Tiny Report From Tiny Tourney
Ed 
For almost a month, I’ve been working on a Flareon deck. I chose it due to economics and the fact that I like decks that play fast and loose. I had it almost built in the Cofagrigous Six Feet Under configuration. It was something of a “Turbo Flareon” build if you will.
There was a tourney coming up, and I didn’t think that version gave me enough chance against all decks. I looked around and found Pooka’s decklist online, so I built that version. I kept playing solitaire and tweaking it, but I never felt comfortable with it. Basically, his build is a metagame counter, and I wasn’t very confident that the meta here would be anything like that of the real world.
The final straw was that, on Friday night, I played a game against my daughter, Ava, and she beat me. The tourney was Saturday, and I didn’t have another deck. I was REALLY kicking myself for not building the deck I had lots of experience with (Darkrai), due to not owning any Darkrai.
As it turned out, I did trade for a Darkrai EX the week before at league. On the downside, that same day, I traded away all my Dark Patch, because I knew I wasn’t playing Darkrai. On Friday night, I was really bugging Omar about this via text. Could I get away with just 2 or 3 many Darkrai? How many Dark Patch would I need, minimum? If I could trade/buy/borrow some Darkrai and Dark Patch, I might switch decks.
On Sat morning, I looked up a decklist for it, and the first one that popped up was Jason Klaczynski’s Worlds list. I printed it off, stopped at the cash machine on the way, and hit up Who’s Game House.
When I arrived, the Tournament Organizer had a box of commons and uncommons. I looked through it and came up with 2 Dark Patch and some other useful stuff. Then I started asking around for Darkrai EX. I thought maybe the only ones that existed in the town were in Brad’s deck. That was almost true. I was able to trade for one from Austin (the same guy that traded me one the previous week, actually). Zach, yet another player, offered to lend me his full-art copy for the day. The final piece fell into place when Ken offered up 2 Dark Patch and a couple Virbanks.
I had what I needed, and I had about 15 minutes to build the deck and write the decklist. It was VERY hectic, and Zach ended up writing my decklist as I tossed newly-sleeved cards at him. As the entry deadline was called, we realized I was 10 cards short, and I started tossing in Crushing Hammer, Energy Switch (LUCKILY), and something else. I made it. Read More