Monday, January 23, 2012

Double CC - with or without Chandelure?

Hey all The Deck Out followers!
Haters gonna hate

As promised, today is a time for a double CC report once again. I thought, I wouldn’t play Chandelure anymore but once again I was wrong. Also, I changed my deck for the second Cities so in the other tournament I didn’t play Chandelure. Well, what did I play? That you must find out on your own by reading this entry.

Anyways, I still needed at least 2 Top4 placements from my 3 remaining Cities so after these tournaments I only have one CC left. I can say that, I didn’t reach my goal this weekend but I’ll surely do it in my last Cities. I have no other choice. After the last Cities, I’ll tell you why I need to get this many CC points.

So without further chit-chat, let’s get into the tournament report.

Here was my Chandelure list this time. I wanted to play Cobalion since I hadn’t tried it out yet and I assumed that the metagame would be full of Kyurems. I was right, but still…

Pokémon:

4x Litwick(CFF)
4x Lampent
4x Chandelure
2x Doduo
2x Dodrio
2x Cleffa
1x Pichu
1x Chansey
1x Blissey
1x Jirachi
3x Oddish
2x Vileplume
1x Cobalion
=28

Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
4x Twins
2x N
3x Pokémon Communication
2x Tropical Beach
3x Rare Candy
4x Sage’s Training
=22

Energy:

6x Psychic
3x Special Metal Energy
1x Rescue Energy
=10

As you can see, I added Cobalion but the rest of the deck stayed the same. I would have wanted more Rescue Energy but didn’t find room for them. I was fully prepared against Kyurems but I didn’t believe that Durants were all around. Gloom would be good when playing against Durant because Vileplume is very hard to get to play without Gloom against Durant.

Anyways, into the tournament.


1. Round Magnezone/Eelektrik/Thundurus/Zekrom

I got a decent start but didn’t draw for a Vileplume with Eeeeks and Sage’s for a long time. He didn’t draw into his Magnezones either. We both Eeeked like 5 turns because he didn’t activate my Twins and once he took his first prize, the game started going. The problem I had in this game was that I didn’t draw in to any Twins at any point of the game. I missed Dodrio the whole game, which made my life really hard. I would have won the game if he didn’t flip paralyze heads with Magnemite in one of the early turns or if I had flipped tails from the late game Eeeeek. However, those coin flips combined to my lack of Twins decided the game into his favor.
0-1

I was pretty frustrated since the tournament was small and I couldn’t afford to any loses since the tournament was very small. (5 Swiss and Top4). I would need a 4-1 to get through.
0-1

2. Round Mirror

I hate mirrors because they are mainly decided by who goes first/ gets the first Chandelures. Well, my opponent started the game but used T1 Sage’s and discarded 2 energy from the Sage’s. I know that Chandelures don’t run that many energy so they can’t afford discarding in the early game that many energy. Thanks to that, I decided to Luring Light his Dodrio into the active position in T2 and it won me the game. He struggled in drawing into energy and I could do the damage with my Chandelures. In T5 I killed 2 Lampents with Cursed Shadow and his only Chandelure  with Jirachi and cleared the table.
1-1

3. Round Durant

Ugh, Durant. I either need a turbo 2 Chandelures and Dodrio or Chandelure and early Vileplume. I got pretty lucky here since I got a T3 Chandelure and Vileplume and won the game pretty easily since I did get one N secured into my hand. His Durants died and there was no way for him to get them back.
2-1


4. Round ReshiPlosion


This is a pretty easy match-up. I just let 3 of my Chandelures to get 120 on them, healed them with Blissey and just run through him and took the remaining 3 prizes with Jirachi. I think he only got 2-3 prizes during the whole game. It was Chandelure at its best.
3-1


5. Round 6 Corners


He didn’t ran Spinarak but I didn’t know that so I couldn’t risk starting with a Baby. That’s why the game was pretty difficult in the beginning however once I got Chandelure attacking his Kyurems were useless. I also got Blissey healing all of my damages from the field and the trainer lock did the rest of the job. 6 Corners loses so much when it can’t use its Junk Arms, Switches and Catchers that one Absol isn’t enough to counter a Chandelure deck.
4-1


So I got into the top cut. I was pretty happy since I got the 4 CP points and that was enough for me. However, thanks to my resistance due the first round loss, I had to pair up with the 5-0 Durant. I knew, I could just check my opening hands and decide whether to play or not. He also run Rotom, Smoochum and Spiritomb so I could hope for bad openers. Well, let’s see what happened.


Top4 Durant

1. Game

I had no draw in my opening hand and just draw passed 3 turns because he was able to Crushing Hammer my only energy away. While I draw-passed, he Devoured for 1. He didn’t get anything until the 4th turn when he started to Devouring for 3. I didn’t get anything during the whole game, gg.
0-1

2. Game

He once again opened with Durant but this time he didn’t have Rotoms prized. My opening hand was horrible once again so there was nothing for me to do. Twins don’t do that much against Durant, lol.
0-2


So, I finished 4th and got 4 CPs. That’s all I needed but I must admit that the tournament was pretty anti-climactic. It was funny that the Kyurems were all around but I managed to dodge them the only time when I played Cobalion. I did nothing with Cobalion during the whole tournament.  I either played against autowins or autolosses and there was nothing that I or my opponents could have done better. I was satisfied with the result but I wasn’t happy with the game. Waiting for the Next Destinies…

Here is the top4 of the tournament:

1. Six Corners
2. Durant
3. Magnezone/Eelektrik/Thundurus/Magnezone
4. Chandelure/Vileplume


Anyways, in the second tournament I had already decided to run Durant. Well, for those who don’t know that EVERY TIME I have played a donk/flip deck, I’ve done horribly - now you do. When I played Uxie donk last season, I went 1-5 and had horrible opening hands and flips the whole tournament through. Usually my heads percentage is something between 25%-30% so that's one of the reasons I'm such a consistency fan - I have no luck at all.

Durant once again was no exception. My tournament and games were a laugh so I will only give you the highlights of the matches. Of course I will give you my list as well (btw this very same list of mine won the Seniors in the same tournament).


Pokémon:

4x Durant
1x Rotom
=5

Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
3x Pokegear 3.0.
1x Xtransceiver
3x Twins
3x N
1x PONT
4x Juniper
2x Victory Medal
1x Black Belt
1x Seeker
3x Catcher
4x Crushing Hammer
2x Lost Remover
4x Junk Arm
4x Revive
4x Eviolite
=44

Energy:

3x Rainbow
4x Special Metal Energy
4x Basic Metal Energy
=11


1. Round Magnezone/Typhlosion

I hit 1/6 Crushing Hammers heads, got T3 Collector after 2 Ns and my 4th Durant was my last prize with Mischievous Trick,  gg.
0-1


2. Round Kyurem/Cobalion/Electrode

He got 5 Energy from a T2 Energymite without Research Records  but I used 2 Lost Removers, Catcher + Seeker trick to clear his field off energy. I miraculously won the game.
1-1


3. Round Mirror

He went first with a T1 Devour for 4. I also missed out energy from Juniper, which cost me the game. He had 2 cards in the deck when I decked out. There was nothing I could’ve done differently in the game. Durant mirrors are such skill-based games.
1-2


4. Round Vanilluxe/Vileplume

This match-up is almost an autowin. Well, he went first, got a T2 Plume, T3 Vanilluxe. Nuff said… I did kill his Vanilluxe with Black Belt + Vicegrip in the late game but he somehow he had everything once again in his hand. I think he was about 7 cards away from decking out when the game ended.
1-3


Well, you guessed it, I dropped. Ironically when I was 1-3, the 4-0 decks were all Durants. I guess I’m just a bad player since I couldn’t win with Durant while the others do, lol. Joking aside, I felt angry at the game. There is nothing I wait more than the change of the first turn rule and the new set. I think EXs will make the game slightly better but the real problem (the T1 rule) still stands. I wonder how long will players have to stand this ridiculous rule. I think I have to use my Japanese contacts to get in touch with PCL or something to make that change.

Here is the finals standings of the tournament:

1. Six Corners
2. Typhlosion/Reshiram
3. Durant
4. Zekrom/Tornadus/Eelektrik


Conclusion



If you look closely at the top4s of these two tournaments, you can figure something out of the metagame. In the first tournament Six Corners got just the right match-ups and ended up winning the only Durant of the tournament thanks to awesome topdecks and bad flips from Durant. The Durant vs. Six Corners match-up is in Durant’s favor but Six Corners got luckier. As for me in the first tournament, I got the only bad match-up against in top4 and I would have been in the finals if I have played against any other top4 deck.

As for the second tournament, it was full of Durants. That explains the weird ReshiPlosion finishing as the second place. ReshiPlosion faced 2-3 Durants in the Swiss and played against Durant in top8 and top4 as well. What I learned from these two tournaments, is that the tournament result is in a this black & white metagame decided by the match-ups. A not that good deck like ReshiPlosion can get very far as long as it can play against the right decks. I think that’s the reason Six Corners ended up winning the both tournaments. It doesn’t have an autoloss match-up and can play consistently against any match-up. The Chandelure match-up is difficult for Six Corners but Chandelure had a very difficult time in the Durant metagame so the amount of Chandelures decreased radically in the metagame.  

Anyways, thanks for reading and I’ll get back to the ordinary articles in the upcoming entries. The new set is about to be released so Impact Crater: Next Destinies is coming. Also, I have a lot of Mewtwo EX based deck articles and Mewtwo EX card analysis coming up as well. I’ll also get some more interesting interviews for you as well. My first featured writer will make his debut in the very near future as well so please let me know your opinions about that when it’s released!

Thanks again for reading and feel free to leave any comments!

19 comments:

  1. nothing about durant is skill based... except playing against it...

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  2. At least you made one cut! Any more Cities coming up or were those the last two?

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  3. Excellent article Esa!!!

    Chandelure is still a pretty good deck.
    Durant.... i don't like it very much, and i think it was a bad decision to play it (even if it was a good experiment).

    Also, have you thought about writing a Next Destinies, card by card-analysis article?
    -How it could affect the current meta
    -New archetypes on the rise with ND
    -Hot cards
    -etc

    Also, good luck in the 3rd CC!!!

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  4. Love the play-by-play! thanks! Looking forward to your mewtwo EX articles.

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  5. Anonymous: Haha, well I think that there are something you must do with Durant (like the Catcher + Seeker trick) but nonetheless most of the match are decided by the coin flips anyways, so I understand your point of view :D

    Adam: True but of course I want to aim higher. I have still one Cities to go. Have to win that one.

    Elias: I'll be doing an Impact Crater article out of ND once its release is closer so don't worry, I have great plans for ND as well. Thanks a lot!

    Ken: Thanks, I hope you like enjoy them!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Esa why did you join the dark side?!!! Why an underground article in 6Prizes?!!!

      Delete
    2. call me bitter, but i just feel that a deck that is harder to play against than it is to play in every matchup is bad for the game IMO. Also, i dont think that catcher + seeker is really a hard to play trick its more of a punishing bad play of your opponent which just adds to the its harder to play against durant than it is to play.

      Delete
    3. Why not just play Durant without coin flips?

      My roommate plays my Durant list for me, and took 4th in our last cities (54 people). I run 3-2 Weavile and 1 smoochum, with less emphasis on the crushing hammers and lost removers. That said, I'll need more lost removers when NEXT DESTINIES comes out... and the deck will need a bit of an overhaul, but I've just found it to be much more consistent and skill based than other Durants.

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    4. Crawdaunt: Yeah, the metagame of Finland forced me to play Curshing Hammers. I love Weavile in Durant and debated to the very last day, should I run it or not but it seems like it woudln't have affected my tournament result in any way. But sure, Lost Remover is a must when Next Destinies and Prism energy are released!

      Delete
  6. My face after I saw my 2nd match would be a Chandelure mirror against you.o_0 I got too good cards from both Sage´s Training, hard to decide what to discard.

    Also I´ve joined the league of "Haters gonna hate Durant". 3 out of 5 matches that all ended up in my loss was just too frustrating. Thankfully I didn´t have to play against any Durants in the sunday´s tournament.

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  7. Great read Esa, as usual!

    I had a quick comment for you that is certainly OT, but thought maybe best to post in your most recent blog as you would be checking the comments here.

    A few times now on both thedeckout and sixprizes I have read you making the claim that anyone playing Six Corners or CaKE/CoKE in the US must have first seen your decklists in the EoJ article before playing them. Without insulting your articles or undermining them in anyway (I love reading them!) I must respectfully disagree.

    On a personal level, I remember playtesting Kyurem well before NV was released and well before ever reading the EoJ article and just going through his possible energy acceleration options. Once I realized how much I loved Electrode Prime, I paired the couple with Beartic. Unhappy with the results, I tried Cobalion NV. I was pleasantly surprised with the deck, and thus had a deck essentially a mirror to CaKE before ever knowing who you were.

    I write this not to make myself seem cool or smart, but just to make a point. As far as Six Corners go, I remember reading people's decklists well before EoJ was released talking about how they threw all the basics together from the past and upcoming set and were pleasantly surprised how well the deck did.

    Anywho, I only bother writing all this to let you know that in the future you may want to be a little more careful when making a claim like that as some people may take it the wrong way (i.e. proud US deck-builders and playtesters) and you can quickly have a nasty argument on your hands that I know you did not intend to provoke.

    Hope that was useful and thanks for the great content!

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  8. Anonymous: I warned about that in my New Year's entry, haven't you read that :O But don't worry it won't affect my blog in any way(but positively).

    Anonymous2: Haha, yeah I am a huge fan of different ways of winning games but I'm too bad at flipping coins so I think I should wait for another DP Rhyperior to arrive once I can deck my opponent out. After all my blog's name is The DECK OUT.

    Luffymcduck: Durant really makes things interesting. The entire top8 of the Sunday's tournament was just crazy because of Durant. Versatility of the metagame is good but deciding the winner by match-ups isn't.

    Lee: Hmm, I have written to SixPrizes forums? I don't even remember posting into SixPrizes forums. Anyways, I have have read comments from players that if you want to know a base list of CaKE / Six Corners you SHOULD read my blog entries about them. I have seen quite a few players all around the internet saying that and it isn't even my opinion.

    I can't take any credit about inventing those decks since I haven't even invented them! I have just introduced them to the western players. If I look at the views I have for Six Corners article and the CaKE article, I must say that they are the two most read articles in my blog's history. Anyone can invent a rogue and put every big basic Pokémon into deck and do "fairly well" in a new metagame that hasn't developed yet but when a player hears that it's a "metagame" he goes and looks for information about that deck. Since I'm one of the only ones to ever write an article about 6 Corners and CaKE most of the players just link my blog into Gym, Heytrainer, SixPrizes and etc.

    I don't want to upset anyone but I don't want anyone claiming that they invented Six Corners or CaKE either. They were both introduced in my Eye on Japan even before I wrote my articles and they soon gathered a lot of attention. All the credit about the decks belong to the their respective Japanese builders. They are stil miles away from the western players when it comes to innovation.

    Thanks for your comment!

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  9. Agreed. I make no claims about who invented what - I think it can be a little silly to say "this one person invented said deck." The same logic can be applied to the statement in question: "anyone playing said deck must have gotten it from said place."

    As far as 6P go, I was referring to your most recent UG article.

    As far as the decks as being considered "meta" I certainly agree that your articles cemented their place to first really be considered there and allowed US players a place to first see a traditional decklist instead of a low-key "rouge" list.

    Can't wait to see the future of both decks as far as ND goes and reading future articles from you as well about one of the most hyped sets in history.

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  10. ".. I miraculously won the game..."

    There's someting miraculous about a milling-deck beating a deck based on using a power to mill 7 cards? Lol, i dont care how many energy he got off the E-mite - that matchup is amazing for Durant :P

    As for your comments on your own performance, I wouldnt be as nice as to credit it all to bad luck unfortunately... Having included a Flower Shop Lady in your list would've most likely won you the Vanilluxe-game - just sayin. I will however admit that you were unlucky to face a) mirror - luckbased, and b)Typhlosion - autoloss. But that's sorta what a Durant-player has to deal with - your matchups determine A LOT!

    Congrats though, on your t4 Chandy-finish - you once again show us readers what Chandy is capable of. A little tip though: Replace your Cleffa with Smeargle so that you wont have to be afraid of the Spider-lock ;) Working off Colourless energy, and being very compatible with Beach, Smeargle is by far the superior choice. Hope I helped :)

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  11. Lee: Ahhh, you mean that one. In the UG article I wanted to emphasis the importance of me and my blog to get some credibility. That's why I said that.

    Drachentraum: Yeah in retrospect, it's easy to say what I should've run and what not but since I didn't expect that many Trainer lock decks, I dropped the Flower Shop Lady. In the end, there were only 1 Vanilluxe and 1 Chandelure in the whole tournament. But in the end, Durant was just an experiment that went horribly wrong. However, it was a good choice during the whole weekend since in both Cities it was the deck that went undefeated and there were three of them in the top8 in the second tournament of the weekend.

    And miraculously, I was being sarcastic about that xD Maybe I should add the sarcasm markers to my text from now one :D

    Thanks for comments everyone!

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    Replies
    1. There were 2 vanilluxeplume and at least 3 Rogue plume decks.

      Delete
  12. I just have one question/comment. You say that the quality of your blog will not change because of you joining the 6P UG team. But then why would anyone pay UG to read your articles. It sounds as though you're implying that you would be able to find the same or better info on your blog. Is you being paid to write for 6P worth anything then? I say this as a 6P member who is seriously considering discontinuing my subscription, not as a critic of you personally.

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  13. I think because he is being payed to write UG articles he can justify spending more of his time writing about Pokemon TCG. So now Esa can spend the same amount of effort on his blog and put extra effort to write UG articles as well.

    Also I'm not personally an underground member I'd think more articles of the same quality as the deck out would be about as good motivation as one could get.

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  14. Anonymous: Max said it very well. I don't need to worry about spending my time on the blog since I don't need to find a job anymore. If I can do things that I love as a work at the same time it's a win-win for me. And if you're an UG member, you can compare the length of my usual blog articles and UG articles. My blog articles are usually between 2000-3000 words while the UG articles are over 6000 words because they have to be longer and more in-depth. And why would writing once to UG per month affect anyway my blog writing? I still have a lot of time just like before.

    If you find problem with me writing to an UG and to my blog at the same time, I encourage you to contact Adam of 6P about the matter since he makes all the decisions when it comes to UG writers! All I can do is speak for my own blog. You, as an UG member, can compare to my blog writings and my UG writing and make up your mind about the quality difference between them

    Max: You just read my mind.

    Thanks for comments everyone!

    ReplyDelete

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