10 years of competitive Pokémon TCG: The Misplay

Even the deck names were more
creative in the past!

Hello everyone!


Note before reading: In order to continue reading this entry, read first the part 1 of this series, which can be found form the link below. There is no point of you reading this entry, if you haven’t read the first part.

- 2004

I decided to make a next entry of this series before the Impact Crater of Plasma Freeze, because we don’t yet have the official card list of Plasma Freeze. Once we get that, I’ll start a full cover on Plasma Freeze!

Now that you have hopefully read the first entry let us recap where we are at. The 13-year old me has just been to his first Worlds Championships and has won his first National Championship title. Now he has come back from Orlando with his family and hears with his big brother that they could establish their own Pokémon TCG league to Hyvinkää – their home town! My big brother went to a local toy store and the owner agreed to have a league inside the shop’s back cafeteria (I think there was a car repair shop and a toy store in the same building, what a combo).  

Anyways, it’s autumn 2004 and I’m 13-years old. Let’s see where the story leads me next.

Hyvinkää League and the first City Championships




It’s pretty crazy to think that it has been already almost 10 years when we first hold our first league meeting with my big brother. We were able to have a commercial of our Pokémon league in our local newspaper at the same time with the commercial of the toy store and it didn’t cost us anything. It was great, but we didn’t know if any people would still turn out.

We went to the league place 30 minutes early just in case (you could say that we were VERY excited), and just waited for someone to come. And someone came! In fact, 4 people showed up in the first league meeting. Among them was a people I was going to spent thousands of hours in the future, but I didn’t really know that at that point. And of course among them was the first non-US, non-Japanese soon-to-become World Champion Miska Saari.

As I pointed out in the earlier entry, I was very shy when I was a teenager. I mostly lagged in the corner with my black clothes on just looking when my big brother taught the newcomers to play. I wasn’t an emo teenager (heck that term didn’t even exist back then), but I was just pretty unsocial, lol. However, after a few league meetings more people showed up and my big brother also introduced the another soon-to-become World Champion Tom Roos the game and league.

Eventually I also become familiar with the new players and started talking to them (especially to Miska and one girl in the league). Miska always thought me as a some sort of a league leader and changed his deck for each league in order to come up with a strategy to beat me. However, back then, luck didn’t have such a big factor in the games’ outcomes, so he didn’t really have a great success in his games against me, because I also had a new deck in almost every league meeting.

We still were in close contact with the TO of the National Championships, who provided us our league material and from him we heard that it was possible to keep a Hyvinkää City Championships tournament! First league, then City Championships, that’s even cooler. Well, we had our first CC in Hyvinkää and the same TO came to organize the tournament with the help of my big brother. Already at this point my big brother seemed to be leaning more towards organizing than playing, even though he really enjoyed the game as well. However, I think that leading and organizing is more than in his nature while competing is more in my nature.

The turnout for the first Hyvinkää CC was a whopping 12 people! Could have been more, but we were still quite satisfied with turnout. I think the Junior division was won by a player, who was back then 6-years old and was bilingual (Swedish is the other official language in Finland), I won the Seniors division and Tom R. won the Masters Division. We didn’t know it yet, but this tournament pretty much showed how the tournaments in Finland would generally go in the next 3-4 years…

There was also Helsinki CC held, which a few of our league members went to. I believe there was only one age division in the whole tournament and even though I don’t remember what I played, I only remember that I won the tournament. Why I remember that? I’ll explain that later on.


Someone to look up to

Everyone has to start from somewhere. And you could say that the real igniter to win something big was the World Championship decks released by PTCI. The first thing we did with my big brother, was to purchase Tsuguyoshi Yamato’s Magma deck and played with it and investigated the different decklists of the World Championships of 2004. This one booklet has had the most impact on me as a deck builder. I still sometimes check it out when building a deck and see how especially the Team Magma builds of Yamato and Yoneda are still viable today. The Supporters counts, the game philosophy of the deck and the versatility of the cards together created something very unique. Something so unique that I’m still impressed how anyone was able to build decks like that in 2004. 

And it was important for me that there was someone I could look up to. It kept me striving to be better every day and to have a goal in playing Pokémon TCG – to become a World Champion one day. Even though after all these years I haven’t been able to achieve that, I’ve gotten so many other things out of Pokémon TCG, that I can’t be disappointed. I still aim at World Championships, but you can say that my appetite for winning has decreased a bit. I have gotten so much for Pokémon TCG that it’s my time to give back to the game, which is one of the main reasons I’m still writing this blog.

I think Magma is the second-most played deck by me ever. I played literally hundreds of games with it and against it trying to find out its deepest essence. However, what is the deck, I have played the most matches with? That will be a story for another time.

Spring time


After a very interesting few months, the Hyvinkää league had grown steadily to 12-14 player league, which isn’t bad at all considering, Hyvinkää has about 40,000 citizen. Pokémon wasn’t in in 2004-2005 anymore in Finland, so it was tough to find people, who were interested in playing the game. However, even though our league was only fairly popular, it was VERY active. All the people came to league every single time and after the league ended and the shop closed, we used to spend hours of chatting outside the league place. I think that I spent 80% of the time I was awake on Saturday’s with the people from the league unless I had a floorball game.

Since we now had access to Pokegym, my skill-level and deck building skills had developed a LOT in the during the year. I wasn’t very good with the Internet, so I didn’t know any other sites than Pokegym, but at the time it was enough. I had already started thinking about my Nationals’ deck and bumped into an interesting deck concept named Zap-Turn-Dos. It was a VERY fast deck back in the day. It was able to hit T2 70!!!!!! And it had a very surefire way of doing that. I was immediately fascinated about the combo and started to discuss about it with my big brother. The only problem was that we didn’t have any Zapdos EX. So we should buy them online! We went to the Pokegym.net trading forums and bought 4 Zapdos EXs from some Canadian seller/player. I think the price was reasonable thanks to Euro.

The metagame in Finland was undeveloped and even though everyone now knew about Pokegym.net, even we didn’t have a lot of metagame decks built together. That’s why I chose Zap-Turn-Dos as my deck for Nationals – it would be super good in undeveloped metagame, where no stage decks would be fast enough and I would get very easy second National Championship title. My list was going to have heavy emphasis on the speed and it could be considered as a donk-deck at the time. However, as you will quickly find out, we completely underestimated the metagame and choosing Zap-Turn-Dos as my Nationals’ decks was one of the stupidest and arrogant decisions I have ever made in Pokémon TCG.


Finnish National Championships of 2005


Ok, so the decklist looks as follows.


Pokémon:

4x Voltorb (Hidden Legends)
1x Electrode (Hidden Legends)
4x Electrike (Deoxys)
2x Manectric (Deoxys)
4x Zapdos EX
=15


Trainer:

4x TV Reporter
4x Dual Ball
4x Master Ball
2x Copycat
2x Steven’s Advice
2x Rocket’s Admin
1x Lanette’s Net Search
2x Strength Charm
4x Pokémon Reversal
4x Super Scoop Up
=29

Energy:

16x Lighting Energy
=16

As anyone who has played back then can see – the list is horrendous. After a year on the Pokegym.net, it seems that my deck building skills hadn’t developed at all! I didn’t’ even play Stadium in the deck, even though I was weak to Desert Ruins. I really didn’t learn anything from the Worlds. However, this list didn’t really show my skill-level well-enough. As I said previously, I underestimated the maturity of the Finnish metagame due to the lack of competitive tournaments. Also, I didn’t take into account that there could be new very good players as well that I hadn’t ever seen before… For those, who don’t get the idea of the deck, it’s simply to use Recharge in T1 and then use Legendary Ascent to get T2 Zapdos EX hitting and win the game before your opponent has time to set-up. Remember, T2 70 was HUGE in the year 2005.

Also, the population of Finnish players had increased a bit and this year our National Championships had a whopping 40(!) players in the tournament. All the 12 Hyvinkää league players were in the tournament. However, since our country’s OP was still so small, we still had the trip for only one person thus every age group still played in the same age category. I was still officially in Seniors, but it didn’t really matter, because I was soon to be a Master and I was already as tall as I am today!

Well, let’s see how the tournament went. (For some weird reason I remember the older World Championships better than the more recent ones…)


1. Round (Random.dec)

It has been 9 years, so obviously my memory is a bit faint, but I do remember that I started the game with a Voltorb and got a Zapdos EX. He was a beginning player that I had never met and I believe I took all the 6 prizes with the one Zapdos EX. I was fairly confident with my deck at this point.

1-0



2. Round (Can’t remember!)

I don’t have slightest memory of this game, but I won it nonetheless.

2-0


3. Round (Metagross/EX.dec)

I saw Beldum and thought it would be an easy victory. Stage2 decks wouldn’t be very slow. However, he went first and got a set-up very first. The I understood, what was the biggest problem in the deck –my main attacker’s damage maximum output was only 70. He was able to attach 4 Special Metal Energy to his Metagross EX and I could only hit him for 30! He started pounding my Zapdos EX’s  with the loaded Metagross EXs and as I couldn’t hit enough heads from Reversals and SSUs, I lost the game.
 
2-1

After the game I was almost crying (really) since I felt like my deck choice was completely off and that I would have no chance of winning the tournament. Thankfully my big brother consoled me. I still didn’t feel happy about the deck’s weakness.


4. Round (Gorebyss.dec)

This was against one of my fellow league members, who has quit the game already, but was very successful in Finland (even won Nationals 2 times in Seniors in the next few years). We knew that the match-up was an autowin for me due to the weakness of Gorebyss, so I think I just quickly got 6 prizes with the one Zapdos EX.

3-1


5. Round (Don’t remember!)

The only thing I remember from this game was who it was against, not what she played. She was also one of my fellow league members and I was very surprised how she was at 3-1 at this point of the tournament. Unfortunately for her, her deck was even less developed than mine, so I think I only used 2 Legendary Ascent in this game and was able to deny her from drawing any prizes.

4-1


So, the Swiss ended here and I knew I were through. I was relieved since I was ready to scoop the tournament after the 3^rd round loss (puberty, yeah). However, I wasn’t still convinced about my deck and as I saw two adults playing in the table 1, I became even more scared. I hadn’t even met either of them and since they were a lot older than me, they probably were more skillful as well.


Crazy Nationals

There was a lot of to whine about the organizer of the tournament, so if you want to read my opinions’ about the situation, you can read them from here: http://pokegym.net/forums/showthread.php?t=22411 Even though my English skills are still lacking, you can see from that topic’s grammar that I was 14-years old back then, lol. I want to warn you that the topic contains spoilers considering this entry, so maybe you want to check it after reading this entry to the end. From that topic you could also see that I took thing quite seriously back then, haha.


Top8 Salamence EX/Pidgeot


1. Game

This was against a son of the man, who went 5-0 in the Swiss. It was a stage2 deck with Pidgeot, so I thought I had an upper hand. However, soon I started to miss Battle Froniter, which I was stupid not-to-play since it had just been released and I didn’t know if it was any good or not. I got a T2 Legendary Ascent and thankfully his set up couldn’t keep up with my Reversals. I was able to stop him from using Pidgeot, which was a huge thing for me. Eventually, he didn’t draw a single prize.
5-1 (1-0)

2.. Game

The game 2 was a complete opposite of the last game. He got a fairly slow start, but I was forced to open with a Zapdos EX (the greatest fear of the deck). We both had slow starts, but as slow starts are naturally better for stage2 decks, I was quickly surprised about the firepower of the deck. He started OHKOing my Zapdos EXs and I understood that in order to win the 3. game, I needed to either win on time or just to be able to cripple his set up.
5-2 (1-1)


3. Game

I looked at my opening hand and saw T2 Legendary Ascent there- I was relieved. However, he got a very quick start as well and if I wasn’t’ able to hit Reversal Heads in T3 to his Pidgeot, I’m pretty sure I would have lost the game. Nonetheless, the game ended to be very tight, but in the end I managed to pull the win.

6-2 (2-1)


I was on the roll, but still hadn’t faced either of the big adults, who I was a bit intimated by.

Top4 Slaking(Deoxys)/Blaziken(Ruby&Sapphire)


He was the player, who went 5-0. He was loud, social and talked to me a lot before the game. He told me that he had never played in a tournament and plays with a U.S. Regionals winning deck. He was able to get the winning list from some website (which I had never heard) and changed it a few cards. U.S. Regionals winning decklist against my pitiful Zap-Turn-Dos build? Doesn’t look good to me.


1. Game

I was familiar with Blaziken, because it was one of the most played cards in the last year Worlds’ even though I didn’t face any Blaziken decks. However, Slaking was a completely new card to me and when it firs hit the board, my heart skipped a few beats. It had Amnesia (Zapdos EX only had one attack) and it resisted 30 damage from attacks by EX-Pokémon.  I was screwed. Thankfully I was able to start the game and got a T2 Legendary Ascent. He struggled with the set-up a lot, but once the Slakings hit the field, I was in trouble. I had a huge prize lead, but struggled getting the last few prizes. In the end, it was a good thing for me, but why? No one could have guessed it at this point. Nevertheless, I was able to pull the last prizes even though I struggled with it a lot.
7-2 (1-0)

2. Game

As the TO was completely unprofessional (not the same TO, who was in the last years’ Nationals), she announced that we only had 50 minutes to play the top games instead of 60 minutes! After the first match, she announced a thing like that. Good for me, bad for my opponent, and in hindsight completely unprofessional and unfair. My opponent had a better start in this game, but as I understood that I would have the advantage in the 3^rd game, if it went to that, because my deck was faster, I should slow down my game tempo (I usually play super-fast) to win the 3^rd game on prizes. After a while it was pretty clear I would lose the 2^nd game, but I tried to switch in to Zapdos EXs just to prevent him for taking the last prizes and dragged the game as long as possible. Just before the game is about to end, the TO comes to us and says that we would only have total of 45 minutes instead of the total 50 minutes! Wtf.

7-3 (1-1)

3. Game

I got a T2 Zapdos EX and didn’t have a clue how much time would be left. However, I think that in just a 3-4 turn the time was called and obviously I had drawn 2 prizes at this point, while he had just set upped his first Slaking. Once again I lucksacked my way to the finals. Also, it’s good to mention that this person became next year the TO of all of the tournaments in Finland and he is one of the main reasons the Pokémon started to grow in Finland in the next years. Some of you may remember him, he was Marko U.

8-3 (2-1)



Finals Crobat.dec


1. Game

I didn’t know what I was up against, but I knew that she was probably playing some as strong deck as my last opponent. She wouldn’t be in the Finals otherwise right? Well, as it turned out she opened with Zubat. I started the game and begin to think were there any good Crobats in the format. Quickly I understood that the deck relied completely on Poison, which would be a very good for me since with Lefendary Ascent I wouldn’t have to worry about that! Not to mention that Crobat was weak to Lighting.. I took 6 prizes in 7 turns.

9-3 (1-0)

2. Game

She started the game, but I benched him in T3. It was the most anticlimactic Nationals’ finals I have ever played (excluding the 2012 Nationals’ Finals, if you do remember what I’m talking about).

10-3 (2-0)


And there we have it. Now I was the 2-time Finnish National Champion! I won the trip for me and to my big parent to the Worlds, which was held in San Diego in 2005. This time my mom believed me without seeing the official papers.  


Preparation and off to Worlds!

This time around, I wasn’t’ the only player going to Worlds. Both, Marko, his kids and my Finals opponent would participate Worlds as well. We couldn’t’ test IRL a lot, so me and Marko played with MSN Messenger’s webcam, lol. Marko wanted to play the Dark Slowking deck. I playtested Medicham EX and LudiCargo deck against him and eventually settled down with the LudiCargo, which I felt more comfortable with. Since I didn’t really have anyone to playtest with on this summer, I pretty much tested my deck against two decks – Marko’s Dark Slowking and the Yamato’s Team Magma deck, which my big brother played. And as you can see from the Worlds report, only one of those decks were present in the metagame.



World Championships 2005


Pokémon:

2x Jirachi (Deoxys)
2x Dunsparce (Sandstorm)
3x Lotad (Sandstorm)
2x Lombre DX {Sandstorm}
3x Ludicolo DX (Swing Dance)
2x Rhyhorn (Hidden Legends)
2x Rhydon (Hidden Legends)
2x Slugma (Deoxys)
2x Magcargo (Deoxys)
=20

Trainer:

4x Celio’s Network
4x TV Reporter
2x Rocket’s Admin
2x Steven’s Advice
3x Swoop! Teleporter
3x Warp Point
3x Rare Candy
3x Desert Ruins
1x Mr. Briney’s Compassion
1x Pokémon Retriever
=26

Energy:

4x Double Rainbow Energy
3x Scramble Energy
3x Heal Energy
3x Water Energy
1x Fighting Energy
=14


The difference between this list and to my Nationals’ list. Well, to be honest, they don’t even seem to be from the same player. And in the end, the Nationals experience really taught me that you can’t overlook your competitors and that speed / donk decks aren’t for players that trust in their skills not luck. This is the truth even in the current metagame and it will never change from that.

This deck however was a whole another caliber. I expected the metagame to be VERY Medicham EX-heavy since Avmozz (or something like that) sold 101 Medicham EXs on the Pokegym before World Championships! I also waited for Dark Slowkings to be fairly popular, because they were not only fast, but also very strong against Medicham EX decks thanks to Medicham EXs weakness.

In hindsight, I should have probably played 3 Rocket’s Admin (which is the same card as N by the way), but in the end it didn’t make that much of a difference in my tournament result. I just had to be extra-careful when playing down Rocket’s Admin.

I won’t go too in-depth about the list, but I want to mention that I played 3 Warp Point (the same card as Escape Rope), because I wanted to get Medicham EXs away from the active spot without Reversal flips and activate my Poke-Powers that way. Of course this wouldn’t work if Medicham deck had 2 Medicham EXs fully loaded, but that was rarely the case. Warp Point also could get me the last few cheap prizes from the benched Pokémon. Back in the day, there really wasn’t anything that gave you unlimited free retreat like nowadays.

Anyways, to the tournament.


1. Round Ty Wheeler – U.S. (Rock-Lock)

I knew what Rock-Lock was all about and my deck had a clear strategy against it. Both, Lotad and Lombre healed 10 damage from them between turns, so Rock-Lock’s strategy didn’t really work against me. However, the game was very close, because I took an early lead and his Scramble Energy activated, while mine didn’t during the whole game. Back in the days, it would take 2,000 words to explain what happened in the game, because so much happened! Compared to the current format, where the games couldb e summarized in two 2-3 sentences. Nonetheless, due to the match-up being positive for me, I was able to take the last prize with one of my 3 Warp Points.

1-0

2. Round Vernola brother #1 – U.S. (Rock-Lock)

The reason I remember this was against one of the Vernola brothers’ was, because I played against both of them during the tournament! Well, I think this was the more skillful one at this point (Adam, I guess), but once again since he was playing Rock-Lock, I had the advantage and won the game.

2-0

3. Round U.S. (Zapdos EX/Rayquaza EX/Electrode EX/Moltre EX)

I was at 2-0 in my second Worlds, and even though I was in Seniors, I was so excited! He started the game with Zapdos EX and I was like “Yeah, an easy win”. Well, I was very wrong. I didn’t really understand what the deck was all about since he killed off his Electrode EX and gave me 2 prizes (what?). Then he N’d me to 2 cards and my deck stopped completely. I was so lost with the match-up that even though he got a bad start, I lost the game only, because my playing skills lacked. He was the better player with a surprise deck and he truly deserved the win.

2-1

4. Round U.S. (Dark Slowking)

I played 3 Dark Slowking decks during the tournament and every single game went just like I had practived against Marko. Dark Slowking was a very fast deck, with good disruption, but once you were able to N them to 1-2 cards, they would be completely screwed. In this game I was 6-1 behind in prizes, but when I Rocket’s Admined (N’d) him to 1, I started my comeback and was able to come back from the 5 prize deficit!

3-1

5. Round U.S. (Medicham EX)

Finally I was able to play against Medicham EX, which I had planned my deck against. He only got 1 Medicham EX to play and I was able to set-up my Rhydons with the help of Warp Points, which game an upper hand in the game. It was a very though match, but I was able to pull it off.

4-1

6. Round Chech or Slovakian player (Medicham EX)

He was able to set up 2 Medicham EXs very quickly and even though I couldn’t use my Powers, the game came down to him flipping 1 heads from 2 Energy Removal 2 (Crushing Hammer). I was at 4-2 after this game, so I would need to win the last 2 games in order to get through to the top32.

4-2

7. Round U.S. (Dark Slowking)

This game went down exactly like the 4^th round game. I was once again in a 5-prize deficit, was able to make comeback with the help of Rocket’s Admin and Warp Point. It’s unbelievable how great the feeling is to overcome a 5-pirze deficit in the World Championships!

5-2


8. Round Vernola brother  #2 U.S. (Dark Slowking)

When he turned the Slowpoke, I was like “not again!”. Thankfully I was able to get a very quick start and I didn’t have to go the 5 prize deficit this time. One of the funniest memories I had from Worlds, is from this game. I counted that he needed a Special Darkness in order to OHKO my Ludicolo. He uses Energy Search and I am relieved that he can’t search for Special Darkness. Well, he proceeds and searches for Special Darkness! I try to explain with my English that he can’t search for Special Darkness and he looks at Energy Search and agrees. He explains that his brother just gave the deck for him and he got through the Grinder and now he is at 5-2! I don’t want to know how many times he searched for Special Darkness during those Grinder and Worlds games.. However, he was only able to hit 90 to my Ludicolo, which was 10 damage from OHKOing, which was enough for me and I proceeded to win the game from there.


6-2


It was pretty awesome to be in the top32 in only my 2^nd World Championships. I was very happy how my deck ran and knew that I could win any deck I would face. Unfortunately no other Finnish player was able to get to the top cut this year, so I was the only one in going to the second day.


Second day

I want to point out that this was the coolest year in Pokémon TCG Worlds. The top32 games were with 90 minute time limit! So the time couldn’t run out. Or could it…

Top32 Bobby Malec (Dark Steelix)


1. Game

In the first game he opened with Onix. I didn’t know what the deck was about, but soon I realized. The point of the deck was just to tank with Dark Steelix and heal the Steelixes with Potions and Life Herbs. Stelix EX was weak to Fire, so surprisingly Magcargo would be my main attacker in these matches. In the first game, he struggled a lot with this set-up and once I got DRE + Heal energy to Magcargo, the Magcargo took care of the Dark Steelixes before they were able to get too many Special Metals to them.

7-2 (1-0)


2. Game

I don’t remember the details of the game, but I remember that it lasted something like 45 minutes. Eventually I wasn’t able to inflict enough damage with Magcargos and the fully loaded Dark Steelix teared through my deck.

7-3 (1-1)


3. Game

This is a game that I saw literally nightmares for about 2 years. He had a very bad hand. I didn’t know it. I was able to get T2 Magcargo and used Smooth Over. I had two options since I had DRE on Magcargo already. Either to search for Rocket’s Admin and hope for an energy from the 6 cards or to search for TV Reporter and Smooth Over again next turn to get an energy for sure. I decided to go for Admin, because I wanted  to get more cards and I thought I would draw for energy. This one decision ruined my whole game.

I used Admin and my opponent said “thanks”. Ok, no matter. I draw for energy. The energy was DRE… I attached it to Magcargo thus making Magcargo to hit only for 60 damage after weakness and the reduction of DREs. He draws everything from the Admin and gets a full set-up. I still have a decent chance at winning, but he starts flipping Life Herbs, Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. He drew 4 Life Herbs in 4 turns and was able to hit heads from all of those. STILL, I had a good chance of winning the game until… Time was called. He was able to buy turns with the Life Herbs just enough, so that when the time was called, I couldn’t make a comeback. 1 turn later I would have tied the game and won it from there.
7-4 (1-2)


I was devastated. Just because of one mistake, everything felt apart and the luck turned against me. I’m pretty sure I will never forget the game, because it was one of the moments where everything changed just in matter of turns. I hope no one of you will ever experience something as similar in such an important game.


The moral of the story: Take the safer route even if it’s slower.




Aftermath

I can’t say that I was happy with the result. Of course top32 was a very good result, but the way I lost, bothered me a long time.

Nonetheless, the life went on and changes were coming to Pokémon TCG as Marko started to be in contact with out Local Distributor and he was planning to open 2 leagues to his home town. Also, we would soon get our own forum for Pokémon TCG in Finland, so the game would have potential to share information on the Internet.

Due to the disappointment in 2005 Wolrds, I was more hungry than ever to make a comeback for 2006 Worlds. I promised to myself that I would play more than ever and would search for information more than ever. I would be better than ever.


To be continued….



Conclusion

Whoa, it got a lot longer than these usually get. However, there are a lot of things coming up in the upcoming seasons as well, so I must start thinking about making these into two part articles. What do you think, was this a too long entry, or were you able to manage to read it all in one run? Also, feel free to ask anything considering the decks, cards etc. and share your own experience if you were playing back then!

Thanks for reading!


P.S. The results of the playmat contest are in and this week I'll soon release the winner(s?). I'll contact the winner(s?) personally, so stay tuned!