One Hit KO

Following the fun I had playing a rogue SP based deck at Cities this Fall, I decided to try something similar for States. This time my deck is based around the synergy between Blaziken FB Lv.X and Blaziken PL. My Cities deck had a 1 – 1 tech line of Blaziken FB and I found it was very powerful and could get KOs when you need them. I decided to use Blaze as the basis of my deck. A full deck writeup is forthcoming so I won’t go into the details here. This article is primarily to report my day and the games that I played.

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 up in line to register, do a quick deck check and sit down to a warm up game.

All my PokeFriends are rolling in; Pikkdogs, Evan, Collan, Cody, Ryan and the rest of Team Warp Point, Ryan, Ryan, Joel, Hunter and some folks that I always talk to but don’t know on a first name basis. It’s great to see everyone and to see the anticipation of good tournament on their faces.

The judges call the room to attention, lay out the rules and all of the announcements then give us the go ahead for round 1; the day is underway!

Continue reading "Playing with fire at the Michigan State championship, 2011"

Hello everyone in Omar Nation! This is Joel here with a report on the Michigan State Championships that took place over the weekend in Lansing, Michigan.

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 go first. I start with an Ambipom G and a Bronzong G on my bench, with a Double Colorless Energy, Energy Gain, and Cyrus in my hand. He has a Garchomp C active, Luxray GL and Dialga G on his bench. I go first and get a quick knockout first turn with Ambipom’s “Snap Attack”. He goes, benches a Crobat G, and uses Flash Bite to drop a damage counter on my Bronzong G, then passes. I draw, and get a Pokemon Collector. I get Uxie, Luxray GL and Crobat G. I drop Crobat, Flash bite his Crobat, attach a lightning energy to Luxray, then Snap Attack his active Luxray for 60. He goes, draws, and attaches to his active Luxray and passes. It seems he didn’t have anything playable in his hand, which is odd because there is usually something playable. I Poke-turn my Ambipom and Crobat, I flash bite his Bronzong, and promote Luxray to Bright Look his Crobat. I bite to get a 2 prize lead. It was after this turn that the game started to go downhill for me. He finally draws a Cyrus which allows him to catch up. I made my terrible misplay here as I played Professor Oak’s New Theory over Cyrus, and end up getting a terrible hand followed by terrible draws. He finally catches up and gets a prize lead over me. As soon as he gets his prize lead, time is called. After realizing that there isn’t much I can do in the next 3 turns, I scoop and get a terrible case of the first round jitters. It was a good game though.
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Continue reading "Another Michigan State Championships Report!"

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 in contact with Austino, but I started playing much less Pokemon. Andy (the reigning State Champion) and I got together to try to get a regular playtesting thing going. It worked well, but as time went on the regular turned into irregular and seemed to fall apart completely in the month leading up to States.

I had thought of switching to a new deck. I had planned on making a new deck for Ava. I had even considered rebuilding Gyarados for Ava and coming up with something completely new for myself. With my hobbytime focus diverted to other things for a while, none of this happened. I decided that I would once again lean on my old pals Magikarp and Gyarados to get me through. I’m a big believer in playing what you’re comfortable with, and this tale just further solidifies my stance, but we’ll get more into that as things unfold.

Continue reading "Gyarados ReRocks Minnesota State Championships (1st Place)"

One of my favorite quotes by Jesus is in Matthew 26 verse 52

“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 article I felt I …

A big hello to everyone in Omar-nation.  This is Pikkdogs here with a report on the upcoming state championships.                         

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 …

States are readily approaching and its time to get ready.  You could just pick a deck you like, test it a lot, and then leave for the tournament.  But, if you wanna read up on whats been happening in the game in the past couple months and what will happen, just continue reading this article.    

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 States. Anyone who plans to win a States and is not playing LuxChomp need the ability to beat it.

Another trend for cities was the return of Gyarados.  Of course Gyarados first came on the scene at Worlds two years ago, thanks to the help of the French.  “Tail Revenge” has invaded the Pokemon TCG scene like no other French attack has ever before (I’ll be here all week, try the veal, and tip your server).  But it was absent from Battle Roads this season, but has came back thanks to the help of Junk Arm.  Now with Junk Arm, Rescue Energy, and Volkner’s Philosophy Gyarados is ready to run over most decks.  It preforms well against a lot of the best decks, but can never seem to consistently beat Luxchomp.  Gyarados is ready to be a deck to be reckoned with for States, but I feel it won’t win too many because of LuxChomp. The Cities version of this deck should be very similar to what we will see at States.

Continue reading "An Introduction to State Championships 2011"

“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 on what techs to run in it. Lots of people were running Luxray. I tried that. Omar built a version with Blissey, but I wasn’t sold on it. I was really worried about the SP matchup and a bit worried about things like Mime and Spiritomb. I tried tossing in things like Combee, Promocroak, Relicanth, etc. I still wasn’t getting the feel that I was searching for.

Continue reading "Austino’s Gyarados Decklist"

Hey 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.

Continue reading "2010 Michigan State Pokemon Championship – Okemos Convention Center"

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 Sharks

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.

Continue reading "Michael’s MN State Pokemon Championship report!"

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.

Round 1: Traci W. (Feraligatr Prime, Gyarados G, and other water Pokemon)
When I sat down, she told me that all I had to do was let her take at least one prize. I must be a jerk, because I didn’t. I actually wanted her to take a prize, but she really couldn’t. She played a Rain Dance deck, but she only got about 2 energy the entire game. That’s not enough for Feraligatr and his pals. I got set up rather quickly. I think I started with Crobat G active, went second, played Collector, and Impersonated Felicity’s and was set up by turn 2. It went fairly quickly after that.

The interesting part was that Ava played Traci’s son, Chris, at the same time. This was Ava’s second tourney, and her first was winless. Ava pulled out an awesome sudden-death victory to start the day, so we knew that she wouldn’t be winless this time.

Continue reading "Gyarados Rocks Minnesota State Championships"