Yes, this is a Pokemon tournament report, not Yu-Gi-Oh. If you understand Pokemon in today's metagame, that's great. Otherwise, enjoy my post because I'll be making comparisons between Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh.
Today, with 5 other players from Belleville, we went to a Battle Roads (a miniature official Pokemon tournament). This was my first Battle Roads, and I was a little intimidated because of that. However, I went to play my best and top, regardless. I played a deck known as Zekeels. It's a tier 1 deck currently, and truly earns that position. This is what the deck does in a nutshell:
Eelektriks have a Pokemon Power that attach an Electric Energy to Pokemon on my bench, not my Active Pokemon, once per turn. Normally, the deck plays powerful monsters such as Zekrom, Thundurus, Zekrom EX, Tornadus EX and Mewtwo EX. (The last two Pokemon are quite powerful in the current format. For those who don't know, if an EX is knocked out, your opponent takes two prizes instead of one. First player to take all six prizes, which are randomly selected at the beginning of the game, wins the battle. The other two ways to win are if your opponent runs out of cards in his/her deck, or the opponent has no Pokemon on the field.)
At this point, I will illuminate a big difference between Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon. It's easy to OTK your opponent in Yu-Gi-Oh, but significantly harder in Pokemon. In Yu-Gi-Oh, many life points can be depleted instantly with only a few cards and select combos. In Pokemon, unless you knock out your opponent's active Pokemon while none exist on his/her bench, you have to fight and grind to obtain your six prizes first. You can't topdeck BLS or Monster Reborn and automatically win in Pokemon...
Anyway, the tournament would consist of four rounds of Swiss, and then the Top 2 players battle each other for first and second place. First place wins some packs and a rare card. Second place wins a less rare card and some packs. Third place gets a rare card as well, though not as rare as the cards for first and second place, and a couple packs. Finally, fourth place gets one pack I believe. It costs $0 to enter this tournament, unlike the $25 required to enter a Regionals in Yu-Gi-Oh (though you get 5 packs when you enter, and sometimes you make your money back...). Each match in the Swiss rounds only consists of one game only, and the top 2 match is best 2 out of 3.
Before I start the actual tournament report, another difference between the games. No side-decking in Pokemon. In my opinion, this makes deck-building in Pokemon a little more complicated because you have to include cards to effectively handle other match-ups. You have to have a 60 card deck, and that's it. Pokemon is more skill-based then Yu-Gi-Oh before the games even begin. Anyway, this is the report. For the non-Pokemon players, i'll try to be as descriptive as possible.
Round 1 Zekeels (Michael)
Playing a team-mate first turn is unfortunate, but whatever. He went first and played a Supporter known as Pokemon Collector to almost entire filled his field with Pokemon immediately. (Collector searches for 3 basic Pokemon from your deck. You can only play one Supporter per turn.) He played one Tynamo (which eventually evolves into Eelektrik) and a bunch of boss Pokemon, if memory serves me. On my turn, I exploded as much as he did,with a Collector, playing 2 Tynamo, and other Pokemon. On his turn, he eventually played Professor Juniper (Supporter that discards your hand and lets you draw 7 cards). He didn't follow up with too much afterward. On my turn, my hand was fairly unsatisfactory, so I played Professor Oak's New Theory (Supporter that shuffles your hand into your deck and draw 6 cards). Using what I drew, I started to knock out some Pokemon. Eventually, he used Pokemon Catcher to bring my Eelektrik to the active spot. (Trainer that allows you to switch your opponent's Active Pokemon with one on the bench. This card isn't as broken as anything in Yu-Gi-Oh. It's a pretty good card in Pokemon, but using it skillfully is more rewarding in the long-term.) Eelektrik has a high retreat cost, (Retreating is paying energy to put an Active Pokemon on the bench. The energy required for this is written on each Pokemon) so I assume Mike did this to stall. Fortunately, I was able to put Eelektrik back on the bench and I had a Catcher to bring Mike's Eelektrik out. I knocked it out, which disabled his Electric Energy engine. (This is why I always try to set up 2 Tynamo/ Eelektrik instead of 1, because 1 will likely faint at some point.) Eventually we reached a point in the game where I had 2 prixes left and he had 4. He played the Supporter, N. (Both players shuffle their hand into their deck, then draw cards equal to the number of prizes you have.) After we drew our cards, he pretty much passed. I drew to 3 cards in my hand, and had Professor Juniper in my hand. When I played it Mike scooped, which isn't surrising. Even without Juniper, I had control most of the game, and my field was dominating his before I played the Juniper. Yeah, so I got accused of sacking, but I brushed it off since I had game in a few turns, without Juniper.
1-0
Round 2 vs Volcarona/ Entei EX Burn (Sal)
Unfortunately I played another Belleville player. Anyway, the strategy behind this deck is to inflict extra damage, outside of battle damage. Burn is a status condition that does the following: At the end of each turn, if you control a Burned Pokemon, flip a coin. If tails, 2 damage counters (20 damage) are applied to the Burned Pokemon. There were other cards that inflicted extra damage as well. Anyway, I beat him down with Tornadus EX and Zekrom, and he couldn't recover from the assault of my legendaries, and I obtained all 6 prizes.
2-0
Round 3 vs Terrakion (Some random person)
Before I summarize this match, allow me to illuminate another difference between Yu-Gi-Oh: Weakness. Certain Pokemon are weak to Pokemon of a different type. In this case, Terrakion is a Fighting type, and all my Electric Pokemon are weak to fighting. This means that all of Terrakion's attacks on my Electric Pokemon would do double the damage. The Terrakion deck is meant to counter Zekeels.
Now, onto the match, I set up two Eelektriks within my first five turns, and for the majority of the game, I only attacked him with both of my Mewtwo EX. I avoided playing my Electric Pokemon, other than Eelektricks which are essential, because I'm a SMART player. He kept stalling by using all 4 of his Pokemon Catchers on my Eelektriks, and I had to waste turns and resources to retreat them. Fortunately, he never killed my eels, and I killed his first 4 Terrakions, but he kept using Revive to bring them back (Revive puts a Basic Pokemon on the Bench from the Discard Pile). Eventually, he killed one of my Mewtwos. When he did that, I played a Bouffalant from my hand, and used my eels to give it Energy to attack. I killed his Terrakion with Bouffalant's Revenge. (Revenge is an attack that normally does 20 damage. However, if your opponent knocked out one of your Pokemon on their last turn, Revenge does an extra 70 damage.) After this I had 1 prize left, and he scooped, realizing he couldn't defeat me. I decided to include Bouffalant into my deck at the last minute for this reason. I'm glad I did, because at that moment in the game, my other Mewtwo didn't have the required energy to knock out his Terrakion. Attention to precise details when constructing the deck is very important, as I've already stated...
3-0
Round 4 vs Celebi/ Mewtwo EX/ Tornadus EX (Another random guy)
This deck uses Celebi for energy acceleration so Mewtwo and Tornadus can attack as soon as possible, and inflict as much damage as possible. He started with a lone Mewtwo, and I beat him in 3 turns with my Tornadus EX. Since he didn't have any other Pokemon on the bench when his Mewtwo was knocked out, he automatically lost. He played Supporters on both of his turns to manipulate his hand in an attempt to draw Pokemon, but he didn't. This was the most luck-based game I participated in all day, and unfortunately for my opponent, he was unlucky. I didn't open awesome, but it didn't matter.
4-0
So, going undefeated after Swiss, I automatically made Top 2 by default. It turned out the player I just defeated was my opponent in my Top 2 match, which didn't surprise me.
Round 5 vs Celebi/ Mewtwo EX/ Tornadus EX (Another random guy)
Game 1 I knocked out 3 of his EXs swiftly. This was a game of skill, and I definitely outplayed him. I killed 1 Mewtwo EX and 1 Tornadus EX. I baited out another Mewtwo, instead of Tornadus, since I had a Bench full of Electric Pokemon. (Tornadus EX is weak to Electric Pokemon.) This is exactly what I wanted. On the final turn I played a Mewtwo EX, that I kept in my hand the whole time to make it appear like I didn't have it. I attached a Double Colourless Energy to it and knocked out his Mewtwo (This card counts as 2 Normal Energy.) This worked because Mewtwo EX is weak to other Psychic Pokemon, therefore Mewtwo can easily kill another Mewtwo.
Game 2, he flipped Heads on all of his trainers, almost, that required good coin flips to defeat me. I put up a good fight, but with my terrible starting hand, I had no chance.
Game 3 I took knocked out one of his Celebi and Tornadus EX early on. As the game went on, his coin flips started revealing tails, which didn't help him. I knocked out another Celebi, and then I beat him he turn after by knocking out another EX.
5-0
I'm happy that I won the first official Pokemon event I've ever attended. Basically, I wrote this post to draw some simple comparisons between Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon. Pokemon is more skill-based then Yu-Gi-Oh. In both games, you really have to play your cards at the right time, and not waste them recklessly. In Yu-Gi-Oh, you can get away with this in certain circumstances, but not in Pokemon. If any Pokemon players reading this are interested in my decklist, comment on this post and I will reveal the list in another post.
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