One Hit KO

Hello, OneHitKO readers! As this is my first article ever, I feel that I need introduce myself and show a little bit of what I can do. You may have seen me on 6p and PokeGym as Darkwing34, in person as Scott Creech, or in comments as Balasar. I have been collecting the cards for seven years, and have been playing for four. I have never made it to top cut, but I’ve gotten close in the past two tournaments. One of those tournaments was the Muncie City Championship, and the other being the Indiana State Championship. In the Muncie Cities, I placed third out of eight, and at Indiana States I placed fourteenth out of fifty-three. Without further ado, let’s get to the article.

I decided to play Durant just because being a Senior puts a budget on you. This meant no Mewtwo EX for me. Here is my personal list. Please feel free to use it; just don’t take credit for it.

• 4x Durant
• 1x Rotom

• 3x PONT
• 4x Collector
• 2x N
• 2x Twins
• 1x Black Belt
• 1x FSL
• 2x Prof. Juniper
• 1x Skyarrow Bridge (SAB)
• 1x Battle City
• 1x Alph Lithograph (FOUR)
• 3x Lost Remover
• 4x Crushing Hammer
• 3x Level Ball
• 2x Pokemon Catcher
• 4x Revive
• 4x Junk Arm
• 3x Pokegear 3.0
• 3x Eviolite

• 1x Prism
• 1x Rescue
• 4x Special Metal
• 5x Basic Metal

The basic strategy is the same as any Durant deck. I found Black Belt needed in this deck over other cards just in case I needed to attack with Rotom. The tournament was smaller than I expected. We only had forty-some Juniors, fifty-three Seniors, and about 160 Masters. The tournament in general certainly was a little odd as far as what I saw play.

This was against a major binder deck. After setting up, he won the coin flip and started out with a lone Terrakion. He wasn’t able to get energy on it until T4 or T6. I had three Durant up until T5.  On my first turn, I was able to Devour his 1-1 Electrode Prime line, which was his only form of energy acceleration. I was able to discard all of his Pokemon with the exception of his lone Terrakion starter. This was quite the easy game.

This certainly was a fun match since Asher is from my league (GO SUMMIT CITY ELITE FOUR TRAINING!). Asher has been constantly trying to get Kyogre & Groudon LEGEND to work in a deck for a while now. This just happened to be one of his attempts. I won the coin flip and opened with a lone Durant against his lone Oshawott. I played Collector to get two Durant and my Rotom because my fourth Durant was prized. I wasn’t able to get it out of my prizes until T7. That didn’t matter as much as it should have because he wasn’t able to get his Oshawott evolved at all until T8. I think he only drew two prizes. This was also a relatively easy game.

For those of you who don’t know, Kaitlin is, as of 6:36 PM March 17^th, ranked sixtieth in Championship Points for Seniors. I knew that this would have been an uphill battle from the start. I went first, and at the time when we started, I realized what she was playing. She opened with a lone Smeargle against my lone Durant. I was able to get two of my other Durants out, but wasn’t able to get the fourth until T7. Kaitlin wound up taking all of the six prizes with one of her Terrakion. This was probably the hardest of my battles today.

Alexandra’s form of shuffling showed me that her deck contained a Junk Arm, Collector, and Lost Remover. I recognized that she was also playing Durant before we even got set up. After the flip, I was able to get two more Durant and my Rotom in addition to my starting Durant. She was able to get all of here Durants out T2. At first, I thought about scooping because I know that in mirror matches, whoever gets four Durants out first, wins. I’m really glad that I didn’t because of a few misplays that my opponent made. First of all, she played a Juniper when she was getting low on cards. Second, she decided to PONT when she had fewer than six cards in her hand. She also only played one Pokemon Reversal instead of Catcher. I don’t mean to insult her or anything; it was just obvious that she didn’t have much experience with it. After the match, I asked her how long she had been playing Durant, and she said that today was her first day using it. I wound up never getting the fourth Durant, but still won due to her misplays. She certainly wasn’t a bad player because I had only one card left in my deck when I won, so luck just may have been on my side.

I had no clue who I actually was playing until the end of the game. I was able to pull of the T1 Durant set up, but that didn’t help a lot. What actually saved me was Lost Removing his DCEs. I was able to deck him down to seven cards, when he pulled out a Juniper to pull out his last DCE, attached it to his Zekrom EX, and Strong Volt for his final prize. After the game, he mentioned that I almost beat the Senior that is placed tenth in the country for Championship Points. If that wasn’t a confidence booster, I don’t know what is.

By now, the other two guys from my league had also gotten a record of 3-2. This proved our consistency as a league. I recognized my opponent from previous tournaments, so I knew a little bit about him. This allowed me to crack a few light-hearted jokes here-and-there, which lightened the mood a lot. Once again, I went first and started with some extra draw power due to some Mulligans that my opponent had. I was able to start with two Durants in play and a Collector in hand. I got even better luck, and my other two Durants were in my deck. I was able to get the Devour engine going from T1. My opponent wasn’t able to get much energy out on the active because Dynamotor can only attach to the bench. He got one Zebstika loaded up with energy, but wasn’t able to retreat or Switch his active Zekrom EX. Let’s just say that this was a relatively easy game.

As stated above, I placed fourteenth out of fifty-three. I missed the top cut by six places though. There was one mantra in particular that I found helpful with Durant. That was “Deck out or die”. This was said by one of my fellow leaguers (and Durant players), Josiah. What this means is that with Durant, you should never attack, only mill. This definitively helped in some of my matches. I just want to take some time  to thank James H., Josiah K., Jesse K., Rob, Michael W, and my sister (Stephanie C.) from my league for lending me about one-third of my deck.