molerator @ seattle

I did not make phase 2 at Seattle, losing in R7 and then tying a meaningless game in R8. I'm typing this on my hotel roommate's laptop off a few beers, so don't expect any of the nice Pokemon icons and decklist graphics until I get to my computer next week. What you can expect is salt, accountability, horrifying matchups and some miscellaneous chatter. Maybe I'll come back and edit this later.

Star Grunt, 2nd Luxcape were edits to tackle Zard, Absol, Grimm.

Some words about preparation I haven't written yet. 
Leading up to this tournament logically I wanted to play Gardevoir. I'd been playing it to locals all month, it's position seemed decent and the power level high. Pidgeot on the other hand, was basically untestable on ladder because of all the ASC stuff, and the Absol matchup was not great in theory because of their watchtower and hand control. One slight problem - I dislike playing Gardevoir! I grumbled through basically every step of practicing the purple deck (worst lobotomy ever) and finally bailed on Tuesday (way too late) to tinker with my Pidgeot list instead. Star Grunt was a natural inclusion to try and get some more chances into Absol and Grimm, the main shifts from the Toronto meta I disliked, and the second Luxcape to give Turt more sticking power was an easy change too. Mesagoza is Pidgeot 50% of the time while Artazon is Pidgeot 0% of the time. I thought about a Frillish for Dengo + general annoyance for all of Wednesday Thursday and Friday but didn't open RK9 a single time because I didn't want to cut a stretcher or a Cipher. I woke up on Saturday morning at 5 am and thought about it one more time then went back to sleep. Work in progress!

Assorted Seattle Travel Section I will fill out later. 
I arrived in the city on Thursday night, got dinner and hung out with a normie friend I hadn't seen in a few years, then went to sleep without thinking too much about Pokemon besides answering her boilerplate questions about how the game and tournaments work. This city is fine if extremely overpriced, would visit, wouldn't live here. Hills suck, sky is super gray. Had ramen, xiaolongbao, pho, and stuff from a bakery. Also a sandwich, hotpot, tonkatsu, and a boba like yogurt drink. I also walked around a sculpture garden I liked and went to look at gum on walls which is highkey gross but visually cool.

Round 1

Dengo WLW
I do a quick search for my opponent's name and actually find an extremely scary Joltik list from Vegas with switch, tool scrapper + prime catcher, Iron Leaves. Luckily he isn't playing that. Solrock flips over and Dengo gameplay ensues. Both rocks are Turo'd out of play quickly and discarded, but I manage to catch Mega Mawile and it's 2 retreat cost with a flute. Multiple turn play, gust the Mawile and Nacli retreat lock, then transition into Elgyem after I Ruffian off the Air Balloon so the Mawile can never attack or move.
Game 2 I open Feebas pass, get donked by Solrock. Game 3, he whiffs gear and is so unhappy I know his hand is cooked, so I attach to Pidgeot and donk his Solrock when he passes back to me. Fair is fair! If you've read my other posts you'll know that this is actually the first and only time all month I've won Round 1, so at least that's over with.

Round 2

Grimmsnarl WLT
This matchup is horrible, but not if they don't know how to play it! During Game 1 I use Elgyem, Fans, and gusts to survive double Froslass for long enough to Penny all of my support pokemon out of play and watch his Grimmsnarls and Munkidoris freeze to death. The Froslass with the air balloon ends up with something like 6 dark energy at one point. 
During Game 2 I prize my Star Grunt and am not able to disable Grimmsnarls in one turn, so I take a lot of extra damage. On a critical turn near the end of the game, I have a chance to Penny my Latias out of play with like 160 damage on it, but for some reason decide to wait a turn to get more value or something? Idk. I then get my Penny Iono'd to the bottom and my Pidgeot removed with Devo, and I'm a turn short of being able to clean my board. 
I ask my opponent about a gentleman's agreement before G3 and he says he's not super comfortable in the matchup so would be okay with a tie. I am not super happy about this but don't want to push him at 1-0. After time is called and we go through +3, I'm in a position where I'm going to win if I draw into an energy off Fez to use on my Turtonator or Elgyem, but obviously we can't play out the turn so we tie. Yay.

Round 3

Dawnzard LWW
I open an unplayable hand and Penny my lone Nacli out of play after like 2 turns of not drawing any relevant cards and watching a Dawnzard board develop on the other side of the table.
During the second game I sus out that there's only 1 Jet Energy because of the Waterpon. After the Jet is committed early for some reason I get a Noctowl stuck in the active hitting a fanned Sudowoodo for 60. I pad back 2 Pennys which causes him to concede.
My opponent opts to try to play his Dawnzard deck with no owl pieces during Game 3, which someone also tried on me in Toronto but I think is never going to work. To make matters worse, he prizes his only copy of Pidgeot so finding this single Jet Energy is an actual fanfiction. I use Elgyem to put all the fire energy in his deck on a Duskull because the other Duskull has become a Dusknoir under Psyduck. The venue alarm goes off at some point during this sequence and we pause play even though we probably could've kept playing. Some random walks by and says we should keep playing because it would "suck to tie" but I just ask my opponent for gents instead, and he agrees. At the end of turns I'm 1 turn away from being able to finish deckout with Xerosic Iono, so my opponent, an extremely honorable gentleman, gives me the win because he hasn't used Burning Darkness for 20+ turns and has 5 Fire Energy on a Duskull.

Round 4

Joltik Dengo LL
Tournament starts to go in the toilet here but I will do my best to keep you all entertained. My opponent opens Joltik, benches Iron Hands and I am extremely unhappy. The AceSpec in this deck is actually trolley but I choose to Genesect block this anyway to stall setup. I find an energy and kill the Joltik with Sudowoodo to try and stunt his setup, but he topdecks Brock for Latias Joltik and does his Joltik stuff anyway. I Boss Impound the Latias and get Amped after he Turos, then manage to stick him with a Star Grunt + Elgyem combo to disable the Iron Hands. From here I make one huge error which is forgetting the cost of Arm Press. After I've removed both lightning energy from the Iron Hands, this thing obviously cannot attack with one attachment, but somehow an Arm Press goes through and KO's my Pidgeot. At some point in here I either decide not to or forget to Luxcape my Elgyem and it dies to something stupid like Make it Rain for 100. I manage to Elgyem a million irrelevant energy onto his Dengo with an Air Balloon while holding naked Iron Hands in the active with live Milotic, but the stupid Joltik on the bench that I've left a Metal Energy on evolves into Galvantula ex and now I'm going to lose to Iron Leaves + Boss. If I was better I probably could have figured something out with Iono/Xerosic to trim his hand so if he ever draws the Iron Leaves without Boss I can Erika it and win, but I am not very good at the game so I just lose.
I make a fake prize trading attempt in game 2 before I just pack it up and sign the slip.

Round 5

Dengo WW
This one was pretty easy, he didn't know what Milotic did. I trap this Lunatone in the active for a while while he's still drawing cards, then Xerosic a huge hand and watch him deck out.
Game 2 I get him with the infamous "Mind Control Kang" manuever which is when I push the Kang to draw cards, then the Dengo player loses their mind and benches Genesect, Solrock, Lunatone + commits their Balloons to try and find the knockout. My Kang goes down, I stick the Genesect in the active, Ruffian off the Air Balloon, then Elgyem every attachment off of it for the rest of the game.

Round 6

Pultzard LWT
I prize my Trolley, can't set up a good enough board, and lose to a Boss candy Zard combo at the end of a quick game.
I set up great this time, Elgyem a million energy onto an ill-advised Budew + flute the board out of a second Charmander so no energy acceleration is coming for the rest of the game, we are trying to see if I don't notice an attachment or something. I float the idea of the gents during Game 2 and am shocked and dismayed when my opponent says he's "down to tie." Why on earth would we ever be "down to tie" at X-1-1? Hello? Do we understand how the tournament works? How match point thresholds work? AHHHHHHHHH.
Anyway I'm cooking him in Game 3 but the clock is my enemy and if my opponent wants to tie we're going to tie. Very cool.

Round 7

Pultzard L
I'll take some accountability for this one and say I should have just won game 1 and then maybe we would be playing on Sunday. My opponent gets all the way down to 2 but I'm taxing his energy the whole way and eventually create a naked Charizard and stick that in the active. My opponent keeps playing though and is doing his recons and draw supporters so I know something is left. I decide it's Turo because that is a card that is good in Pultzard and set up my Milotic and retreat lock the Latias, which I figure should convert since the Pultzard deck can't attack with Latias at all. Instead what happens is I get hit with a hard switch card + Jamming tower to take the last 2. Nice dude, hard switch is a real cool card and super useful in the current metagame. I definitely believe this was worth the deckslot! Realistically what I should've done is just taken the energy off the Pult, either with Ruffian or Elgyem, but I'm a moron and don't deserve match points.
I actually have a pretty good prize attempt in game 2, killing every Charmander with Blustery Wind while I weave in Elgyem and Ruffian to remove Luminous Energy from Drakloaks. I'm a bit too slow though and obviously my attacker isn't good enough to close the game in time when they evolve their board into stage 2s. I'm eliminated. Judge walking by sees my thousand yard stare and asks if I'm okay so I fake a smile and lie.

Round 8

Charizard + MegaZard WL
This one is honestly a wash because if I was playing for stakes I would have 1-0d this guy but he was cool and clearly having fun so I played pretty fast to give us a chance to finish the second game. This Zard deck has 2 jets, a turo, a mist, 7 fires, 2 super rods, and a tool scrapper, all of which is to say yikes. I take advantage of his inexperience in the matchup during game 1 and Elgyem all the fires away from Zard onto a ChiYu. There's a Tatsugiri on the board too that sits in the active a lot while I slight shift to disarm Charizards. I get my LuxCape on Turtonator tool scrappered at one point which is an insanely annoying card to play against, but I do manage to get rid of all the fires.
Game 2, the board is too thin and the MegaZard is looming the whole game. There's like 5 energies on a Zard Ex and I can't wager the whole game on Tool Scrapper prized, so I try to Iono to stabilize since all 3 boss are down, but he draws into a super rod Fez combo to take his last prize on my benched Elgyem with Cruel Arrow on the last turn of time. This matchup seems really bad with the heavy fire count and much higher damage cap, but if I really didn't want game 2 to finish I could have pumped the brakes. 1-0 manuevers in R8 after elimination against an opponent who was nice to me seemed like bad karma though so I abstained.

The deck was fine. Even though I hit some egregious matchups, if I played like 10% better I could easily have converted a lot of these lost or tied sets. I would like to blame the horrible poisoned Ascended Ladder, KK for Leap Out Curse, and my own general incompetence. In the future, I might be pushing for gents when I sit down a round or two earlier in the tournament because apparently not everyone understands how this stuff works! Next is Houston.