patthemanvan
New Member
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Patrick Vanlandingham. I’m playing out of Cocoa FL and I’ve pretty much been a blip on everyone’s radar until this season. As you may or may not know, Fl is considered to be one of the hardest areas to play Pokemon. Fl is also semi divided into the Orlando, Melbourne, and South Fl player base. Most of the Melbourne players went up to Georgia with the Currys, so I felt like I had a decent shot at doing well. I end up making top 8, but I’m getting ahead of myself, so I’ll start from the beginning.
After my T16 at FL states, and the format being as stale as it is, I didn’t do any additional testing for regionals and stuck with the deck I grew to love, Magnerock. Friday night my friends Dillon, Chuck Panz (Charlie Potts), and I crash at my house. We had just finished making shirts the night before for our team, “Team Pineapple: We Rot!”. So instead of sleeping, we stay up until at least 2am watching cartoons and marble hornets. Morning comes, my girlfriend (Kassie) meets us at my house, and we all pile in our truck to head on out to tourist trap Orlando. I’m playing Magnerock, Chuck is playing Gigas, Kassie is playing Kingdra, and Dillon’s got DonChamp. We show up, get registered, and the day begins.
Round 1: Alfredo Girona w/ VileGar
He’s a new guy who’s only really been playing for about a month. He talked about how he just switched over from you-gi-oh and how the Pokemon player base is way better. I agree, and proceed to sweep with Magnets. He didn’t have an azelf, so I gave him one of my League Promos. I have never seen a grown man so excited.
1-0
Round 2: Roberto Arenas w/ Luxchomp
Roberto is a pokedad, but unlike normal pokedads he’s pretty pro. His son got 2nd at worlds last year in juniors or something, so that’s pretty cool. He’s a swell guy. I open Spiritomb and he opens Uxie and Promocroak. I sunny shore, collector for magnetite and a few other things, then Darkness grace. Long story short, my judges stick and he plays with a hand of zero for a lot of the game. I think he takes a prize at the end, idr. Once during the game he goes to set up and I yell “Magnezone!” then flash the prime in my hand. We lol’d, lame joke is lame.
2-0
Lunch Break: Cici’s Pizza. Their Pizza’s even better than the price!
Round 3: Hunter DruFaustino w/ Luxchomp Donphan tech(s)
I start spiritomb he starts uxie I think. I’m groggy from lunch/ a bad player and don’t notice that he Sp radar’s twice while he’s trainer locked. I noticed two turns later, but there’s nothing I could do about it. He gives me a few takesie-backsies to make up for it. It still comes down to 1-2 prizes, but he takes 2 prizes in 1 turn with flash bites and he wins.
2-1
Round 4: Mellissa Hebra w/ Luxchomp Blaziken tech
This game was annoying. I get a spiritomb start again and get set up decently, calling her on her attempts to play trainers while spiritomb was active. She luring flames with blaziken fb about 4 turns in a row. I manually retreat regirock after a few turns of warp energys. It was a pretty decent game and I end up winning.
3-1
Round 5: Justin Deuetian w/ Machamp Magnezone
I flip over a magnemite, he flips over machomp , magnemite, regice. I’m like “Whaaaaaaat? I’m not the only one playing magnezone?!?”. I collector for a magnemite, spiritomb, regirock, and start darkness gracing. It’s back and forth for a while, but he played just take out Machamp so he has to rely on some hurricane punches. Sunnyshore saves me a couples times and I OHKO him while he 2HKO’s me.
4-1
Round 6: Edison Valdez w/ Gyarados
I’ve seen this kid at a few Brs and a Cities or two, so I have no idea how competitive he is. He looks pretty hipsteresque, so I’m expecting anything. I start Spritomb and Magnimite. He starts mesprit. I draw a collector waaay too late and he’s able to regice around my spiritomb. I wind up taking an early lead somehow, but he comes back with 4 turns of mesprit and a promocroak. Powerlock shuts down magnezone, so he won that one.
4-2
So far, me and my buddy Dillon have been doing exactly the same (win, win, loss, win, win, loss). That was pretty cool,…..until I looked at the pairing for……
Round 7: Dill Shny The Science Guy (Dillon Schneider) w/ DonChamp
No one wants to play their best friend, especially when they’re playing your auto loss. It takes magnezone 4 energy to KO a Donphan. FOUR! That’s outrageous! But anyways. Even though it’s a game between team mates, it’s regionals. We say no take backs and it begins. I start Regirock too. He starts machop I’m pretty depressed the whole game. I wind up getting a spiritomb out and do the same thing I did in round 3. He communications for an uxie while it’s active. I realize it the turn after and there’s nothing I can do. I suck. I bring it to 1-1 prizes, but he crushing punches for 180 I think and makes me a sad panda.
4-3
Round 8: Branden Jackson w/ Dusknoir Vileplume
I’m pretty bummed that I missed my shot at making cut, but there’s talk of a lot of 5-3’s making it so I go for the gold anyways. Idr a lot of this game, he knew my girlfriend though, so that was cool I guess. I drew into my stadiums like a champ and his dusknoir X was never a stadium for more than a turn. He took like one prize I think.
5-3
I don’t think I’m gonna make it but I rip my deck anyways and start looking for trades. In the middle of trying to bling out Magnerock, Chuck Panz bolts over and tell me I made it. I run over in disbelief to check. Sure enough I’m 27th seed in top 32. Dillon also made it in 25th seed! Hooray! Everyone’s a winner! I’m up against Edison again, but this time I’m ready to slay some face. Dillon is also up against Gyarados, and to make it worse he’s up against John Silvestro. Yikes.
Top 32: Edison Valdez w/ Gyarados
Game1) See round 6, except there were breaks in the power lock so I was able to get the one turn of powers to kill something. I KO’d a Gyarados, then he had to recover it instead of seekering the mesprit. Win for me
Round 2) See Round 1
So I’m in Top 16, meaning I have a reason to come back tomorrow. Hooray me! But I play Jason Klaczynski in the morning. Me and the rest of my team goes out to TGI Fridays for victory dinner. Dillon had four slushies and was flirting with the waitress hardcore. Good times. We head home, I pass out, then it’s back for top 16. BK for breakfast and away we went. Sidenote: IWrestleSmoochums (Kevin Kobayashi) also made T16 and I talked to him a few times throughout the day. He gave me a RH engineer’s adjustment. He’s a pretty swell kid despite his online persona.
Top 16: Jason Kaczynski (Ness) w/ VileGar
I’m pretty sure my day was about to be over, but here’s what happened.
Round 1) I start Magnemite, magnemite. He starts ghastly, ghastly. He goes first and pitch darks. I draw, collector for a spiritomb, regirock, and skuntank. Free retreat into spiritomb, attach and darkness grace. I get Magnezones up and rolling and take a hefty 4 prize lead. I’m pretty sure he didn’t really know what my deck was supposed to do at first, but he caught on pretty quickly because,……well……you know…..he’s ness. But anways, he takes 3 prizes with compound pain. I KO something else making it 1-3 prizes. He compound pains again taking 2, and I cant return the KO. Pretty close game.
Loss.
Round 2) I start Spiritomb and Magnemite, he starts gastly I think (Idr if it was a ghastly or spiritomb). The game is pretty similar to round 1 except he kills off my skuntank early, so I’m forced to risk fainting spells. I’m ahead on prizes until he takes a one prize lead with compound pain. I have no skuntank, a Mag Prime active, and he has an active Gengar X with no rescue. I gotta risk it for the biscuit. I KO it and go down to one prize. He flips tails and I have a chance. He couldn’t get up anything attacking in one turn and I KO something for the win. 1-1
Round 3) Now here’s where things get interesting. We both shuffle and set up for game 3. We’re the last ones playing, so all the judges are watching us. We set up. The dialogue goes like this,
Judge: “Jason do you know who’s going first?”
Jason: “Umm”
Judge: “And that is time”
Time is called before he says that I go first. We think that it goes turn 1 (me), turn 2 (Ness), turn 3 (me), then the game is to the next prize. The HJ goes to get a ruling, and we play it this way just incase. I start spiritomb, magnemite he starts Spiritomb, ghastly. I attach to magnemite then darkness grace into magneton. He darkness graces into a haunter. I evolve into mag prime, attach Q to spiritomb and show him the fighting. I have it. BUT WAIT! The HJ comes back and says that that’s not how it works. Because the game didn’t start yet we were to play a 1 prize card sudden death match. So we reshuffle and I lose my “win”. We re set up and I get the same thing. GG
Win in T16
T8 Steve Silvestro w/ MewDos
Round 1) I get set up pretty decently, and get gets early prizes with regice and gyarados. I don’t think he really knew what to do either, as it became a battle of 2HKO’s (him) against OHKO’s (me). He scoops for time when I have 2 prizes left as I can KO his belted Gyarados.
Round 2) He realized Mew is awesome against magnzone. It turns it into a game of OHKO’s and who can keep them coming. Mew’s go faster incase you didn’t know. I get wrecked pretty hard,
Round 3) See above.
So I end somewhere between 5-8. Pretty good weekend. I got 18 packs of CoL and nothing good in them, go figure. Kassie went 4-0 in the modified side event and Chuck Panz went 3-0 in the videogame side event. Hopefully I earned enough points to convince my parents to let me go to Nationals and hopefully people see me as somewhat of a decent player now.
Props:
Kassie for being the best girlfriend ever <3
Team Pineapple!
Dillon and Chuck Panz for being awesome!
Dillon for T32ing with a deck we built the night before!
Magnezone and Regirock
Europe
Morten for making this piece of awesome
Ness for being a cool dude and being able to joke around during top 16
Kobayashi for the RH Engineer’s
And everyone everywhere.
Slops:
Playing friends and me being oblivious
After my T16 at FL states, and the format being as stale as it is, I didn’t do any additional testing for regionals and stuck with the deck I grew to love, Magnerock. Friday night my friends Dillon, Chuck Panz (Charlie Potts), and I crash at my house. We had just finished making shirts the night before for our team, “Team Pineapple: We Rot!”. So instead of sleeping, we stay up until at least 2am watching cartoons and marble hornets. Morning comes, my girlfriend (Kassie) meets us at my house, and we all pile in our truck to head on out to tourist trap Orlando. I’m playing Magnerock, Chuck is playing Gigas, Kassie is playing Kingdra, and Dillon’s got DonChamp. We show up, get registered, and the day begins.
Round 1: Alfredo Girona w/ VileGar
He’s a new guy who’s only really been playing for about a month. He talked about how he just switched over from you-gi-oh and how the Pokemon player base is way better. I agree, and proceed to sweep with Magnets. He didn’t have an azelf, so I gave him one of my League Promos. I have never seen a grown man so excited.
1-0
Round 2: Roberto Arenas w/ Luxchomp
Roberto is a pokedad, but unlike normal pokedads he’s pretty pro. His son got 2nd at worlds last year in juniors or something, so that’s pretty cool. He’s a swell guy. I open Spiritomb and he opens Uxie and Promocroak. I sunny shore, collector for magnetite and a few other things, then Darkness grace. Long story short, my judges stick and he plays with a hand of zero for a lot of the game. I think he takes a prize at the end, idr. Once during the game he goes to set up and I yell “Magnezone!” then flash the prime in my hand. We lol’d, lame joke is lame.
2-0
Lunch Break: Cici’s Pizza. Their Pizza’s even better than the price!
Round 3: Hunter DruFaustino w/ Luxchomp Donphan tech(s)
I start spiritomb he starts uxie I think. I’m groggy from lunch/ a bad player and don’t notice that he Sp radar’s twice while he’s trainer locked. I noticed two turns later, but there’s nothing I could do about it. He gives me a few takesie-backsies to make up for it. It still comes down to 1-2 prizes, but he takes 2 prizes in 1 turn with flash bites and he wins.
2-1
Round 4: Mellissa Hebra w/ Luxchomp Blaziken tech
This game was annoying. I get a spiritomb start again and get set up decently, calling her on her attempts to play trainers while spiritomb was active. She luring flames with blaziken fb about 4 turns in a row. I manually retreat regirock after a few turns of warp energys. It was a pretty decent game and I end up winning.
3-1
Round 5: Justin Deuetian w/ Machamp Magnezone
I flip over a magnemite, he flips over machomp , magnemite, regice. I’m like “Whaaaaaaat? I’m not the only one playing magnezone?!?”. I collector for a magnemite, spiritomb, regirock, and start darkness gracing. It’s back and forth for a while, but he played just take out Machamp so he has to rely on some hurricane punches. Sunnyshore saves me a couples times and I OHKO him while he 2HKO’s me.
4-1
Round 6: Edison Valdez w/ Gyarados
I’ve seen this kid at a few Brs and a Cities or two, so I have no idea how competitive he is. He looks pretty hipsteresque, so I’m expecting anything. I start Spritomb and Magnimite. He starts mesprit. I draw a collector waaay too late and he’s able to regice around my spiritomb. I wind up taking an early lead somehow, but he comes back with 4 turns of mesprit and a promocroak. Powerlock shuts down magnezone, so he won that one.
4-2
So far, me and my buddy Dillon have been doing exactly the same (win, win, loss, win, win, loss). That was pretty cool,…..until I looked at the pairing for……
Round 7: Dill Shny The Science Guy (Dillon Schneider) w/ DonChamp
No one wants to play their best friend, especially when they’re playing your auto loss. It takes magnezone 4 energy to KO a Donphan. FOUR! That’s outrageous! But anyways. Even though it’s a game between team mates, it’s regionals. We say no take backs and it begins. I start Regirock too. He starts machop I’m pretty depressed the whole game. I wind up getting a spiritomb out and do the same thing I did in round 3. He communications for an uxie while it’s active. I realize it the turn after and there’s nothing I can do. I suck. I bring it to 1-1 prizes, but he crushing punches for 180 I think and makes me a sad panda.
4-3
Round 8: Branden Jackson w/ Dusknoir Vileplume
I’m pretty bummed that I missed my shot at making cut, but there’s talk of a lot of 5-3’s making it so I go for the gold anyways. Idr a lot of this game, he knew my girlfriend though, so that was cool I guess. I drew into my stadiums like a champ and his dusknoir X was never a stadium for more than a turn. He took like one prize I think.
5-3
I don’t think I’m gonna make it but I rip my deck anyways and start looking for trades. In the middle of trying to bling out Magnerock, Chuck Panz bolts over and tell me I made it. I run over in disbelief to check. Sure enough I’m 27th seed in top 32. Dillon also made it in 25th seed! Hooray! Everyone’s a winner! I’m up against Edison again, but this time I’m ready to slay some face. Dillon is also up against Gyarados, and to make it worse he’s up against John Silvestro. Yikes.
Top 32: Edison Valdez w/ Gyarados
Game1) See round 6, except there were breaks in the power lock so I was able to get the one turn of powers to kill something. I KO’d a Gyarados, then he had to recover it instead of seekering the mesprit. Win for me
Round 2) See Round 1
So I’m in Top 16, meaning I have a reason to come back tomorrow. Hooray me! But I play Jason Klaczynski in the morning. Me and the rest of my team goes out to TGI Fridays for victory dinner. Dillon had four slushies and was flirting with the waitress hardcore. Good times. We head home, I pass out, then it’s back for top 16. BK for breakfast and away we went. Sidenote: IWrestleSmoochums (Kevin Kobayashi) also made T16 and I talked to him a few times throughout the day. He gave me a RH engineer’s adjustment. He’s a pretty swell kid despite his online persona.
Top 16: Jason Kaczynski (Ness) w/ VileGar
I’m pretty sure my day was about to be over, but here’s what happened.
Round 1) I start Magnemite, magnemite. He starts ghastly, ghastly. He goes first and pitch darks. I draw, collector for a spiritomb, regirock, and skuntank. Free retreat into spiritomb, attach and darkness grace. I get Magnezones up and rolling and take a hefty 4 prize lead. I’m pretty sure he didn’t really know what my deck was supposed to do at first, but he caught on pretty quickly because,……well……you know…..he’s ness. But anways, he takes 3 prizes with compound pain. I KO something else making it 1-3 prizes. He compound pains again taking 2, and I cant return the KO. Pretty close game.
Loss.
Round 2) I start Spiritomb and Magnemite, he starts gastly I think (Idr if it was a ghastly or spiritomb). The game is pretty similar to round 1 except he kills off my skuntank early, so I’m forced to risk fainting spells. I’m ahead on prizes until he takes a one prize lead with compound pain. I have no skuntank, a Mag Prime active, and he has an active Gengar X with no rescue. I gotta risk it for the biscuit. I KO it and go down to one prize. He flips tails and I have a chance. He couldn’t get up anything attacking in one turn and I KO something for the win. 1-1
Round 3) Now here’s where things get interesting. We both shuffle and set up for game 3. We’re the last ones playing, so all the judges are watching us. We set up. The dialogue goes like this,
Judge: “Jason do you know who’s going first?”
Jason: “Umm”
Judge: “And that is time”
Time is called before he says that I go first. We think that it goes turn 1 (me), turn 2 (Ness), turn 3 (me), then the game is to the next prize. The HJ goes to get a ruling, and we play it this way just incase. I start spiritomb, magnemite he starts Spiritomb, ghastly. I attach to magnemite then darkness grace into magneton. He darkness graces into a haunter. I evolve into mag prime, attach Q to spiritomb and show him the fighting. I have it. BUT WAIT! The HJ comes back and says that that’s not how it works. Because the game didn’t start yet we were to play a 1 prize card sudden death match. So we reshuffle and I lose my “win”. We re set up and I get the same thing. GG
Win in T16
T8 Steve Silvestro w/ MewDos
Round 1) I get set up pretty decently, and get gets early prizes with regice and gyarados. I don’t think he really knew what to do either, as it became a battle of 2HKO’s (him) against OHKO’s (me). He scoops for time when I have 2 prizes left as I can KO his belted Gyarados.
Round 2) He realized Mew is awesome against magnzone. It turns it into a game of OHKO’s and who can keep them coming. Mew’s go faster incase you didn’t know. I get wrecked pretty hard,
Round 3) See above.
So I end somewhere between 5-8. Pretty good weekend. I got 18 packs of CoL and nothing good in them, go figure. Kassie went 4-0 in the modified side event and Chuck Panz went 3-0 in the videogame side event. Hopefully I earned enough points to convince my parents to let me go to Nationals and hopefully people see me as somewhat of a decent player now.
Props:
Kassie for being the best girlfriend ever <3
Team Pineapple!
Dillon and Chuck Panz for being awesome!
Dillon for T32ing with a deck we built the night before!
Magnezone and Regirock
Europe
Morten for making this piece of awesome
Ness for being a cool dude and being able to joke around during top 16
Kobayashi for the RH Engineer’s
And everyone everywhere.
Slops:
Playing friends and me being oblivious
