Tournament Reports: A Brief Look at My Regionals Experience

Whew! I just got back from our Regionals trip earlier this afternoon. Our flight was delayed yesterday, so we had to stay the night in Memphis. Fortunately, the flight delay allowed me to see some very good friends in Memphis! So, that ended up being a blessing in disguise. A very nice unexpected surprise :)

Although I didn’t do very well in the tournament, my Regionals experience was a blast. I ended up playing the same Garbodor list that I used at the Yeti Gaming Battle Road. My record was 3-3 when I decided to drop (I wanted to spend more time with Michael and others at the event). Unfortunately, many of my games weren’t very interesting..so don’t be expecting too much from this brief write-up.

I believe we had 256 Masters in Houston. We were apparently one person short of having 9 rounds. I can never remember the numbers required for those things- so this may not be true. Regardless, there were 8 rounds and quite a few X-2′s were not going to make the Top 32.

Round 1: v.s. Darkrai EX/Terrakion/Sableye

This is definitely one of the harder matchups for Garbodor..not a good way to start the day. I went second in this game and my opponent got a turn 2 Night Spear. My start was very poor. I opened with 2 Darkrai EX (no Supporter or Sableye) and had to sacrifice 2-3 Sableye in order to get going. I did flip quite a few heads on Crushing Hammer..which helped quite a bit. Anyway, I eventually got out a Garbodor and was able to keep a Terrakion active for several turns while trying to remove his energy. But the opponent soon got a Tool Scrapper and time was called on the turn he got the Scrapper. He was up 2-3 prizes and I had no way of coming back in 2 turns. Although I don’t believe he was intentionally playing slowly, his pace was questionable. Assuming he couldn’t get another Tool Scrapper, I believe I could have won with several more turns.

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Round 2: v.s. Terrakion/Registeel EX/Gigalith

I went first in this one and had a ridiculous opening. He played down a Roggenrola and I had to think really hard about what the Gigaliths did. I was pretty certain that none of them had any Abilities- so I decided not to get out Garbodor this game. I ended up getting a turn 2 Night Spear and quickly took all 6 prizes without giving up any prizes in the process as a result of reusing Pokemon Catcher and Enhanced Hammer (he played a lot of Blend Energy). This ended very quickly.

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Round 3: v.s. Terrakion EX/Terrakion/Mewtwo EX/Bouffalant

This matchup really isn’t that hard..you just have to be very patient and wait until they run out of Energy. Unfortunately, my opponent (who was a very, very nice Dad) played rather slowly. I do not believe it was intentional, he just naturally took a while to perform his actions. Anyway, he went first and we both had fine starts. I went about 50/50 in Crushing Hammer flips. He took 2 quick Prizes on a Sableye and a Trubish. Time was called on his turn and he had an active Bouffalant with a DCE/Fighting and a benched Mewtwo with no Energy and benched Terrakion EX with no Energy. He had very few Energy left in his deck and a hand size of 2-3 without any Supporters. He was only able to do 60 to my active Sableye with Bouffalant. Although I had 3 Crushing Hammer and an Enhanced Hammer in hand along with a fully powered Darkrai EX on the bench, I couldn’t grab 2 prizes over the next 2 turns (I hadn’t started attacking yet). Had I had an extra turn, I would have been able to grab 2 Prizes and tie it up and then probably proceed to the win. Perhaps I didn’t test enough with slow players? I was very surprised by the time troubles in this and the first round.

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Round 4: v.s. Chandelure/Darkrai EX

I went second in this one and just annihilated him. I got a turn 2 Garbodor with attached tool and also Ned him to no Supporters. I won within the next several turns after knocking out 2 Litwicks, 2 Chandelures and a Darkrai EX. He only did 30 damage to a Trubbish on his 2nd turn with Chandelure’s Ability.

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Round 5: v.s. Registeel EX/Terrakion/Garbodor

Oh boy! For those of you that don’t know, I played this deck at several different Battle Roads. It has a major flaw that is easily exploitable with Sableye variants. If you keep sending up the Garbodor with Pokemon Catcher, they will eventually run out of Switch and deck out. I suspect he thought I was playing a Hydreigon variant because he quickly got out Garbodor. Anyway, I kept Catchering up Garbodor and he did run out of Switch then finally decked out.

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Round 6: v.s. Darkari EX/Mewtwo EX/Sableye

This was a pretty exciting game! I went first and opened Sableye to his Darkrai EX. It took me a few turns to realize what he was playing. I got out Garbodor with a Tool relatively quickly. The Ability lock stuck for a while which kept him from easily switching Pokemon. He Catchered 2 Garbodor and knocked them out with Mewtwo EX. I had the edge for the beginning of the game but I hit a string of 4ish tails on Crushing Hammer that allowed him to get enough Energy into play in order to make a come back. When he knocked out a second Garbodor, I was unable to get the Ability lock online the next turn which allowed him to get off an extra Junk Hunt. He picked up 2 Pokemon Catcher which gave him the last 2 prizes for victory. He got Eviolites on his Pokemon very quickly, so I had to 3-shot his Pokemon. He also was able to hit a Max Potion and remove lots of damage from a severely damaged Darkrai EX. I think he went on to get Top 4. Very strong player!

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Even if I was able to go 6-2, I doubt I would have been able to make Top 32. A lot of my opponents were dropping and my resistance was terrible.

Anyway, it was a very rough day for Garbodor. As you can see, I didn’t play against any Eelektrik or Hydreigon variants even though there were A LOT of these decks in Houston. When you play an anti-meta deck and you play against none of the meta decks, you will have a hard time winning. I still really love Garbodor/Darkrai EX..but it is now time to start trying out Boundaries Crossed.

My intention for the next couple of weeks is to talk a bit about what decks were successful at Regionals, interview a player or two for the Player Spotlight, and start talking about Boundaries Crossed. A few people approached me this weekend wondering if they could write for Celadon City Gym. It hadn’t actually occurred to me that anybody would be interested in doing this until this weekend.

Now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I would be happy to have others write for CCG so long as their writing is on par with all the things that Brit and I put out. You must remember that Celadon City Gym is a blog. I want the entries to be personal and honest- but also informative. For in-depth analysis, you should probably turn to SixPrizes- though we do have detailed analysis every once and a while.

If you are interested in writing for CCG, feel free to email me at colin@celadoncitygym.com. I would be happy to hear what you have to say!

~Colin