Yu-Gi-Oh! ETC Store
0
Now, I had recieved a good number of decks, but only 8 decks made it to the second round of judging after I thoroughly examined the decks. The contestants making Top 8 were:
- Master of the Six Kings (Skuntank/Mightyena)
- Lapras Lover (Empoleon)
- Afstandopleren (Electivire)
- BrianHa (Exeggutor/Banette)
- The.D (Ambipon/Lanturn)
- Darkartisian (Drapion)
- Destiny Hero (Eeveelutions)
- Dante710 (Beautifly/Dustox)
These 8 decks then went into Redshark and underwent extensive testing against one another. Soon, it was found that certain decks simply functioned better then others, despite the ideas of the other decks not being bad at all. Hereby the impressions I got from each of the decks in the order I posted above:
Master Of The Six Kings:
Skuntank/Mightyena is a tried and true deck, and the Unown ? coupled with several Stage 1's you don't play on the field was a nice drawing engine, but unfortunately it seemed to falter against the decks that packed more power in the end due to Mightyena's frailty. While lethal in the first turns, anything surviving those could often punch through the deck in the end. Therefore, this deck did not make the top cut unfortunately.
Lapras Lover:
Your Empoleon deck is definitely a solid build, the Claydol added in added definite consistency throughout the board. But it came with a price, which translated into a rather weak trainer setup, which in turn meant that this deck had more bad starts compared to most others around here, and without that setup, Empoleon just wasn't fast enough. Particulary scary were the games were Claydol was prized. Good effort, definitely, but again, no top.
Afstandopleren:
At first I had my doubts about Electivire, thinking it would be too slow. But I was proven wrong, the combination of using it with Elekid, SW Electivire and most importantly that one Rayquaza made the energy supply stable, yet you had plenty of space for good trainers and supporters, keeping the deck going fast. While having some early game speed issues, this deck easily made top cut.
BrianHa:
Banette and Exeggutor proved to be a lethal combination in the first few turns, especially when starting with an Exeggute to quickly get Shuppet to go with it. Emptying your hand and then quickly switching it with your opponent's proved to be lethal to several strategies, but after pulling that trick, the deck only had one other big attack in store, which was Banette's damage swap. After that, the deck kind of faltered into nothingness. The idea was very well-thought out, but it lacked a final hitter.
The.D:
Another deck that proved my initial doubts wrong. Ambipom's energy maneuvring antics combined with Lanturn's "Spinning Tail" (as you described it) proved to be a powerful combo, and only the decks low on energy count in this contest proved to be troublesome, and thanks to the way the contest was set up, those were rare to find. Therefore, a definite top cutter.
Darkartisian:
You were the first to include a Level X (Not the only one though), and it proved to be a tough customer for most decks to beat. On the other hand, even without the Level X, Drapion himself is a rather good low-budget card, which you capitalized on. Not the fastest or the most powerful of the decks here, but definitely one of the steadiest. Therefore, this too made top cut.
Destiny Hero:
Another deck using the ? engine, and in Eevees, it was even more annoying then in the other deck in this top abusing it. Eevee's are spammable thanks to Eevee's fetching attack, and after that, this deck could hit on a lot of weaknesses. This allowed the deck to hold its own against pretty much everything in here and thus earning its rightful spot in the top cut.
Dante710:
While I was initially impressed with the Beautifly/Dustox deck, I soon found out that while a great deck in theory, it didn't work out in the end due to the lack of solid energy acceleration, which is something Beautifly desperately needs to be effective. It just took too much time to get set up and start attacking. And even after that, it relied too much on coin flips to be effective in the end. A good effort but short of top cut.
So that left me with Drapion, Electivire, Lanturn and Eevees. I then played out these decks against each other once more in a group of 4, using matches consisting of Best-Of-5. I had help of another Pokemon player here (who prefers to stay anonymous but was not involved in any way in this contest, she doesn't know which deck belongs to who), but in the prospect of being fair, we both piloted both decks and made each deck face the other twice in these Best-Of-5's, letting her always start the first game so that gamestarting coinflips wouldn't matter. And the results? They were pretty surprising.
Afstandopleren vs. Darkartisian 3-2 2-3
The.D vs. Destiny Hero 3-0 3-0
Afstandopleren vs. The.D 1-3 3-2
Destiny Hero vs. Darkartisian 2-3 1-3
Destiny Hero vs. Afstandopleren 0-3 1-3
Darkartisian vs. The D. 1-3 1-3
This gave us the following scores:
1. The D. 17 points
2. Afstandopleren 15 points
3. Darkartisian 13 points
4. Destiny Hero 4 points
The reason Destiny Hero lost is simply because it couldn't hit the weaknesses it wanted to target in here. Lanturn/Ambipom simply spread the little energy around and then proceeded to swiftly eliminate the Eevees with the spread, Drapion and Electivire simply muscled their ways through.
Drapion lost out not against Electivire (Which basically did end up in a draw), but in its matches against Lanturn, which took advantage of the big energy costs of Drapion. Even a change in playstyle (Switching to focussing on the low energy costs) didn't help as Ambipom could still take full advantage of that and hit for big numbers, letting Lanturn clean up the mess.
And Electivire, it just fell short of beating Lanturn/Ambipom. It could stand its ground a lot better due to the ability to pull the energy out of the discard and then redistribute it, but Lanturn and Ambipom were simply faster. The draw against Darkartisian sealed the deal.
Therefore, our winner is, surprisingly, Ambipom/Lanturn, 2 cards I never expected to see here. Give it up for The D. everybody.
The D. will get first pickings of the 3 tins that come with Surpreme Victors. I would like to ask him to email to etcwinatin@hotmail.com with his name and address, as well as a list of 3 tins in order of preference, so we can ship out his tin as soon as possible.
Afstandopleren will get the second tin. We'd like to ask him to email to etcwinatin@hotmail.com with his name and address, as well as both his 3 tins in order of preference, so we can send out your tin as well after The D. has picked his.
This leaves the originality prize, which is the final remaining tin. Unfortunately for Darkartisian and Destiny Hero, the ideas behind your decks have been seen amongst more contestants, and thus these two didn't make it to win that prize. The originality prize goes to BrianHa. While not the most powerful deck around, the simple hand swap strategy was executed wonderfully in this deck, and therefore I felt that this was deserving of winning the third and final tin. So we would like to ask BrianHa to email etcwinatin@hotmail.com with his name and address, as well as his list of tins in order of preference.
Now, since we want these tins to be in the hands of the players before the tournaments kick off September 19, I'd like to ask our three winners to contact us September 9 at the latest. If you don't, your picking rights will drop towards the ones under you, this matters in particular for The D. and Afstandopleren. The faster we know, the faster you can get your tin.
And with that, we conclude the ETC Win-A-Tin contest. Again, I'd like to thank each and every member who competed. We will soon have another contest, when exactly I do not know yet, but it will be there. We also hope you will all contribute to this site and its Pokémon section which we try to expand, and the more you all post, the more you all discuss, the bigger our contests can become next time around.
Thank you for competing, and a big congratulations to:
The.D
Afstandopleren
BrianHa
And a big thank you from the ETC Forums staff and me.
Edited by Lou Cypher, 06 September 2009 - 02:48 PM.
