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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I’m going to file this under “Tourney Report” even though it turned out to not be an actual tournament. It still felt like a tournament to me, even though it wasn’t official. Here’s the story.
My family and I went out to Rapid City over the Easter weekend. We arrived on Friday, and Grandma came home from skiing. We hadn’t told her that we were coming, so she was surprised and cried tears of joy to see her grandkids. Then, on Saturday morning, they took my kids skiing. Can you sense a theme here? Yeah, they dig the slopes.
I figured that Pokemon was cheaper than a lift ticket, so I’d go do my own thing for the day. The Rapid City “South Side Pokemon League” had a tournament scheduled for the day, so the timing was right. It was an Unlimited Constructed tournament with a catch. Cards that are currently Modified-legal were banned. I thought this was quite an interesting twist, and since I didn’t have much for cards in between very old and very new, I didn’t know what to expect.
I arrived at “First Chance Last Chance Games” (which, according to this legend, was once “First Chance Last Chance Saloon” 101 years ago) and there was a long wait. This is only the second time I’ve tried to attend a Pokemon event in Rapid City, and both have been on holiday weekends. The last time was the day after Christmas and the morning after a big snowstorm. I think there were only 3 local players that day. The day before Easter was slightly better. 6 people (which includes myself) showed up and had decks. A 7th person also showed without a deck. I figured that I could build him a deck real quick if it came to it, but we needed at least 8. That didn’t happen, so the tournament was officially called off. Unofficially, though, I figured people (like myself) had built interesting decks, so I still wanted to battle it out.
During what was now league time, I was able to duel 4 of the 5 players that built decks for the tournament. I didn’t really keep notes about individual games, since it wasn’t a tourney. I did take a couple pictures (that are now posted at the bottom of this article). I do recall that my first match was against Adam. His deck revolved around Dark/Rocket Pokemon. Many of them were EX, and after a long defensive battle, I was able to KO 3 of them to get my 6 prizes.
Then, I played against Chris. Chris was one of the guys that actually showed up the day after Christmas. On this day, though, Chris wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t see a whole lot of his deck, and I got the feeling that he was just going through the motions of playing just to humor me and my desire to play against people’s tournament decks.
After playing Chris, I played against a younger kid. I’m sorry, but I don’t remember his name. His deck was mostly Base Set fire Pokemon. He did get Charizard powered up and even did a Fire Spin. After he removed 2 of his own energy, and Chansey wasn’t even phased by the Fire Spin, he seemed to lose interest in Charizard. My Energy Removal combined with his own put him in a pretty bad spot against my damage removal.
My final match was against Becky. I recall thinking that her deck was rather interesting, but I don’t recall what all she played. I do remember the Delta Species Jolteon repeatedly doing Return Spark. After several of these attacks, some Damage Swapping and Pokemon Centers came out. Let’s just say that Becky wasn’t real happy with me. Energy Removal and damage removal combined to frustrate my opponents all day.
So, I went 4-0 in the non-tournament. I played tons of Energy Removal and other nastiness. I was very surprised that nobody played any Energy Removal, Gust of Wind, Professor Oak, Item Finder, CPU Search, etc. against me. At least I don’t recall any.
So, I had fun, and I hope that I wasn’t too annoying of an opponent for the South Siders. Now, let me get into the deck I played. I had 2 decks left around from the Base Set/Jungle/Fossil time-frame. One is a Haymaker deck, and the other was this Alakazam Damage Swap deck. I figured that the Haymaker would take too much modification, because it had cards like Bill, Plus Power, and Electabuzz that were all reprinted recently. The Alakazam deck had some things like Double Colorless Energy and Bill, but they weren’t as integral to the play of the deck.
Abdi lent me a few interesting trainers/supporters/energy, and on the 9 hour drive to Rapid City, I built my deck. I had one very interesting find while searching through some of the odd cards I picked up here and there along the way. Persian, from EX Delta Species, looked pretty darn cool. Its “Prowl” Poke-Power lets you search your deck for ANY 1 card and put it in your hand, and it’s “Snap Tail” attack can snipe for 30 damage. Both seemed good to me.
Once I arrived, I laid it out and took another look. The deck is almost entirely defense, and I was worried that an opponent might set up a quick attack and use Gusts to take out my wimps before I could do anything. To counter that, I decided to toss in 4 Energy Removal (the deck already had 2 Super Energy Removal). I figured that the removal could slow down an opponent long enough to get my damage swap/removal set up. It did.
Here’s the list I ran. At the bottom, I’ll give a quick run-down of how the deck works.
Pokemon: 14
4 Chansey (Base)
2 Mr. Mime (Jungle)
2 Abra (Base)
2 Kadabra (Base)
2 Alakazam (Base)
1 Meowth (Jungle)
1 Persian (Delta Species)Trainers: 24
4 Energy Removal
2 Super Energy Removal
2 Scoop Up
3 Pokemon Center
2 Item Finder
2 Computer Search
2 Professor Oak
2 Gust of Wind
2 Master Ball
2 Dual Ball
1 Pokemon RetrieverSupporters: 8
2 Celio’s Network
2 Lanette’s Net Search
1 Wally’s Training
1 Mr. Stone’s Project
1 Forrest Guardian
1 Island HermitEnergy: 14
7 Psy Energy
2 Recycle Energy
2 Full Heal Energy
3 Double Rainbow Energy
The idea is to start with Chansey. If you can use his Scrunch attack to slow down the opponent, that’s great. You can also use Scoop Up to clear damage off of him (or as an alternative to retreating). Energy Removal is a very nice way to add to this stall (and ruin your opponent’s chance of ever doing anything useful in some cases). While stalling with that wall, you need to build up Alakazam (and maybe Persian) on the bench.
Once Alakazam is set up, then you can start moving damage counters around. I would usually spread them out evenly among the benched Chanseys. That reduces the chance of a Gust KOing one. If you have a Scoop Up, you can put up to 110 damage on a Chansey (without energy on him) and Scoop him. If not, just wait until you start getting uncomfortable with all the counters, move them to any un-energied Pokemon you have, and play Pokemon Center. That’s a sure-fire way to annoy your opponent.
At some point, you will want to attack. If you’ve devastated your opponent enough, you can use Chansey’s Double Edge attack. It does 80 to the opponent, but it also does 80 to Chansey. To use this effectively, you need to be fairly certain that your opponent can’t do 40 damage to Chansey on his turn. If he can’t, then you can just swap the damage back to the bench, and do it all over again.
Persian’s sniping attack also turned out to be pretty good. It only does 30, but that worked well against some wimpy benched guys. The Double Rainbow Energy helps Persian but reduces the output to only 20. Kadabra can attack for 50, but usually you’d need to evolve him to Alakazam. In the original deck, Kadabra would be a main attacker. Here, it didn’t usually happen that way. Alakazam is a bit of a last-ditch attacker. He can confuse the opponent, but it doesn’t seem worth it usually.
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.
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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: 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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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.
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My cities was INSANE out here. So many good players, including one of my losses came from a guy in the top 10 in worlds atm. I was running GG. Out here, everyone techs against Dialga. Everyone. Not one person likes it. haha. But there is what happened roughly.
Round 1: GG vs. Lady Gaga (luxray G & Garchomp G) with infernape 4 and blaziken FB
I locked up his ability to heal and his ability to bring up anyone he wanted active starting turn 2 and never looked back. He also didnt pull a supporter untill turn 4, and he didnt ever pull cyrus. Pretty much locked him up hard and then 1 hit KO his luxray with my gallade. He couldnt recover. GG :)
1-0
Round 2: GG vs. Salamance
I was really surprised at the amount of salamance decks out here. There are some pretty sick strategies with this deck. First, they run Kingdra, discard energies and do 60 and 20 to a bench. Then, they use delcatty and salamance AR to play multiple energies a turn, and the point is to injur someone on the bench to a point of being 20 hp away(usually claydol) and then they Lv. X their Salamance, and use shoot through, doing 50 up-front, most likely knocking him out, and then knocking out the benched guy. This gives them 4 prizes. Unfortunately for him, i had him in a lock starting turn 3 for the whole game, so no delcatty, no salamance AR energy acceleration, and no double fall(multiple prizes). He couldnt keep up, and lost.
2-0
Round 3: GG vs. Gengar, Nidoqueen, Blaziken FB????
Im not ever supposed to win this matchup. Period. I have too many pokepower people in my deck that are active at one point, and not enough unownG To cover everything up, making my only shot to get around Gengar is to use Gardevoir X and bring down, but unfortunately unownG their gengars, making that impossible to get around, and so they usually win the prize race and KO my dudes with fainting spell. And thats exactly what happened. i lost. I guess the blaziken is for Dialga, which is a good tech, i just never thought people would try it.
2-1
Round 4: GG vs. Blaziken FB, Blaziken PL?, and Gliscor(the one used in lock decks)
This was the slowest player ever. I guess the point they used was to burn me either with Blaziken PL? and gliscor, and then use the FB lvl X to do 40 more damage, whether it was blaziken using jet shoot, or gliscor using pester. Either way, they couldnt burn me, because i unownG my active gardevoir, and lock powers, so no way to burn. He also struggled getting cards since he got locked starting turn 2. unfortunately, i couldnt get KO’s because he would just use the gliscor’s attack and go back in his hand over and over, but after a while, since there was no BTS it caught up to him, and after time was called, i was winning 3-4 prize count. I swear i only attacked like 4 times, thats how long it took.
3-1
Round 5: GG vs. flygon nidoqueen dusknoir blazken FB gengar
IDK HOW HE DOES IT, but i guess he won cities last week with this redic amount of cards in his deck. He said he likes the variety and all the outs he has, but starting my second turn, he was power locked for the rest of the game. 3 turns later, he scooped, and i laughed thinking there is no way he won with that redic amount of cards in one deck. How he was 3-1 at this point was confusing.
4-1
So after this, turns out the top 8 are filled with some rediculously stacked decks not for my favor. turns out the guys i beat round 1 and 2 were also in the top.
1. Garchomp Dialga
2. Gengar
3. Flygon Varient
4. GG <– Me
5. Gengar
6. Lady gaga with infernape 4 and blaziken FB
7. Salamance
8. Garchomp Dialga
So i play 5th seed. Gengar. not to mention, this is a normal tourney where it is best 2 out of 3.
So, i get to play another Gengar deck, not the same one i played before, but one that ran Manectric, making it pretty much impossible for me to win, because of his spread ability, 30 dmg to anyone that has a pokepower for 1 energy, and then after two turns of that, he can compound pain for like 4 knock outs. So i sit down expecting to just lose. My lock saves me tho. He wasnt able to get enough energies, and missed many different drops, and because i started my lock turn 1 instead of 2, he wasnt ever able to unown G anything, making gengars killable without any fainting spell flips. So he scoops when he sees there is no way, and i am ecstatic. woohoo. i win round 1.
Now, the rounds are 45 min, to play best 2 out of 3. But, for game 2 to count, 4 prizes need to be taken. There was less then 20 min left after game 1. This game he was setting up at the normal pace, and i knew there was no way for me to win this game. He takes his 3rd prize when time is called. HAHAHAH yay!!!!.
So, as the top 4 are called, i laugh. The people i beat round 1 and 2 are playing each other, and then there was stefan Tobaco or sumthing like that. Hasnt lost yet today. ranked 11 in world before the tourney. Sweet jesus. He was playing Gachomp Dialga, So with the special metals, and resistence, i would usully do 20 and no pokepowers, so yeah i ended up losing this one. Couldnt get around 80 damage a turn when i can only do 20, and then he couldnt snipe claydols. Ish. So i end there, and salamance lost next to me. Since i beat salamance, i get 3rd, take 5 packs instead of 4, idk why, get a shiny omynite for my close to fully hollow water deck, and go 5-2, hopefully getting a positive rating on the day.
That was my day. lasted from 11-7:30. Sweet jesus.
Ed 
Cheffords 
Michael 
Omar