2nd to 8th.. EXPLANATION ;)

[Kevin89]

Nats report

I took a week off to practice with MD a little bit, built leafeon, eeveelutions, empy omastar, and infernape. And invited some friends over to playtest. All 4 decks prove to be metagame worthy, however, I didnt have a single idea what the metagame was. After the playtest I was wondering what the other dutch top players might use. I suddenly became aware that 1 deck had a pretty good matchup versus my top 2 choices: Empoleon and Gallade.
So I textmessaged Marcel about it, and he put the deck together. Then on friday, we went to the Hilton for some last playtests etc etc.

Saturday morning, I still had no idea what to play.
I grabbed Empoleon and Gallade, and went to the tournament location.
Ultimately, I remember the playtests from the Hilton and decide I'd go for a little gamble.
Since there was NO WAY I could lose my invite from the rankings, I opted to go for Kabutops.
Kabutops has a slight edge versus any stage 2 decks, like empoleon and gallade. and pretty much loses to mortar/leafeon/eeveelutions.
I figured the top 5+- players would chose either Gallade or Empoleon, so all I had to hope for is to avoid the semi-decent players with their mortar/stage 1 rogueish decks.

30 minutes prior to round 1 I finish my kabutops list, which looked like this:

Pokemon:
4 dome
3 kabuto
4 kabutops
2 helix
2 omanyte
2 omastar
1 amber
1 aerodactyl
2 baltoy
2 claydol
__
23

Energy:
11 Fighting
4 Double Rainbow
__
15

Trainers:
4 Rare Candy
3 Celio
3 Fossil Excavator
3 Stevens
2 Team Galactics Wager
1 pluspower
1 Crystal Shard
1 Warp pont
2 pokedex handy
2 crystal Beach
__
22

This decklist sucks... horribly, I didnt have the chance to playtest this so yea. It really needed Scramble and more warp points

Round 1 vs...
I look at the pairings and see I have a bye, and Arco and Anna are paired already
hows that for a perfect start.
1-0

Round 2 vs Raichu88
I get a very crappy start with helix fossil and no supporters. I draw nothing but candies and eventually I topdeck Omastar. After I KO Baltoy with omastar, he candy-scrambles a gallade and its over.
1-1

Round 3 vs Arnold
I get to start... with a helix fossil, 2 kabuto, kabutops, warp point, and 2 fighting energy... i draw into nothing and pass. he candies a garchomp and starts setting up.
I topdeck Dome, and start to setup myself. he levels his garchomp up at some point and takes a prize. I topdeck useful stuff, and spread some damage around. He puts chatot or something active, and gets a new hand.
I omastar + wager and draw into more stuff. He is stuck with basics and loses eventually.
2-1

Round 4 vs Kurt
He plays ape . this is an autowin. however, I get my 3rd Helix fossil start, but I at least topdeck a baltoy. he candies to ape on his 1st turn and does damage.
I take some turns to setup, and he at some point has 2 catties, 1 ape active and 20 cards in his hand. I warp point + omastar + wager, win the wager. and from there on I KO some stuff.
He tries to make a comeback but then I drop a second omastar. I win.
3-1

Round 5 vs Lennard.
what the... I get Helix fossil again.. along with 6 happy energies. I pass and he candies to togekiss on his first turn. He didnt even see that he could KO my helix already with togekiss, and proceeds to do 10 damage with Gible. for 3 or 4 turns.. lol. in those 4 turns I topdecked more energy and omastar!
3-2

Round 6 vs Leon
He plays mortar and I just wanted to cry. to make matters worse, I start with helix fossil... he opens with skitty and proceeds to do.. nothing.
lol, his start was as bad as mine. I eventually topdeck a steven and setup. he still topdecks nothing for 5 or 6 turns and I just KO basics for the win...
4-2

I have decent tiebreaks and at least make T16, after 5 helix fossil starts, with 4 of them without a single supporter card...

T16 vs Erik
Game 1
I get my first Baltoy start!!! unfortunately, he T2 psychic locks me and Im pretty much stuck. He gets ahead in prizes a little and then I strike back. I play superbly with omanytes and stars and am able to get 2 of them out at crucial moments. I take this one in the end.
Game 2
I get my first Dome fossil start!!! but opt to start with something else anyway... since I expected him to candy into Gallade/Gardevoir turn 2. He did, and gets some prizes with Gallade. I dont want him to OHKO my kabutops so I cant attack back AND lose my trainer lock, so I try to make him flip prizes for omastar. he warp points every time and gets 4 prizes before I can get one..
But at least I can attack now, I KO his Gallade with pluspower. and omastar-wager after. eventually, as he tries to get back again I take 3 prizes, and puts a Claydol in front for me to KO. He only has claydol 80HP, and Kirlia 80HP, 2 energy. so the only way he can win is through insanely nice plays with Gardy lv X. since Im 1-0 ahead, I just relax and do 70 to claydol. so if he's ever going to try and attack back, he brings down his own pokemon. we draw-pass for 10 turns and times up.

T8 vs Arco
I start with a dome fossil, and setup. I never played this matchup and made some dumb mistakes along the way. it gets down to the last prizes but I just cant keep up. Also, everytime I omastar-wager, he draws all his evolutions back, including claydol... this game I just couldnt win.
Game2
I start with helix fossil but with supporters so its not bad. He doesnt get his claydol in his first turns, which made his setup a little shaky. eventually after KOing 1 or 2 empy's and some basics, he scoops.
Game 3
I finally get a good start, but without energy. I win my wager, pokedex, do some more stuff. but I just cant find a single energy =/ Turn 2 I have 2 omastars ready to devolve his everything, kabutops active, aerodactyl benched, but I just cant find energy for 3 more turns and I just cant attack .
horrible.

Im REALLY really dissappointed, because my only interesting games were in top cut. and eventually lose due to extremely bad luck again. At first I didnt even want to write a report, because my swiss matches sound so emo. but its all true. I dont mind losing or bad luck.. but this was just ridiculous.
But I still have my invite, and Ill give it another shot at worlds.

props:
Djowie
Marcel
Rob
Kabutops.dec
The people from the tournament location giving me free stuff for no real reason
Soccer afterwards
HP & Elsa
and everyone else I talked too. but those in particular. thanks!

slops:
me sounding so emo in this report.
my luck.
Rob for judging instead of playing
Jamal misplaying accidentally and receiving a game loss.
the marcel-hp incident.

GG and till worlds.

- Kevin

 

[David's Confused Pokedad]

Thanks for keeping it Real. I feel for you. Hope we don't get that kind of luck.

 

[afirule]

bad luck dude and better luck next year! nice to see you EXPLAINING things! :lol:

 

[Type O negative]

The way I see it:

Ultimately, I remember the playtests from the Hilton and decide I'd go for a little gamble.
Since there was NO WAY I could lose my invite from the rankings, I opted to go for Kabutops.
Kabutops has a slight edge versus any stage 2 decks, like empoleon and gallade. and pretty much loses to mortar/leafeon/eeveelutions.
I figured the top 5+- players would chose either Gallade or Empoleon, so all I had to hope for is to avoid the semi-decent players with their mortar/stage 1 rogueish decks.

This decklist sucks... horribly, I didnt have the chance to playtest this so yea. It really needed Scramble and more warp points

R1 You have a bye (lucky, especially since you're playing a deck that apparently doesn't really want to face 'randoms')
R2 You get to play GG (lucky) and lose, because of a bad start (unlucky).
R3 You win by topdecking into the good stuff (after another bad start) while he gets stuck after your Wager (both lucky/unlucky).
R4 You get an auto-win matchup (lucky).
R5 You both had bad starts (your opp mainly because he misplays if I read u correctly) but he has something to deal damage and you don't, so you lose (Slightly unlucky).
R6 You face an extremely bad matchup but proceed to win because your opponent loses in the only way he can lose, by an absolute crap Skitty start (lucky).

In the top 16 you play GG (lucky), in which game1 your opponent might have misplayed (skill), but also got unlucky, and game 2 you win not because you would in any way win the game but just because you won the first game (combination of skill and luck).
In the top 8 you play Empoleon (another good mu according to you so lucky), game 1 you seem to lose on skill and him drawing well after your Wagers, game 2 he gets a subpar setup but I infer that you won this on matchup advantage, game 3 you get unlucky with energies and lose because of it.

So all together, you make a gamble on a deck which really just wants to face 2 decks (and some random decks like Ape, or other random stage 2 decks), with a subpar decklist. And actually, you proceed to get these matchups in every round, save one, in which you get lucky and still win. Your starts were admittedly sub-par, but I cannot help but conclude that getting top 8, given all preconditions, was actually pretty lucky - or at least not unlucky as you feel it to be.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash you here. You're a great player and I think our top 16 match was pretty good, and the prospecting Gardy play just ended up being crucial, in your advantage. It's just that the more I thought about it afterwards, the more amazing I found your deck choice to be, and I hoped to find some good arguments in its favour here. However, I have failed to find them.

Of course, had this been a Worlds-caliber tournament, metagaming against the top two decks would be a great move, as you can actually expect them to cover a big part of the metagame. At Nats level however, I think this is a mistake, mainly because the sharply increased amount of people just playing anything they like (and some even really successful with it, like Lia).

Maybe you disagree with some or all of the above, and in that case I hope you'll elaborate on it; it might develop in an interesting discussion which we all could learn from.

 

[Jason]

Whoa, way to go Kevin, and cya in Orlando