Overview

Well, things at States were fairly predictable this year.  Luxchomp again won most tournaments, while a couple other popular decks got a couple wins.  According to Pokegym.net this is the list of winners of States.

16 Luxchomp (1 w/Honchkrow)
4 Vileplume/Gengar
4 Gyarados
3 DialgaChomp
3 Sablelock (1 w/ Luxray SP)
2 Lostgar w/Vileplume
2 Machamp (1 w/ vileplume)
2 Chenlock
1 Arceus
1 Steelix
1 Scizor Prime
1 Vilegar / Dusknoir
1 Magnezone

From this list, we can see a couple cool rogue decks winning here; like Steelix, Scizor, Mangezone, and Arceus.  And, some second tier decks took some states as well,  with help from the good players that champion them.  We also see 6 Vilegar variants winning and 5 Sablelock variants winning.  This somewhat surprising showing by these decks show that they are strong contenders for the title of 2nd…

I woke up a little after 5:30, and got on the road before 6:30.  This was very early for me, but it was cool to go outside and see a huge full moon hanging in the sky before sunrise.  I then took the 3 hour drive to Fort Wayne, Indiana.  When I got there I met my friend James in the parking lot.  James, who is a testing buddy of mine, tried really hard to get me to come today and I’m glad I capitulated to his requests. Before the tournament started I made some trades with some players, borrowed some cards, said hello to a lot of my Pokemon friends, and received a cool deck box from James.  The format again was very Luxchomp heavy.  It was a little more diverse than last week, but Luxchomp was by far the most popular deck.

The tournament was held at a neat venue, a minor league baseball stadium.  Just past right field is a long narrow room…

This year the event is in Lansing and we have a good turn out; 74 players in the Masters age division. This means 7 rounds in swiss with a top-cut of 16. I’m at the venue just before registration opens and find a Jimmy Johns nearby and buy my lunch. I’ve learned from experience to be prepared for long rounds and no breaks, so having food on-hand makes that one less thing to worry about. This year my buddy ‘Pinch’ decided to play and we meet…

Before I go on any further with my report, I’d like to thank Pikkdogs and the rest of the Team Omar staff for inviting me to write for you guys. Here is a little bit about myself, I have been playing since the Base Set, took a hiatus when the first e-reader set came out, then got back into the game around Diamond and Pearl. But enough about me, let’s go on with the article!

I decided to run Luxchomp for this event because that was the deck I felt most comfortable with. Luxchomp has an excellent track record and hasn’t really disappointed me. I’ll post my deck list at the end of the article. For this event, there were 76 Masters, with 7 rounds and a top 16 cut.

Round 1 vs Marvin P with Luxchomp

My first round match was a mirror. I have never met Marvin before but our pre-game talks give off the impression that he is a really nice guy. The game starts and I…

At the time, Team Omar was meeting almost weekly, so I got plenty of practice and experience against multiple decks. With Austino‘s deck help and Team Omar’s playtesting help, I was able to ride Gyarados to 5th place after Swiss in the 2010 MN State Championship. I then dropped before top cut, but it was a decision that I always wondered about. Should I have canceled my other plans? Should I have stayed and played. I felt like my top-8 matchup was favorable, and I think I could have made top4.

This season saw Omar depart the state and with him went the regular playtesting sessions. I hung onto Gyarados and still kept…

“For those who take the sword, will perish by the sword.” (English Standard Version, 2001).

And you say, “Pikkdogs this is a Pokemon site not Sunday School, why are you talking about this verse?”

It is a verse that sums up my day at the 2011 Michigan State Championships.  I tried to live by the sword, but I ended up dying by it.  

The event was held at the Radisson in downtown Lansing, Mi.  We normally play the states out in the burbs, so being in an urban area was kind of a shock.  Besides some parking issues, this new venue wasn’t too bad, although the playing area is smaller than in our previous location.

I decided to play Uxie donk for this event, there were many reasons why I chose this.  1. I was tired of getting pushed around by Luchomp, so I thought I’d play something that could beat it. 2.  Radu wrote a great article on this site that told people how to play the deck in a very easy to learn matter.  With a couple reads through this…

So I had my preview of states all done and written, and I was ready to make some final tweaks to my deck, and then………………………….. The Europeans screwed it up.

Darn Euros!  They had one tournament and with that turned the Metagame on its side.

In case you haven’t watched PokemonDan’s video on the ECC, the talk of the Benelux region was Italy’s Andrea C. and his Lostgar Lock deck.  Its basically just a trainerlock deck but that exchanges 2 Gengar SF for 2 Gengar Primes.  Even though he was very lucky in the tournament, he was at a place where he should have won the entire tournament, but misplayed at then end.  So he basically should have won the tournament, and turned quite a few heads while he did it.  You can bet this deck will migrate to the U.S. and become the biggest Italian import since the Pizza pie.

So what does this mean for State Championships?              

Well I’m glad you asked that, because it is the topic of…

In this article we will be looking at how cities ended, what changes have occurred since then, how good the most popular decks will do in states, and then I will throw in some tips for S/P/T Championships at the end.

Cities: A recap-

City Championships 2010-2011 did not have surprising results.  One trend for cities was the dominance of LuxChomp.  LuxChomp has now been going strong for a year, and has been the best deck in the format for all that time.  Luxchomp won around half of the cities in the U.S.  It dominates most of the other best decks out there.  It is a great fast and disruptive deck that came strong after cities into States.  The Cities version of LuxChomp included Lucario Gl for the Gyarados match-up, and we should be seeing a similar list coming into…

Let’s take a look at the deck that helped Austino and I get all those match wins, but first I should provide a little background on why I am posting about Austino’s deck in the first place. Leading up to states, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to play. For a while, I had been thinking SP, but whenever I played it, it just didn’t feel right to me. I’m not saying that I didn’t have fun playing it or that I couldn’t play it well. It’s just not my style, I think. I could have worked it out, but I wanted something that felt more natural to me. I researched a lot, and I came to the conclusion that Gyarados would be a good fit for me. I started building the deck, but I got stuck…

A little about myself: this is my second season playing the Pokemon card game. I got into the game when my daughter asked if she could start collecting the cards and I said yes but we had to learn the game too. Since then she and I have been going to league and tournaments together pretty regularly. My first season was a huge learning opportunity and it took me a long time to get enough knowledge of the cards and various strategies to feel like I was able to compete. Things changed this year during the very first City Championship when I ran a vanilla Shuppet deck and won first place. My daughter has been running Kingdra since Legends Awakened came out and she took third place at the same city’s.

We went to 3 different city’s this year and have tweaked our decks over the course of time. I no longer think of my deck as a vanilla Shuppet deck, in fact…

Now, my friend Sabrina will also be included in this report. Why? Well, before a few weeks ago, Sabrina would play the worst decks. They would be pyramid lines, like 3-2-1, with like 20 energy and like 10 trainers, a few of those trainers being like Marleys Request and Rival. I could not stand by any…

We woke up, watched a couple episodes of Indigo League, and then headed out for Misty Mountain Games. It’s about a 45 minute drive from our house, and we arrived around 9:30. I had our decklists ready, so registration was smooth sailing.

The Team Omar contingent consisted of Omar, Abdi, Tre, Louis, Ava, and myself. I hope I get this right. Omar played LuxChomp. Abdi played Jumpluff. Tre played Flygon. Louis played Typhlosion. Hopefully, one or more of them will add their report sometime. I know that Michael (who also posts here) is on the hook for a report, but we’ll get to that later. Let’s get to the action from Ava’s and my perspectives.…

My daughter Ava and I plan to go to tomorrow’s tourney together. There we will meet the rest of the Team Omar guys and play cards for fun and profit. Anyway, I hope we can achieve at least one of those goals. This will be Ava’s 2nd tournament. Last time she played Shuppet at Cities and didn’t win a match, so I am really hoping that this time will be an improvement for her. I think she has a good deck that she knows how to play well, but she kinda clams up a bit when she goes up against other people. She has a tendency to play slowly and decide not to make certain plays that she would otherwise see. She’s only 6, so she has a lot of growing to do still, but I still wish that she would get some wins to help her feel better about herself.…