Ok, just like last year, I am going to use one thread for all of my City reports, so each one I go to, I'll post my next report as I go to them. Makes it easier to keep track of. ANYWAYS, on to my first report.
I was going to be driving down to Columbus today for the Magic State Championships, after compiling a good and well tested Jund deck ( for anyone who plays Magic, I know, so exciting and fresh ) but I was A.) short on money ( 25ish for entry, 20 for gas, 10 for parking...I'm poor an unemployed! ) Instead, I decide to go to league in the morning, and round up a crew and end up driving out to Chardon for the City Championships. AJ, the organizer, had called me earlier in the week about judging, but I was planning to go to States, so I turned it down. Of course, I show up anyways, and my friend Scotty had already grabbed the judge spot. So I decided to play and I grabbed what I am confident is one of the best decks, Dialga Garchomp with Toxitank. My list wasn't perfected, and could probably be smoothed out as I haven't played much at all this season, but overall it played very well for me.
Round 1 vs David B with Gengar Nidoqueen Relicanth
David had been doing extremely well during Battle Roads, and was still running hot after winning Ohio States the year before, beating me in top 4, and Drew Holton in top 2. I was a bit worried because he was likely to have a better feel for the format than me being far more active. I get a pretty nice opening hand, starting with Dialga, but I lose the die roll, and he opens Gastly, allowing him to Dark Pitch to prevent me from playing my Energy Gain and Galactic HQ to start a Deafen. I get my set up rolling, and toss an Unown G onto my Baltoy. I start going aggressive and take an early prize, and drop the Galactic HQ and use Skuntank to poison Gengar. Of course, this was a disastrous move, as he procedes to drop Relicanth, which deals 90 due to my stadium: Honest confession, I knew Relicanth did 30x tool, and I have E Gain and Unown G in play...definitely forgot about the Stadium part. SLIGHTLY awkward. Anyways, I am rewarded for my awful play by an awesome topdeck, putting me in a great game position by getting another Claydol up shortly there after. Outside of the few support/draw Pokemon in my deck, it is really, really hard for Gengar to make much ground against my SP Pokemon, and I end up winning comfortably after doing my best to throw the game away. ( You'll see a trend of this in this report ) I felt I would be in good shape to win regardless even if I didn't topdeck as well as I did, due to the inherent strength of the matchup, but it was still embarassing.
1-0
Round 2 vs Jeanette S with Gyarados
She gets a decent start, slowrolling the Sableye open, but she has a hard time getting anything going early because she has a really difficult time getting to her Magikarp early enough. By the time she does, my Dialga is tanked heavily, and I'm able to Warp Energy into Garchomp C Lvl X enough times that my Dialga goes the distance. Midgame I did the fun little Deafen lock for a KO in order to assure me a few turns of no Gyarados. Gyarados has a really hard time dealing with Deafen if it doesn't have any particular tech for it, and she didn;t...I built her Gyarados list, and well, it wasn't nearly as good as it should have been. SOOO I'm taking the blame for this one.
2-0
Round 3 vs Ryan M with GG
I'm not 100% on the name, but he traveled in from New York with a group of people for CCs this weekend. He opened with Spiritomg and started to get set up, and I locked in a Galactic HQ, and kept Deafening, while poisoning him. He didn't want to evolve his stage 1s into the Gardevoir/Gallades until he could break my stadium, which I'm not sure I agree with. On one side, if he does evolve, he takes 20, which is bad news putting his Gardevoir at 90, and Gallade at 110 when dealing with my Toxicroak G. Unfortunately, since he didn't evolve, I opened up my game, breaking Deafen once I was set up effectively, and brought up Garchomp C Lvl X to do 80 to Kirlia with 3 energy, leaving him with a Ralts with an Upper. This becomes a Gallade, and flips 3 prizes for the KO, but that means he can't deal with my Expert Belt'd metal'd Dialga, I bench the 2nd Garchomp C, and have Aaron's Collection in hand to get Garchomp back, and have a Warp Energy and the Cyrus Chain of PokeTurn in hand to make sure that Dialga isn't getting chewed through anytime soon. At that point, he is stuck using psychic types to try and eat through Dialga, which isn't happening. He used the last 3 prizes with Gallade, which was likely incorrect because he would be better off doing smaller damage at first with other attackers to force me to keep Chomping to prevent the other KO. I guess he didn't know I'd have access to the 2nd Chomp though, but it was still likely I did. Again, this is another matchup where Dialga simply has an innate advantage. As long as I force them to flip prizes with Gallade early, they can't chew threw my tanked Dialga mid and late game.
3-0
Round 4 vs Joey G with Gliscor Lock
Joey was my only loss at one of the Battle Roads I went to, beating me in the finals, so I wanted a bit of revenge. I saw he was using Gliscor and felt very comfortable. Notice a trend here? I was being carried this tournament by deck choice alone. My start sadly is atrocious. Not unplayable, but it involves me needing to Chatot, and use Azelf, and a bunch of other stupid stuff just to get Claydol online. I'm stuck not being able to get Dialga G Lvl X online until about 12 turns into the game, meaning I had to deal with being locked out of trainers ( and attacks) for a very very large portion of the early game. I also didn't see ANY of my Warp Energy until I'd already taken 3 prizes. I had a Dialga G active at one point, and he used the one Gliscor and flipped heads, reducing me to 10 damage. If I knew that card existed I'd have probably used an Unown G at some point. That Dialga later got Relicanth'd, as I was threatening a Garchomp C Lvl X and it has 2 special metals on it. This gave me access to my trainers, and a few turns later, I got Dialga G Lvl X up, and after that point, I had a hand full of PokeTurn, and this let Garchomp and Warp Energy make it academic. Joey wasn't sure if the Relicanth play was correct but I'm positive it was, he has to get that Dialga out of the game, even if it meant breaking the lock, because it was only a matter of time before I broke it myself, and taking out Dialga was a large chunk of my set up.
4-0
So I'm guaranteed to make top 4 at this point, but strangely we get a 5th round with 17 people. I'm not complaining though.
Round 5 vs ??? with Gengar Nidoqueen with a 1-1 Blaziken FB Lvl X
Ok, this game was ugly. My hand was pretty slow, and he opened Blaziken. I wasn't sure what he was running, but I knew it was Quagsire time. So I Roseanne...oh, lame, Quagsire is prized. Oh. So is my Water Energy. I get Azelf and grab Quagsire and stack the prizes so I know where the Water is, but I'm stuck with a weaker set up this way, and am a few energy drops behind as I wind up having to Chatot trying to get to Claydol. He ends up getting a bunch of guys into play as I am setting up. He ends up with Gengar, Gengar, Nidoqueen, Claydol, and Blaziken FB on his bench...his active? Spiritomb, which he used to get the 2nd Gengar online.I immediately send up Azelf, and Lock Up. I try to psyche him out. " I know your not running any dark energy " and he shrugs like it doesn't matter, and than after my 3rd turn of Deafening I let him know I'm going to do that until time and simply KO it once we reach sudden death. Due to it's PokeBody, he couldn't play Switch, Warp Point, Super Scoop Up, etc to get it unactive. He couldn't damage me due to not running Dark. His bench was full, preventing him from dropping an Unown G to break the lock, and Nidoqueen made it so Lock Up netted a total of 0 damage by the end of his turn. It was such a stupid scenario to have happen, and I doubt I'll ever be able to end up doing that again, but it was nice to sneak out a win after the awful start I had. The matchups likely very close if we both get equal starts as Quagsire is a very good counter to Blaziken. I also don't need to heavy-tank a Dialga to fight Gengar, so I don't have to invest everything in one Dialga letting Blaziken ruin me, so I still have plenty of game vs that.
5-0
Top 4 vs Mike A with Uxie
Ok, we effectively make an agreement that if I can get Deafen off, he scoops that game. My opening hand is AWFUL game one, as in, unplayable awful, I have a Call Energy, but open with a lone Azelf going 2nd. I Call for Dialga and Baltoy, with nothing in my hand. He double PokeBlowers Dialga up, but doesn't get the KO. I end up PokeTurning, and calling again for a Chatot and a Dialga. He has a tiny hand though, so Chatot isn't exactly very good. I topdeck a Bebe's Search though, and get Claydol, and a Metal, and I get Deafen off. He scoops. Game 2, my hand is a lot better. Well, not really, but it gives me the tools to guarantee I get a Dialga online by turn 4. He clunks a bit and has some poor flips, and misses a few early KOs by a few damage. PokeTurn wastes his effort and keeps me fine prize wise and Defean gets online. Its academic at that point as theres literally no way for the deck to damage me once I get Deafen up. What did I say earlier about Dialga making things easy?
6-0
Top 2 vs Andrew S with Toxitank Toolbox
He was mainly using Toxitank with heavy Crobats and Honchkrow. He'd just won a sudden death game vs Gliscor in top 4. Game one I get a pretty good start, and get a tanked Dialga up with a few Metal. He ends up getting Deafened pretty early, and he can't chew through the metals. He gets Mewtwo Lvl X up, and he hits me for 10 with it's attack past metal and resistance. I get the Lvl X, and Deafen plus Poison with Skuntank. He smacks me for 70, and I warp and Garchomp C Lvl X the damage away. I drop an Expert Belt, and KO with Remove Lost and a few turns later he concedes as I am up on prizes and he really has no way to ever kill Dialga. He could have likely taken a few cheap snipe KOs over the course of the game, but a VAST majority of his attackers were psychic, and most of them capped at very low damage vs me. Game 2, I get an alright hand, but am slow at getting access to Claydol. He gets Honchkrow up sniping early, and I am unable to bench a Baltoy until I make sure my active is a more alluring target than my freshly benched baltoy. I actually wind up benching both Baltoy at once, and eventually get a claydol down. He played his own Galactic HQ, which is pretty lame for me because I can't counter it and it prevents me from poisoning Mewtwo, and also makes it so he has a very easy time sniping my Claydols. I Roseanne for both Baltoy, like an idiot, when I needed to get a Crobat to score the KO on the active Honchkrow and am instead stuck Deafening again. I follow up this awesome play by Cyrus'ing into an SP Radar to get Garchomp Lvl X to heal off all the damage from Dialga only to notice about 8 turns into the game he was prized. I could have Roseanne'd for an Azelf and been fine. He proceeds to Cyrus for a Power Spray the next turn too, noticing it was prized. I try to bait out his Spray but it doesn't work. I'm stuck Bronzong turning Dialga for awhile as he overextends with Crobats to take a few prizes, tying us at 4 prizes a piece. With roughly 10-15 minutes left, his board is Crobat x3, Skutank, Toxicroak, and Uxie. I just keep Deafening, and his board is unable to even damage my Dialga without freeing up bench space. I buy 3-4 turns with this as he first tries to use Skuntank to Smokescreen me, which I counter by Warp Energy and eventually an Unown G on a second Dialga. This gets him to finally use Uxie's Psychic Restore to free a bench space, and I take a KO with Remove Lost to go up on prizes when time is called.
7-0
SOO despite playing some of the worst Pokemon I'd played in years due to being very rusty and not knowing most of the new cards, I pull off a win at my first Cities. Not sure I deserved it, but hey, I'm not complaining. I really felt Dialga Garchomp was a fantastic choice, as it has so many free wins in the format, and it almost no autolosses. Even its weaker matchups are close to 50-50 and can certainly be teched for and played around.
I was going to be driving down to Columbus today for the Magic State Championships, after compiling a good and well tested Jund deck ( for anyone who plays Magic, I know, so exciting and fresh ) but I was A.) short on money ( 25ish for entry, 20 for gas, 10 for parking...I'm poor an unemployed! ) Instead, I decide to go to league in the morning, and round up a crew and end up driving out to Chardon for the City Championships. AJ, the organizer, had called me earlier in the week about judging, but I was planning to go to States, so I turned it down. Of course, I show up anyways, and my friend Scotty had already grabbed the judge spot. So I decided to play and I grabbed what I am confident is one of the best decks, Dialga Garchomp with Toxitank. My list wasn't perfected, and could probably be smoothed out as I haven't played much at all this season, but overall it played very well for me.
Round 1 vs David B with Gengar Nidoqueen Relicanth
David had been doing extremely well during Battle Roads, and was still running hot after winning Ohio States the year before, beating me in top 4, and Drew Holton in top 2. I was a bit worried because he was likely to have a better feel for the format than me being far more active. I get a pretty nice opening hand, starting with Dialga, but I lose the die roll, and he opens Gastly, allowing him to Dark Pitch to prevent me from playing my Energy Gain and Galactic HQ to start a Deafen. I get my set up rolling, and toss an Unown G onto my Baltoy. I start going aggressive and take an early prize, and drop the Galactic HQ and use Skuntank to poison Gengar. Of course, this was a disastrous move, as he procedes to drop Relicanth, which deals 90 due to my stadium: Honest confession, I knew Relicanth did 30x tool, and I have E Gain and Unown G in play...definitely forgot about the Stadium part. SLIGHTLY awkward. Anyways, I am rewarded for my awful play by an awesome topdeck, putting me in a great game position by getting another Claydol up shortly there after. Outside of the few support/draw Pokemon in my deck, it is really, really hard for Gengar to make much ground against my SP Pokemon, and I end up winning comfortably after doing my best to throw the game away. ( You'll see a trend of this in this report ) I felt I would be in good shape to win regardless even if I didn't topdeck as well as I did, due to the inherent strength of the matchup, but it was still embarassing.
1-0
Round 2 vs Jeanette S with Gyarados
She gets a decent start, slowrolling the Sableye open, but she has a hard time getting anything going early because she has a really difficult time getting to her Magikarp early enough. By the time she does, my Dialga is tanked heavily, and I'm able to Warp Energy into Garchomp C Lvl X enough times that my Dialga goes the distance. Midgame I did the fun little Deafen lock for a KO in order to assure me a few turns of no Gyarados. Gyarados has a really hard time dealing with Deafen if it doesn't have any particular tech for it, and she didn;t...I built her Gyarados list, and well, it wasn't nearly as good as it should have been. SOOO I'm taking the blame for this one.
2-0
Round 3 vs Ryan M with GG
I'm not 100% on the name, but he traveled in from New York with a group of people for CCs this weekend. He opened with Spiritomg and started to get set up, and I locked in a Galactic HQ, and kept Deafening, while poisoning him. He didn't want to evolve his stage 1s into the Gardevoir/Gallades until he could break my stadium, which I'm not sure I agree with. On one side, if he does evolve, he takes 20, which is bad news putting his Gardevoir at 90, and Gallade at 110 when dealing with my Toxicroak G. Unfortunately, since he didn't evolve, I opened up my game, breaking Deafen once I was set up effectively, and brought up Garchomp C Lvl X to do 80 to Kirlia with 3 energy, leaving him with a Ralts with an Upper. This becomes a Gallade, and flips 3 prizes for the KO, but that means he can't deal with my Expert Belt'd metal'd Dialga, I bench the 2nd Garchomp C, and have Aaron's Collection in hand to get Garchomp back, and have a Warp Energy and the Cyrus Chain of PokeTurn in hand to make sure that Dialga isn't getting chewed through anytime soon. At that point, he is stuck using psychic types to try and eat through Dialga, which isn't happening. He used the last 3 prizes with Gallade, which was likely incorrect because he would be better off doing smaller damage at first with other attackers to force me to keep Chomping to prevent the other KO. I guess he didn't know I'd have access to the 2nd Chomp though, but it was still likely I did. Again, this is another matchup where Dialga simply has an innate advantage. As long as I force them to flip prizes with Gallade early, they can't chew threw my tanked Dialga mid and late game.
3-0
Round 4 vs Joey G with Gliscor Lock
Joey was my only loss at one of the Battle Roads I went to, beating me in the finals, so I wanted a bit of revenge. I saw he was using Gliscor and felt very comfortable. Notice a trend here? I was being carried this tournament by deck choice alone. My start sadly is atrocious. Not unplayable, but it involves me needing to Chatot, and use Azelf, and a bunch of other stupid stuff just to get Claydol online. I'm stuck not being able to get Dialga G Lvl X online until about 12 turns into the game, meaning I had to deal with being locked out of trainers ( and attacks) for a very very large portion of the early game. I also didn't see ANY of my Warp Energy until I'd already taken 3 prizes. I had a Dialga G active at one point, and he used the one Gliscor and flipped heads, reducing me to 10 damage. If I knew that card existed I'd have probably used an Unown G at some point. That Dialga later got Relicanth'd, as I was threatening a Garchomp C Lvl X and it has 2 special metals on it. This gave me access to my trainers, and a few turns later, I got Dialga G Lvl X up, and after that point, I had a hand full of PokeTurn, and this let Garchomp and Warp Energy make it academic. Joey wasn't sure if the Relicanth play was correct but I'm positive it was, he has to get that Dialga out of the game, even if it meant breaking the lock, because it was only a matter of time before I broke it myself, and taking out Dialga was a large chunk of my set up.
4-0
So I'm guaranteed to make top 4 at this point, but strangely we get a 5th round with 17 people. I'm not complaining though.
Round 5 vs ??? with Gengar Nidoqueen with a 1-1 Blaziken FB Lvl X
Ok, this game was ugly. My hand was pretty slow, and he opened Blaziken. I wasn't sure what he was running, but I knew it was Quagsire time. So I Roseanne...oh, lame, Quagsire is prized. Oh. So is my Water Energy. I get Azelf and grab Quagsire and stack the prizes so I know where the Water is, but I'm stuck with a weaker set up this way, and am a few energy drops behind as I wind up having to Chatot trying to get to Claydol. He ends up getting a bunch of guys into play as I am setting up. He ends up with Gengar, Gengar, Nidoqueen, Claydol, and Blaziken FB on his bench...his active? Spiritomb, which he used to get the 2nd Gengar online.I immediately send up Azelf, and Lock Up. I try to psyche him out. " I know your not running any dark energy " and he shrugs like it doesn't matter, and than after my 3rd turn of Deafening I let him know I'm going to do that until time and simply KO it once we reach sudden death. Due to it's PokeBody, he couldn't play Switch, Warp Point, Super Scoop Up, etc to get it unactive. He couldn't damage me due to not running Dark. His bench was full, preventing him from dropping an Unown G to break the lock, and Nidoqueen made it so Lock Up netted a total of 0 damage by the end of his turn. It was such a stupid scenario to have happen, and I doubt I'll ever be able to end up doing that again, but it was nice to sneak out a win after the awful start I had. The matchups likely very close if we both get equal starts as Quagsire is a very good counter to Blaziken. I also don't need to heavy-tank a Dialga to fight Gengar, so I don't have to invest everything in one Dialga letting Blaziken ruin me, so I still have plenty of game vs that.
5-0
Top 4 vs Mike A with Uxie
Ok, we effectively make an agreement that if I can get Deafen off, he scoops that game. My opening hand is AWFUL game one, as in, unplayable awful, I have a Call Energy, but open with a lone Azelf going 2nd. I Call for Dialga and Baltoy, with nothing in my hand. He double PokeBlowers Dialga up, but doesn't get the KO. I end up PokeTurning, and calling again for a Chatot and a Dialga. He has a tiny hand though, so Chatot isn't exactly very good. I topdeck a Bebe's Search though, and get Claydol, and a Metal, and I get Deafen off. He scoops. Game 2, my hand is a lot better. Well, not really, but it gives me the tools to guarantee I get a Dialga online by turn 4. He clunks a bit and has some poor flips, and misses a few early KOs by a few damage. PokeTurn wastes his effort and keeps me fine prize wise and Defean gets online. Its academic at that point as theres literally no way for the deck to damage me once I get Deafen up. What did I say earlier about Dialga making things easy?
6-0
Top 2 vs Andrew S with Toxitank Toolbox
He was mainly using Toxitank with heavy Crobats and Honchkrow. He'd just won a sudden death game vs Gliscor in top 4. Game one I get a pretty good start, and get a tanked Dialga up with a few Metal. He ends up getting Deafened pretty early, and he can't chew through the metals. He gets Mewtwo Lvl X up, and he hits me for 10 with it's attack past metal and resistance. I get the Lvl X, and Deafen plus Poison with Skuntank. He smacks me for 70, and I warp and Garchomp C Lvl X the damage away. I drop an Expert Belt, and KO with Remove Lost and a few turns later he concedes as I am up on prizes and he really has no way to ever kill Dialga. He could have likely taken a few cheap snipe KOs over the course of the game, but a VAST majority of his attackers were psychic, and most of them capped at very low damage vs me. Game 2, I get an alright hand, but am slow at getting access to Claydol. He gets Honchkrow up sniping early, and I am unable to bench a Baltoy until I make sure my active is a more alluring target than my freshly benched baltoy. I actually wind up benching both Baltoy at once, and eventually get a claydol down. He played his own Galactic HQ, which is pretty lame for me because I can't counter it and it prevents me from poisoning Mewtwo, and also makes it so he has a very easy time sniping my Claydols. I Roseanne for both Baltoy, like an idiot, when I needed to get a Crobat to score the KO on the active Honchkrow and am instead stuck Deafening again. I follow up this awesome play by Cyrus'ing into an SP Radar to get Garchomp Lvl X to heal off all the damage from Dialga only to notice about 8 turns into the game he was prized. I could have Roseanne'd for an Azelf and been fine. He proceeds to Cyrus for a Power Spray the next turn too, noticing it was prized. I try to bait out his Spray but it doesn't work. I'm stuck Bronzong turning Dialga for awhile as he overextends with Crobats to take a few prizes, tying us at 4 prizes a piece. With roughly 10-15 minutes left, his board is Crobat x3, Skutank, Toxicroak, and Uxie. I just keep Deafening, and his board is unable to even damage my Dialga without freeing up bench space. I buy 3-4 turns with this as he first tries to use Skuntank to Smokescreen me, which I counter by Warp Energy and eventually an Unown G on a second Dialga. This gets him to finally use Uxie's Psychic Restore to free a bench space, and I take a KO with Remove Lost to go up on prizes when time is called.
7-0
SOO despite playing some of the worst Pokemon I'd played in years due to being very rusty and not knowing most of the new cards, I pull off a win at my first Cities. Not sure I deserved it, but hey, I'm not complaining. I really felt Dialga Garchomp was a fantastic choice, as it has so many free wins in the format, and it almost no autolosses. Even its weaker matchups are close to 50-50 and can certainly be teched for and played around.
:smile:
