There were only five 3-0s left in the tournament, which meant that I was essentially sitting at the head table with people who might be top cutting. Sure enough, I get paired with another familiar face. Above me in the table were Christian and Trevore. Christian was a super keen Pokemon player who only started recently. He accompanied me to Tukwila and was inspired to build his own Zekrom deck. He had already played a BR just the day before in Redmond, WA and was doing very well this tournament. Trevore arrived on the mainland with a large group from Vancouver Island and, well, you’ll see what he’s playing below.
To my left, Ricky was downpaired and also not too happy with it. Ricky is another friend from the local league and we had actually went together to watch the Canucks, our local NHL team, open practice the day before.
I had a DCE in hand and decided that it might be worthwhile to start Zekrom instead of Solosis. Sam turns over…magneton? We laugh at how tired poor Sam was and treated it as a mulligan. I had mulligan’d once already, so I just didn’t draw an extra card.
Gothitelle got set up turn three this game and I drop the Jirarchi and Shaymin to accelerate my energy attachment enough to KO his active Reshiram. Sam laments that he didn’t use Switch for Cleffa while he had the chance. I was actually quite nervous this match as Magnezone can set up ridiculously fast off Twins. I, myself, had no real draw to speak of, but two energies were already on the field and I knew that I needed Goth active immediately while he still was stuck on basics. Luckily, he whiffed on Twins (not sure if he even ran any) and my first prize card was a catcher.
Seriously, screw this guy
When I played the catcher, Sam revealed that he wasn’t aware that Gothitelle was a one-sided trainer lock. This had led him to over invest in one Magneton, which I brought up and KO’d. I followed up with consecutive KO’s on another other Stage 1’s that I saw and Sam was unable to get anything going.
4-0
Round 5 vs. Ricky Gao (Cincinno/Ninetales/Yanmega/Simisear)
Aw man, not Ricky Gao! I could’ve been paired with Trevore, but nope. I had to play Ricky Gao. Ricky definitely is a name in Pokemon and I’m never enthusiastic to play against him.
True to form, he is well prepared against Goth and Ross decks in his Stage 1 variant. He benched Pansear off my Pichu and attempts to evolve it to Simisear on his first turn. After clearing things up with the judge, he would evolve it properly on turn two and would Flame Burst twice to KO both my Solosis on the bench.
Seriously. Screw. This. Guy.
I get Gothitelle up late, no thanks to Ricky’s constant use of Judge, and it was in risk of getting two-shotted as well. I communicated and opted to avoid dropping another Solosis and instead put up Gothita. This turned out to be the wrong play, as he focused on finishing the Gothitelle and I top deck the Rare Candy. Of course, if I dropped the Solosis, he probably would have gone for that instead. I try to charge up Gothitelle with Jirarchi and Shaymin but epically flip three tails on Stardust Song. Like a boss!
I promote Cleffa and Eek to see if I could salvage the game in anyway. I also needed to do this as both Cleffa and Pichu had 20 damage from an earlier Flame Burst and Ricky only had two prizes left (Ricky himself actually suggested the move while I basically had no idea what I could do, what a pal!). Unfortunately, Ricky Copycats into a catcher and Flame Bursts for the win.
4-1
Top Cut or Not?
Cor ultimately ends up 2-3. I noted that two other Ross/KGL players didn’t do too well either. Simon was 3-2, Garik ended 2-3, Sam fell to 3-2 and Ricky was, of course, 5-0. There were five or seven other players with 4-1 and two with 5-0. I knew that if I got into the top four, I would be just squeaking by.
Sure enough, I end up in fourth place behind Christian. Kevin Gomez, who was playing my nightmare match up of Mewplume was just behind me with about 3% of difference in resistance. I would like to thank all my friends/opponents for boosting me up into top cut! I couldn’t have made it without you!
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