Last tournament before Nationals with Celebi/Mewtwo EX!

At the moment, I'm as clueless as Mr. Imakuni

Hi everyone!

On Saturday, I played in my – probably last – tournament of the year before Nationals. If you’ve been following my tournament reports regularly, you know that I need CPs to get 2 byes for our National Championships. You also know that I failed miserably with my Tornadus tech in my Celebi/Mewtwo EX deck in the last State Championships.

This tournament unfortunately wasn’t that different from the last tournament where I failed. However, I learnt from my mistakes and fixed my list. My final list for this tournament looked a bit more like me.

Pokémon:

4x Celebi Prime
3x Mewtwo EX
=7

Trainer:

4x Professor Juniper
4x Dual Ball
1x Pokémon Collector
2x PONT
1x Copycat
4x N
3x Pokegear 3.0.
3x PlusPower
4x Pokémon Catcher
4x Junk Arm
3x Switch
2x Eviolite
2x Skyarrow Bridge
1x Energy Retrieval
1x Revive
=39

Energy:

4x Double Colorless Energy
10x Grass Energy
=14

So, back to basics. It was pretty much the same list, I played in the ECC and did fairly well. I changed one Copycat to N (which was completely unnecessary change and added one Energy Retrieval, which was in case, I ran into Durants. Well, I did ran into Durants but you’ll soon see, if these changed did me any good.

Ok, first of all, I must say that, I’m very disappointed on how the is developing in Finland and in Scandinavia as whole. We have been getting less and less players show up in tournaments and there were more players in CCs than in States. That’s just sad. One very big reason for this is that we haven’t been getting our prizes (Trophies etc.) in few last year in time. There was also year 2010, when we NEVER even got our Nationals Trophies. I don’t know if this problem is because of PCI or our LD Bergsala Enigma but it has hurt the game a lot and is visible in tournament attendance.

So, we had only 44 players in the tournament (31 Masters, 9 Seniors and 4 Juniors). That’s the least amount, I can remember for States. That also means that if you go 4-1, you don’t get into tops if your tie break is high enough. Well, anyways, enough of rant and let’s get into games.



1. Round Durant

Ahh, but of course. Durant for the beginning. My opening hand had: 2 Celebi, 3 Grass Energy, Junk Arm and PlusPower. She goes first and gets T1 Devour for 4. I draw something useless, attach and pass. She flips heads for Crushing Hammer and Devours for 4. I draw Dual Ball and hit double tails – pass. She just Devours for 4. Well, I knew at this point of the game that I had already lost the game but since she hit 3/3 heads from Crushing Hammer and drew the Lost Remover in the perfect spot, I think, I draw only 1 prize during the whole game.
0-1

I knew that my tournament was over. My tie break would be horrible even with 4-1 result and only thing that was on my mind, was going 4-1 and get the 5 precious CPs.

2. Round Durant

I knew that he played Durant and was pretty frustrated. However, in this game, I had an ok opening hand. I got T1 X-Ball with DCE but he had once again Lost Remover in his hand. Slowly but steadily, I got Grass energy to my Mewtwo EX with Celebi and started to get going. This was a complete opposite of my last match, I had no problems at all.
1-1

3. Round Kyurem/Cobalion/Mewtwo EX/Shaymin/Shaymin EX

This was a very interesting deck since it was some kind of weird hybrid of 6 Corners and CaKE. Anyways, I knew that I could get the control if I could just get rid of his energy but I missed Catcher / Junk Arm with my Juniper in a very deciding moment. I wasn’t surprised since somehow I always miss with Juniper whatever, I’m looking for with this deck (just look at my ECC Report). From that point, I had some serious problems dealing with his 3 energy Cobalion but since he missed a Seeker donk possibility in a very crucial moment, I managed to take the game. It was a very close game.
2-1

4. Round ReshiPlosion

I got a very quick start but his start wasn’t that bad, even though it wasn’t as fast as mine. I was leading in prizes all the time and was pretty sure that, I had the game and was too sure about it. I hit 110 to Reshiram with full HP Mewtwo EX. Then, he Pokegeard, 7^th card of it was a Black Belt. Well 110+20+40 is OHKO for Mewtwo EX. This Outrage OHKO completely screwed my game and it all came down to my turn. I had Mewtwo EX with 1 energy attached as my active Pokémon and 1 Celebi on the bench and  Skyarrow Bridge in play. He had 130 HP Typhlosion Prime as the active Pokémon with 2 energy. If I didn’t get a prize this turn, I would lose the game. I already had all my Junk Arms, PlusPowers and Catchers in my discard pile. I pokegeared for my deck and took N from it. I counted my decks cards, there were 7 of them. I had Juniper in my hand. I needed to deal 130 damage somehow this turn. Then it came to me, I counted my discard pile and noticed that I had everything I needed for the OHKO in my deck. I Junipered and decked myself out, benched Celebi, Switched, attached, Switched, attached, retreated, attached DCE and OHKOd Typhlosion Prime. I just had used 99% of my deck’s resources. The last card in my hand was Energy Retrieval. Very good game.
3-1


5. Round ReshiBoar w/Cobalion

This was against a player that could threat me with his CPs. So, I had my own destiny in my very own hands. Thankfully, the game was pretty one-sided. My one Mewtwo EX overpowered his deck and even though he got going very well, it wasn’t enough. He just ran out of resources too early in the game. I was pretty surprised that he had almost nothing in his +7 card hand.
4-1

Well, I did what I could. Naturally, I finished 6^th in the standings since my tie break was more than horrifying but at least I got 5 CPs. This was all because of the low attendance numbers and I hope we can revive the game in Finland since missing the top cut this way, makes me mad. The results of the tournament looked like this:

1. Zekrom EX/Mewtwo EX/Eelektrik/Smeargle/Thundurus/Tyrogye
2. Zekrom/Zekrom EX/Mewtwo EX/Eelektrik/Zebstrika
3. Yanmega/Mew Prime/Chandelure/Jumpluff
4. Zekrom EX/Zekrom/Eelektrik/Mewtwo EX


I didn’t meet a single Zekrom in the tournament and I’m pretty disappointed since they’re very good match-ups. Of course the bye race for Nationals got even more complicated. The current standings look like this with 1 States remaining before Nationals.

51p Jouni L
36p Esa J
36p Miska S
29p Mauri V

----------------- 2x bye

28p Henrik L
19p Mikko A
16p Toni M
14p Toni T
----------------- 1x bye
14p Ville V
14p Jari K

As you can see, there’s still people fighting over 2 byes and 1 bye for Nationals. I have a certain 1 bye but I’m not guaranteed to get 2 byes. It will be decided in the last States, which I can’t unfortunately attend. I just have to wait and see what happens. Of course, I can go to BRs chasing for last points, but we’ll see if it’s necessary (I hope it won’t be).

Anyways, I’m hoping that you enjoyed the report and have done well (and better than me) in your local States. I’ll try to get 3 updates out this week, so look out for them! I’m in a very good pace for my entrance-exam reading and it will take a lot of my time so I’m happy my Nationals will be in late May.

Thanks for reading and feel free to comment on anything!

P.S. Remember to Share your The Deck Out story or ask me anything you would like to know about Pokémon TCG!