Tuesday, February 21, 2012

ECC Report

Bridge over troubled water
Hey all The Deck Out followers!


First of all, sorry for the late entry but as you probably know, this weekend I played in ECC and lost in top16 due to my own misplay(if you didn't know that you should start following my Facebook!). The weekend was a great success and I had a lot of fun and even learnt a thing or two about playing, which really surprised me. I apologize for the late report since I came home yesterday evening at 1 AM. I got to writing as soon as I woke up so my English may be a little rusty in this report so forgive me about that.

Anyways, the tournament was a very big one so I’ll get to report now.

We came to our Arnhem’s hostel on Friday evening (the tournament began on Saturday) and the whole team Finland started to make deck lists. I wasn’t making a deck list because I wasn’t sure what to play. The last weekend, when I tested the HGSS-NEX format, I only learnt that there were some decks I didn’t want to play – Zekrom and Durant. Durant isn’t just a deck for me and I didn’t want to play Zekrom because I feel uncomfortable with Eelektrik because it just sits on the bench. The two decks, I were debating between, were ReshiPlosion and Celebi/Mewtwo. And yes, it wasn’t a CMT (hate the name by the way) but a plain Celebi/Mewtwo.


ReshiPlosion would have been a great choice if the metagame had been a full of Durants (autowins for ReshiPlosion) but I just decided to go with Celebi/Mewtwo because it’s the deck, I have tested the most and I felt the most comfortable with. I played a few test games and went 5-1 against Zekrom (The Finnish player who ended up placing 3rd in the tournament) and settled for Celebi. It’s not probably the most difficult deck to play but you have to have a correct strategy with it to be able to win games. It’s fast and punishes for every bad start your opponent gets. It also takes the first prize almost 100% of time so it’s a perfect tournament deck.


On the Friday evening the final list looked like this:

Pokémon:

4x Celebi Prime
3x Mewtwo EX
=7

Trainer:

4x Professor Juniper
3x N
3x Professor Oak’s New Theory
2x Copycat
3x Pokémon Collector
3x Dual Ball
3x Pokegear 3.0
3x Eviolite
4x Pokémon Catcher
3x Switch
4x Junk Arm
2x Skyarrow Bridge
3x PlusPower
1x Revive
=41

Energy:

10x Grass Energy
4x Double Colorless Energy
=14


I went to sleep and was pretty confident even though, I hadn’t tested with this exact list a lot of matches.


On Saturday I registered and went to Eskil’s (Tego) Deck check. He remembered that he had e-mailed me about The Deck Out goes global and we talked a bit. However, if you paid attention, the deck list, I listed earlier had 62 cards. Eskil said that he counted 62 cards and I was like “what”. In the end, I also counted the cards and there were 62 cards. So, I took 2 cards off and the final list looked like this.

Pokémon:

4x Celebi Prime
3x Mewtwo EX
=7

Trainer:

4x Professor Juniper
3x N
3x Professor Oak’s New Theory
2x Copycat
2x Pokémon Collector
3x Dual Ball
3x Pokegear 3.0
2x Eviolite
4x Pokémon Catcher
3x Switch
4x Junk Arm
2x Skyarrow Bridge
3x PlusPower
1x Revive
=41

Energy:

10x Grass Energy
4x Double Colorless Energy
=14

I took off 1 Collector and 1 Eviolite. In the end, I did nothing with Collectors and Eviolites during the whole tournament so they were the correct cards to take away from the deck list. Anyways, the tournament started only a bit late, which was good because the tournament was so huge. Masters had about 230 players so we had 8 Swiss and top32.

I won’t be having names of my opponent’s in this entry because I don’t remember all of them. I will list the deck and nationality so that you can see what was the metagame like and how international the tournament really is.


1. Round (Vanilluxe/Vileplume/Kingdra Prime) (The Netherlands)

It was ironic. This was the same player, I played against in top32 of ECC last year. That time I won a Luxchomp mirror 2-0. I was very surprised when I saw Horsea as his active Pokémon. Soon I realized that it was a Vanilluxe deck. I got a T1 40 with Mewtwo EX even though he started the game and since his opening hand wasn’t too good, I pretty much steamrolled through him. He was able to do 50 damage with Kingdra Prime before I OHKOed his Kingdra Prime. It was all the damage he was able to inflict during the whole game.
1-0

While looking the pairings for the 2nd round, my 1st round opponent stopped me and gave me the ECC die, I forgot to leave to table. Thanks a lot for that! The ECC die was very cool looking.


2. Round (6 Corners/without Mewtwo EX) (Denmark)

He opened with Virizion and I immediately realized that I would be against Six Corners. In the 2nd turn of the game, I knew that I would have the game. The reason for this was that he sought for Cobalion after he saw my Mewtwo EX. That could mean only one of the 2 things – he either didn’t have Mewtwo EX in his deck or it was prized. As soon I realized this, I started to load my every energy on the active Mewtwo EX and Catchered any Pokémon he attached energy to and OHKOed them. He did 0 damage during the whole game and took 0 prizes.
2-0


3. Round (Zekrom/Eelektrik/Magnezone/Mewtwo EX/Zekrom EX) (France)

He opened with Zekrom so I didn’t get a donk even though I went first. I decided not to attack to Zekrom because of Outrage but settled for set-upping 2 Mewtwo EXs on the bench in T1. He was struggling with his set-up and it felt like he was pretty inexperienced against playing a deck, which had 3 Mewtwo EXs in it. He used one Mewtwo EX to counter OHKO mine and the rest of the game I took care of Eelektrik because Magnezones arent’ a match for Mewtwo EX if they don’t have energy accelerators with them. It was the most difficult game so far because of his 2 card N but since I had saved resources, I managed to draw a PONT from the 3rd card and took the remaining 2 prizes with Catchers.
3-0


4. Round (Celebi/Mewtwo/Tornadus/Shaymin/Shaymin EX/Terrakion ) (Belgium)

We both opened with Mewtwos and I knew that this game would be very difficult. I think this player was the first one, who mentioned something about my blog. It was very nice to hear. For some reason, his opening hand wasn’t that good and I took 5 prizes easily with one Mewtwo EX. For some reason, I wasn’t able to draw energy for my 2nd Mewtwo EX, which was on the bench and when he N’d me to 1 card(which I was prepared to with saving a lot of draw cards into my deck) and started using Shaymin EX to kill my Pokémon I was in problems. I kept topdecking trash card after trash card while his Shaymin EX killed everything. In the end, I lost the game even though I was in a 5 prize lead. It was pretty frustrating because I thought I had the game and that I would draw SOMETHING within 5 turns because I conserved my every draw card and over 50% of my deck was draw cards.
3-1

5. Round (Durant) (Great Britain)

Durant wasn’t a deck I wanted to play against after a frustrating loss. Well, my opening hand was just bad (Mewtwo EX and 3 Grass energy). Or so I thought before I saw his Durant. In fact, the opening hand I had in this game was a optimal start against Durant – a lot of Basic energy. The game would go down on his Crushing Hammer flips and when he flipped 3 tails in his first turns from Crushing Hammers, I knew that I had the game. He flipped the rest of the Crushing Hammers heads but it really didn’t matter even though he Devoured all of my DCEs into the discard pile because he wasn’t Devouring for 4 all the time. I had about 15 cards in the deck and N in my hand when the game ended.
4-1

Durant was the match-up I was the most afraid of and I was glad that I was able to defeat it. I thought I wouldn’t meet Durants in 4-1 because it isn’t THAT good even if it’s that played.

6. Round (Zekrom/Eelektrik/Magnezone/Mewtwo EX) (Italy)

This match went just like the previous “Thunderdome” match. My deck is just too quick for Magnezone to handle and there is nothing they can do about it. He N’d me to 2 but it was no use because I managed to draw the needed Junk Arm for Pokegear and sealed the game. I don’t remember much about this game but it wasn’t a difficult one.
5-1


7. Round (Cleffa.dec) (Germany)

I was only one win away from the top cut and I still hadn’t donked a game even though my deck should be THE donk deck in the format. I opened with a perfect donk hand in this game (Mewtwo EX, DCE and PlusPower) and I saw from my opponent’s face that he had a terrible starter. It could mean two things: a Pokémon with big retreat cost or a Pokémon with a very low HP. It was Cleffa. I went first and apologized to my opponent. I hate donks more than anything else in a big tournaments like this but it’s part of the game and there is nothing we can do about it.
6-1


8. Round (Mewtwo EX/Celebi/Tornadus ) (Norway)


I was very relieved in this game because I knew I would be in the day 2. He had a better opening hand but he misplayed at one point of the game because he passed instead of attacking with Mewtwo EX. I let him take back and told him that if it would have been a “real” tournament game, I wouldn’t have let him take back but thanks to my kindness (lol), he managed to win the game. I didn’t enjoy playing this game because he kept asking all the time questions about my deck (which I think is impolite) and kept answering to questions like “how many Ns do you have in your deck ?” and “Do you run Shaymin EX” with answers like “4” and “yeah, I do”. In my opinion, if you want to know about your opponent’s deck concentrate on playing not to asking questions.
6-2

I think I was 18th in the standings and the whole Finnish team did very well. No player in Masters did worse than 4-4 (11 Masters in the team Finland). Jouni (the Finnish CP leader and the 3rd of this tournament) was in the top cut as well and surprisingly my big brother went 7-1. It was the biggest surprise for me because he hasn’t played this year that much and isn’t usually doing that well in tournaments. My girlfriend also went 5-3, which I was very happy about because she has played almost no games this year. All in all, the first game was a huge success for team Finland because we had 1 Senior in top16 and 3 Masters in top32.

I slept the night peacefully and went to the second day with full of excitement.



Top32 (Typhlosion/Magnezone) (The Netherlands)


1. Game

In the first game we both mulliganed 3 times and I thought I would meet a Magneboar because I saw Fire and Lighting Energy. However, he played Typhlosion/Magnezone instead. I was very happy when I noticed this because I knew my deck was way too fast for a deck that has to set-up 2 stage2 Pokémon in order to work. I had a prefect donk hand and needed only DCE/Energy+Pluspower from Juniper to end the game T1 but whiffed for everything and just passed. After that, the first game was pretty much just a straightforward beat down from my side. I Catchered anything I could KO and he didn’t get N for the right spots so I got a very easy win. In the last 7 cards of my decks were 5 energy, including 3 DCEs…
1-0(7-2)


2. Game

My opening hand wasn’t as good as it was in the first game and I was pretty sure he would kill my only Pokémon (Celebi) with Cyndaquil because I kept drawing trash. However, the Eviolite I attached to my Celebi in T1, saved the whole game. He wasn’t able to kill my Celebi and after I got a Juniper and Mewtwo EX, I managed to take control of the game with Catchers once again. He had only 1 Cyndaquil on the bench I while I kept Catchering the lone Cyndaquil all over again, he wasn’t able to get a proper set-up. In this game he N’d me to 1 but I had a too strong field already and the N didn’t really matter. I also think that he run pretty much out of resources because he only had 3 cards in his deck when the game ended.
2-0(8-2)



Top16 (Smeargle/Zekrom/Eelektrik/Mewtwo EX/Zekrom EX/) (Great Britain)


1. Game

This game was against Tom Hall, who I knew by name but didn’t know that much about. He was pretty nice and it was great meeting and talking with him during the game. In the first game, I noticed that his deck ran only 1 Mewtwo EX and I took the control of the game with my Mewtwo EX superiority. When I had drawn 4 prizes to his 1 or 0 he scooped the first game.
1-0(9-2)


2. Game

This game went pretty much just like the first game because I was able to keep the pressure on with Catchers and Mewtwo EX. We both thought that the game was already settled when he had 4 prizes and I had only 2 prizes. He came to attack with Zerkom EX, Catchered my Celebi and managed to flip heads for the KO. I thought it wouldn’t really matter because all I needed was DCE or 2 energy from my deck with Juniper/PONT for the 2 remaining prizes. The other option would have been to Catcher for 2 prizes but I was afraid of going to 1 prize because I had already lost to 1 card N in the 4th round. This was the decision (and mistake), which costed me the game (and the whole tournament). I Pokegeared before the Juniper to take something away from the deck to increase the chances of getting 2 energy of DCEs from my deck. I managed to get a Collector but noticed that I also had 2 energy in the 7 cards I Pokegeared. If I had just Junipered, I would have had the game. Anyways, I had half of my energy in the deck (including 2-3 DCEs) and was pretty sure that I would draw the cards I need from the Juniper. Well, I draw only  1 energy from the Juniper and was VERY frustrated. After that I just hit 160 to his Zekrom EX(With 2 PlusPowers I played before Juniper). He used SSU and flipped heads to savedthe Zekrom EX. After that I checked the field and realized, I had lost the game. He Catchered my benched Celebi killed it with Tornadus, Super Rodded Mewtwo EX from his cards pile and took the remaining 2 prizes from my Mewtwo EX with his Mewtwo EX.
1-1(9-3)


3. Game

Of course I was frustrated about the loss but I was pretty sure I had a decent chance in the 3rd game because the match-up was on my side. However, I managed to get the second most terrible start of the tournament for this game and knew that I needed to N him to one to be able to win the game. When I N’d him to one, he drew PONT from it. I was like “of course!” and he was able to finish the game with DCE and Mewtwo EX he got from the Portrait-Collector.
1-2(9-4)

From an another certain 2-0 to a 1-2 loss. That’s how I felt after the game. I wished Tom good luck for the rest of the tournament and wasn’t that mad about the loss because in the end, the better player won. I should’ve known at that point of the games that he didn’t have a N in his deck but because I didn’t see one during the games I couldn’t be 100% certain about it. I lost the game pretty much due the loss of the 4th round and the fear that I lived with through the games. I also felt like my deck has a lot more to give because I had controlled all the games I played almost completely. I’m pretty sure that only deck’s that can stand a chance against this kind of Celebi build is a deck that is able to get 3 Mewtwo EX attacking during the game. I would have loved to play more games with this against international opponent’s but it just wasn’t my day.

I’m used to losing due bad luck and not to my own mistakes but I’m very happy that this was “only” ECC, I made this big mistake. If it had been Nationals or Worlds, I wouldn’t have been this easy on myself. However, I learnt from this mistake and am sure not to make it in the future. I still need to perfect my game and that’s something what keeps me playing – if I couldn’t develop as a player, there would be no point of playing.

After the match, I just watched the games of other Finnish players. Heikki from Seniors managed to place in to top8 of the tournament and Jouni – as mentioned earlier – reached the 3rd place in the tournament losing to the tournament winner David Booij in top4.


Conclusion

The tournament was great fun, I was happy with my result and the whole team Finland’s result. It was great meeting everyone from all over Europe and it was nice hearing from all of you guys that came to talk to me and said great things about my blog! I heard that many players were asking about how do I look like and almost every opponent of my big brother asked him if I was his brother. I’m not used to be a well-known player but nonetheless it’s always more encouraging hearing good things about my writings IRL than on the internet so thanks a lot for everyone who came to talk to me! I’ll be in ECC next year for sure if nothing radical happens and I’ll be looking forward to seeing you everyone there once again next year! Of course, there is Worlds before the next ECC and I’ll hopefully see some of you there as well.

In the end some pros and cons from the tournament:

Pros:

+ I did well
+ Meeting everyone
+ The deck worked well, the player didn’t
+ I still have things to learn
+ Celebi won the tournament
+ The drastically versatile metagame
+ Tournament organizers and judges (especially Hapé who made all this possible!)
+ Team Finland doing very well (especially Heikki, Jouni, Isto and Anni)
+ All in all, a fantastic trip
+ Lidl cookies
+ You for reading my blog

Cons:

-/+ I lost to my own misplay (and a coin flip, lol)
- One hundred grammar errors and typos this report has


Thanks for reading and feel free to leave any comments!


33 comments:

  1. Esa, Y U NO swap me out for 1 PONT and 1 N?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pros... Lidl cookies.. wait what?
    great report, hope you'll do better next time, and hopefully play against you!

    ReplyDelete
  3. How did CTM beat Zekrom/Eels/Mewtwo in the finals? I played and won a local tournament with ZEM this past weekend and steamrolled my way through all the CTMs. Isn't Tornadus' weakness a huge advantage for the Zekrom player?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Why did you decide to play this instead of CMT even though you'd said the deck had problems because it is too easy to return-KO your Mewtwo EX in your 6PU article?

    Did something change?
    Maybe the way you played it?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Copycat: You're broken thanks to my mulligans.

    Shijuuichi: Haha, yeah cookies from Lidl were very good xD Thanks!

    Luichi: If CMT or Celebi/Mewtwo goes first, Zekrom will be left under a steam roll. It's too fast and can easily outspeed any deck. It usually gets a good start and most decks don't usually get the ideal set-up in T2 like this deck. Speed is the reason why this deck is so good.

    elmaga: Well, as I said in the UG article, Mewtwo EX is easy to get OHKO with another Mewtwo EX. However, I considered the metagame very carefully and was pretty sure that there wouldn't be that many decks with 2-3 Mewtwo EXs. If there were, I would have gone that far AND the CMT wouldn't have won. It was a metagame choice. The speed and consistency of this deck is always unbelievable and I felt the most comfortable with it in the end.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for te quick answer!

    (Your round 6 opponent was Simone Soldo from Italy, not a French player! :P )

    ReplyDelete
  7. Celebi did not win the tournament, Mewtwo Ex did.
    No mention to first time presence of spanish players?
    Good report ;)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nice deck, and thanks for the report!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Great report Esa! And for the record, I don't think you misplayed. That was just luck not to hit 2 Energy. It seems like you made the right move trying to thin your deck. There could have easily been no energy in the 7 cards when you played Pokegear, you know?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I totally agree.

      Delete
    2. Completely agree. You did the correct play, it just didn't work out. I had a similar circumstance at a City Championship this year.

      Delete
  10. going for a faster way to win instead of taking the surefire option is always worse IMO.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Esa let me get this straight.

    You Pokégear to thin your deck in order to have better odds of drawing 2 energy. This is the correct play. Then you happen to realize that there were 2 energy in the top 7 cards of your deck, but you had no way of knowing this so it was not a missplay. It was random chance. Then you take a Collector and discard it there by thinning your deck of cards, which gives you a better chance of drawing what you need. Then you don't draw it and are mad. Understandable and this was also random chance. You also say you learned a thing or two, which I assume means you will change your playing a bit.

    1. You make the right play.
    2. Realize that if you didn't you would have won.
    3. Then you continue the right play and lose.
    4. You say to yourself you would have won the game if you played wrong.
    5. You develop as a player, which I assume means that you then change your way of playing and because you were making THE right plays at first you changed to making missplays.
    6. You swap from being good to making missplays intentionally.

    Is there something I am missing?

    ReplyDelete
  12. It depends, if he had the two catcher in his hand before using juniper (or catcher / junk arm etc) It would have been the better play to just take the catcher kos.

    I'm going to assume he didn't have the catcher, but he didn't really specify in the report

    ReplyDelete
  13. Excellent Article Esa.

    If you were watching the play from outside, you could think if it was a good/bad play; but as you were playing, none of the 2 cards you played (Pokégear and Juniper) were bad ones, just bad luck and the randomness of the game, so don't feel bad.

    Aside from Pokémon, i play Magic and in a recent and very important event, at semis, one player did a "mistake" (in viewers' point of view), but it was the correct play at the moment for the player, and it costed him the pass to finals.

    What i mean with this, is that if you're some kind of "precog" you may play always safe, but not being one makes you a better player, by making "mistakes/misplays" and learning from them.

    In short: your play wasn't wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  14. So from these results, and commenting on how easily: A) Mewtwo/Celebi and CMT beat everything else B) Decks with 3+ Mewtwos are the only possible way to win against the above, Mewtwo-centric decks are the only way to win, and the emergent best Mewtwo deck will ru(i?)n the format?

    Given that these decks are simply "pile energy on basics and attack", I'm not looking forward to the second half of this season if that's the case. I think if this IS the case Mewtwo's value will only go up, and a LOT of players will leave the game, or at least competitive, as a result, too. At least there were other options during LuxChomp season that stood a solid chance at taking tournaments, you make it sound like there aren't here. My testing results don't disagree either.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think Leafeon/Amoonguss with Houndoom and Espeon (as mewtwo counter) primes will fare well in this format, according to my testing. Houndoom is pretty necessary in my opinion. Cause burn can turn the game around, especially against durant and zekrom decks. Espeon prime just needs the amoonguss' statuses on mewtwo to ohko it.

      Delete
  15. In my opinion running this deck, I will not use pokemon collector, you loose one turn that you have to use another supporter to refresh hand, and I will use Shaymin Ex, Shaymin UL and Terrakion, Great article, sorry for the grammar mistakes, cya

    ReplyDelete
  16. Great report!
    I really like your deck and i'm pretty sure it was the right meta choice.

    About the Gear + Juniper move, i think it was the right one even because if you had some Catcher/Junk Arm left in the deck, not only you could have got a DCE, but if you have got no DCE but one between them you could have made the KO anyway.

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  17. I guess I confused you guys with the explanation of the misplay. Even though the Pokegear misplay can be counted as a misplay, the real misplay was that I even tried to OHKO Zekrom EX during that turn instead of just Catchering something and getting down to 1 prize. I did this because I was afraid of going to 1 prize and THAT was a misplay in my opinion because I should've known at that point of the game that he didn't have N in his deck.

    Anonymous abotu the metagame: Well, one thing is for sure now. You MUST be able to OHKO Mewtwo EX some way to be able to stand a chance in this format. It can be via Mewtwo EX, Mew Prime, Weezing, Magnezone or even with Darmanitan as long as you've something to OHKO them with. My versio of Celebi/Mewtwo crushed every deck that doesn't run Mewtwo EX counter because Mewtwo is so good. It isn't unbeatable but you can't go to a tournament without countering it.

    Zhaituki: The problem with Leafeon/Amoonguss is that it's just way too slow. If Mewtwo/Celebi goes first, it has taken 2 prizes at the point, you're ready to attack. Foongus only has 40 HP, which is the optimal number for this deck.

    Anonymous2: Yeah this deck has so many options that there won't be two 100% similar lists. It's a personal option how to build this deck. After a tournament, I would liked to have 1 Tornadus in my deck.

    Andceo: Thanks a lot! And yeah, I think it was the best deck in the format given to us. I wasn't surprised when David Booij won the tournament even though his deck was worse than mine for the metagame, lol. But I guess donks he got helped him with the worse match-ups.


    Thanks for comments everyone!

    ReplyDelete
  18. your top 16 wasn't really a misplay. it happens to everyone who runs pokegear. statistically your like i should get a card out so i can get the things i need. but luck decides to just crap you out. i wouldn't call it a misplay. a misplay whould be like "oh i forgot to play the pluspower".

    im not sure if your wrote this but what deck won? it impacts the states, well states, trmendously. whatever does good here is likey to be popular in the west.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Glad to see I got in your report Esa. I'm sorry if I frustrated you with your 5 prizes lead and yet beating you with shaymin EX ;-)
    Anyway it was an awesome match and I hope to play against you again.

    Greetings from Belgium

    P.S. Your deck shuffle technique is awesome btw !

    ReplyDelete
  20. I think you should consider the possibility that your opponent in round 8 simply was nervous. A common response to stress is trying to calm yourself down by communicating with those around you. I believe Mikael (The norwegian who beat you fair and square), didnt mean any harm by asking those questions, but rather just wanted a more relaxed atmosphere.

    As for your Finnish team's accomplishments, I'm sorry to inform you that us Norwegians have taken over the European throne. (Lol, jk;))Hehe, we did after all end up with 3 participants in the t8 and 6 in the t32. Despite our low numbers, I believe that to be better than any other nation present :)Heck, had Benjamin gone first in t2 against David Booij, I believe he would've been the champ! Doesn't really matter though - we'll just come back stronger in Hawaii :)Hope to see you there, Esa ;)

    ReplyDelete
  21. Anonymous: Thanks! Mewtwo/Celebi/Tornadus won the tournament by beating a Zekrom EX/Eelektrik/Mewtwo EX in the finals.

    Anthony: No problem, it was a great game and I learnt something from it so it was only a good thing I lost the game! It was nice playing with you as well, hope to see you some other tournament as well.

    Anonymous2: It may be that he was nervous but I didn't feel like that someone should be nervous since he was already through! I had the same kind of experience with my 8th round opponent in my last ECC when I was 6-1 with a German player and I was back then already like "what's his problem". But, in the end, that's how I felt :D

    It's great to hear that Norway did that well as well! I hope you can show the same kind of strength in this year's World Championshisp even though they're in Hawaii!

    Thanks for comments everyone!

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  22. I'm not sure I entirely understand your reasoning about not running Tornadus. I agree that no deck, save Durant and possible Mew variants, can compete without running a Mewtwo counter, in the form of Mewtwo itself. Magnezone is simply to slow and the others are gimmicks. The question then is it preferable to go aggro Mewtwo (3 or 4 copies), and risk giving up early prizes, or use Tornadus to get early tynamo/eel kills, setting up your field and wrecking the eel players set-up. David faced a lot of eel variants and beat them all despite the lighting weakness because T1/T2 80+ damage (w/ PP) is devastating.

    On a side note, I think in addition to stage 2 decks being severely hampered by this format, I think techs need to be very simple and rely on your colorless or your primary basic energy. Since both energy accelerators rely on basic energy, running prisms or rainbows seems to negate whatever type coverage you hope to get.

    Regardless, congrats on your Top 16, and keep up the great work here.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Esa,

    As I heard from your t32 opponent, he actually had both games terrible prizes and actually almost won the second game.
    In first game almost all his Cyndaquill were in the prizes and the other all Typlosion prime. (maybe I turned the games around) And even then he picked 4 prizes in the first and 5 in the second. He said that the DCE in both games concluded both matches because of really bad setups.

    Even so, congrats on T16 from me and him. He said he enjoyed playing with you even with his terrible set ups bacause you are an good and sporting player to play with.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's agreeing with my testing: Mewtwo/Celebi has some difficulty beating Typhlosion decks off a good start, and builds with a high Rescue count have excellent comeback potential.

      Delete
  24. Once again, GREAT ARTICLE! Now I need to test my Durant deck against CMT. I agree with you that CMT is a horrible name for a deck because I already know 2 CMT (Country Music Television and Central Monitoring Team). PICK ANOTHER NAME FOR THE DECK PEOPLE!

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  25. Congrats on a good result Esa. I don't think you misplayed in the Top 16 - you just increased your chances of drawing into the cards you needed by using that Pokegear. In a tournament like this with a lot of good players, I guess that Top Cut games just come down to small moments like that.

    Who would have thought that a deck running only 2 different Pokemon could do this well :).

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  26. Finally some use for those 4 Celebi Primes I drew from Triumphant boosters. Now I just need like 3 Mewtwo EXs.:/

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  27. Anonymous1: In theory it sounds very weird that this deck doesn't run Tornadus. But when you start playing with it, you'll notice that it isn't that bad a decision. In the end, I would've had the upper hand against the tournament winning deck that had only 2 Mewtwo EXs and no Revives. All I need to put into play is 3 Mewtwo EX and 1 Celebi and they still have to KO 3 Mewtwo EXs in order to win the game. That puts me right away in a uper hand position. Also, as you mentioned, Tornadus screws up the Durant match-up(even though it can donk Durant). The winner donked many matches during the tournament thanks to Tornadus but I rarely even saw DCEs in my opening hands. If I would re-enter the tournmanet, I would probably run 1 Tornadus. Thanks for your opinions!

    Anonymous2: Ahh, yes he did mention something about bad prizes in the first or the second game but I didn't want to concentrate on that that much because the games were still in the progress. The first match was pretty easy and I should've been able to donk his lonely Magnemite but because I'm a bad donker, I couldn't do that. In the second game, I agree, he should've won the game. He started the game and I did nothing but draw pass the first 2 turns. This deck shouldn't be able to win from that kind of start. I think he was a bit too greedy to start attacking with his only Cyndaquilto my lonely Celebi(if those 2 were prized) and that lead to his loss. And for the DCE part. In the second game I had 9 cards in my deck before my Juniper, 3 of which were DCEs. I checked my deck with Poekgear before the last Juniper and there was 100% chance I would draw a DCE from my deck. It was a close game but I still don't think that stage2 variants have a lot to say against this deck, I lost zero stage2 variants during the tournament.

    Anonymous3: Thanks a lot!

    Zarmakuizz: Lol.

    Nathan: Thanks a lot! Indeed, it always goes down to topdecking and coin flipping, lol :D

    Luffymcduck: Hahah, well' that's an easy task.

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