Just a quick one.
I had a fun prerelease, but my pulls were pretty bad.
I didn't get any: Thunderus, Landorus, Gothitelle, Beartic, Catcher, Cheren, Audino, basculin or lilligant; all the cards that were expected to kill prereleases.
My deck was:
3-1 Excadrill (holo)
2 Throh
2-1 Braviary (holo)
2 basic monkeys (1 pansear 1 pansage iirc)
4 Sigilyph (3 'reflect', 1 other)
1 Bianca
1 Max Potion
1 Recycle
2 Crushing Hammer
13 fighting
7 psychic
This deck went 4-0. It went pretty well, mainly because of Excadrill and Braviary being able to attack for a lot of damage (and excadrill discards energy) while sigilyph was a very good early game pokemon. I never used the sigilyph which does 40+the number of damage counters on their pokemon, but if they had any huge HP pokemon like beartic out it would have been useful.
My first game was against a girl who was playing grass types, and I was fairly worried because she had lilligant. However she wasn't a very skilled player and I don't think she realized how good Lilligant was - she sent it up as suicide fodder while she charged up virizion (instead of the other way around).
Giga drain was hard to deal with in this match because I can't really do that much damage. I won the first game, putting out a Sigilyph to spam reflect and then snipe until I got out excadrill or braviary who can always 2shot virizion.
The second game she just charged up virizion and used mass amounts of cheren and bianca (she had at least 2 of each... incredible) to overwhelm me really quickly. after she killed excadrill and I had nothing else I scooped.
Game 3 went quickly to me, powering up excadrill for turn 3 after a bianca for 6 cards.
1-0
Second game I managed to do pretty well, and almost lost vs a guy playing mass basculin/sawk/audino (basically, mass coin flips...). In this matchup I didn't draw into my excadrill so I had to improvise.
I forget how the games went exactly; but the first game he started with Audino active and I managed to get rid of it fairly quickly. In game 2, he had Audino on his bench and I think I lost that game. Eventually I won after he flipped two tails on Basculin (I had a strong lead, he nearly came back. i think?)
2-0
Third match was against a guy playing thunderus, klinklang, audino, basculin, etc. First game went pretty quickly to him, but the second game went quickly to me - I waited for him to evolve into braviary to get a KO on sawk (fighting resistance really hurt) but I evolved into my own braviary for the KO. Game 3 went to time, and he made the mistake of thinking I couldn't bluff. He had a basculin active, and I couldn't attack him otherwise he would flail me for the 1 ko needed. I simply waited until I had my 3 energy, and retreated and evolved to excadrill and won with drill run.
3-0
The fourth match was against a guy who is quite well known in our area, who I don't know very well (shaun chang... he went to worlds); and he was playing excadrill/gigalith/sigilyph. These games weren't very long, but mainly because we were both quite good and took 10-20 second turns. I felt sorry for him, needing to fight into resistance - but he did a pretty good job. A long time was stalled between Throh and his (bad) excadrill, him using Dig, with me using scarf hold - if dig succeeded, I couldn't stop him from attacking with scarf hold - but if scarf hold worked, he couldn't dig to protect him from scarf hold. Either way, I eventually got a sigilyph out. I started sniping for prizes; and as soon as I saw him topdeck and play a roggenrola I prioritized it to prevent him from evolving to gigalith which I assumed was coming. I won the first one.
The second game was over fairly quick, with me starting off spamming reflect and him starting out getting excadrill. His dig prevented me from using reflect and he manages to get a KO at some point with earthquake. However, eventually (after that sigilyph died) I brought up an excadrill and drill runn'ed him. He retreated excadrill then max potioned it so I couldn't snipe it, and eventually I just brought up sigilyph and started sniping again. He thought for a while about his options and retreated knowing he probably had no other options, and if I had the energy (out of my 4 cards) I would win. He did it anyway, and I showed him my hand of 4 energy cards.
4-0
Someone else also went 4-0, but he dismantled his deck but I probably would have won because he played fighting (I think?)
So... yeah.
My last two packs had Virizion and a catcher and nothing else. I traded the virizion for a vileplume and that was about it.
Props:
Winning without any of the bombs people expected to win
Going 4-0 (it's always nice)
Funny story about juniors (see below)
Having fun!
The people who tried to trade to win lost
Joey who played the awesome only Audino deck (4 audino and rest energy (people lent him our cards. yay joey!)
Slops:
Bad pulls overall
Cards are pretty expensive in comparison to just buying boxes (our boosters in australia are $7... our prerelease was $40 for 8 packs, which is okay though)
Nobody wanted to trade Beartic or Gothitelle
The funny story: In juniors, one of the kids didn't like his pulls... so he took 20 cards out of his main deck and used reshiboar instead. Needless to say his opponent caught on pretty quickly...
I had a fun prerelease, but my pulls were pretty bad.
I didn't get any: Thunderus, Landorus, Gothitelle, Beartic, Catcher, Cheren, Audino, basculin or lilligant; all the cards that were expected to kill prereleases.
My deck was:
3-1 Excadrill (holo)
2 Throh
2-1 Braviary (holo)
2 basic monkeys (1 pansear 1 pansage iirc)
4 Sigilyph (3 'reflect', 1 other)
1 Bianca
1 Max Potion
1 Recycle
2 Crushing Hammer
13 fighting
7 psychic
This deck went 4-0. It went pretty well, mainly because of Excadrill and Braviary being able to attack for a lot of damage (and excadrill discards energy) while sigilyph was a very good early game pokemon. I never used the sigilyph which does 40+the number of damage counters on their pokemon, but if they had any huge HP pokemon like beartic out it would have been useful.
My first game was against a girl who was playing grass types, and I was fairly worried because she had lilligant. However she wasn't a very skilled player and I don't think she realized how good Lilligant was - she sent it up as suicide fodder while she charged up virizion (instead of the other way around).
Giga drain was hard to deal with in this match because I can't really do that much damage. I won the first game, putting out a Sigilyph to spam reflect and then snipe until I got out excadrill or braviary who can always 2shot virizion.
The second game she just charged up virizion and used mass amounts of cheren and bianca (she had at least 2 of each... incredible) to overwhelm me really quickly. after she killed excadrill and I had nothing else I scooped.
Game 3 went quickly to me, powering up excadrill for turn 3 after a bianca for 6 cards.
1-0
Second game I managed to do pretty well, and almost lost vs a guy playing mass basculin/sawk/audino (basically, mass coin flips...). In this matchup I didn't draw into my excadrill so I had to improvise.
I forget how the games went exactly; but the first game he started with Audino active and I managed to get rid of it fairly quickly. In game 2, he had Audino on his bench and I think I lost that game. Eventually I won after he flipped two tails on Basculin (I had a strong lead, he nearly came back. i think?)
2-0
Third match was against a guy playing thunderus, klinklang, audino, basculin, etc. First game went pretty quickly to him, but the second game went quickly to me - I waited for him to evolve into braviary to get a KO on sawk (fighting resistance really hurt) but I evolved into my own braviary for the KO. Game 3 went to time, and he made the mistake of thinking I couldn't bluff. He had a basculin active, and I couldn't attack him otherwise he would flail me for the 1 ko needed. I simply waited until I had my 3 energy, and retreated and evolved to excadrill and won with drill run.
3-0
The fourth match was against a guy who is quite well known in our area, who I don't know very well (shaun chang... he went to worlds); and he was playing excadrill/gigalith/sigilyph. These games weren't very long, but mainly because we were both quite good and took 10-20 second turns. I felt sorry for him, needing to fight into resistance - but he did a pretty good job. A long time was stalled between Throh and his (bad) excadrill, him using Dig, with me using scarf hold - if dig succeeded, I couldn't stop him from attacking with scarf hold - but if scarf hold worked, he couldn't dig to protect him from scarf hold. Either way, I eventually got a sigilyph out. I started sniping for prizes; and as soon as I saw him topdeck and play a roggenrola I prioritized it to prevent him from evolving to gigalith which I assumed was coming. I won the first one.
The second game was over fairly quick, with me starting off spamming reflect and him starting out getting excadrill. His dig prevented me from using reflect and he manages to get a KO at some point with earthquake. However, eventually (after that sigilyph died) I brought up an excadrill and drill runn'ed him. He retreated excadrill then max potioned it so I couldn't snipe it, and eventually I just brought up sigilyph and started sniping again. He thought for a while about his options and retreated knowing he probably had no other options, and if I had the energy (out of my 4 cards) I would win. He did it anyway, and I showed him my hand of 4 energy cards.
4-0
Someone else also went 4-0, but he dismantled his deck but I probably would have won because he played fighting (I think?)
So... yeah.
My last two packs had Virizion and a catcher and nothing else. I traded the virizion for a vileplume and that was about it.
Props:
Winning without any of the bombs people expected to win
Going 4-0 (it's always nice)
Funny story about juniors (see below)
Having fun!
The people who tried to trade to win lost
Joey who played the awesome only Audino deck (4 audino and rest energy (people lent him our cards. yay joey!)
Slops:
Bad pulls overall
Cards are pretty expensive in comparison to just buying boxes (our boosters in australia are $7... our prerelease was $40 for 8 packs, which is okay though)
Nobody wanted to trade Beartic or Gothitelle
The funny story: In juniors, one of the kids didn't like his pulls... so he took 20 cards out of his main deck and used reshiboar instead. Needless to say his opponent caught on pretty quickly...
