Tournament report w/ Chandelure and more

I didn't help Esa at all.

Hello all The Deck Out followers!


As you know if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, I was in a CC this Saturday. As I said in the Chandelure article, I didn’t want to play it anymore. However, it turned out that I didn’t have time to do any testing or deck building between last Cities so I was forced to play Chandelure once again. I was pretty frustrated by this because playing the same deck 4 full tournaments (6 rounds of Swiss and 3 top matches in each tournament) straight was too monotonic for me.

Chandelure was fun to play when it wasn’t considered as a metagame deck and when I haven’t played every match-up with it. However, going to this tournament I knew every match-up inside out and I could’ve played the games with my eyes bind. Anyways, I wanted to do some changes to the list if I was going to play with it in the tournament once again. This time the list looked like this.

Pokémon:

4x Litwick(Promo, CFF)
4x Lampent
4x Chandelure
2x Doduo
2x Dodrio
3x Oddish
1x Gloom
2x Vileplume
1x Jirachi
2x Cleffa
1x Pichu
=26

Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
4x Twins
4x Sage’s Training
2x Tropical Beach
4x Pokémon Communication
2x N
3x Rare Candy
=23

Energy:

8x Psychic Energy
3x Rescue Energy
=11




As you can see, I finally got Promo Litwicks. In fact, most of the cards aren’t even mine because I own almost none Noble Victories because our Local Distributor – Bergsala Enigma – isn’t really interested in the Pokémon TCG anywhere in the Scandinavia. I still miss prizes from 2 CC wins and one 2^nd place meaning that I’m still to receive over a booster box of Noble Victories Boosters. However, thanks to Matti I’ve managed to play Chandelure in the past Cities.

Enough of the rant. As you can see, I also decided to run Gloom in my deck because everyone’s being saying that I’m crazy because I don’t run a Gloom. Giving Gloom a chance wouldn’t hurt that much, right? Well to be honest, I did nothing with it during the whole tournament. I also took off the Blissey and thought about adding a Bellosom but due bad metagame predicting I didn’t do even that and that was the reason the tournament didn’t go that well.

Anyways, to the games.


1. Round (Klingklang/Vileplume/Blissey/Victini)

This is a very scary deck because it can OHKO Chandelure with Klingklang’s Gear Grind. However, the match-up reminds me of Vanilluxe match-up very much. If you’re able to eliminate their Victinis, they will eventually fail to double tails. We both got a decent set-ups but there wasn’t a game at all because her 2^nd Victini was prized and she managed to flip a double double tails with KlingKlang to one of my Chandelures. Burn and Confusion did the rest of the work since Klingklangs retreat cost is 3 and attaching energy manually and retreating at the same time doesn’t really work at all. The game could have been difficult without her bad luck because Jirachi was my last prize.
1-0

2. Round Zekrom/Eelektrik/Thundurus/Rocky Helmet

Well, I had a super start and I had seen this match-up too many times to know that it’s the most autowin match-up on the planet. However, things didn’t go as planned because he started the game and when I used my Collector in my T1, I noticed that my 2 Oddishes are prized – whoops. Well, I opened with my only Oddish in the deck so suddenly things looked terrible. Well, he was able to Catcher the Oddish T2 with Thundurus (of course) and decided to go with Chandelure and Dodrio heavy set-up. I was pretty frustrated because  I knew I was going to lose the game if I wasn’t able to get the Oddishes soon from my prizes. I managed to get few easy prizes from 30 HP Tynamo and Cleffa so I was able to get the 1^st Oddish out of my prizes. I decided to took a chance and play it on the Bench (he had used 3 Catchers and 2 Junk Arms) at that point but he was still able to Catcher the Oddish from the bench. Somehow the offensive Chandelures and right damage counters placements made the game very close even though I didn’t have a trainer lock. It was close but I managed to get the Vileplume in the play in my last turn and won the game.
2-0

I think it tells something about the match-up that I was able to win the game even without Vileplume. After the match I joked that I should try building a Chandelure deck without Vileplume but I know it wouldn’t be that good so ditched the idea.

3. Round Cobalion/Kyurem/Electrode

This was probably the most frustrating game of the day. We flipped the starting flip, he started the game (went 2^nd in every game so far) and we flipped our basics. He used Sage’s and manually attached energy to his active Kyurem. I know I couldn’t use Vileplume because my hand wasn’t that good but I had a T3 Chandelure in my hand. However, when I looked at the table in my T1, I knew how the game would go. Since he started the game he was able to hit Glaciate before I was able to hit with Chandelure to his Kyurem and that was what decided how the match would turn out. Knowing this fact, I attached energy to my Litwick. Well, the turns went as I predicted and he got T3 Glaciate and I got a T3 Chandelure. However, the game was over at that point. I didn’t have a Blissey Prime or a Cobalion in my deck so I had no possibility for an epic comeback like in the Finals of the last tournament and just played the game knowing that I would lose the game.
2-1

This was the first time I was very frustrated about the first turn rule while playing with Chandelure. The opening flip doesn’t affect Chandelure usually that much but in this case I knew it was the thing that decided how the match would go. The saddest part was that I knew it as soon as we flipped our active Pokémons face-up. Ignorance is bliss.

4. Round Durant

Well, this was a deck that I thought I would run into at some point. He got a horrible opening hand and was only able to Devour for 1 card in T1 and T2. I was able to get a T2 Plume and that was the game. He never got a decent set-up because of trainer lock and one Chandelure just killed the Durants because he wasn’t able to get them back with Revives.
3-1

5. Round Cobalion/Kyurem/Landorus/Electrode

I knew what he was playing so when I saw my opening hand, I knew I would lose once again. Once again, without Blissey or Cobalion, the match-up is just horrible unless Chandelure is able to get a T2 Chandelure, which wasn’t in sight during the whole tournament. I also had a lack of energy during the whole game so I’m pretty sure that I didn’t even hit with a Chandelure more than one time during the whole game. Everything went as badly as they could in this difficult match-up.
3-2


I dropped from the tournament. This was due 3 reasons. First, I didn’t feel like playing with Chandelure in the first place but had no other option. Second, the loss in the 3^rd, which was caused by an opening flip made me remember once again how horrible the first turn rule really is. Third, my resistance was the worst of 3-2s so even if I won the last round; I wouldn’t have made the top cut. So I scooped and went to play Dominion.


Here is the top8 of the tournament.

1. Cobalion/Kyurem/Electrode
2. Cobalion/Kyurem/Electrode/Landorus
3. Chandelure/Vileplume/Bellosom
4. Chandelure/Vileplume
5. Chandelure/Vileplume/Blissey
6. Cobalion/Kyurem/Electrode
7. Vanilluxe/Victini/Vileplume/Cobalion/Victini(V-Create)
8. Reshiram/Typhlosion


As you can see, the metagame – well, I don’t know what to say about it. IMO Cobalion/Kyurem/Electrode and Chandelure (and 6 corners) are the top2 decks in the format (when they are well-built and played) and it shows. I don’t know how Magnezone/Eelektrik has been able to take the most Cities but I’m going to find that out in my article next week. However, it’s good to remember that Chandelure is very close behind in wins even though it wasn’t that played in the first few weeks in Cities.

On a side note, the 2007 Masters World Champion Tom Roos was able to take these Cities once again (his second win in a row) so I much give him a credit for very well built Kyurem/Cobalion/Electrode.


I will hopefully be able to test a bit before next Cities so I can get back to CP track. I’m still missing 7 points from the best possible Best Finish Limit that you can get from Cities, so there’s still work to be done and I have 3 Cities left. I missed the first 2 Regionals of Finland so I’m very much behind other Finnish players in CP points. I hope I can correct that in Cities and in the upcoming Regionals. I need to be in top4 of the CP Points when the Nationals take place. Why? I’ll explain that later this year in one of my entries.


Anyways, at the moment I’m on a train going back to Vaasa once again since my Christmas break is over and the University starts once again tomorrow. It has been  a great month of a vacation and I hope you guys had always a great Christmas break (if you had a break at all) and a great start for the new year. I’ll be very busy until the mid-summer but I hope that my hard work will pay off and I’ll get great experiences in the progress (Trip to Hawaii and summer job would be nice as well, lol).

Thanks for reading and remember also to check the interview of Kyle “Pooka” Sucevich that will be released tomorrow! Feel free to comment, every thought is appreciated.