Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Battle Roads tournament report!


Hello all the The Deck Out followers!


I just came home after a very interesting weekend and I’m back with a special update – my tournament report! I played a Battle Road this Sunday and was very excited because it was my first tournament of the year. At the moment I don’t have that many chances to go to the tournaments so I didn’t want to play metagame. I was playing the deck I call Electroman (named after that song from Benny Bennanssi and T-Pain). Here is the decklist:


Pokemon:

3x Voltorb
2x Electrode Prime
4x Tornadus
2x Zekrom
1x Reshiram
1x Pachirisu
1x Shaymin
=14


Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
2x Pokegear 3.0
2x Professor Juniper
2x Professor Oak’s New Theory
2x Sage’s Training
2x Bianca
3x Pokémon Communication
3x Pokémon Catcher
4x Junk Arm
2x Research Records
1x Super Scoop Up
2x Twins
=29

Energy:

8x Lighting Energy
5x Fire Energy
4x Double Colorless Energy
=17


I once called this deck ZRE because It has Zekrom, Reshiram and Electrode but it also had Tornadus so I didn’t want to disgrace one of my favorite decks. And Electroman is a nice name so why not.

I’ve always loved cards like Electrode ex which versatility is unbelievable. Electrode Prime is considered as a horrible card but with Research Records, Junk Arms and Twins it’s pretty decent. This deck’s main strategy is to blow up 1 Electrode Prime and live with those energies and your turn energies for the rest of the game while killing things with Catcher and Digimons. It only problems are decks like Gothitelle and Ross’ decks but it has an answer against them as well because you can blow 2 Electrodes and keep the game tied. These 2 decks work with Twins but with Electrode Prime you have the board control and they can’t use Twins. I love this deck and I’ll make a big blog entry about this deck if anyone wants to learn more about this deck and its possibilities.

I ended up playing this deck because I borrowed a deck for 4 players so this was all I had left. And as I said earlier I don’t want to play meta and I love this deck so it seemed like an natural option.


Now for the tournament.



We had 43 players in Masters so it was pretty big tournament and it started a little late.

Interesting fact: I started 5 games with a lone Voltorb…


1. Round (Mewgar/Muk/Vileplume)

As soon as I realized what I was playing against and survived the lone Voltorb start, I knew it was an auto-win. I blowed-up my 2 Trodes T2 and 3 so he didn’t get Twins going and while he didn’t draw Vileplume because he couldn’t use Twins I just ran through him with Tornadus. It was a funny game because until the end of his last turn, he had more Pokémons in Lost Zone than I did XD (Muk and Gengar).

2. Round (Reshiram/Typhlosion)

I got a pretty decent opening hand and T2 Trode blowing up. I got 2 DCEs and 2 Basic energies from the Electrode with the help of Research Records. I could Catcher him every turn which crippled his set-up completely. He really didn’t even get a set-up in this game because I killed his Cyndaquils and Quilavas before they could evolve.

3. Round (Reshiram/Emboar)

Once again I start with a lone Voltorb but I get to go first. I used Collector and hit 30 to his Tepig. Next turn he just Collectored 2 Reshirams and a Tepig. I knew that I didn’t have anything that could OHKO fully HP Reshirams so I had to take a risk and attach 2nd energy to active Voltorb, evolve it into Electrode Prime and killed Tepig with Gigashock. The best thing about Gigashock is that it hit 10 to 2 benched Pokémons. It was just enough to get the Reshirams into the KO range of my Zekroms/Reshirams. It’s funny how a horrible attacker like Electrode Prime can really win you games. Well, the next turn I just blowed up the Electrode once again and started killing Tepigs with Zekrom. My bench was fully loaded with energies so I knew I had the game once I had the 3 prize lead + 10 damages on the 2 Reshirams.
3-0

I was happy because I was 3-0 and because my deck was worked very well so far. I had used every card of the deck and it really didn’t have weak spots. After the 3rd round was the lunch break but for some reason I’m incapable of eating during tournaments so I just stalled around the place and talked to people while waiting for the lunch break to end.

4. Round (Zekrom/Pachirisu/Shaymin)

I start with a lone Voltorb and he goes first donking me with Outrage and 2 Pluspowers. PP.
3-1

I had lots of time to play around during this round so I watched my friends’ games and waited anxiously for the next game.

5. Round (Zoroark/Yanmega/Cinccino)

This match was probably the worst of the days matches. We both got a bad start but because Tornadus is obviously a better starter than Zorua, I just run through him with a lone Tornadus because he didn’t draw anything in the whole game. I don’t like playing these kind of games.
4-1

6. Round (Zekrom/Pachirisu/Shaymin/Tyrogue)

I start – surprise, surprise – with a lone Voltorb and he retreats Zekrom with DCE and donks my Voltorb with Tyrogue and Pluspower.
4-2


Yeah, I was frustrated because I didn’t have that many good games during the tournament and my both loses were donks. Fortunately I knew that my tiebreak was pretty high so I fugred I could have a good chance top cutting. And so I did. I ended up  7th place and playing against my big brother – yeah right.

Top8 (Reshiram/Typhlosion)


1. Game

I had tested this match-up with my brother 2 months ago and knew it was pretty even. And so it was. I tried to lure him into retreating his Typhlosion Prime with 120 on it, with Afterburner and turn energy but I think he was one of the few that knew what  Electrode Prime did ( he had a second Typhlosion with 120 damage on it on the bench as well). If he had retreated the Typhlosion with Afterburner I could have Catchered the other Typhlosion and Gigashocked the both Typhlosions for 2 prizes. Instead of retreating he figured to start a brainless prize-trade which ended up 1 prize in his favor because he started the game.
0-1(4-3)

2. Game


I get to go first and used Pokegear. I whiffed the Collector which I needed for the T1 donk. Instead of donking I just attached an energy to the active Tornadus and passed. He didn’t get a fast set-up but because I missed my all DCEs (I had 3 DCEs in my 5 card deck in the end of the game), Energymite discarded Junk Arm, Catcher and a Shaymin and he draw his last Junk Arm AND Catcher from the PONT he won the game by one prize. If anything would have gone differently, I would have won the game but too bad I had bad luck and that’s it.
0-2(4-4)


After the game I was pretty frustrated about my bad luck so I figured it would be the best to go eat something good with friends and so I did. Good food – better mood.


My big brother ended up placing 2nd, losing to a ReshiBoar in the finals. The Reshiboar player has won our both tournaments this season so it was nice seeing him win again. Well, I didn’t gain any Championship Points but it really doesn’t matter – I don’t have money to go to Hawaii. I know most people are interested in our metagame so here are the top8 decks.

1. Reshiboar
2. ReshiPlosion
3. Zekrom/Tornadus/Pachirisu
4. Zekrom/Tornadus/Pachirisu
5. Zekrom/Tornadus Pachirisu
6. Zekrom/Tornadus Pachirisu
7. Zekrom/Tornadus/Reshiram/Electrode Prime
8. Stage1


As you can see Zekrom was highly represented in our BRs but in the end Reshi variants were better. This was only a one tournament but I can easily say that the top2 decks in this format are ReshiPlosion/Reshiboar and Zekrom/Tornadus. And if look at the BR results from the U.S. we can see the same. I’ll get into the deeper analysis of the results of the Battle Roads next month but I hope you enjoyed my article and don’t hesitate to leave feedback!

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to come back this Friday when it’s time to analyze one of the tier1 decks – Zekrom/Tornadus!


6 comments:

  1. Interesting deck. Why do you put so much Tornadus in it ? Reading your report, it looks like Zekrom is more important than Tornadus to the deck (except round 5 :p ).
    I also notice you didn't put any Dual Ball, instead there is Bianca. Any reason behind that ?

    Overall, the report was interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Playing 4 Tornadus is a must because you want to start with it and take the easy prizes with it because that way you can load Zekroms. If you use Zekroms early game, you're screwed because you don't have enough enery acceleration for Zekrom's because they're easily KOed back.

    And as you can see from my deck, there is no flip. Dual Ball is a horredous card in this deck because you need 2 Voltorbs on your bench everytime. With Dual Ball that doesn't work unless you flip every flip heads. And Collector is better against trainer lock as well. AND you can get Collector with Pokegear, which is great in your first turn.

    I experienced Bianca in this deck and it worked very well. This deck doesn't want to shuffle the certain cards in to the deck so Bianca worked very well.

    Thanks for the comment!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow you are doing an awsome job here! Keep it up!

    ReplyDelete
  4. i love this deck and i've been experimenting with a lot of different possibilities, like a legend-based version and others - i would love a blog post on this :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous: Thank you very much! I'll be doing an Electrode Prime featured blog entry sometime in the future. Thanks for comments!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I've tried a variant of this deck, in mine I put a 2-2 RDL line in. In your list you have no way to beat Gothitelle which is a major deterrent to me, but you already have the energy for RDL (I switched some Fire for Rainbow BTW) and it OHKOs everything in the format sans a rogue Tyranitar deck. You could also runs a 1-1 or 2-2 DCL to beat Gothitelle, again all you need to change is add rainbows over fire/lightning. The best part about the legends is you run twins. The only downside is they can be prized or discarded (a 2-2 line rectifies this but also takes more space)

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.