Above average standing at Pokemon Regional Tournament

There is an author Garrison Keillor, who talks about a fictional town called Lake Wobegon. And in Lake Wobegon, he says, “all the men are good looking, all the women are strong and all the children are above average”.

I was above average in the lake Wobegonean way. I went to play the Regional Pokemon Tournament in Pasadena last week. Regional tournaments are held between the state tournament and the national tournament; so all the champions from the state show up there. The one that I went to was in Pasadena and had the champions from southern California, Nevada and Arizona.

I went there with my wailord and Mismagius deck; the deck I affectionately called Raging Tsunami. It is a very nice deck; I practiced with it for a week or two and I was able to defeat or hold off the most powerful deck in the Pokemon – GG deck, which includes gardevoir and Gallade. Lots of my cards were shiny holo and I also had 4 DRE cards, which are very expensive.

I won’t go into the strategy of choosing these cards, except to say that Wailord is a good defensive pokemon and Mismagius is a good offensive one, so it was balanced.

Here I am shuffling the cards – see how fast I am shuffling, you can’t even see the cards.

Here I am playing with James, the state’s best player in the junior division.

Of course, I lost the game with him; he had a Pokemon card Absol, which kept disrupting my strategy.

Here I am with the prize that I got for winning the sixth game of the tournament.

That’s my friend Kai next to me. And yes, I did get that hat at the tournament.

So my standing at the game was 3-3 (won three games, lost three games), but overall, out of 43 kids, I was 21st – that’s above average, or in top 50% – ok, just a tad above average – not bad at the regional level.

My dad took me there and we had a lot of fun!

Love this cute Pokemon Leafeon from Majestic Dawn Set

I have seen a couple of pokemon from Majestic Dawn set and the art work is really nice. This one is so cute!

This is Lefeaon – Hi Lefeaon! Lets play together!

another cute little pokemon Phione from Majestic Dawn

Pokemon swimming away.

This is Phione from the Majestic Dawn set.

Looks like a little doll just came to life to play with us! It weighs only 6.8 lbs, that’s is just like a new born baby.

Carefully opening all my Booster Packs at Pokemon Pre-release Party

So the new Great Encounter Pokemon Deck is coming out on 13th February.

My dad found out that there was going to be a pre-release party on 2nd February in Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is not too far from us; about 90 miles, and I heard it was a great little town on the beach. So we decided to make a family outing out of it.

I was so excited to go to the Pokemon pre-release party! I have never been to one before and I had heard you get some great cards at the pre-release.

We got there by 1.00 and got settled in. Kiim Cary of Pokegym fame was the organizer. We met him at the Pasadena city championship event and have been exchanging emails with him. He was a judge at the World Championship and maintains all the changes to the Pokemon rule book and a very nice guy.

There was a tournament using the cards from the booster packs. If you don’t know what a booster pack is, it is a pack of 10 Pokemon cards that enhance the powers of the Pokemon cards you get in the standard deck.

We got 6 booster packs and we were supposed to make a deck of 20 cards out of those 60 and we get additional 20 energy cards from the organizers.

Here is me, carefully opening my Pokemon booster packs.

I was hoping to get Wailord Pokemon card with HP of 200 but, sigh, I didn’t get that. sob sob!

I played 3 games; won 2 and lost 1. It wasn’t really a fair competition, because I was playing against players in senior division, but hey, I had fun.

On the way back we stopped on the beach to watch the sunset. It was a bit cold but it still felt kind of nice.

After the tournament, I also got two more booster packs and one very special pre-release card. If I get a chance, I will scan it and post it here.

There is a state championship in March and I am thinking whether I can participate in it or not. I think I might, if I can construct a good deck.

Pokemon Championship tournament excitement

I didn’t have time to write about the exciting Pokemon tournament I participated a couple of weeks ago.

The City tournament was on Saturday and we found out about it on Thursday! We weren’t sure if we would be able to go or not but on Friday, on a whim, we decided to go to it any way.

I had no deck to play with. We gathered up my cards and put together a Fighting deck. It was a really poor deck. Rampardos was the best card I had and the evolution chain was kind of weak. I had no trainers and no supporters. I called my deck ‘little ninja’ – ninja because it was a fighting deck, and little because, the deck still has a little growing up to do.

We were joking that going to the city tournament with my deck was like going to a sword fight with a banana! :-)

Here is a picture of me at the tournament in my ninja like dragon jacket.

I got there at about 9.30 or so and there were a few people waiting; all them with a huge binders of Pokemon cards in tow. The collections that these people had were impressive for sure. I played a warm-up game with a guy there and lost pretty easily. :-(

The tournament started at about 11.00 and I played my first game. My opponent had really really good cards and very strong deck but he didn’t understand the cards and the rules very well. The game continued for a while and we were both at 2-2. Since the time was up, the judge said that who so ever gets the next knock out, wins. I noticed that one of his benched pokemon had a lot of damage and I used one of my cards that did damage to the benched pokemon and got a knock out and won the game! I didn’t expect to, but it was great to win a game.

In the next game, my opponent was a guy named James L. I asked him what kind of deck he had and he wouldn’t even tell me. Turned out that he had a Blissy deck. He won the game very quickly. His cards were doing 80+ damage to me and I had no Pokemon that was very strong. remember, I only had one Rampardos with 120 HP.

Later I found out that James L. is the best Pokemon player in the state of California! I don’t feel too bad, I was beaten by the expert. And Blissy deck is considered one of the strongest deck.

I played two more games and they were nice. I lost them both but I did do some damage. Considering how weak my deck was, I felt pretty good.

I also met Kim Cray from Pokegym.net and he gave me a special Pokemon dice! cool. He also suggested that I might consider playing with proxy deck or dummy deck and that was a great nugget of information.

At the end, we all got a special promo card and a poster and a tournament pin!

All in all, a very intense experience!

Unicorn Pokemon – Rapidash

There is no true unicorn pokemon in the game, but the one that comes closest to the mythical creature is Rapidash.

The basic stats for the Pokemon-Unicorn, Rapidash are : TYPE: Fire (Fire Horse), height, 5’7″, wt. 209 lbs. It can gallop as fast as 150 miles an hour and it can reach the top speed within just 10 steps!

Ash once used a Ponyta belonging to Lara Laramie in the Pokémon Marathon in The Flame Pokémon-athon. The Ponyta evolved into Rapidash near the end of the race, winning it.

And here is another cool picture of the dark Rapidash:

I have this card collected already, in fact, I have two of these and four Ponytas.

The dark Rapidash is by Ria and can be seen here. Thank you Ria for letting me show it.

Pokemon Battle revolution – got destroyed by MewTwo

I started playing the Pokemon Battle Revolution a couple of days ago. I like the game, there are a lots of battles and its kind of fun. All my pokemon are at level 50, just starting out.

Today we set up the WiFi on the Wii so I can play Pokemon with others. I signed in, found an opponent to battle and had a nice game; I barely won but it was a good match. And then I tried to play another game with a new opponent and Voooh…

The other person had all the BEST pokemons; he had MewTwo, Charizard and several other really strong ones. I had no chance what so ever!

I took out two of my best pokemon (Charmeleon and Wartotle)- the MewTwo did an earthquake on me and boom, both of my pokemon fainted. :-( It was really scary and freaky.

It was good to fight with such a strong pokemon trainer. Hope I see him/her again.

I am just a noob (n00b) and after the game was over, the other trainer probably said w00t!

Lazy summer days! & Pokemon fever!

Haven’t written my blog in a while – it is because these are lazy summer days!

I have gotten interested in pokemon! yes, I know I am a few years too late, there is something special about these mythical creatures!

I have been drawing them a bit and also playing the Pokemon Pearl – I am up to level 11.

Here are a few more variation of my favorite and cutest pokemon.

Don’t forget to check out my Lefeon and other pictures from the Majestic Dawn Pokemon set.

And all of my pokemon related posts here.