Hello,

I went to a DCI santioned tournament at the War Room with about 16
participants.

My record in the tournamet was 3-2 (I lost the last game by default due to
the fact that I made a phone call
and was not there when the match was to begin). If I had actually been able
to play that last game, I feel I could have won and made the final round of
the tournament.

The point of the deck was 2 fold:

1) Get Scyther out and able to attack 2nd turn of the game.
2) Get Venusaur and/or Beedrill to fully evolved state and have them do the
heavy hitting late in the game.

The cards in the deck were:

Pokemon Cards (23 total):
----------------------
2 Venusaur
3 Ivysaur
4 Bulbasuar

2 Beedrill
2 Kakuna
3 weedle

1 nidoqueen
2 nidorina
3 nidorans

3 scyther
1 kangskhan

Trainer Cards (11 total)
---------------------------------
4 Bill
3 Professor Oak
1 Switch
2 Pokemon Trader
1 Super Potion

Energy Cards (23 total):
-----------------------------------
20 green energy
3 double energy

Game descriptions are below, here are the lessons that I learned at this
tournament:

1) Best ratio to acheive 2 levels of evolution is the 4-3-2 ratio (basic-
level 1- level 2). I had the venusaur in play in every game I played, not so
for Beedrill or Nidoqueen.
2) Cover your Weaknesses. Both the bulbasaur/ivysaur/venusaur evolution and
the weedle/kakuna/beedrill combinations are weak to fire. I put the
nidoran/nidorina/nidoqueen cards in there to compensate, but it is too hard
to have 3 two level evolutions in the deck. It would have been much better
to put more Kangskhans in the deck.
3) The scyther/double energy combination is great. The fact that scyther's
retreat cost is 0 is fantastic as well.
4) I needed more healing in my deck. The method I had for dealing with hurt
pokemon's was to hide them on the Bench, if I had more healing I would have
given up less prizes. The Venusaur/Pokemon Center combination is a great fix
for this problem (Use venusaurs power to move all the green energy to a
pokemon that is not hurt, then use pokemon center to heal all the pokemon.
Then use the venusaur power again to redistribute the energy).
5) The pokemon trader is a great card. He allows me to trade any pokemon in
my hand for another in the deck. This really helps to get that one stage
that you need to evlove your pokemon to level 2. I like this better than
pokemon breeder because it helps in the case where you have the level 1
evolution and the level 2 evolution, but you don't have the basic pokemon.
Also in this deck that is 2/3's weak to fire, it would allow you to trade a
weedle in your hand for a kangskhan in the deck.


Game 1: Versus a Green "Poison Deck"
The opponent in this game had a lot of Koffings and the
weedle/kakuna/beedril cards in his deck. Initially in this game I had a few
basic pokemons out and the opponnent was able to collect 5 prizes off of
them. Most of my pokemon that were knocked out were un-evolved bulbasaurs,
nidorans and kakunas. They died because of the poison damage. I finally got
a pair of scythers in play as well as a venusaur and started to knock out
his koffings then beedrills. Time was called on this match and I had 2
prizes to go, and my opponnent 1. I lost.

Game 2: Versus an Jigglypuff deck.
This game the opponnent put 2 Jigglypuffs in play. He tried to put your
pokemons to sleep then pound them.
I had a scyther in play and ready to attack on turn 2 (turn 1 put green
energy do a 'swords dance', turn 2 put a double energy and attack). A few
coin flips went my way allowing my scyther to wake up and attack and it
killed the 2 and only 2 jigglypuffs that were put in play. My record was now
1-1.

Game 3: Versus a Fire deck.
This deck had charmander/charmeleon/charizard evolution,
growlithe/arcanine, and ponyta cards in it. Again in this game I was able to
get scyther to attack the 2nd turn of the game (for 60 points after doing
swords dance the first turn). I won this game mostly because I was able to
get 2 scythers in play and the venusaur in play. Having multiple big-HP
creatures allowed me to fight the fire creatures for a while then withdrawl
before being knocked out. The venusaur allowed the movement of green energy
to other un-hurt pokemons so that they could go and fight.
I took 6 prizes and won, my record was now 2-1.

Game 4: Versus a Phsyic/Fire deck.
This deck had abra/kadabra/alakazams evolution, Jynx and
Charmanders/Charmeleons/Charizard in it. This was another game where scyther
was able to attack on turn 2 for 60 points of damage. I was able to knock
out an Abra and a pair of Jynxs before a chamander became the active
pokemon. At this point, I retreated the scyther (which is weak to fire) and
advanced kangskhan. I also had a venusaur in play so moved enough energy to
kangskhan so that he could comet puch (4 coins, 20 damage x # of heads).
Kangskhan knocked out charmander and a couple of other pokemon to win the
game for me.

Game 5: Verus an electric deck.
This is the game I lost due to being late. The deck consisted of Zapdo's,
Hitmochans and evee/Jolteon cards.

Regards,
Todd