Hello pokegym community!
I hope you don´t find it anyhow ironic or stupid to write a report at a time when our faces are towards the next worlds&next winners already. However, i feel like writing a report is a kind of "debt" i should pay for the community - not only pokegym, as you might know, i´ve been a very silent member here, but rather to all pokemon tcg players around. I know i will most likely get flamed, or this topic might actually be complitely ignored, but i don´t care... I feel like i want to write it, read if you feel like reading it. I´ll also mention now, in the very beginning, that the explainings before the report might be a bit long, since we were in Havai'i for 3 weeks - it´s mainly bit of the trip&how we came to choose this deck, feel free to skip it:lol:.
Last mentions before the raport itself... I´m extrimely sorry for not having the names of all my opponents. I could´ve figured them out with research i quess, but i know links&sources badly, so rather just let me know&i´ll fix it. The report was written in the airplane on the way back from US, so while still in quite fresh memory, i can´t really say i would´ve done good "turn by turn" report. Also, i don´t even think there wouldn´t be slight or even major mistakes in some places, but correct me if i´m wrong.
Ah well, start was as cool as it could be. We landed to Havai'i after around 24 hours of flying and i just couldn´t belive my eyes. I was expecting some kind of large airport, knowing that Havai'i is very popular holiday resort, but nah, it was pretty much a joke
. We got our luggage&got out of the airport in absolutely no time (no offence to guys from LA, but the airport there was a nightmare... Literately puke on the floors and mindless queues). First evening went quite as expected... We got to our hotel, our parents were tired&went to sleep after dinner, we playtested till quite long with Kim (can´t remember our hotel, but it was awesome place to play at...It´s also some luxury to be able to go out at 3-4am&feel it´s very warm outside still for a Fin^^).
About the deck, i quess i´ve been flamed a lot for copying Fulops list. In fact however, till this point, i´ve never seen his list. Esa from my old team gave me the deck once when we were playtesting for world&encouraged to test it out. I didn´t like it at first, but i had to agree that both flygonlution&metanite(the decks i played most of the season) were getting old, and destiny(my nats winning deck) wouldn´t stand a change ty to DP pokes. Also well, i only was a challenger there, so i gathered cards for the deck(thanks for all who gave me cards for that)&packed it along with the others. During our playtesting, it became pretty clear that at least one of us, hopefully both will be playing speed spread. The problem was mainly fighting decks, while both absol&jolteon are weak to that. However, 2 rays&jirachi proved themselves more than useful in those matchups, and we found even raieggs losing most of the time, even though i found it autowin for eggs on paper. Machamp/lucario aka Mario was the deck i didn´t want to meet(meat of the deck would just run out in most of the games), but we came to the conlusion that is was pretty bad compared to other choices, so if we could luck first few rounds without facing one, they wouldn´t disturb us later on either. Main props to Kim for playtesting all that time. Sure, we had nice beach journeys&loads of swimming and stuff, but every day included a LOT of playtesting, so i think the trainer lines were perfect, card by card. We could swap just once card&play 30 matches with that&see what happens, it´s just as it should be imo. It wouldn´t be really possible if Kim wasn´t about at my level when it comes to skill(not really saying if it´s high or not that high), it´s a shame he panicked in the event : But well, first worlds for 11 years old is sure quite a big thing.
The list:
2 Ray ex
4 Absol ex
2 Mew ex
3 Jolteon ex
1 Espeon ex
1 Vaporeon ex
4 Eevee
1 Jirachi ex
1 Jolteon*
1 Lickitung
1 Castform
1 Voltorb
4 Trans
2 Mentor
1 Scientist
1 Adv
3 Elm
2 Mary
1 Scott
4 SSU
3 Windstorm
1 Stump
3 Darkness
2 Multi
7 Lightning
4 Psychic
I think there are lots of "why"´s and "becauses" in the list, but in the other hand most of them are pretty obvius. Being able to rush through in absolution way or play slower a bit destiny like, or even swap that during the match was just great... Greatest deck i´ve ever played really. It´s still a shame that i had my brother playing the list also... He played it great without pressure, but he didn´t quite do under pressure.
Anyway, to the tournament itself! We came to Hilton at wednesday for a visit i think, after swimming on a beach nearby. Unfortunately, there really wasn´t much of action there yet. I met a few random players and chatted a bit, but that´s it. Thursday&friday went pretty much in the game room, playtesting stuff. The grinder was a bit sceary. I really didn´t want Mario to win, since i thought it might mean that we´d see more Marios in the tournament itself also. However, it was too late to make any dramatic changes, so we just decided to chill with it. Also, there was another, worse problem. Thanks to a player that i won´t mention here, i was missing about 7 ex’s in total. This was the case still as late as about 11.30 pm at friday, but i got saved by our TO at the time, Marko Uimonen, who lent me the missing cards. Good so, i would´ve ended up playing the rhyperior list we tested last night or so.
From this late night cardrun till opening ceremony at saturday morning, i had a complete blackout. I quess i was pretty stressed&damn tired, so i couldn´t really remember anything. I watch the pairings and...great, Chris Fulop. This wasn´t quite the way i wanted to start(some easy, long match to gain some self confidence, my first worlds anyway^^)
Round 1. Chris Fulop(USA) – mirror match
My draw in this game is great. I start with ray ex, having 2 windstorms, 2 SSU’s and energy. To make matters perfect, he started with his tech – mew d, and even got the start. Well, he goes, attaches a multi&gets 2 energy. I just attach&pass. He Gets Lapras, mentor and attaches for 70. I drew an energy and flip my both SSU’s. After seeing they´re both tails, i scoop.
0-1
Round 2. A lovely lady from Czezh Republic
My draw was fine, hers wasn´t as good as mine. I started with 2 eevees, she with 2 spinaraks. I attachcall for family for an eevee. She attaches&stun poisons, tails. I attach, evolve jolteon*2& Second bite for the KO. She still draws pretty much nothing...Elms for an ariados, attaches&sleep poisons. I flip tails, attach to eevee&pass. She still has nothing, and just KO's the jolteon who failed sleep check again. I elm for an Espeon&attach for the KO.
1-1
Round 3. Lars Andersen - Tyra ex/Altaria ex
I get to start with eevee, he with 2 larvitars&a swablu. I attach and call for family for an eevee. He candies to tyra ex, attaches&hits for 20. I evolve to jolteon, attach to bench&pass. He plays an energi to the tyra&hits for 30. i SSU the jolteon, play it back, play a jolteon*, use 2 absols&second bite for the KO. He gets a new tyr immediatly and hits for 20. I can´t remember too well what happened in the late game - he got a third tyra up still, but i managed to throw a perfect vaporeon to kill his draw. Even though he got fast tyras, a win without too much probs.
2-1
Round 4. "Reeds mother" - Infernocatty - USA
I started with mew ex, she with 2 skittys. I won the start, attach&call for family. She uses an adventurer if my memory serves me, attaches to skitty&tail whips tails. I attach and hit special circuit to skitty. She retreats for a budew&gets a trans. From this point on, i spreaded some damage&went train - like with absol. All she got in the end was a lone Delcatty ex, that even was 10 dmg short of the ko^^. No much trouble here.
3-1
Round 5. Also a polite guy from Japan - Corsola/Empo
If i still wanted to go on, i was playing a knife on my neck. This guy was the first japanese i met in any kind of game in my life, and knowing their reputation, i was pretty nervous. The deck was their SD, and i can say i was quite confused when seeing how that could work out. It was so simple, that it actually was pretty genious - i´m not saying easy to play, just the idea is so straight forward. I had actually NEVER seen Corsola before&funny enough, i needed to ask translation for translations twice or 3 times.
I owe my thanks to Eetu, since we playtested quite a lot friday night still. Though we had fine results vs. raichu already, i got some kind of "snap" that night - i just didn´t lose those matches at all. And Eetu is indeed a great player too, shame that he so often fails in the big tournaments. How is raieggs related anyhow here? Well, there are similarities in all decks that play 4-4-4 scramble - cess -stone, so i could play the match as well as possible for the first time vs. the deck.
He started with corsola, i think i with eevee. He got as bad setup as possible with the deck i quess(at least when comparing to Yamatos deck, i doubt the lists were far from each other). He had corsola active for a long time and i think he was waiting for scramble - empoleon or something, but i managed to spread dmg overwhere& i had both rays and a jolteon fully pumped up. Cursed stones weren´t too useful, as i think he had to make a decisition to not use them - he disced 2 earlygame. As his setp sucked big time, when something actually started to happen, i was able to OHKO everything, so no much changes for him.
4-1
Round 6. Yoneda - absollution+lucario - Japan
Ah great, another opponent i would rather liked to skip on premilinary rounds. I had about the worst resists, so i had to win this game to get to tops. My hand is pretty much horrific again - ray ex, jirachi, windstorms&energy. No draw. I decided to go with ray, Yoneda started with voltorb. I attach&pass. He however got a godly start - i can´t remember if it was T2 or T3, but he SSU'd voltorb up, threw a flareon&started to munch my benk with lucario. I couldn´t do much while i drew crap, so i knew i was out from the tournament now. Miracles seem to happen however, i quess all my opponents won their last matches or something... My resists jumped up&i was 13th in the list, against...Yoneda, great.
During the evening till very long in the night, we did some playtesting. We built Yonedas deck as well as possible by just seeing it, and we honestly were like wtf... The deck was one of the crappiest i ever played with. However, he came throught the grinder, and he still is Yoneda. We didn´t know why our version didn´t work, but still, though still as a challenger, i was pretty confident.
We did same thing for the japanese secret deck, as we knew that Miska's opponent at t8, if he of course would ge there, will play it. The deck worked way much better than Yonedas&while i was ropebly stupid, i didn´t think i´d win Yoneda anyway, so i didn´t even test against it. However, we had some great fun testing the Lucariolutions, watching the stupid starts the deck got^^.
T.16 Yoneda - Absollutions/Lucario - Japan
Game 1.
Yoneda started with voltorb, i with mew ex. Yonedas decks weakness, which was playing lots of bad starters helped a lot here. I could bomb the bench, while this time he couldn´t SSU it from front. We went on fairly quickly, he couldn´t hit with lucarios due to psychic weak at that time knowing i could get espeon to KO it, so we went to 6-3 or 6-2 easily, after which he told he wishes to go to game 2.
Game 2.
Another good start for me, though this time also for him. I was forced to hit with jolteons in that game, from which he got too easy prizes with lucario with the minus though, that there really wasn´t damage spreaded on my table. It went pretty closely to 2-2, when i saw i got the game. 2 absols, 60 dmg to jolteon that had already taken 30. Mentor for lickitung, attach and attack for the KO...Yoneda was about to throw his hand to table, but then noticed the thing i noticed a half second later - the only and most dramatic missplay i know i made in the tournament, wrong energy. "Happily", there wasn´t a right energy in my hand either, so it wasn´t too dramatic. Luckily,Yoneda was completely locked. He needed a stump, which he didn´t get. He could´ve KO'ed licki, but it would´ve activated rays body, so he couldn´t do that. I had 3 SSU's in my hand so i decided to go with luck, 2 heads&i would jolt*+absol. 2 First were heads for the game, though i don´t think of anything Yoneda could´ve done, besides the stump.
2-0
T.8 - Reed the younger - R-gon - USA
Great, Reed the younger now =). I don´t know why, but i remember all reeds as polite, social people, with good sense of humor. I remember his dad when we got to same elevator at some point after the match, he got playfully angry(i quess there´s a word for that, i just don´t know it) when we chatted for something else^^. That´s some good sportmanship =).
Game 1.
The match however, was not what i hoped for. I knew R-gon was a complete autoloss, and i knew this is a must win match to get some actually useful prizes. I heard from someone that he´s playing sceppy ex, so i went all out rush as well as possible. I went with the basic schematic - castform down immediatly, all SSU's for vaporeon, vaporeon after each delta draw if possible. This went as i hoped it would, and he drew quite nothing. While he got nothing up, he quickly scooped.
Game 2.
I got a godly start, and would´ve played in the same way as in game one, but he got absolutely awful start. He drew nothing, so i just spreaded damage&focused in keeping my hand small, so he wouldn´t be able to recover.He missplayed badly by putting an exeggutor for my mew ex to use, and i quickly managed to bomb the bench. He got one flygo d to bench, which i then threw back with espeon&i think i also vaporeoned at this point. He got a flygo ex without energy still up, which he manually pumped for 2 turns, but it was just not enough. When there was nothing he could do, he scooped.
2-0
T.4 Yamato - Corsola/empo - Japan
I quess i could´ve gone to this match with a feeling like "i´m glad i got this far" or something, but latest at this point, my absolute goal was to win.
Game 1.
My start was almost perfect - in other words, a horror. I sure got eevees&t2 psychic pulse, but i lacked PETM or Jolteon. Happily, it actually seems that the deck doesn´t do much without scrambles up. He didn´t want to swap the corsola from front, so i just did hit 30 front&absol the dmg to bench every turn after. He´s game was totally locked, due to not activating scrambles, and 2 prized cursed stones. I eventually did hit the jolteons when drawing turn by turn, and when i started to sweep, he quickly scooped.
Game 2.
I think i dominated this game from the start, when he started with chimchar, but in the bad side, he got his cessations&cursed stones as he pleased in this game. Prizes 3-2 for him, damaged jolteon on bench, cursed stone on table&he decides to hit it for 10 with corsola, as scramble no longer worked, and he couldn´t afford an empoleon at this point yet. I KO the corsola with ray. He brings infernape active, that has 40 hp left, attaches to empo on bench&passes. Jolteon had something like 40 hp left now, i throw one of my 3 SSU's-->heads, eevee to bench, energy that&30 to nape. I don´t think he did anything special anymore... I jolteoned nape away, retreated for jolteon&second bited empo for the KO. GG
2-0
The Final - Steffen From - Queen/Flygon ex
Game 1.
This game was just a LOL. I heard his deck is fast, but okay well, i got a great start. I decided to start t2 spreading before he could get anything off, but boom... he hits absol for 100 with the candied flygo ex. Ok well, i need time, i play ray active, attach to somewhere&pass, boom, boost&pp. I can´t even remember what i threw after ray, but it got OHKO'ed also.
Game 2.
I indeed had to think of a new strategy, and that was Jirachi ofc. I think i actually got jira to my starting hand in this game, and i did absolutely nothing but shield beam the whole game. To make matters great for me, he drew just crap&couldn´t really bring anything useful up.
Game 3.
Final match then... I got a good start here also, and managed to keep shield beam lock with mew ex from t2. In this game he actually drew some stuff, and got 2 of my shield beamers down. Prizes went down to 4-2, i remember i would´ve lost if he could evolve his full bench, 3 pokes in there. I see he evolves one right away, petm's for another and...he knocks my active, making it 2-2 if my memory serves me. I manage to get one of the benched ones with some power comboing&vengeance the active queen away with pumped mew ex. GG.
2-1
And well, there we were... Next what came up was filling some papers, countless photographs&ppl congratulating, after which the closing ceremony took place. I haven´t got much of a memory what happened now, but we left Havai'i soon after it, might´ve actually been at sunday already.
Propsi think i could list endless stuff here, so i keep at the very important ones)
*Havai'i as a place
*All the friendly ppl there
*Everyone i played against in the tournament/in the ballroom
*Marko for lending some cards(others too ofc, that gave them in finland already)
*Kim for being a greatest possible playtest partner i could imagine
*i won
*The great holiday we had with the family
*All the friendly people i spoke with
Slops:
*RIDICULOUSLY HIGH FOOD PRICES (at Hilton only though, and the shops near it)
*Not having a car at that point anymore to get food for reasonable price
*Me for not thinking that Kim's deck might´ve been too hard in an under pressure-situation
*The person that gave me all the trouble for having to run for the cards in the last evening
*Me having high fever during the first week
*LA airport&long flights
Sorry for any errors in the text, but i quess it should be very understandable at least.
I hope you don´t find it anyhow ironic or stupid to write a report at a time when our faces are towards the next worlds&next winners already. However, i feel like writing a report is a kind of "debt" i should pay for the community - not only pokegym, as you might know, i´ve been a very silent member here, but rather to all pokemon tcg players around. I know i will most likely get flamed, or this topic might actually be complitely ignored, but i don´t care... I feel like i want to write it, read if you feel like reading it. I´ll also mention now, in the very beginning, that the explainings before the report might be a bit long, since we were in Havai'i for 3 weeks - it´s mainly bit of the trip&how we came to choose this deck, feel free to skip it:lol:.
Last mentions before the raport itself... I´m extrimely sorry for not having the names of all my opponents. I could´ve figured them out with research i quess, but i know links&sources badly, so rather just let me know&i´ll fix it. The report was written in the airplane on the way back from US, so while still in quite fresh memory, i can´t really say i would´ve done good "turn by turn" report. Also, i don´t even think there wouldn´t be slight or even major mistakes in some places, but correct me if i´m wrong.
Ah well, start was as cool as it could be. We landed to Havai'i after around 24 hours of flying and i just couldn´t belive my eyes. I was expecting some kind of large airport, knowing that Havai'i is very popular holiday resort, but nah, it was pretty much a joke
. We got our luggage&got out of the airport in absolutely no time (no offence to guys from LA, but the airport there was a nightmare... Literately puke on the floors and mindless queues). First evening went quite as expected... We got to our hotel, our parents were tired&went to sleep after dinner, we playtested till quite long with Kim (can´t remember our hotel, but it was awesome place to play at...It´s also some luxury to be able to go out at 3-4am&feel it´s very warm outside still for a Fin^^). About the deck, i quess i´ve been flamed a lot for copying Fulops list. In fact however, till this point, i´ve never seen his list. Esa from my old team gave me the deck once when we were playtesting for world&encouraged to test it out. I didn´t like it at first, but i had to agree that both flygonlution&metanite(the decks i played most of the season) were getting old, and destiny(my nats winning deck) wouldn´t stand a change ty to DP pokes. Also well, i only was a challenger there, so i gathered cards for the deck(thanks for all who gave me cards for that)&packed it along with the others. During our playtesting, it became pretty clear that at least one of us, hopefully both will be playing speed spread. The problem was mainly fighting decks, while both absol&jolteon are weak to that. However, 2 rays&jirachi proved themselves more than useful in those matchups, and we found even raieggs losing most of the time, even though i found it autowin for eggs on paper. Machamp/lucario aka Mario was the deck i didn´t want to meet(meat of the deck would just run out in most of the games), but we came to the conlusion that is was pretty bad compared to other choices, so if we could luck first few rounds without facing one, they wouldn´t disturb us later on either. Main props to Kim for playtesting all that time. Sure, we had nice beach journeys&loads of swimming and stuff, but every day included a LOT of playtesting, so i think the trainer lines were perfect, card by card. We could swap just once card&play 30 matches with that&see what happens, it´s just as it should be imo. It wouldn´t be really possible if Kim wasn´t about at my level when it comes to skill(not really saying if it´s high or not that high
), it´s a shame he panicked in the event : But well, first worlds for 11 years old is sure quite a big thing.The list:
2 Ray ex
4 Absol ex
2 Mew ex
3 Jolteon ex
1 Espeon ex
1 Vaporeon ex
4 Eevee
1 Jirachi ex
1 Jolteon*
1 Lickitung
1 Castform
1 Voltorb
4 Trans
2 Mentor
1 Scientist
1 Adv
3 Elm
2 Mary
1 Scott
4 SSU
3 Windstorm
1 Stump
3 Darkness
2 Multi
7 Lightning
4 Psychic
I think there are lots of "why"´s and "becauses" in the list, but in the other hand most of them are pretty obvius. Being able to rush through in absolution way or play slower a bit destiny like, or even swap that during the match was just great... Greatest deck i´ve ever played really. It´s still a shame that i had my brother playing the list also... He played it great without pressure, but he didn´t quite do under pressure.
Anyway, to the tournament itself! We came to Hilton at wednesday for a visit i think, after swimming on a beach nearby. Unfortunately, there really wasn´t much of action there yet. I met a few random players and chatted a bit, but that´s it. Thursday&friday went pretty much in the game room, playtesting stuff. The grinder was a bit sceary. I really didn´t want Mario to win, since i thought it might mean that we´d see more Marios in the tournament itself also. However, it was too late to make any dramatic changes, so we just decided to chill with it. Also, there was another, worse problem. Thanks to a player that i won´t mention here, i was missing about 7 ex’s in total. This was the case still as late as about 11.30 pm at friday, but i got saved by our TO at the time, Marko Uimonen, who lent me the missing cards. Good so, i would´ve ended up playing the rhyperior list we tested last night or so.
From this late night cardrun till opening ceremony at saturday morning, i had a complete blackout. I quess i was pretty stressed&damn tired, so i couldn´t really remember anything. I watch the pairings and...great, Chris Fulop. This wasn´t quite the way i wanted to start(some easy, long match to gain some self confidence, my first worlds anyway^^)
Round 1. Chris Fulop(USA) – mirror match
My draw in this game is great. I start with ray ex, having 2 windstorms, 2 SSU’s and energy. To make matters perfect, he started with his tech – mew d, and even got the start. Well, he goes, attaches a multi&gets 2 energy. I just attach&pass. He Gets Lapras, mentor and attaches for 70. I drew an energy and flip my both SSU’s. After seeing they´re both tails, i scoop.
0-1
Round 2. A lovely lady from Czezh Republic
My draw was fine, hers wasn´t as good as mine. I started with 2 eevees, she with 2 spinaraks. I attachcall for family for an eevee. She attaches&stun poisons, tails. I attach, evolve jolteon*2& Second bite for the KO. She still draws pretty much nothing...Elms for an ariados, attaches&sleep poisons. I flip tails, attach to eevee&pass. She still has nothing, and just KO's the jolteon who failed sleep check again. I elm for an Espeon&attach for the KO.
1-1
Round 3. Lars Andersen - Tyra ex/Altaria ex
I get to start with eevee, he with 2 larvitars&a swablu. I attach and call for family for an eevee. He candies to tyra ex, attaches&hits for 20. I evolve to jolteon, attach to bench&pass. He plays an energi to the tyra&hits for 30. i SSU the jolteon, play it back, play a jolteon*, use 2 absols&second bite for the KO. He gets a new tyr immediatly and hits for 20. I can´t remember too well what happened in the late game - he got a third tyra up still, but i managed to throw a perfect vaporeon to kill his draw. Even though he got fast tyras, a win without too much probs.
2-1
Round 4. "Reeds mother" - Infernocatty - USA
I started with mew ex, she with 2 skittys. I won the start, attach&call for family. She uses an adventurer if my memory serves me, attaches to skitty&tail whips tails. I attach and hit special circuit to skitty. She retreats for a budew&gets a trans. From this point on, i spreaded some damage&went train - like with absol. All she got in the end was a lone Delcatty ex, that even was 10 dmg short of the ko^^. No much trouble here.
3-1
Round 5. Also a polite guy from Japan - Corsola/Empo
If i still wanted to go on, i was playing a knife on my neck. This guy was the first japanese i met in any kind of game in my life, and knowing their reputation, i was pretty nervous. The deck was their SD, and i can say i was quite confused when seeing how that could work out. It was so simple, that it actually was pretty genious - i´m not saying easy to play, just the idea is so straight forward. I had actually NEVER seen Corsola before&funny enough, i needed to ask translation for translations twice or 3 times.
I owe my thanks to Eetu, since we playtested quite a lot friday night still. Though we had fine results vs. raichu already, i got some kind of "snap" that night - i just didn´t lose those matches at all. And Eetu is indeed a great player too, shame that he so often fails in the big tournaments
. How is raieggs related anyhow here? Well, there are similarities in all decks that play 4-4-4 scramble - cess -stone, so i could play the match as well as possible for the first time vs. the deck. He started with corsola, i think i with eevee. He got as bad setup as possible with the deck i quess(at least when comparing to Yamatos deck, i doubt the lists were far from each other). He had corsola active for a long time and i think he was waiting for scramble - empoleon or something, but i managed to spread dmg overwhere& i had both rays and a jolteon fully pumped up. Cursed stones weren´t too useful, as i think he had to make a decisition to not use them - he disced 2 earlygame. As his setp sucked big time, when something actually started to happen, i was able to OHKO everything, so no much changes for him.
4-1
Round 6. Yoneda - absollution+lucario - Japan
Ah great, another opponent i would rather liked to skip on premilinary rounds. I had about the worst resists, so i had to win this game to get to tops. My hand is pretty much horrific again - ray ex, jirachi, windstorms&energy. No draw. I decided to go with ray, Yoneda started with voltorb. I attach&pass. He however got a godly start - i can´t remember if it was T2 or T3, but he SSU'd voltorb up, threw a flareon&started to munch my benk with lucario. I couldn´t do much while i drew crap, so i knew i was out from the tournament now. Miracles seem to happen however, i quess all my opponents won their last matches or something... My resists jumped up&i was 13th in the list, against...Yoneda, great.
During the evening till very long in the night, we did some playtesting. We built Yonedas deck as well as possible by just seeing it, and we honestly were like wtf... The deck was one of the crappiest i ever played with. However, he came throught the grinder, and he still is Yoneda. We didn´t know why our version didn´t work, but still, though still as a challenger, i was pretty confident.
We did same thing for the japanese secret deck, as we knew that Miska's opponent at t8, if he of course would ge there, will play it. The deck worked way much better than Yonedas&while i was ropebly stupid, i didn´t think i´d win Yoneda anyway, so i didn´t even test against it. However, we had some great fun testing the Lucariolutions, watching the stupid starts the deck got^^.
T.16 Yoneda - Absollutions/Lucario - Japan
Game 1.
Yoneda started with voltorb, i with mew ex. Yonedas decks weakness, which was playing lots of bad starters helped a lot here. I could bomb the bench, while this time he couldn´t SSU it from front. We went on fairly quickly, he couldn´t hit with lucarios due to psychic weak at that time knowing i could get espeon to KO it, so we went to 6-3 or 6-2 easily, after which he told he wishes to go to game 2.
Game 2.
Another good start for me, though this time also for him. I was forced to hit with jolteons in that game, from which he got too easy prizes with lucario with the minus though, that there really wasn´t damage spreaded on my table. It went pretty closely to 2-2, when i saw i got the game. 2 absols, 60 dmg to jolteon that had already taken 30. Mentor for lickitung, attach and attack for the KO...Yoneda was about to throw his hand to table, but then noticed the thing i noticed a half second later - the only and most dramatic missplay i know i made in the tournament, wrong energy. "Happily", there wasn´t a right energy in my hand either, so it wasn´t too dramatic. Luckily,Yoneda was completely locked. He needed a stump, which he didn´t get. He could´ve KO'ed licki, but it would´ve activated rays body, so he couldn´t do that. I had 3 SSU's in my hand so i decided to go with luck, 2 heads&i would jolt*+absol. 2 First were heads for the game, though i don´t think of anything Yoneda could´ve done, besides the stump.
2-0
T.8 - Reed the younger - R-gon - USA
Great, Reed the younger now =). I don´t know why, but i remember all reeds as polite, social people, with good sense of humor. I remember his dad when we got to same elevator at some point after the match, he got playfully angry(i quess there´s a word for that, i just don´t know it) when we chatted for something else^^. That´s some good sportmanship =).
Game 1.
The match however, was not what i hoped for. I knew R-gon was a complete autoloss, and i knew this is a must win match to get some actually useful prizes. I heard from someone that he´s playing sceppy ex, so i went all out rush as well as possible. I went with the basic schematic - castform down immediatly, all SSU's for vaporeon, vaporeon after each delta draw if possible. This went as i hoped it would, and he drew quite nothing. While he got nothing up, he quickly scooped.
Game 2.
I got a godly start, and would´ve played in the same way as in game one, but he got absolutely awful start. He drew nothing, so i just spreaded damage&focused in keeping my hand small, so he wouldn´t be able to recover.He missplayed badly by putting an exeggutor for my mew ex to use, and i quickly managed to bomb the bench. He got one flygo d to bench, which i then threw back with espeon&i think i also vaporeoned at this point. He got a flygo ex without energy still up, which he manually pumped for 2 turns, but it was just not enough. When there was nothing he could do, he scooped.
2-0
T.4 Yamato - Corsola/empo - Japan
I quess i could´ve gone to this match with a feeling like "i´m glad i got this far" or something, but latest at this point, my absolute goal was to win.
Game 1.
My start was almost perfect - in other words, a horror. I sure got eevees&t2 psychic pulse, but i lacked PETM or Jolteon. Happily, it actually seems that the deck doesn´t do much without scrambles up. He didn´t want to swap the corsola from front, so i just did hit 30 front&absol the dmg to bench every turn after. He´s game was totally locked, due to not activating scrambles, and 2 prized cursed stones. I eventually did hit the jolteons when drawing turn by turn, and when i started to sweep, he quickly scooped.
Game 2.
I think i dominated this game from the start, when he started with chimchar, but in the bad side, he got his cessations&cursed stones as he pleased in this game. Prizes 3-2 for him, damaged jolteon on bench, cursed stone on table&he decides to hit it for 10 with corsola, as scramble no longer worked, and he couldn´t afford an empoleon at this point yet. I KO the corsola with ray. He brings infernape active, that has 40 hp left, attaches to empo on bench&passes. Jolteon had something like 40 hp left now, i throw one of my 3 SSU's-->heads, eevee to bench, energy that&30 to nape. I don´t think he did anything special anymore... I jolteoned nape away, retreated for jolteon&second bited empo for the KO. GG
2-0
The Final - Steffen From - Queen/Flygon ex
Game 1.
This game was just a LOL. I heard his deck is fast, but okay well, i got a great start. I decided to start t2 spreading before he could get anything off, but boom... he hits absol for 100 with the candied flygo ex. Ok well, i need time, i play ray active, attach to somewhere&pass, boom, boost&pp. I can´t even remember what i threw after ray, but it got OHKO'ed also.
Game 2.
I indeed had to think of a new strategy, and that was Jirachi ofc. I think i actually got jira to my starting hand in this game, and i did absolutely nothing but shield beam the whole game. To make matters great for me, he drew just crap&couldn´t really bring anything useful up.
Game 3.
Final match then... I got a good start here also, and managed to keep shield beam lock with mew ex from t2. In this game he actually drew some stuff, and got 2 of my shield beamers down. Prizes went down to 4-2, i remember i would´ve lost if he could evolve his full bench, 3 pokes in there. I see he evolves one right away, petm's for another and...he knocks my active, making it 2-2 if my memory serves me. I manage to get one of the benched ones with some power comboing&vengeance the active queen away with pumped mew ex. GG.
2-1
And well, there we were... Next what came up was filling some papers, countless photographs&ppl congratulating, after which the closing ceremony took place. I haven´t got much of a memory what happened now, but we left Havai'i soon after it, might´ve actually been at sunday already.
Props
i think i could list endless stuff here, so i keep at the very important ones)*Havai'i as a place
*All the friendly ppl there
*Everyone i played against in the tournament/in the ballroom
*Marko for lending some cards(others too ofc, that gave them in finland already)
*Kim for being a greatest possible playtest partner i could imagine
*i won
*The great holiday we had with the family
*All the friendly people i spoke with
Slops:
*RIDICULOUSLY HIGH FOOD PRICES (at Hilton only though, and the shops near it)
*Not having a car at that point anymore to get food for reasonable price
*Me for not thinking that Kim's deck might´ve been too hard in an under pressure-situation
*The person that gave me all the trouble for having to run for the cards in the last evening
*Me having high fever during the first week
*LA airport&long flights
Sorry for any errors in the text, but i quess it should be very understandable at least.
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