Pidgeotto Trainer
New Member
I love how your such an expert on what I did, and who I faced at battle roads. Two people even QFT'd this statement, amazing. =/
My metagame is very good. Definitely top 5 in the nation. I had to go 4-0 against Paul J who just top 32'd nationals, and went to sudden death with the eventual 2nd place finisher. I also had a winning record in many battles with him during cities. I beat Michael C (undefeated in Nats swiss) at my last Battle Road, and had I believe about a 4-1 record against him during cities. I also had to go 4-0 against Tyler N during BRs, who is the back-to-back Northwest Regionals Champion. I think Washington's success in the younger divisions is also a direct reflection of the good players in the masters division, but I won't even get into that.
Going 34-3 during my BRs was harder than making nats top cut. Not sure what level I'd compare it to beyond that. Unless you come to Washington and play in all the tourneys I do, I don't want you telling me how good our player base is, or how hard the battle roads were.
And how dare you call me a coward Chuck? I believe you made a post about BRs before nats where you said you deliberately sat out BRs as it was the smart thing to do. You feared a loss. Now you're going to bring up the coward argument now against me?
For everyone else that thinks they know exactly my mindset over the last month+ of Pokemon, I'll tell you exactly how my mindset changed.
My original goal was to raise from 1830 to 1930 over the BR season. I did this with still 2 weeks left of BRs. I won another to go to 1970. Still worth it to try to go higher, and I had been very successful thus far, though having many close, close games. I went 4-0 drop in my next tournament after defeating Paul J, the 2nd highest rated player in WA and potentially getting paired down to a couple bad matchups. My rating then was ~2003. Another reason I decided to drop (and I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do, and at the last second just wrote 'drop'), was I thought I was in position to sit out nats and go to worlds. I thought about the prospects of that all that Saturday night. I wanted to play in nats, I didn't like my position. I figured where I was I could sit out nats, but not play and risk a loss. If I won another tourney though, I would be in position to play til I got a loss, a much better prospect. So the next day, the last BR, I risked my rating, which I correctly thought was high enough for a trip, with one more BR. That day, I beat Michael C, Paul J, Tyler N, and Paul J again. The latter 3 matches all came to time, with me holding off Paul J's comeback in the finals. I was where I wanted to be, able to play until a loss at least at nats.
When I came to nats, I was disappointed to see just how many Infernape mirrors there were. I had tested many decks against Infernape with little success. Castform-type setup decks (which I had played all year) were especially bad against Infernape. After extensive testing, I went into nats believing Infernape to be the deck I would play. The amount of mirrors that appeared Thursday was way more than I thought would be there though. Having to face so many mirrors didn't make Ape seem like a winning play. I tested with my team even more possible counters to Ape, with limited success. Thursday I found out about Jeremy S (who placed 3rd in Senior's) success with Empoleon/Marowak. Hearing the great success, I figure I would play this for nats. So I test it Friday and get some horrible horrible starts. The deck didn't seem consistant to me at all. I also worried about being able to play it correctly, as it is a somewhat difficult deck to master. Very different from the setup decks I'd played all year basically. About the 5th really bad game with Empoleon, I decided I could not play that the next day. I went back to testing Ape and went to the tournament area to test vs mirrors. I found out that you really can't outplay the mirror, as I'd feared. Every ape mirror would be a 5050, plus all the counters going around, like Empoleon. So the situation didn't seem good. I'm sure I wasn't nearly the only one that had concerns over their deck choice for nationals going into the night before. The difference was I had a safety net I could use.
There was one more thing to do though, I had done a lengthy mock nationals using slips of paper, and a 20-sided dice to determine results. I wanted to get an estimate of the ratings invite cut line. I hadn't finished the top cut though, too busy testing etc. So Friday night I did finish it. My results had the 8th place invite at 2015, and 7th place 2028. If I was slightly off and 2028 was closer to the cutline, playing even til just the first loss could take me out. Even Kettler after his first loss and drop wasn't entirely sure his 2020s rating would make it. If I played, I would also have to start about 5-0 to be able to keep playing after a loss (not even Fulop did that). So I figured if I played at all, I would have little chance of winning nats (just needing to start 5-0 and not having a great deck for the metagame imo), and I would also have a little chance of losing my invite. I decided the small chance of winning wasn't worth the small chance of losing my invite.
So it wasn't an easy decision to not play. Until friday night, I was leaning more towards playing til sitting. I did what I had done to get to my position though, I saw the situation and made the wise decision. I had dropped in BRs when the situation was not advantageous, and this was the same thing. I did weigh in the possibility of winning nats but I had many reasons to not play as well. I wanted to go to worlds. I would've gone anyways probably, but I really wanted to go without needing my parents to pay for another trip this season. I also like playing in 64 person tournament over a 400+ one. I still have some unfinished business at worlds from 05. This decision was not easy, and I know many people would have chosen both sides if they were in my situation. Sure, Eric Craig and Chuck who had great chances of rating invites did very well proving that playing was a good choice. However, there are also many recognizable names at 6-3 that will tell you the perils of needing to get through a 400 person tournament that could've easily been Craig or Chuck. In fact, I wasn't even the only person who chose this path. Many Seniors did as well.
So anyways, my decision was not easy and was not made til the night before the tournament, weighing in metagame and my own deck. My BRs were anything but easy, and it's just too easy for any of you sitting at home to say that. I deserve every bit of credit for my BR record. Why don't you guys ask me before speculating on what I did or what I thought.
Edit: Kettler has a good analogy 2 posts above.
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