors), and I've played her in quite a number of tournaments, including this one.
Heather looks to be drawing dead for quite some time, she opens with a lone Chinchou, and thats where it stays.. For a long time. I get set up and she just can't use any trainers by the time she has other pokemon set up, games already over. By the time it becomes a Lanturn Prime, my Gothitelle is active and a Reuniclus is benched and I wash over the potential threats with catchers.
1-1
Round 3 Vs. ???? (????)
All I really remember here is it was a 3 turn win. One turn for energy drop on Gothita, Two turn for evolve into Gothorita, energy drop, Three turn for energy drop on evolution to Gothitelle + Energy = game against his lone Mareep.
Sorry bro, just how the game rolls some time.
2-1
Round 4 Vs. Stacia ? (Stage 1's)
I forgot the last name, but I remember the first! This is a woman from the Columbus area league who did pretty well for her second major tournament and it was amusing to see how many players have been hopping into this game of late.
Stacia starts out with a lone Phanpy, Mostly remember in this game that I was getting set up decently before she judged me away and that I kept this Donphan Prime active for a while before she does what my opponent from last week did when my Goth hit the field, begins to swing with EQ till she knocks a large abundance of her bench out.
The trainer lock carries me past Stage 1's once again.
3-1
I figure I have a good chance going in, but my first round opponent ended up going 2-2 with his round 4 loss against Reshityph, I hit up 5th place and get bubbled out for this tournament. No biggie, for those interested, the top cut looked like this at the end of round 4.
1st- Morgan Smith (Reshityph)
2nd- Jason M. (Blastoise/Gatr)
3rd- Jimmy Gurney (Reshityph)
4th- Michelle Hanslik (Reshityph)
This was a pretty.. interesting top cut, needless to say, Blastoise/Gatr ran off with it, which was impressive, the locals carried this tournament off.
In other news in this tournament, Seth and Kyle, the two kids I've been teaching walked away with their very own first place Victory cups, so I have to say this was an overall success.
(Gothitelle Record after today 9-2)
So not so bad, we drive home, I hatch eggs trying to set up my rain dance team for fun (gogo Poliwag gogo) and I make a couple of silly errors in the process since I haven't EV trained in about 43893485327538494373974fg93394853849758 years, but I finally walk away with a couple decent Poliwags before getting home.
I sleep, find out girl can go to a tournament the next day and I help her get a Goth build together also, so we head up to Chardon with Dolphins jersey's on (only to now witness Tony Sparano's inevitable execution from the Dolphins) and I roll Gothitelle once again.
I'm looking at the field and I'm a bit nervous. It appears my showing from last week made the Cleveland area very sold on Gothitelle, and including my girlfriend, at least 4 other people were playing it as well. I'll admit, I haven't even bothered to playtest the mirror, and I was going to have to learn it spur of the moment. Fun times.
Round 1 Vs. David Davies (Reshityph)
This round one reminded me vaguely of my previous week 1 round. No draw cards for a year and I have to keep feeding him prizes in order to stay alive. I eventually get a Gothitelle set up, and a Reuniclus not soon after, however I did manage to lose BOTH of my Dragons in the process, which really sucked a lot. This mostly occured due to the fact that my lone draw pokemon (1 Cleffa) was in my prize cards and I had to find my Cheren's or my PONT's, which I didn't see in a while.
However, once I got the Gothitelle, once again, did this Gothic psychic nutso arise from the ashes and began to trade prizes back. I was down 4 prizes with a decent amount of time left, and I had to fight to earn this win. I finally managed to press back from behind with a single Gothitelle and forcefully had to evolve additional Gothitelles just to have the 130 HP walls to move damage to. I was getting Max Pots, Junk Arms, everything. It came down to just one thing though as I knew he was building up for a Black Belt and I had previously placed 110 damage on a Typhlosion trying to keep my psychic energies down, so in order to seal my victory, I used Jirachi for the first time in 3 tournaments to de-evolve it to Quilave for the win.
1-0
Round 2 Vs. Corey Goss (Reshityph)
Corey ended up not seeing any draw power or fire energies for at least 3 turns, I had my cleffa this game and was able to start my lock up early. We traded prizes mostly because I wanted to control whether he could black belt or not (I was killing my own pokemon with Damage Swap). On one occasion, I even put myself down a prize to activate a twins just so I could control the game further. Once I ran him out of threats, I pulled myself ahead to finish the game.
Round 3 Vs. Henry de Groh (Cobalion/Klingklang/Steelix)
Resistance. Oh come on. Psychic resistance + Special Metals. Talk about agonizing.
The deck looked like it prided itself on moving metals around and utilising max potions. I know he showed me a Max Potion jokingly during the trainer lock, so it looked like it could have had a lot of massive potential had I not locked him early and took away his threats quickly.
Needless to say, I was unable to do any serious damage for a little while, I had to add more energies than I liked to knock out Cobalion's, and on one occasion, he even moved energies to Klingklang to gamble a few turns. (Those were very frightening moments indeed, 160 damage for two heads? Thankfully, that never happened, but my heart was on edge each time)
On two occasions, I knocked out low HP pokemon to get my Dragons on the field and eventually overran his psychic resistance, noticing when he scooped he had 7 trainers in his hand with nothing to do with them.
3-0
Round 4 Vs. Jake Hanna (Mirror)
Oh goody. Mirror. He started Gothita to my Gothita, puts me to sleep, I don't wake up, but I also attach an energy. His next turn, he sees nothing but an energy to put on his Gothita, which now has two. I respond to that by evolving my Gothita to a Gothorita, DCE it, and actually wipe out his Gothita for 100 damage. He was surprised by this sudden turn and I manage to get the trainer lock going before he does, ending it relatively fast.
The game went on for a while, but he threw it once he saw the setup.
4-0
Sooo this tournament ended up a Top 2 cut despite having 19 players. We had 15 at the end of registration, but 4 people came in late and screwed up the Top 4 for the other two players. Regardless, my girlfriend Heather (secretsof2113) walked away with a 3rd place victory cup, so it was all good in the end.
My opponent? Same from Round 4, Jake Hanna and once again a mirror match.
Round 1:
I set up, he sees nothing and in a matter of 3-4 turns, I have Goth and control of the board. He scoops ridiculously quick.
Round 2: Almost a repeat of the first, but I just can't put this away fast because I can't get past a Zekrom wall because of one major thing.
MY TWO REUNICLUS ARE BOTH PRIZED.
Yeah, that was an annoying mess. I manage to wipe out a gothitelle and a gothita, removing them from the threat list before they became annoying, but I couldn't put the game away due to losing my potential trainer lock from a dead gothitelle because I couldn't move damage anywhere! I had to pick my fights carefully. Eventually, he actually knocked my Gothitelle out with an energised Reuniclus, which I traded my prize off with another Gothitelle active. Once again, the Zekrom wall came out and I needed to soak Outrages until I got to 60, seeing a Jirachi on his bench. At that point, I had to call away the lock to keep it alive, cleffa'ing instead. I get a mysterious case of deja vu once again as I constantly am reshuffling with PONT's and cleffa's, this time for a junk arm to get one of my two Pokemon Catchers back from the abyss,
I eventually see it, and after taking FOUR prize cards, I finally see one of my Reuniclus and I can finally put this game in the record books.
I must say, I love this deck. I don't see why people are hating on it as much as they are as it is amazing. It really has no truly bad matchups except for two, the first one being Yanzone. Yanzone can work around the damage placement with snipe and one shot Goths really fast. The only problem it has is that once a Zone comes out to attack, it needs 3 turns to recharge, or a switch to start the aggression with Yanmega, plus Yanzone has really good matchups across the board.
The other one is obviously Mewpile, which I lost to last week, which I am still skeptical of. I like the deck, but I don't know how strong it is in this ADD meta. It does beat Goth down pretty hard, but Goth can beat the vanilla list by merely teching a Mew Prime to Muk up its Vileplumes while setting up second Goths. The list I ran against last week played a much different variant which was far better suited to play against Goth, but I'm unsure how its other matchups were (I don't really know who he played against, so I can't just assume he auto won or auto lost any matchups)
I've never had issues with Reshityph. The deck can play Black Belt, but you can control the matchup so you can work around it by placing damage counters to KO things to prevent your goths from dying until you rid yourself of the major threats. It can't pluspower, or catcher anything, so the only thing it has is Black Belt aggro, which is even controlled if you keep the prize count tied. So, to those of you on 6P saying it loses, think again. Please.
Stage 1's is even easier, It relies so heavily on trainers that once Goth stays active, you can't really respond with 60 damage to the active. The big threat is obviously Yanmega, but if I see that dude, its usually catchered up and killed quickly. The biggest threat from this deck is an early Judge, which is a massive drawback, but sometimes this even hurts S1's more than it does Goth. That being said, Judge is one of the biggest threats to Goth early on. If you get this, oh my god, does it stall me out.
At any rate, I'm anticipating the metagame in Ohio to grow even more in favor of this deck. One week I do well, and 5 people are now playing it, now 3 people placed in the Top 4 in this tournament with it, and I expect it to only grow more. I'm not really including a deck list as between the two reports I've put together, I'm sure you can piece together a lot of different things from it. Its very frightening when played right, and I would definitely think this to be a Tier 1 deck for sure.
I find it amusing also that I changed my good luck charm to something different for Parkersberg. I had my Pokecenter Serperior last week with me, and it got me second, I changed to my UFO Dragonite and only got 5th, this time, I went back to Pokecen Serperior, and well, here we are.
Props:
- Watching a couple of kids I trained continue to do well in their respective divisions.
- Pesto Chicken Sammich at the Parkersberg Venue
- Girl being able to play in a tournament and coming in 3rd!
- More Championship points!
- Goth, again.
- Seeing a lot of friends I haven't gotten to see in about 3 months
- Lotsa time for EV training!
Slops:
- The Miami Dolphins
- Me for being a dumb and hatching eggs of a pokemon I already had the right nature for
- Not having a Top 4 cut at Chardon
- Other stuff I'm not remembering
Well, I'm not gonna be playing for a couple of weeks, actually have a weekend to myself next week to kinda kick back, but I intend to play in two tournaments towards the end of the BR season, so maybe you shall see more from the Naki soon!
Till next time, Keep Gothing.
