One Hit KO

A big hello to all you OHKOERS out there, this is Pikkdogs here with a tournament report from the 2011 Fall Great Lakes Regionals.  Just a note for you guys, we have been having a lot technical problems with our server lately.  So we apologize for that stuff, Ed is trying to figure out what the problem is and if it will be fixed soon.  We ask that you bear with us with the delays, this article was delayed two days, so we are sorry for the delays.

Intro

                After Zekrom ended the Battle Road season very strong, I was not very excited about the format.  So I did not get a lot of practice in, in fact, I did not decide on my deck choice until about half an hour before the tournament started.  So when I decided to go to regionals, I knew very well that I was never going to cut.  The night before, I decided to make a Gothitelle deck because I thought it would be fun to play.  I didn’t get much chance to play-test it, but the testing I did do did not turn out well.  I could set Gothitelle up, but then my deck would stall.  So I needed to switch to something else or fix Gothitelle.  Before the tournament started, I decided to go back to my Donphan and Dragons deck, which is more of a Donphan/Tornadus/Zekrom deck.  If you guys want a list you can request one in the comment box.

I decided to go to the regionals in Fort Wayne, Indiana with my buddy and fellow onehitko writer, Mark.  I woke up early at 4:30 A.M. and warmed up some rolls for breakfast.  Then I watched a little tv and went to pick up Mark.  We ended up making very good time and made it to Fort Wayne in less than 3 hours.  The tournament ended up having about 220 masters, including people from Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and the magical land of Canada.  It was really nice to see most of my friends from the area.  Almost all of my Team Warp Point buddies were there, James and the Fort Wayne players showed up to defend their turf, and my buddy Andy drove with a bunch of some of the cool Minnesota players; it was nice seeing all of those guys again.  I also got to meet some new people, I finally got to meet The Top Cut’s Kyle “Pooka” Sucevich.  I didn’t get to talk to him too much, but he seemed like a nice guy and it was nice to finally meet him in person.

Another cool part of the day was that I decided to where my Halloween costume.  I had decided to dress up as my buddy Frank S. for Halloween night at the league that Team Warp Point runs.  But, I was not able to make it to the event, so I wore it to regionals.  Frank always wears his Sonic shirt but for some reason he decided to make me mad and wear something else, oh well, at least the hat and the snake were right.  You can see the pictures to the right.  Anyway, that is enough distractions for the moment, let’s go to the tourney report.

Tournament Report

Round 1 against Reshiboar

`               My first round was against a new comer from Michigan with the last name of Moncreif.  I loved that because I am a big fan of the play, “The Importance of Being Earnest,” and there is a character in that play with the same name.  Unfortunately, the game was not as exciting as his name.  He started with a Reshiram and a Tepig, and I started with  a Phanpy and a Tornadus.  I go first and attach to Phanpy and pass.  On his turn he doesn’t do much, and passes to me.  On my turn I evolve to Donphan Prime and use a Pokemon Catcher and Plus Power to knock out the Tepig.  On his turn he uses a Professor Oak’s New Theory, but can’t come up with any more Pokemon, and passes again.  It takes me two more turns to knock out the Reshiram after he whiffed on another supporter and  I got another Plus Power.

1 – 0.   didn’t expect to do too much today, but I had a good start. 

Round 2 against Zekrom

My opponent was a guy named James who was from Columbus, Ohio.  We had the Michigan/Ohio State rivalry going in full force.  I happened to be playing with blue sleeves, and he had red sleeves.  Even though I knew I wasn’t doing well today, I knew that I had to beat this guy for Michigan.  This game was pretty much like the first.  He started first with Zekrom and I had Tornadus.  I had a bad hand with 3 Donphan Primes and a Professor Juniper, luckily he decided to Judge it away on the first turn.  I didn’t end up with a great hand, but it was good enough to get a Phanpy on the field.  On his next turn he used another supporter like PONT, but he was not able to find another basic, he did get to knock out my Tornadus.  On my turn I used a Sage’s Training to get both a Plus Power and a Donphan Prime for the win.

  2 – 0.   Another good win, but I know that there was still a lot more tournament to be played.

Round 3 against Zekrom/Magnezone/Vileplume

This game was against Moncriefs’ friend J.W.  The game started off pretty poorly as I had to mulligan 3 times to get a basic.  But it improved as I got two Donphan Primes by my second turn.  I then was able to use Supporters to draw into Pokemon Catchers.  With those Catchers I was able to knock out an Oddish and 2 Mangemites.  Eventually he was able to setup Vileplume and Magnezone, but I was down to 2 prizes left at this time.

 

3 – 0 Well I did get another win and I was happy to be undefeated at the lunch break.  Mark and I were able to drive on over to Five Guys Burgers and Fries and got a couple of crazy good burgers.  This was actually Marks first time to 5 guys, so it was nice to introduce him to the one of the happiest places on earth.

 

Round 4 against Gothitelle.

This round was against Sarah, she is known throughout the area as the best Gothitelle player around.  This ticked me off because my deck does not have a single Gothitelle tech in it.  The only way I can win this game is if I am able to take control of the game early with Pokemon Catchers, and knock out all of the Gothitas.  This did not happen in this game.  I started with a Zekrom and she started with a Gothita.  I attached a DCE, but was not able to get a Phanpy going until the next turn.  Sarah was not having a good time  in setting up either, but I knew she had Twins in her hand just waiting for a chance to use them.  I decided that I had to eventually take a prize, so I knocked out one of the Gothitas.  As expected, she used Twins about 3 times in a row to get setup.  My only hope now was that she had prized her Blissey Prime or something, but she was able to control the game and do whatever she wanted.  She used Blissey once, and then a couple turns later she used Seeker and “Mad Kinesis” for the win.

3 – 1 Good job Sarah, she played the deck well.  I just had no counters against it, so she was able to control the game easily.  I was not very mad at this game, I knew I had no chance against decks like this.

Round 5 against Ross Deck

As I mentioned, I have a bad Gothitelle matchup.  I also have a bad Ross Deck matchup.  I need to knock out the Oddishes and Solosi before they can evolve.  At first I was doing really well. I started with Phanpy and was able to get Donphan with an energy on turn 2.  I used Pokemon Catcher to knock out an Oddish on turn 2.  On his next turn he used Twins to get a Suicine/Entei Legend out.  I decided that SEL was a big threat because it could hit Donphan for weakness, so I used Pokemon Catcher to attack it for 90.  He was able to knock out my Donphan on his next turn, but I used Tornadus to get the revenge knock out for 2 prizes.  On his next turn he again used Twins, but was not able to get much going.  On my turn I used Pokemon Catcher to knock out a Phanpy, and then got another knock out next turn.  But before I could take my 6^th prize, he setup Vileplume and Reuniclus.  After this he was able to make sure his Donphan Prime kept free of damage counters.  And was able to slowly knock out 6 Pokemon for the win.

 

3 – 2. I never expected to do well at this tournament, and here was my wakeup call.  I knew I had to win out from here on to top cut.

Round 6 against Donphan and Dragons

This game was against another Donphan player, this guy was from Fort Wayne and is a league member with my buddy James.  I have talked to him several times about the deck, and we have talked a little about the game before so it was nice to finally meet him in battle. 

I can’t recall too much about the specifics of this game, but I think he had a tough time setting up.  I think I had a Phanpy start and a fairly easy Donphan Prime.  I used Pokemon Catchers to take out his bench, so that left him with only one Donphan Prime to contend with.  I was able to use Donphan Prime and Tornadus to finish off the last Donphan and get the win.  Hopefully we have more interesting battles in the future. 

4 – 2. I kept my hope alive here with a win.  It’s nice to at least be in the hunt at this point.

 

Round 7 versus Primetime.

I had a really poor start in this match.  I probably should have won the game, but I just had some bad luck that prevented me from going on.  I started with a Zekrom, I eventually got a turn 2 or 3 Donphan, but had a hard time of getting it going.  On about his 5th turn he was able to respond to a knockout with my Donphan with an attack by Magnezone Prime.  I was able to get back going with the help of Tornadus and a couple Donphan Primes, but he had started taking prizes way before I did.  I ended the game by having 1 prize left as he took his last.

4 – 3.  I knew my small hopes of top cutting were over, so I started looking at the side events to see when a new 8 man tournament would start.  But there was not one until after the next round, so I decided to stay and play.

Round 8 versus Ross Deck

Ross Deck and Gothitelle were my two worst matchups, and I managed to play them three times.  This game was against Abraham from Wisconsin.  I think he was one of Pooka’s friends.  He seemed like a really nice guy and we talked about Wisconsin before the match started, since I was born in that state.  In my last Ross Deck game I was able to get 5 prizes before he setup, this time was much worse.  I did start with a Phanpy, but so did he.  I did knock out an Oddish with Pokemon Catcher, but he used Pokemon Collector to get a lot more basics out.  By his 4^th or 5^th turn he got all setup and I just decided to scoop.  I was fairly tired from a long day of Pokemon, and didn’t want to fight another losing battle.

The Aftermath

So I fizzled out to 4-4 after a 3-0 start, but my buddy Mark had better luck.  I will not tell you too much about how he did since Mark will probably write an article himself.  But I will say that he did Top Cut and eventually made top 16.  Since I had to wait around for Mark I decided to play in a side event with my friend James.  In my first game I played a Reshiphlosion deck and beat it in a long game.  In my second match I played James who was playing my Gothitelle deck.  Of course I again lost to a stupid Reuniclus deck.   One funny part was that during my first match I noticed that my buddy Andrew was walking by so I looked at him.  While I was distracted, Bruce the judge tried to throw a pack to the person who was sitting right next to me.  But instead of throwing to him, Bruce hit me right in the mouth with it.  The really bad part was that I didn’t even get to keep the pack.

 

After the side tournament Mark and I added Cody B. to our group after he also made top 16.  We were going to get a motel, but I wasn’t happy about having to pay for a room when I wanted to go home.  Luckily my buddy James stepped in and said we could stay with him for the night.  Dustin Z. from Indiana also joined us and we stopped at Arby’s before we got to James’ apartment.  After ordering, we got lucky and the Arby’s people gave us some free chicken, onion rings, and mozzarella sticks.  So  big thanks to Arby’s, that was really good.  Then we went to James and just about collapsed as we walked in, and woke up just in time for top 16 the next morning.  I won’t spoil the story of what happened to Mark, so let’s skip to the ride home.  We ended up stopping at a McDonalds and talked about cartoons and other television shows (Anime sucks by the way), and then we listened to “Family Guy: Live in Las Vegas” until we got home.

 

It ended up being a really fun trip.  I didn’t win, but I didn’t expect to, so that’s okay.  A big thanks to James for saving us and putting us up for the night.  Cities starts in only two weeks, so good luck to everybody who will be trying to get a hold of the new cards and make new decks.

 

So long and thanks for all the fish!

Category: Regional Championships | Tags: