Hi everyone. It’s Tragic again, this time with a city championship report for Cumbernauld Cities.
After playing at Nottingham States and doing ok with TyRam, I decided I definitely wanted to attempt something new for Cities. I decided to try an item lock deck, since they weren’t usually that popular in Scotland, and my initial deck used Beartic and Ursaring as attackers. This didn’t go well so I changed it to something very similar to the deck used by google at worlds, by adding Reuniclus and replacing Ursaring with Donphan, as well as adding a Zekrom and Blissey.
The problem with this deck was that without Tropical Beach the deck was very slow and hard to set up. This was mainly due to having too many pokemon in the deck so I replaced Beartic with Kyurem. Not only could it abuse Outrage but when you’re in a mirror match, being able to do up to 180 damage to your opponents field, and potentially knocking out babies/solosis as well, is a really nice tool. The Basic pokemon also helped to speed up the deck a little.
Then, while trying to find a replacement for Donpahn, I came across Terrakion from Noble Victories. It had 130hp, weakness to grass and the potential to knock out Magnezones with two energies, if not 3. In short, it was perfect. I took out the Donphan lines and replaced them with two Terrakions.
Terrakion turned out to be a very strong attacker (3 for 90 is nice when your opponent is struggling to set up anything that can do more than that). It also made matchups against Zekrom and Magnezone decks a lot easier. I felt that these two decks would be seen in large numbers at Cumberanuld so the day before I replaced my last Zekrom with a 3rd Terrakion.
I arrive at the tournament and the hall soon get’s busy. In total there were 19 players in masters alone (not as big as other places but large by Cumbernauld standards) and like I thought, it looked like a large number of people were playing Zekrom, which made me feel a bit more confident in the deck. However some of the other decks I saw, including Chandelure, Durant and LostGar made me feel a bit nervous.
The LostGar in particular was a match I didn’t want to play, since my deck ran a large number of pokemon and Gengar would be very hard to knock out, since it can also use Seeker to heal damage if it wanted to.
Registration ends and the first round parings go up shortly before 11. Each match would be a single round lasting 30 minutes. For masters there were going to be 5 rounds with no top cut.
The first round parings are up and I’m up against a name I recognise, but can’t remember where from.
Round 1 Mike ZPST with Eelektros
We sit down and I finally remember that Mike was my final opponent at Nottingham States. I played TyRam then against his Zekrom and it was an incredibly close game. His deck hasn’t changed much since then and I hope that he doesn’t get a turn one setup. Fortunately for me, although he starts with Tornadus, Pachirisu and Shaymin, he only has two energy cards and not a lot of cards to work with. This gives me enough time to set up my board, but I need to play N early on which gives him a much needed hand refresh and he takes his first prize next turn.
I think on the next turn I finally get out a Vileplume and I then start to set up a Terrakion and Reuniclus. I soon get everything ready while he struggles to do much with his hand full of items and I can start moving damage off my Terrakion. He’s unable to take any more prizes with his pokemon and finally scoops when I play a Flower Shop Lady to increase my near empty deck.
1-0
I’m happy at this point because my deck was working and doing what it was meant to, and I go into round two hoping to increase my winning streak.
Round 2 Darren with Vanilluxe
He gets the better setup and I struggle a bit at the start but I don’t think it would have affected the outcome of the match. He soon gets out everything he needs while I have a Reuniclus, Chansey and another pokemon on the bench to absorb damage. From there the match is pretty repetitive. He would attack with Vanilluxe and paralyze my active, and I would move the damage done onto a benched pokemon. I try to find an opening to attack but his coin flips were incredibly good, only needing to use Victini twice in the whole match.
After moving and healing as much damage as I possibly could, I finally have no other choice then to sacrifice my Terrakion and attack with a Kyurem to take a prize. However he can easily knock it out next turn and the match goes back to the way it was. Eventually time is called and on my final turn, I need to take a prize with my paralyzed Terrakion, or two with Kyurem. Both are impossible, so that’s game.
1-1
I have a look at the rankings and there’s actually a lot of 1-1’s that I don’t really want to play against at this point. However my next match is against James, a local player, and since I had leant him two Thundurus and two Catcher before the tournament, I already knew what he was playing.
Round 3 James with Magnezone/Eelektrik
I don’t remember much about this match so some things here might have been wrong. I think I’m able to set up quickly, but before I can get out a Vileplume, he catchers up a Terrakion and knocks it out. While this does allow me to use Twins, it means that I now only have one more Terrakion in my deck (the third was prized), which might prove costly if he can get out multiple Magnezones.
I’m able to set up a Terrakion and knock out his active pokemon. I then get an opening to catch up on prizes when he uses Magnezone’s lost burn to deal 100 damage. I move the damage off and knock out his lone Magnezone with Terrakion.
He then attempts to stall with Cleffa’s Eek attack, which prevents me from doing much for a couple of turns. A few turns later he promotes Thundurus. I move damage onto my Cleffa and start setting up a Kyurem instead, then knock out his Thundurus to make the prize count 3-3
He stalls with Cleffa again and a later gets out a 3rd Magnemite. On his next turn he evolves into Magneton and on mine, I use N to reduce his hand size. It turns out I manage to remove the Magnezone from his hand when I did that and without Magnezone, he struggles to while I’m able to take my last prizes with Terrakion.
2-1
At this stage, 2 wins out of 3 is great, although admitibly both of them were down mainly to type advantage. The next match was neither Zekrom or Magnezone however, ant it turned out to be a very challenging game
Round 4 Max with Chandelure
This is actually another rematch. I played Max earlier this year at Manchester battle roads where his Gothitelle thrashed my TyRam in the last round of swiss. We both have different decks now, with Max going for an item lock version of Chandelure.
He gets out a Tropical Beach on his first turn. My deck doesn’t run this card but I’m more then happy to take advantage of it here. I play sages training on my 2nd turn and have to make a choice as to whether I should keep Vileplume or Reuniclus, with a rare candy in my hand.
I go for Vileplume, since he could potentially get multiple Chandelures out next turn without the item lock and soon I’m able to get the Reuniclus anyway. By then his Lampent has dragged up my Vileplume, and gets knocked out while his Vileplume remains on the field.
I’m then able to take advantage of Twins to get all the cards I need, and use Kyurem’s Glaciate attack to spread damage and knock out his Cleffa. I’m also able to take a knock out with Outrage next turn, but the damage put’s Kyurem into knock out range with a combination of Cursed Shadow, Eerie Glow and burn damage.
I try setting up another Kyurem while attacking with Terrakion to put him 10 away from a knock out. He heals it next turn by retrating it and using seeker, while I heal my side of the board by using Blissey’s Blissful Nurse power.
Not long after that I realise I’ve run out ways to get energy cards, so I use Seeker on Terrakion to prevent it from getting dragged in the active spot, which would cost me the game. I then use Kyurem to take an outrage ko, which puts me ahead of prizes. He now takes advantage of Twins but time is called as he drags up my Reuniclus with Lampent. On my first turn, I play N to give him a 3 card hand, and move damage in a way to make it hard for him to get a knock out. He’s unable to take a prize on his turn and I draw and end my turn to win the game.
3-1
I feel I definitely got lucky in that match since he did admit to making a misplay by not playing a Jirachi he had, which I hadn’t accounted for at all.
So after a short wait, the final pairings go up. I end up facing Daniel, who’s playing a Zekrom deck, so if I do as well against him as I did the other Zekrom decks, it should be an easy match. However, Daniel wasn’t going to make this easy for me.
Round 5 Daniel with ZPST
He sets up quickly and gets a turn 1 Zekrom and a pluspower to knock out my active Kyurem. This allows me to immediately play Twins and set up my bench with Pichu. I get out Vileplume early in the game, but I take a very long time to get Reuniclus. He takes advantage of this by knocking out everything I place in front of him. Soon I have little choice then to pay the 4 energy retreat cost to save my Terrakion while he has a 3 prize lead.
Eventually I am able to get Reuniclus set up, and I start attacking again with Terrakion. By then I’ve only taken 2 prizes to his 5. However, with the lock now ready, he’s unable to take any more prizes as I move any damage he can do to my bench filled with Kyurems and Terrakions. From there it’s only a matter of time until I take my last prize.
4-1
So after this match, I find out that no one else had managed to win all their matches, and that 5 players finished with 4-1 records. As some of you might know already, championship points for cities are only awarded to the top 4 players, and here, the additional booster prizes also stopped at top 4. So it comes down to resistance to determine which of us 5 would walk away without points.
I finish the tournament in 5th…..lol.
So missing out on the points did hurt a little but I left the tournament very happy with how I did and how well the deck ran. Along with Manchester Battleroads earlier this year, this was the best I had done at a tournament in this format.
The tournament was won by a TyRam deck played by John, the league leader in Edinburgh. This was his first tournament so congratulations to him xD.
I don’t know what tournament I’ll be at next but it might be after the next set when we get some EX cards. I’m already looking forward to trying one or two of these titans in decks.
Also, as a last word of advice to future city players, if you think Zekrom and Magnezone will be dominating your area, I would definitely consider this kind of deck. It’s fun to play and has slightly favourable matchups against these decks, while having no terrible matchup or autoloss (well maybe Vanilluxe now xD).
Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas
Scott
After playing at Nottingham States and doing ok with TyRam, I decided I definitely wanted to attempt something new for Cities. I decided to try an item lock deck, since they weren’t usually that popular in Scotland, and my initial deck used Beartic and Ursaring as attackers. This didn’t go well so I changed it to something very similar to the deck used by google at worlds, by adding Reuniclus and replacing Ursaring with Donphan, as well as adding a Zekrom and Blissey.
The problem with this deck was that without Tropical Beach the deck was very slow and hard to set up. This was mainly due to having too many pokemon in the deck so I replaced Beartic with Kyurem. Not only could it abuse Outrage but when you’re in a mirror match, being able to do up to 180 damage to your opponents field, and potentially knocking out babies/solosis as well, is a really nice tool. The Basic pokemon also helped to speed up the deck a little.
Then, while trying to find a replacement for Donpahn, I came across Terrakion from Noble Victories. It had 130hp, weakness to grass and the potential to knock out Magnezones with two energies, if not 3. In short, it was perfect. I took out the Donphan lines and replaced them with two Terrakions.
Terrakion turned out to be a very strong attacker (3 for 90 is nice when your opponent is struggling to set up anything that can do more than that). It also made matchups against Zekrom and Magnezone decks a lot easier. I felt that these two decks would be seen in large numbers at Cumberanuld so the day before I replaced my last Zekrom with a 3rd Terrakion.
I arrive at the tournament and the hall soon get’s busy. In total there were 19 players in masters alone (not as big as other places but large by Cumbernauld standards) and like I thought, it looked like a large number of people were playing Zekrom, which made me feel a bit more confident in the deck. However some of the other decks I saw, including Chandelure, Durant and LostGar made me feel a bit nervous.
The LostGar in particular was a match I didn’t want to play, since my deck ran a large number of pokemon and Gengar would be very hard to knock out, since it can also use Seeker to heal damage if it wanted to.
Registration ends and the first round parings go up shortly before 11. Each match would be a single round lasting 30 minutes. For masters there were going to be 5 rounds with no top cut.
The first round parings are up and I’m up against a name I recognise, but can’t remember where from.
Round 1 Mike ZPST with Eelektros
We sit down and I finally remember that Mike was my final opponent at Nottingham States. I played TyRam then against his Zekrom and it was an incredibly close game. His deck hasn’t changed much since then and I hope that he doesn’t get a turn one setup. Fortunately for me, although he starts with Tornadus, Pachirisu and Shaymin, he only has two energy cards and not a lot of cards to work with. This gives me enough time to set up my board, but I need to play N early on which gives him a much needed hand refresh and he takes his first prize next turn.
I think on the next turn I finally get out a Vileplume and I then start to set up a Terrakion and Reuniclus. I soon get everything ready while he struggles to do much with his hand full of items and I can start moving damage off my Terrakion. He’s unable to take any more prizes with his pokemon and finally scoops when I play a Flower Shop Lady to increase my near empty deck.
1-0
I’m happy at this point because my deck was working and doing what it was meant to, and I go into round two hoping to increase my winning streak.
Round 2 Darren with Vanilluxe
He gets the better setup and I struggle a bit at the start but I don’t think it would have affected the outcome of the match. He soon gets out everything he needs while I have a Reuniclus, Chansey and another pokemon on the bench to absorb damage. From there the match is pretty repetitive. He would attack with Vanilluxe and paralyze my active, and I would move the damage done onto a benched pokemon. I try to find an opening to attack but his coin flips were incredibly good, only needing to use Victini twice in the whole match.
After moving and healing as much damage as I possibly could, I finally have no other choice then to sacrifice my Terrakion and attack with a Kyurem to take a prize. However he can easily knock it out next turn and the match goes back to the way it was. Eventually time is called and on my final turn, I need to take a prize with my paralyzed Terrakion, or two with Kyurem. Both are impossible, so that’s game.
1-1
I have a look at the rankings and there’s actually a lot of 1-1’s that I don’t really want to play against at this point. However my next match is against James, a local player, and since I had leant him two Thundurus and two Catcher before the tournament, I already knew what he was playing.
Round 3 James with Magnezone/Eelektrik
I don’t remember much about this match so some things here might have been wrong. I think I’m able to set up quickly, but before I can get out a Vileplume, he catchers up a Terrakion and knocks it out. While this does allow me to use Twins, it means that I now only have one more Terrakion in my deck (the third was prized), which might prove costly if he can get out multiple Magnezones.
I’m able to set up a Terrakion and knock out his active pokemon. I then get an opening to catch up on prizes when he uses Magnezone’s lost burn to deal 100 damage. I move the damage off and knock out his lone Magnezone with Terrakion.
He then attempts to stall with Cleffa’s Eek attack, which prevents me from doing much for a couple of turns. A few turns later he promotes Thundurus. I move damage onto my Cleffa and start setting up a Kyurem instead, then knock out his Thundurus to make the prize count 3-3
He stalls with Cleffa again and a later gets out a 3rd Magnemite. On his next turn he evolves into Magneton and on mine, I use N to reduce his hand size. It turns out I manage to remove the Magnezone from his hand when I did that and without Magnezone, he struggles to while I’m able to take my last prizes with Terrakion.
2-1
At this stage, 2 wins out of 3 is great, although admitibly both of them were down mainly to type advantage. The next match was neither Zekrom or Magnezone however, ant it turned out to be a very challenging game
Round 4 Max with Chandelure
This is actually another rematch. I played Max earlier this year at Manchester battle roads where his Gothitelle thrashed my TyRam in the last round of swiss. We both have different decks now, with Max going for an item lock version of Chandelure.
He gets out a Tropical Beach on his first turn. My deck doesn’t run this card but I’m more then happy to take advantage of it here. I play sages training on my 2nd turn and have to make a choice as to whether I should keep Vileplume or Reuniclus, with a rare candy in my hand.
I go for Vileplume, since he could potentially get multiple Chandelures out next turn without the item lock and soon I’m able to get the Reuniclus anyway. By then his Lampent has dragged up my Vileplume, and gets knocked out while his Vileplume remains on the field.
I’m then able to take advantage of Twins to get all the cards I need, and use Kyurem’s Glaciate attack to spread damage and knock out his Cleffa. I’m also able to take a knock out with Outrage next turn, but the damage put’s Kyurem into knock out range with a combination of Cursed Shadow, Eerie Glow and burn damage.
I try setting up another Kyurem while attacking with Terrakion to put him 10 away from a knock out. He heals it next turn by retrating it and using seeker, while I heal my side of the board by using Blissey’s Blissful Nurse power.
Not long after that I realise I’ve run out ways to get energy cards, so I use Seeker on Terrakion to prevent it from getting dragged in the active spot, which would cost me the game. I then use Kyurem to take an outrage ko, which puts me ahead of prizes. He now takes advantage of Twins but time is called as he drags up my Reuniclus with Lampent. On my first turn, I play N to give him a 3 card hand, and move damage in a way to make it hard for him to get a knock out. He’s unable to take a prize on his turn and I draw and end my turn to win the game.
3-1
I feel I definitely got lucky in that match since he did admit to making a misplay by not playing a Jirachi he had, which I hadn’t accounted for at all.
So after a short wait, the final pairings go up. I end up facing Daniel, who’s playing a Zekrom deck, so if I do as well against him as I did the other Zekrom decks, it should be an easy match. However, Daniel wasn’t going to make this easy for me.
Round 5 Daniel with ZPST
He sets up quickly and gets a turn 1 Zekrom and a pluspower to knock out my active Kyurem. This allows me to immediately play Twins and set up my bench with Pichu. I get out Vileplume early in the game, but I take a very long time to get Reuniclus. He takes advantage of this by knocking out everything I place in front of him. Soon I have little choice then to pay the 4 energy retreat cost to save my Terrakion while he has a 3 prize lead.
Eventually I am able to get Reuniclus set up, and I start attacking again with Terrakion. By then I’ve only taken 2 prizes to his 5. However, with the lock now ready, he’s unable to take any more prizes as I move any damage he can do to my bench filled with Kyurems and Terrakions. From there it’s only a matter of time until I take my last prize.
4-1
So after this match, I find out that no one else had managed to win all their matches, and that 5 players finished with 4-1 records. As some of you might know already, championship points for cities are only awarded to the top 4 players, and here, the additional booster prizes also stopped at top 4. So it comes down to resistance to determine which of us 5 would walk away without points.
I finish the tournament in 5th…..lol.
So missing out on the points did hurt a little but I left the tournament very happy with how I did and how well the deck ran. Along with Manchester Battleroads earlier this year, this was the best I had done at a tournament in this format.
The tournament was won by a TyRam deck played by John, the league leader in Edinburgh. This was his first tournament so congratulations to him xD.
I don’t know what tournament I’ll be at next but it might be after the next set when we get some EX cards. I’m already looking forward to trying one or two of these titans in decks.
Also, as a last word of advice to future city players, if you think Zekrom and Magnezone will be dominating your area, I would definitely consider this kind of deck. It’s fun to play and has slightly favourable matchups against these decks, while having no terrible matchup or autoloss (well maybe Vanilluxe now xD).
Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas
Scott