Back in business - tournament report from Battle Roads!

Back with Hammers!

Hello everyone!


As promised, it’s time for my very first tournament report of the season. There have been a few Battle Roads in Finland before, but I have only attended one before this tournament – as a head judge of the tournament. Anyways, this entry will include my tournament report with the very expected rogue I promised to play.

I’ll try to get my hands on the winning deck lists from each tournament series, so I can be able to show you not only my competitive deck lists, but also decks that have been proven to be working in a tournament play while showing another way to build deck lists – not just my way of building them. That’s why I’ll later on this week analyze the Battle Roads winning deck lists from our local players. Thank you for everyone for giving me a permission to use your lists in my blog!

Also, as said on Facebook  and Twitter, I’ll try to get the first Eye on Japan of this season released this week, so be sure to look for it. I have a pretty busy schedule this week, so it’s scheduled to be released next Monday t. Now, on to the report!

Finnish Pokémon TCG this season

Thanks to the lack of communication between our Local Distributor and tournament organizers, we don’t know yet how many City Championships and State Championships will be held in Finland. This means that we can’t count how possible it is to get an invite to Worlds. According to my calculations, it’s almost impossible to get an invite to Worlds from Finland unless

1) You have already gotten CPs from Worlds (like one of our new Masters)
2) You win every single Cities and States (even I can’t do it)
3) You do well during the whole season AND top8 in the Nationals (manageable)

So, no matter what you do this season in Finland, it all comes down to how you do in the Nationals. I’m hoping that we’ll get at least a trip for top 2 in the Finland to Worlds since the scholarship money was cut last season and I’ve heard rumors that it should go to travel awards. Well, we’ll see, we’ll see.

I said that I’ll play more rogues this season than before and at least in this tournament I did. Anyways, here’s my deck list.


Pokémon:

4x Sableye
4x Aron
4x Lairon
3x Aggron
2x Darkrai EX
=17


Trainer:

4x Professor Juniper
4x N
2x Bianca
3x Random Receiver
4x Ultra Ball
1x Pokémon Communication
1x Level Ball
3x Devolution Spray
3x Pokémon Catcher
3x Crushing Hammer
2x Enhanced Hammer
1x Rare Candy
1x Tool Scrapper
1x Super Rod
1x Revive
=34


Energy:

9x Darkness Energy


If you aren’t familiar with the concept and strategy of the deck, read my entry about it, which was released few weeks back. Anyways, as you can see, there are small modifications compared to the list, I introduced in the AggroHammer –entry. I must thank David Mann for some of these changes, because he e-mailed me and said what kind of changes he did and what kind of changes he would do in the future to get it working. I tried some of his ideas and added some of my won philosophy and I was very pleased how the deck turned out to be.

What I love about this deck the most is Sableye. Sableye is so good. It’s too good. And just like I’ve said before, the only reason why this deck works is Sableye, but at the same time Sableye is this deck worst enemy. Sableye allows you to play 1 copies of Item cards, because you can always get them back with Sableye and you can also rely more on Random Receivers thanks to Sableye, which will save you from the bad starts in most of the games. This deck is so consistent that getting a bad start with this is very difficult. However, in the end, I of course managed to draw the dead hand in the tournament…

1. Round (Eelektrik/Rayquaza EX/Raikou EX/Thundurus)

He goes first (which is huge against this deck) and Charges his Thundurus in T1. Not good. Not only Thundurus hits me 80 in T2 if I hit tails from Crushing Hammer (Which I did), but it also gives Eelektriks energy to discard pile. The match-up itself is pretty 50-50, because they don’t run DCEs, with which they would retreat their Eelektrik when I start Catchering them. He goes aggressive and I know, I can beat Eelektrik decks with Catchering and N’n in the late game. However, it’s ironic how in 3 turns my game-plan went down the toilet. I N myself in T1, because it was my only supporter. I N myself in T2, because it was once again my only supporter and in T3 I had to use Juniper and discard N, because playing N would’ve been worse in that situation. At that point I already knew that only a miracle would save. Well, of course my 4^th N was prized, so I didn’t even have an access to it, so I tried desperately Catchering and Hammering him, but as his hand was 6-8 cards all the time, I figured that he would’ve just the right cards there all the time. As he did. I was pretty much run over in this game.
0-1


2. Round (Eelektrik/Rayquaza EX/Raikou EX)

Ok, so another one of these. This time I go first.-Get T2 Lairons, while he whiffs on supporters 4 consecutive turns. This was a pretty lame game, because whenever he was able to hit a supporter next turn, I always happened to use Toppling Wind that turn. With one Toppling Wind, I discarded 2 Ns and a Juniper. It was pretty funny that even though he only had 2 Eelektriks in play all the time, he was almost able to take 5 prizes by killing the Sableyes with Eelektriks. In the end, the way to win AggroHammer is not let it lock you. And how can you lock 2 Eelektrik? That’s right you can’t. However, the 50 with Eelektrik wasn’t enough in the end and I managed to deck him out.
1-1

3. Round (Mirror)

You got to be joking right? There was only one Aggron in the tournament (and me) and of course we face each other already in the 3^rd Round. Well, as you can believe, Aggron mirrors are pretty brain-dead match-ups. I go first and in T1, I want to make one thing sure – my Super Rod isn’t prized. Well, of course it is. And no, this didn’t lead me into trying to load the Darkrai EX and win the game with it – it would be a pointless effort to attach 3 energy manually to Darkrai EX against AggroHammer. The only thing I needed to do was to guarantee that I’ll get more Toppling Winds than he does. And how do you guarantee it? Catchering Aggrons and flipping heads with Crushing Hammers of course! Well, both of our flips sucked in the early game. I think we hit 10 tails in row before he hit one heads with his Hammer. However, with patient Catchering I was able to lock his Aggron. For this I had to use a lot draw cards, and was really close to decking out. In the last turn of the game the scenario was pretty funny. I had 0 cards in my deck while he had 6 cards in his deck. I was able to get the 2 Toppling Winds with Aggron and get him to 0 cards as well, so all I needed was to pass the turn to win. It was my very first time seeing that both players had 0 cards in their decks left in the end of the game.
2-1

4. Round (Terrakion EX/Mewtwo EX/Garbodor)

Tool Scrapper was one of my last additions to the deck, because I didn’t first remember that Gardodor existed. This match-up is very near to an autowin as long as the Tool Scrapper isn’t prized. Catchers and Hammers do too much damage against the deck, because there is no way, it can energy accelerate its attackers. The deck also runs Special Energy, which are free meals for Enhanced Hammers. The match-up combined to his horrible opening hand (he passed & drawed for 2 turns) lead into him scooping around T6. There is pretty much you can do about the match-up as long as the player with AggroHammer knows what he is doing.
3-1


5. Round (Ho-Oh EX/Mew EX/Terrakion/Darkrai EX/stuff)

I was hoping that I wouldn’t face the deck. Ho-Oh EX is useful in this match-up against my deck! The deck was so interesting that I’ll later on reveal it in the later entry of this week with a full analysis of the deck. The player was the same, who I faced in the last year’s Nationals finals and was playing 6-corners. The most important thing about this game was that I got a mediocre start, while he had one Ho-Oh EX prized, which was problematic. When he decided to move off the energy from Ho-Oh and not to attack with it, I knew I had a very good chance in winning the game. I Catchered the Ho-Oh and just started the normal Hammer disruption. The Ho-Oh EX sit as the active Pokémon for the rest of the game, while I slowly decked him out. It was also pretty unfortunate for him that he didn’t get his 2^nd Ho-Oh EX from the prizes even though he only had 2 prizes left in the end of the game.
4-1


6. Round (Darkrai EX/Tornadus EX/Mewtwo EX)

I was very happy that I made it this far with the deck. Many people asked me first how did I do, but when I told them which deck I was running, they thought I was trolling them. I knew I had a proper tie break, so all I had to do was to win this game to get to top4. I don’t know about this match-up. The deck runs DCEs, which is always a good thing, but Darkrai EX can get very nasty, if you aren’t able to Hammer the energy away in the early game. I would say it’s something like 60-40 to the opponent. In this game it was 100-0 for my opponent. He went first and he N’d my good hand in T1 into a crap hand. After that I draw&passed for 6 turns until he was able to KO my Lairon and Darkrai EX. Ugh… I looked through my deck, and saw that in 7 turns, I would’ve drawn my first supporter of the game. I need to learn to shuffle properly!
4-2


So, in the end I went 4-2 and placed 7^th in the tournament. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t that mad either. It was fun to play the deck and see it working (until the last game). Getting to top4 would’ve been awesome as you can see from the final results of the tournament.

1. Garbodor/Terrakion/Mewtwo EX
2. Darkrai EX/Tornadus EX/Mewtwo EX
3. Garbodor/Mewtwo EX/Registeel EX/Terrakion
4. Eelektrik/Zekrom/Zekrom EX/Raikou EX

Both Garbodors would’ve been VERY good match-ups and the Eelektrik is more than winnable match-up as well. The only problem would’ve been the Darkrai EX deck, but he wouldn’t have been in the top4 if I hadn’t lost to him, so it wouldn’t have been a problem.


I think I got some Championship Points from this tournament! Something like 6? I have get to know to the CP system that much yet, because the only thing I checked was that is it possible to get an invite to Worlds from Finland and just like said earlier in this article – it’s pretty damn difficult. However, of course I’m aiming at my 7^th Nationals victory, so if I’m able to succeed in that, I don’t have to stress about Championship Points.

Conclusion

So, my first tournament was a mediocre success – no fireworks, but still satisfied. As said, I was judging on Sunday and from there I have some decklists and analysis of them ready by Wednesday, so be sure to look my blog for that later this week! "Eye on Japan: BW-BC" is scheduled for Monday 22nd of October, so don’t miss it either!

I hope you enjoyed the report and that I’ll see more rogue decks from everyone this season compared to the last season! Thanks for reading and feel free to comment on anything that comes into your mind!