One Hit KO » Gyarados

Midwest Regional Championships Report: From Hero To Zero

Ed — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:48:03 +0000

Well, I don’t really think I was ever a “hero” but it sounded good in the title. Maybe a better title would have been “Riches to Rags,” but it’s already up there. My previous installment saw me winning the Minnesota state tourney, so that’s what I’m talking about with “Hero” or “Riches.” The “Zero” and “Rags” will be discussed below.

Before that, I have a little side story about Pokemon economics. This is something of a lesson in online sales via eBay, but kinda just an interesting story. Just before Regionals, I decided to sell off a bunch of cards from my LuxChomp deck. On one hand, it’s a good deck to have around for testing. On the other hand, I don’t plan to play it in any upcoming tourneys, and I have some other stuff I wanted to buy (meaning I needed the cash). One of the cards I listed was my Uxie Lv. X. On Thursday of last week, I got a message from a guy that needed this card for Regionals. Well, I was leaving for Regs on Friday, so it was tight. He was willing to cover the extra shipping charges, but…

Gyarados ReRocks Minnesota State Championships (1st Place)

Ed — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:25:54 +0000

I got back into the game a bit over a year ago, because I thought it would be something that my daughter, Ava, would be into. We started during Cities last season, which didn’t go so hot. By the time States preparation rolled around, though, I knew I needed a new deck, and I chose Gyarados based on several factors. After making that choice, I started looking for the right combination of cards for the meta, and that’s how I got in contact with Austino.

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…

Gyarados, Gyarados, Gyarados : City Championships, MN, Jan 8+9, 2011

Pikkdogs — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 17:14:25 +0000

Hey Everyone, this is Pikkdogs and Ed here to give you a dual article about the Cities we attended this weekend. We’re going to see how merging the two reports works. Pikkdogs played on Jan 8th, and Ed played both the 8th and 9th. Pikkdog’s matches will be in blue and Ed’s in red. The article intro is by Pikkdogs, and the wrapup is by Ed.

Jan 8th Misty Mountain Games in Burnsville

I was able to attend a tournament in Minnesota this weekend. I normally play in Michigan, but I spend my time away from school in Minnesota so I was able to attend the tournament on Saturday in Burnsville, MN. I was really excited to go to this tournament, because it was slated to be the reunion of Team Omar. This is because both me and Omar will be in town, so the team will be able to get together for one more tournament. I have fond memories of this past summer, when Omar won 3 cities so I was excited to see if we can take another victory medal.

I always like to play in Minnesota because the Metgame is much more relaxed. …

Like Jerry Seinfeld, Pikkdogs is Even Steven, Rochester Hills Cities Report

Pikkdogs — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 02:04:09 +0000

My fellow Seinfeld fans will appreciate the reference to the episode where Jerry continually loses things and then gains things back again. This is how I felt today at the Rochester Hills City Championships. No matter how hard I fight to break away from the crutches of mediocrity, it pulled me back in, but then I was reminded that it wasn’t that bad.

The story of the 2010 Rochester Hills Michigan City Championship begins on Friday afternoon. I got back from my jog and fired up the computer. I got a message from Derek, our tournament organizer, saying that he expects a record draw to the next cities and reccomends that we all show up early. I decided to pass that info on to my buddy Jona, and hope to make it there when registration starts, at 11. I end up making it by 11:10, the parking lot was full, but I was able to register. At about 11:20, they begin turning people away, because the fire code only lets 70 people in the building. This left several players, including last years state champion, away from the tournament. When I saw this I thought I…

Second Best or First Loser? Gyarados vs. Luxray

Ed — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:44:38 +0000

This past Saturday (12-04-10), I went up to The Source to play in their city championships. 25 masters showed up, giving us 5 rounds of Swiss with a cut to top 4. I brought Gyarados with me, but I left my sick daughter, Ava, at home. Hopefully she can join me this weekend.

Round 1) Justin K. with Lefeon/Flareon/Arceus
I don’t know why, but I’ve played Justin in just about every tourney we’ve both participated in. Heck, I even got matched against him at regionals. Well, at least he’s used to playing against me. He started with a fire Arceus on his bench. I think I Regimoved it active, and he ended up belting it. I used the 2X water weakness to my advantage and went up 2-0 in prizes. After that, he couldn’t recover.
1-0

Round 2) Emmanuel D. with Machamp SF/Prime and Kingdra Prime
I’ve played against this deck before. You might think it’s heavily weighted in my favor, but it’s not that bad for him. What is bad is prizing like all his primes and 2 Bebe’s. I am pretty sure he used Seeker to use Azelf’s Time Walk 3 times. In theory, he should be…

PokemanDan’s PokeClass Episode 7 – Gyarados, The Comeback!

PokemanDan — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:23:54 +0000

Ed’s Note: This is Team Omar’s 100th article! Try to imagine 100 balloons dropping from your ceiling and people blowing silly noisemakers as you read this. Anyway, I wanted to point that out and say THANKS to all you guys who read our ramblings. Well, without further ado, I’ll let you get back to your regularly scheduled PokeClass, and we’ll start working on our next 100!

This week, I am analysing a deck that was very popular last season and even took second place at Worlds in Seniors. However, after rotation it has suffered a bit from the loss of certain cards but here I am looking at how Gyarados can be better than ever before after the release of Triumphant!

P.S Went to a second Battle Roads on Saturday and managed to get 2nd place, only losing to the guy who went on to win so I’m pleased with that!

Deck Analysis: Gyarados (1st Place BR report included)

Austino — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:24:45 +0000

Yes, the angry dragon/eel/fish is STILL here and kickin’ (or splashing, rather)! Over the past few weeks of going through old tournament reports and decklists, I remembered how well Gyarados has treated me every time I’ve played it. However, I had a small issue with the deck concerning the recent rotation. The exclusion of Claydol (GE), Night Maintenance, and Felicity’s Drawing were something of a hindrance to the efficiency of the deck. Sure, there are cards like Uxie and Volkner’s Philosophy that could fill in, but would it work? Some….no, MANY have completely written of Gyarados until Junk Arm and Rescue Energy are released. While I agreed with the assumptions that the deck won’t work without Felicity’s/Claydol for a while, I quickly found that the deck can not only still fully function without them, but THRIVES in a format with trainer lock where using supporters is required as well as a pokemon that can FISH (har har, puns) them out of your deck.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “What are you going to do against Vileplume, scrub? Good luck winning when you can’t play SSU, Communications, Poketurns, and most importantly, your rescues, which Gyarados hinges on.” This is a…

A Tale Of 2 Roads (The Battle Type)

Ed — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 00:13:55 +0000

Eh, there’s not much to say, but I figure that I ought to write something up. This weekend, there were 2 BRs in the area. Ava, Abdi, and I went to the first one. Abdi played Machamp, I played “Hot TOSSED” (as it was dubbed), and Ava played Donphan. Ava and Abdi couldn’t make Sunday’s tourney, so Gyarados and his pals accompanied me.

We had a higher than normal turnout at both events, thanks in part to a group of guys that road tripped it from South Dakota. It seems that the Sioux Falls league is poorly run, and they never receive their proper promos or prerelease swag at the events there. Someone ought to do something about that, because if these guys are that into the game attending a mismanaged league, just think how well things could be going (and how many people they could get into the game) if league and other events were run properly.

Well, on to the reports.

Saturday, Misty Mountain Games
As I mentioned, I played “Hot TOSSED” which features the Blaziken FB tech to try and shore up some concerns with Dialga and Vileplume matchups.

Round 1: Jon Nichols (aka Jake Long)…

Deck Workshop: Will Gyarados Stil be Atrocious After Rotation?

Pikkdogs — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 07:38:09 +0000

A big hello to all of you in Omar-Nation. This is Pikkdogs here with a deck workshop.

Before we get started I would like to talk a little about Twitter. I loved hearing you guys tweet during Nationals, and because of that I decided to get into Twitter more. I have started to tweet about my decks and have found a couple of other people who do the same. So if you are on twitter I would love to have you follow me and hopefully we can converse about the game. Also, if you know anyone in the game who tweets also about it, please let me know. My user name on there is “Pikkdogs.”

Like most of you, I am currently working on getting my decks post-rotation ready. Some of my decks are working well, and some aren’t. One that I am kind of on the fence about is Gyarados.

Just a small run through the strategy of the deck for all the new-comers. Gyarados decks try to discard three Magikarps by turn 2 and then promote a Gyarados SF to do 90 damage with its “Tail Revenge” attack. To get the karps in the discard pile, most people…

Battle Roads: Dreamers, St. Louis Park, MN

Ed — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:24:40 +0000

Saturday saw Team Omar take 3 of the top 4 spots in MN’s second Battle Roads. Sunday brought us a new opportunity to claim a Victory Medal. This time it was at Dreamers. My daughter, Ava, had birthday parties to attend both days, so she couldn’t attend. Here’s how my day went down. This will be somewhat of a mini-report, because Omar is going to come along and give full coverage of the weekend’s events.

Round 1: Radu Ciocan – Sabledonk/SPionage/Sablelock
Radu starts Uxie. I donk him with my Sableye.
1-0

Round 2: Thomas Veazie – DialgaChomp
It wasn’t a super-quick battle, but Thomas never got anything set up for long. Most of the game was me bringing up his 110HP Pokemon and one-shotting them with Gyarados.
2-0

Round 3: Mark – BLG (Blaziken, Luxray, Garchomp)
This was a pretty good battle. I donked Mark the previous day when I played Shuppet and he played Jumpluff. Today was a tougher battle. Garchomp uses up a lot of energy, and if they can’t take prizes each turn, it’s tough once I get Gyarados set up. He got desperate near the end, and I recall having to use…

Austino’s Gyarados Decklist

Ed — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 15:18:30 +0000

“Austino’s Gyarados” No, it’s not a new gym leader’s Pokemon, but maybe it should be. After all, Austino rode Gyarados to 3 top cuts in States/Regionals ultimately grabbing second place in the CO regionals earning him a 2 round bye at nationals and a $1000 scholarship. All it got me was 5th (after Swiss) in MN states and 17th in the WI regionals.

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…

Riding the Bubble in Wisconsin Dells

Ed — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 04:36:13 +0000

Going in to regionals, I felt a bit ill prepared. I had wanted to run Jumpluff, because playing it pleases me. I didn’t get much play with the deck, and when I tested it with Omar about a week and a half before regionals, he handed me like 5 consecutive losses. After that, I felt much more comfortable with the Gyarados I played in MN states. I decided to use the same deck, which put me at ease.

Most Gyarados builds would have a pretty similar core. Some people tech in Blissey, Luxray, and maybe even Donphan. I didn’t. Enough about my deck, though. If you want to read about that, see this article about Austino’s Gyarados. Let’s get to the regionals action.

My wife and kid picked me up at work, and we headed out to Wisconsin Dells. We arrived at the Wilderness Territory at around 7:30. It probably took us about 15 minutes to figure out where the Pokemon stuff was. There wasn’t a whole lot going on Friday night. They had pods for people that wanted to get some pratcice/testing in. Ed (not me) was there selling cards. We bought a couple deck…

Rap Video Explains The Pokemon TCG

Ed — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:02:51 +0000

First of all, I’ll try to give credit where it’s due. It sounds like Bret Brander, the New Mexico state champ, was asked to explain the Pokemon TCG, so he came up with this video with Ian Brander (his brother) and Disney Gonzalez.

If you want to read more about Bret, check out this article in the The Gazette of Colorado Springs. If you’re going to regionals in Denver, maybe you can get him to sign a Donphan for you. He’s obviously on his way to rap stardom.

Gyarados Rocks Minnesota State Championships

Ed — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 04:19:34 +0000

After cities, I built an SP deck. You may have read about the LuxApe deck I was building. I had thought it would be a deck that I could play at States, but the more I played it, the less I was confident with it as a tourney choice. A few weeks ago, I decided on playing Gyarados, and I feel that, in retrospect, it was a smart choice. Ava was ready to go with her Scizor/Cherrim deck that she’s been practicing with.

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.…