Here's a tournament report from my friend/local Keva, enjoy!
Hi all! Not really planning on keeping a regular blog so thanks to molerator for letting me guest post, but I had a fun time in Seattle and went on a pretty good run, so I wanted to write a bit of a recap for my own purposes. I went 8-3-3 for 148th place (top 256), which is my best finish out of the three majors I’ve attended this season (and ever), so overall I feel pretty happy about that. There is a bit of disappointment though after getting off to a 6-1-2 start, but losing 2 out of my last 3 games definitely took some of the steam out of my run.
Tournament Prep:
Going into Seattle, I was feeling a bit under-practiced because of Live’s early rotation to Ascended Heroes format as well as some busy-ness at work. I toyed around with the possibility of switching to Liam Halliburton’s euic 60, but after some egregious bricks at locals I remembered I disliked darmanitan and I wanted to trust myself to convert playing a more consistent 60 instead of banking on more of a high roll deck. Also, I had plenty of reps on Zoroark with Toedscruel and Lopunny for Toronto, so I leaned a bit on that experience and defaulted to 59 of that 60. I was a bit worried about Gardevoirs picking up drifloons, so I wanted my 60th card to help that match up. I thought about picnic basket, rigid band, tool scrapper, and 2nd n’s pp up, and I eventually settled on picnic basket for having a bit more utility into other close match ups (pult and grimm).
Editors Note: Did you mismatch your Zoroarks just so the decklist would be square?
R1 – Charizard/Noctowl LWW
I felt pretty good in g1, until I egregiously threw in the end. I had secret box in hand to get watchtower iono, but I also had the pieces in hand to win on board next turn. I spent some time analyzing the board state to see if my opponent could set up a checkmate, and I determined he could not. I was pretty egregiously wrong, and he set up checkmate and I scooped. G2 went pretty smoothly since I actually used my watchtower, and g3 I was definitely in the driver’s seat but time was not my friend, but somehow fate was. He was turn 2 in overtime and had 2 prizes left with no zard access on board, and I had 4 prizes left to take. There was some damage spread on his board, so I could theoretically take a 4 prize turn if he gave me more damage to work with, but he had no win condition that turn and if he passed we would certainly tie. He looks at his hand for a bit, and says “I don’t think I can win but let me just see” and plays nest ball and starts searching his deck. But his bench is full, so we call a judge over and he gets a dpl. He still plays out his turn, ended up attacking my lopunny with terapagos anyways, so I have the damage I need to use double munki switch to clean up a benched waterpon that I had previously hit with virtuous flame for my last two prizes.
R2 – Charizard/Noctowl WW
This game was not super notable; both games went pretty smoothly. I do the same thing I usually do in this match up, hit into waterpon/pagos with virtuous flame, hit into zard with virtuous flame, and eventually set up for a 2-4 prize map. Double munki eswitch out of nowhere won me g2, he was not expecting that.
R3 – N’s Zoroark/Darmanitan WW
I actually find current zoroark mirrors really interesting if they are not the exact same 60 (this will change with zekrom unfortunately). G1 we both take our time setting up, spreading energies and all that. I want him to take the initiative, so I dangle a single prizer on my bench for him to gust (forget if it was munki, buneary, or reshi). He takes the bait and benches reshiram to boss ko it, and at this point I am pretty sure he’s on Liam Halliburton’s exact euic 60 since I saw a darm and reversal hit the discard. The list plays 3 stretchers and no rods, so I bench double toedscool and reshiram, and boss ko the single reshiram in his list. I have one toedscruel in hand, and 1 in a thin-ish deck, so I feel confident even with an iono I’ll have it to evo next turn since he doesn’t have a benched darumaka to threaten ko on both toeds. He ends up bossing one toedscool and ko-ing it with a night stretchered reshiram attack, so I evolve the other one, boss reshiram, and basically restrict him to using darumaka’s flare for the rest of the game. I just need to play around black belt bloodmoon, but eventually he scoops and shows me bloodmoon prized and we go g2.
G2 was less interesting, I set up quicker and restrict him to a solo zoroark for most of the game so his draw is not strong. Eventually he goes for a last ditch play by gusting an energy-less zoroark and hitting it for 170, and then I secret box for eswitch and ko his only zoroark. This is where list knowledge came in handy, I’m not sure he knew I had eswitch in my deck. Eswitch has won me all 3 sets so far.
R4 – Charizard/Pidgeot with max belt WLL
Charizard pidgeot with max belt is a really hard matchup, but I put up a decent fight. I win g1 because he early commits max belt for his first ko, and I’m able to ko that zard and control the pace of the game from there. He wins G2, and then G3 comes down to a watchtower iono to 2 play. I felt it was a pretty decent check, because there was no fez on board and he needs both max belt and zard, so even a stadium bump would get him only one piece guaranteed with quick search. Unfortunately, his stadium bump was town store, so that got him max belt, and quick search got him night stretcher for zard.
R5 – Mega Absol Box WLW
I won G1, lost G2 because I misplayed and forgot these decks run jumbo ice cream, and G3 was unfortunate for my opponent. They claw of darkness-ed my active munkidori and took a card from my hand but forgot to take a prize. This happens to me a lot when I play absol because the physical motion of taking a card from my opponent’s hand feels the same as taking a prize. By the time we realize, the game state is too broken (iono has been played, deck has been shuffled, etc.), and a judge issued a game loss and a warning for potential dq since this was the second time it happened to this player. I felt I was in a strong position in the game, but we were definitely running up against the clock and we had no gents in place. So got pretty lucky (again) that my opps were less locked in re: maintaining game state.
R6 – Dragapult/Charizard W
He opens hawlucha, so I think I finally hit my first pultnoir of the tournament (and I had only hit one all of my Toronto run). But then his first poffin searches out dreepy and Charmander, and I brace myself for a really long, and grindy matchup against pultzard. That hawlucha ends up being really bad for him, since after he establishes two dreepies and two charmanders and begins budew-ing me, he has bench locked himself out of Munkidori. I know a lot of pultzard lists don’t run turo, so I decide to go with that and avoid taking kos and spread a ton of damage on his board, hitting 170 into zard and pult, and munki-ing any excess damage onto the bench. He tries to tempt me into a KO by phantom diving into my zoroark, but I’m not ready to take a ko yet and turo it and continue munki-ing damage over. The next time he hits into zoro, I feel ready to powerful rage for my first two prizes, and then next turn I take a 4 prize turn with a virtuous flame and munkis to clean up a damaged hawlucha and a budew on bench.
G2 is similarly grindy, which favors me after winning G1. He again bench locks himself out of munkidori, and there’s a moment where I moved 100 dmg onto charmeleon. He evolves it into a second zard to protect it from being ko-ed but whiffs his infernal reign. He hits into me with a burning darkness from his first zard, and I immediately boss what my friend calls a “naked charizard” and just leave it in the active while I munki damage across his board. His one air balloon was already committed to get into an early budew, so he has to slowly raw attach two luminous energy onto his zard to hard retreat it, effectively limiting any chance of munki access that game. Eventually we get to overtime turns and he scoops when he realizes there’s no way he can take all his prizes in time. He had so much damage built up on his board at this point that I was pretty confident of closing anyways.
R7 – Miraidon/Iron Hands LWT
My opponent was a really cool guy, and he starts off the conversation commenting he hasn’t really been hitting meta matchups. I laugh and assume he’s probably on a meta deck, but then he flips a magnemite. I’m feeling a bit nervous about miraidon.
G1 goes pretty much as expected – he hits electric generator, amps me very much, then cleans up with zekrom. G2 he whiffs his first generator but hits his second, but I’m able to keep a pretty thin board and use an active reshiram to evo into zoroark and lopunny. This leaves him in an awkward spot with no amp target, and he ends up arm press-ing reshiram. I establish fez and am able to ko iron hands with lopunny, and then he makes an interesting choice. He ends up using magneton to load energy onto a zekrom and then hitting an electric generator to load up miraidon. Then he prime catchers my fez, and ko’s it with miraidon. My next two prize ko will put me in zekrom range, but I look at his discard and there are 11 energies committed total (3 on zek, 3 on miraidon, and another 5 in the discard). He’s used 3 generators, so I figure an iono to 3 + cc ko on zekrom would force him to need 1) recovery for zekrom, 2) electric generator, and 3) hit electric generator with limited energy left. So that’s what I go for, and he ends up getting 1 and 2 but only getting one energy off the generator. He hits into my lopunny with miraidon, and I show him boss energy for game on squawk with spiky hopper. He mentions that he misplayed by committing too early on the zekrom set up, and I agree. His logic was that he was worried I would ko miraidon and he wouldn’t be able to find zekrom, but in my head he can grab zekrom but not commit the magneton, which I think was the bigger issue. Nonetheless, I realize this is a terrible match up, and he realized his misplay, so I decide to offer an ID if he was interested in drawing into day 2. He unsurprisingly but graciously turned it down, and I totally get that since this is a pretty good match up for him.
We shuffle up for g3, and he looks at his hand, chuckles, and attach passes to zekrom and says “I should’ve taken the ID.” I look at my hand, which has a buddy poffin, but my only playable supporter is iono, which would refresh his clearly terrible hand. I tell him that the offer is still on the table if he wants, and he decides to take it on account of his terrible hand. Even though his start is bad, I feel like he was always one top deck away from running away with it. And considering my start was not good unless I iono’ed, it felt like I would not be able to capitalize on his poor start. Anyways, I was happy to secure day 2 one game early, and avoid a high pressure win and in situation.
R8 – Grimmsnarl/Froslass WLT
I get to the table for R8 and see a judge waiting for me, and my opponent and I were told we would be playing in the side feature stream. This was an exciting moment for me, my first time playing on any sort of stream, and especially at a regional. I asked my opponent if he had played on stream before and he said no, so I joked that we would always have this moment together. Unfortunately, the first game was not terribly interesting. He is slow to set up his froslasses, and can never really get more than one up at a time and the first one came pretty late. I got to a quick munki advantage, bossed his froslass everytime it got up, and kind of ran him over.
G2 was a lot more difficult, he was able to get froslasses up more quickly and put a lot of pressure on my board. I think I misplayed a few times here. 1) I committed my one of picnic basket a little bit early, and I think I could’ve held off for a more impactful turn. But its hard to say, and my inexperience in this match up really showed. 2) end game, I just completely misdid the math after he shadow bulleted into my zoroark. I thought if I healed 60 off the zoro, I could avoid a 3 prize turn, so I committed my turo for a double munki turn and then used powerful rage to ko the grimm, leaving me at one prize and just a boss next turn away from winning. Unfortunately, I cannot count, and he was able to double munki onto the zoro, cc my munki, and then shadow bullet for a three prize turn for game. I think turo-ing my active zoro was definitely the play, though im still unsure how I would’ve closed out from there.
R9 – Gardevoir/Drifloon WW
I hit my first garde of the event, and it’s a drifloon variant which is pretty scary for zoroark. But G1, I felt pretty in control luckily. I start reshiram and he starts frillish, and he just oceanic glooms for a while. He seems afraid to evolve into an early gardevoir to avoid giving me an early 2 prize ko, and for some reason early benches drifloon and bench locks himself out of scream tail. I feel that there is no real way for my opponent to initiate into me effectively, so I take my time under item lock to establish multiple zoros with energy, and compress my deck until I’m confident I can chain boss ko’s after I initiate. I also was able to establish toedscruel, so I knew if I could initiate with a ko onto drifloon, his access to his best attacker would be limited. So I make this plan in my head, but spend 5-6 turns just trading and passing until I felt good about my deck compression. From there, I just ko his drifloon and he responds with a scream tail ko on my toedscruel to gain stretcher access, but I’m fine with that since he’ll never win the prize trade from there since my deck is so thin and my three zoros have 5 energies, so I’m never whiffing a ko on a garde. So the game is over in 3 turns from there with consecutive boss kos.
G2 was over relatively quickly, I just kind of ran him over and he had a weak start. I still think the drifloon match up is worse than it showed in this game, but I think I learned a lot about how to control the game and take advantage of their lack of proactive plays.
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That’s the end of Day 1 (including 1st round of phase 2), and at this point I’m feeling really good. In Toronto, I squeaked into phase 2 at 5-2-1 with a really stress relieving win in my win and in and then proceeded to lose to venusaur and end the day at 5-3-1. But now, I ended the day at 6-1-2, and I knew I had a lot of luck, but I also feel like I played some really strong games and my deck was flowing super well. And playing my first feature stream game was a lot of fun, so I ended the day super pleased. I met my friends for some good pho nearby, and then went back to my friend’s house to sleep and prep for day 2.
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R10 – Raging Bolt LWT
First game of day 2 (second of phase 2), and I’m feeling a bit tired but ok. I look up my opponent on limitless and groan when I see raging bolt, but I unfortunately failed to click into the list. So when I win the coin flip, I pick first as I normally do against bolt to deny early owls. Unfortunately, he is not playing owls and is playing a turbo bolt variation, which very much wants to go second. He gets pretty close to pulling off a torrential pump, but misses eswitch (4 of!) off of Lillie’s. He ends up sobbing my active, and I’m just sitting there wondering what this deck is. Anyways, g1 proceeds how most raging bolt matchess go, I try to prize trade with lopunny, and actually am in a pretty good spot. I hit him with the classic cc iono to 1, ko a latias and rebench a buneary to set up game with lopunny boss on one of his ogerpons. Unfortunately, one of the 2 cards he drew was prime catcher, so he prime catchers my toedscruel and attaches to raging bolt and passes. Both my air balloons are committed, so I have no way to move toedscruel, and next turn he kos it for his last prize.
G2 proceeds pretty similarly – he goes 2-3 in the prize trade, and I go 2-2, and I Iono him to 1. His only draw is mew, and he needs to get boss to ko one of my single prizers with a fully loaded sandy shocks. He whiffs, and I boss mew and ko with zoroark. We didn’t have time for g3 to conclude. He had been playing a little slow in g2, and seeing that I was in a decent position with an iono check, I felt that if I closed g2, the less time left for g3 would be advantageous to me in a bad match up. So, I didn’t rush him and let him take his time, and we ended up drawing. I felt good about turning another bad match up into at least a tie, which is important for a deck like zoroark. Also this was a really fun opponent, he repeatedly commented excitedly on my love of purple, and would point at each of my accessories and laugh. We exchange twitters after the game, and I learn he’s the guy who went viral a few months ago for winning a city league as “seto kaiba.”
R11 – Gardevoir/Jellicent WW
I again look up my opponent on limitless, and I see he recently was in assym top cut in Merida on garde/jelli. This is a good match up, but obviously he’s an extremely good player so I know it’ll be a tough game. G1 was really intricate. He committed early onto a frillish shuffle game plan to set up a big devo play, and I realize this probably means he is not playing mega diancie. He’s moving a lot of damage each turn, and I make a big early error by discarding munki off of a trade, and my second one is prized and I can’t recover it under perpetual item lock. But eventually I’m able to get a boss onto garde and ko it, and that relieves some pressure as hes not able to reestablish it for a turn. He still maintains item lock, so I can’t picnic basket to heal my board, but I am able to weave a turo in to clear some damage and bench a zorua. I rarely commit to 4 zoroarks, but I did this game and it helped spread the damage and delay the devo play. He eventually gets a devo play to clear 3 zoros, leaving me with one zoroark to close the game out. I am able to boss garde to ko it that turn, and crucially the devo meant I was not oceanic gloomed for what felt like the first time in forever, so im able to pal pad a turo and boss back into my deck. He then ccs my reshiram to stall, but I draw turo and am able to take my last prize.
G2 I have a much stronger start, and he’s not able to establish a strong board. Eventually, I just run him off the board.
R12 – Mega Absol Box LL
Here, I pair into Lucas Xing, so I know it’s going to be a match up against absol/kangaskhan. Another opponent with a top cut this year! G1 he starts precious trolley going first, and then proceeds to run me over, his first two claw of darknesses get super rod and pal pad, and eventually I just do not have the resources to play the game so I scoop. G2, he chuckles when he sees his hand so I wonder if it’s a brick, but no, he drops the precious trolley again and I’m left really wondering what deal with the devil these absol players have made. I play this game better than g1 and establish a triple zoro board and only bench reshiram to attack when my hand is full of bad cards. We trade prizes back and forth, but when he’s on 2 prizes and I’m on 1 he pennies his last munki out of play, leaving me with an absol and kang to go through. He’s able to use another penny to avoid a 2hko and eventually wins with an eswitch pecharunt play. I can’t complain too much about this game; I got thoroughly outplayed by a really top player even though the matchup is not bad for me at all.
R13 – Grimmsnarl/Froslass LL
I feel like my lack of practice at the top-end of this match-up really hurt me this tournament. Both games were pretty close, but eventually he just overwhelms my board with damage and even the picnic basket is not enough to save me. I again question some of my picnic basket timing, but sometimes I just feel like the damage accumulates too quickly. Also, he was playing a grimm build with 4 luminous energy and a moltres, so I am repeatedly being hit with mind bend which stretches my pivoting resources and I’m not able to chain kos on froslass as effectively. A pretty disappointing 2-0 loss in this set.
R14 – Dragapult/Charizard WW
I’m not feeling too great at this point – I thought I got off to a really strong 6-1-2 this tournament, but here I was at 7-3-3, one loss away from equaling my Toronto record from a much stronger start. Anyways, I get to my table and everyone around us is discussing ID-ing to guarantee top 256, and I float the idea to my opponent and he respectfully declines. In retrospect I’m glad he did, because ID-ing at that point would feel anticlimactic even if it did guarantee top 256.
Anyways, this pultzard match up is a bit more difficult than the earlier one, because he does not bench lock himself out of munki. I’m forced to play it a bit differently, so I focus on utilizing my damage counters to eventually ko both his zard and charmeleon, so cutting off his access to a Charizard for the endgame. I’m at 3 prizes, and he phantom dives my damaged zoroark to go down to one prize. At this point, he just needs boss to win, and he has two drakloaks on board. I’m able to pal pad two bosses orders into my thin deck, and hit him with a cc iono, and ko one of his drakloaks. He has one top deck and one recon directive to hit boss, and whiffs. Next turn, I boss his last drakloak, ko it, leaving him only with a top deck to get boss. He whiffs, and then I boss munki and take my last prize. This was a pretty scary situation, but his deck was still pretty large at this point so it was a decent enough check. But you never can feel fully comfortable with these kind of checks.
G2 is pretty much a wash. I have a meh start, I open cleffa, bench buneary, and attach pass. He opens budew, ultra balls for Charmander, and then passes, showing an even worse start. I top deck lillie’s, but I also have double boss and lopunny in hand, so I decide to just evolve my buneary and boss ko Charmander. He draws for turn, and then shows me his hand, which is something egregious like double rare candy, super rod, air balloon, defiance band or something like that. I donk his lone budew and take the win.
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I end 8-3-3, which overall I felt pretty good about and is obviously my best finish so far out of my three majors. But I do wish I was able to capitalize on my relatively strong start, and close out with an even better finish. But I am happy with my run, and overall, I think I played some really good games this weekend and played against some pretty strong players. I learned a lot from these games and definitely came away wishing I had more practice at the top end for certain match ups, especially Grimmsnarl and Absol box. I was happy with how I was able to convert some pretty bad match ups into ties and navigate close matchups with good play to bring home wins. Overall, I think my tournament run was pretty representative of the zoroark deck as a whole: you really do have to earn your wins through good play, and your losses are usually punishment for micro-misplays that come to bite you in the end.
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