Atlanta, GA
The War Room, 11-20-99

Well, it's day two of NATO, and I'm riding high on my perfect score from
yesterday, so I played the same deck as last time, just with SER in the place
of ER like I had yesterday.  For those of you who didn't see it, here it is:

Mewtwomaker:
11 Psychic Energy
8 Lightning Energy
2 Double Colorless Energy

4 Mewtwo (Movie promo)
4 Electabuzz
2 Ditto

4 Bill
4 Super Energy Removal (Used to be Energy Removal)
4 Pokemon Center
4 Professor Oak
4 Computer Search
4 Pluspower
3 Gust of Wind
2 Energy Retrieval

Here's how it went down:

Round 1:
Against Unho Kim.  If you have read any of my previous reports, you know
about this guy.  1st in the state, way up in the world, and he plays all
decks equally well. 

Strange first turn play, I get 4 Bills.  It was sick.  First turn he starts
out Bulbasaur, so I know he's playing Energy Trans.  My Mewtwo beats up on a
few pokemon ay the start, but we just trade Scythers, Mewtwos, and about 6 or
so SERs.  The game gets really tense, But by the end, he is leading at 3-2
prizes left, with 6 cards left in my deck, and only a Ditto out.  I Comp.
Search to make sure it's impossible to win, and I see only 2 energy, and his
cheapest attack costs 3.  I forfeit, swearing to see him again in the finals,
and he simply says "I hope so..."
LOSS

Round 2:
Against Matt.  Great 0-1 matchup, I know he's playing a no weakness deck with
resistances to a bunch of my cards.  It looks bad from the start.

He starts out with only Gastly, and my Electabuzz terrorizes it to within 10
of death, but he Okas to save himself.  My Mewtwos smash up his Gastlies with
pluspowers, but his Dragonite beats my two Mewtwos up.  It gets tense, and by
the end, it's one card left in each of our decks.  I have to draw first,
though.  I am up on prizes, but am too honorable to try to stall for time,
and it would be an obvious stall attempt anyway.  I lose with 30 seconds
left.  :P
LOSS

Round 3:
Well, no Unho Rematch.  Still, I can fight for my DCI rating.  I face a young
oriental girl who appears to be new at it.

She was playing a grass deck.  It was over in a minute or two.  I got the
energy on Mewtwo quickly, and kept him out with my Pokecenters, beating 5 in
a row, and running her out.  If it's any consolation, in the next practice
game, she had me running out of cards, as Ditto vs. Lickitung ate away at
both our decks.
WIN

Round 4:
Against a young man who I had traded with a lot before, but we never traded
names.  He was playing a Grass/Psy deck.

It was surprisingly long.  I beat him down to 1 or 2 prizes, but his Koffings
(!) kept confusing my Mewtwos, and I reteated them successfully every time,
but this happened about 4 or 5 turns in a row, like clockwork.  Fortunately,
I lost no energy to the whole process, so after a while, his luck ran out,
and I won.
WIN

Round 5:
My opponent didn't walk up, as I sang the impromptu cheer "Gimme a Kyle! 
Gimme an opponent!" while I waited for him.  He never did show, and I get the
stupid win.
WIN

So, I went a mediocre 3-2.  Unho won 7-0, BTW.  I decided to post this up to
help out future generations of Mewtwo trainers.  In any case, it's time to go
over what I have learned.

What have I learned from this?
Ditto is alomst useless in here, really.  I think he's going to go out in the
very near future.  He was just to susceptible to their tactics, especially if
they wanted to stall me.

People are to scared to play their own types, they just cure the big ones.  I
ran into a lady who was playing who said that her son put in the Meowth line
just to stop me.  It's sad when people have that little faith in their decks.

I need to put in fighting.  Colorless smashed me horribly, and I think that
with Aerodactyl, it could solve my big evolution problem.  We shall see.

Well, 3-2, but 1 came down to the last play, so I don't feel so bad.  1 more
card in my deck, and I'd be in the finals.  So it goes, I guess.  Tommorow is
the last day of NATO and my experimenting of the idea of a Mewtwo deck.  I
hope this has been helping out to improve the metagame, and I hope this will
give people ideas on how to win with and beat this underplayed, very nasty
deck.

Justin Purdy
Daihakusei@aol.com
One more to go...