Cheffords’ 2010 Pokemon National Championships

Monday, July 5th, 2010

Here’s my report from the master’s division at this year’s Nationals.

First, a little about the event. My daughter and I have been planning to attend Nationals this year ever since we failed to go last year. We knew we were golden when we convinced my wife to come along and treat it like a family vacation. The drive from Michigan was easy, about 5 hours, and we made it with plenty of time to get the early registration t-shirts. We didn’t really grasp the scale of the event until Friday morning though.

The venue was gigantic, easily the biggest single room I have been in for a long time (in fact I am having difficulty recalling another time when I was in a room this size.) There are tons of people milling about. There are people in line for the Video Game Tournament. There are side rooms with vendors, open playing, and just hanging out. In the main room there are separate sections for each of the age groups, one for league play and side events, one for eating with tables and one for the video game stuff too.

Throughout the weekend we see people we know from Michigan …

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2 Wins in 2 Days, Epic

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

So, this weekend was full of tons of excitement and fun games. There were 2 tourneys, Ed did his reports, and hyped up mine I guess. The 2 days I ran the same deck both days, Gengar Garchomp C (again). I almost played Blaziken Garchomp day 2 since Dialga is everywhere, but decided to go with what I was successful with.

So the first day was at the source in St. Paul, and there were 5 rounds cut to top 4. So, day 1 report begins here.

Game 1: Me vs. Charlie

So game 1 I play my teammate Charlie, who was playing Blaziken Garchomp. Since I built his deck, I knew what he could and couldn’t do, and he is a newer player so he would make more mistakes then me. The game was somewhat of a game for the first couple turns; I started horrible and had to pitch dark the first 2 turns with Gastly in play and on the bench. Luckily, his entire search was trainer, and he slowed as well. I finally top collector, and start rollin. I Garchomp his Garchomps, and unown G my claydol. This keeps my claydol safe and his bench owned. …

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Battle Roads: Dreamers, St. Louis Park, MN

Monday, June 7th, 2010

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.

Austino's GyaradosRound 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 many Warp Energy and Super Scoop Up to get Regice and Claydol out of the way. In the end, it’s was all that Warping that won me the game.
3-0

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Battle Roads Report: The Source, St. Paul, MN

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

Shuppet - PlatinumI’m going to keep this short. Maybe Omar will add his report, and mine won’t be as interesting. In fact, mine probably isn’t that great, but since it’s the first time I’ve played in top cut, I figured I’d better add something for the archives.

The details will be a bit blurry and maybe inaccurate. I didn’t take any notes, and I didn’t have my camera.

Game 1: Mark – Eevee
Mark goes first and attaches a call energy to his 50HP basic. He calls for Eevee and something else. On my turn, I KO his Eevee. He goes again, and doesn’t do a whole lot. I think I may have had Mr. Mime active. On my turn, I KO something else. Mark scoops.
1-0

Game 2: (different) Mark – Jumpluff
Mark starts with active Azelf (IIRC). I donk.
2-0

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Team Omar’s First Team Victory

Monday, May 24th, 2010

Woohoo!!!! After about a year of playing competitively, and only about 3 months after the whole team of team omar was put together and created, we have our first team win. Who cares if it was just a battle roads, its a victory no less. The win came from me, and ill give my report on the day. But, other then me winning, we did have another team member t4 with Charizard. Dont know how he did it, but he did.

Anyways, the deck of choice i had going into the tourney was Gengar Garchomp C. The reason for it is because of the snipe ability. I thank whomever created the deck (i believe Kendall, but idk how to spell it)for creating it and sharing with the world the idea. So, on to the report. This tourney had 28 Masters, 4 away from top 8, so its 5 rounds cut to top 4, and the best part was that of the 28 people, 7 were team omar representitives

Round 1: Me vs. Gyrados/Kingdra Prime

The game starts with me starting a Garchomp C. He starts Sableye just like every other gyrados deck in the world, and a regice on the …

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Interview and Pictures From WI Regional

Saturday, April 24th, 2010

Hey guys. This will be a quick post. Check out this YouTube video. It’s an interview I did with Steven Reich of the Poke Press this last weekend right after I got eliminated from the regional tournament. Steven seems like an interesting fellow. I guess he’s been covering Pokemon events for around 10 years, and he runs a league, too. If you want to see more of his videos, check out the Poke Press YouTube channel.

In addition, I am finally posting the pictures that I took at the tournament. They are nothing special, but I figured that I ought to include them somewhere. Those are just after the video.



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Pokemon Regional Championship, Angola, Indiana

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

Following my good showing at the Michigan State Championship (we won’t mention my meltdown in top-cut), I knew for sure that I would be taking the same deck to Regionals. The problem I had was I wanted to do a little tweaking but wasn’t able to do any play testing at my local league. Fortunately I have a group of friends at work that like to play during our lunch. I built Pikkdog’s Flyperior deck and a typical CurseGar to play against. I figured out a nice tactic against the Flyperior deck, but wasn’t realy consistant in winning. Testing against CurseGar was really tough on me (I don’t think I won a single game) and it taught me a lot about how that deck works.

Based on my testing, I decided on the following tweaks to my deck:

-2 great ball
-1 pokedex
+1 Copycat
+1 Unown G
+1 Cyclone energy

I didn’t get to test these tweaks, but I printed my deck list, packed my bags, and hoped for the best in the morning. We live in Michigan and the event was held in Indiana, this meant we were in for a drive that Google Maps says is 2 hours long. This of course didn’t count the construction underway on our route, so make it 2 hours and 30 minutes.

We arrive, get registered and wait for the day to get underway. Age division rosters get posted and masters has 146 players, 8 rounds of swiss parings with a top cut of 32. I planned on taking notes throughout the day and did pretty well, but as the day wore on I got more and more disctracted so the details of my later matches aren’t as strong as my earlier ones. Here’s how my day played out:

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Riding the Bubble in Wisconsin Dells

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

Team Omar Midwest Regionals

Team Omar at Midwest Regionals (photo by Steven from Poke Press)

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.

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2010 Michigan State Pokemon Championship – Okemos Convention Center

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Shuppet PlatinumHey there, Cheffords here. This is my first tournament report, and first post to TeamOmar.com. I hope you get something out of this, because I know I do when I read other people’s reports.

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.

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Michael’s MN State Pokemon Championship report!

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Hey everyone, this is Michael making my first post on Team Omar. Anyways, for the past few weeks I had been testing and perfecting a Flyphan list, but on the Wednesday before states at the Misty Mountain weekly Pokemon Tournaments, Radu told me it was trash and instead wrote me up Jay H’s GG list. I couldn’t resist such a good list, so I quickly set out to gather up all the cards. I finished the list on that Friday, and went to testing. Through testing, I found the lock GG puts out is one of the funnest things to do. Lukas came over and stayed the night, and I beat him 4/5 times while he used SP. That Friday night, I also playtested against Thomas V’s Gyrados, and beat it 2/3 times. Unfortunately, I would not have that same luck the next day.

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 longer, so I built her a 3-2-3-1 Mchamp 2-1-2 Nidoqueen deck, so she could do good, and to show her that pyramid decks suck, and that real competitive decks win. Thats the small story behind her, and it showed.

Michael Playing at the Top Tables Surrounded By the Big Boys

Michael Playing at the Top Tables Surrounded By Sharks

Moving onto the tourney:

Michael playing: GG

My friend Sabrina playing: A Machamp Nidoqueen deck I built her.

Round 1:  Michael S.(GG) VS Ryan Westgard(SP)

I start with a Ralts, he starts with Garchomp C. He has a godly hand, and I TGW(Team Galactics Wager) it away. He still manages to take three prizes, but then, I have the Gardevoir set up, and under the lock, SP could not do a thing. He keeps trying to play Uxie for 4 or 5, and I am like “No stupid, power lock”. He couldn’t do anything while I beat down everything he had.

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