Name: Jonathon Warden
Place: The Merchant Gamer, Cookeville, Tennessee
Date: 1/27/01
Deck: The Great American Novel

 TeeHeeTeeHee... Remember me?
 It is I, Jonathon Warden! Knothole Gym Leader and Pickett County Honor
Roll Student! You may have read my deck report from last month, you may
not have. If you didn't it was probably because I receive high ratings
on my English papers or because the deck was named "Jonathon's Trap".
Because, as you probably already know, "Trap" is the most feared and
hated combo in the game, and so therefore they pass by the deck's link
without giving it a second thought....
 So I present to you, the Neo version of my deck (I discovered there
were few good cards in the Neo set, and I won yiffin' box! Arrgh!) with
a new name! Haha! You now view upon... my new deck! Hooha!

The Great American Novel:

Pokemon: 16
1x Cleffa (Will anyone buy that this was the only good card I pulled
from that box? I guess we'll also call it "paper"...)
3x Jigglypuff (The Eraser!)
3x Wigglytuff (See above.)
3x Mewtwo (The yiffin' dictionary!)
4x Scyther (The scissors! Why I need scissors to write a novel, I don't
know.)
2x Erika's Dratini (For lack of a better comparison, we'll call it
"Pencil")

Trainers: Bwahahaha! 32
4x Professor Oak (My English Professor!)
2x Impostor Oak's Revenge (When my English Professor goes mad! [A
two-page writing prompt? In twenty-five minutes?! With all due respect,
what have you been smoking?])
4x PlusPower (That extra "oomph" of caffeine at 2 a.m. in the morning.)
2x Gust of Wind (Related to PlusPower, let's sing ya'll! "I've got my
second wind/That feeling's returning again...")
4x Rocket's Sneak Attack (We'll call this card "Jessica Clark" for lack
of a better comparison, she'll ruin you, I'm telling 'ya!)
3x The Rocket's Trap (You know what? Maybe I shouldn't call RSA,
"Jessica". The reason being that Jessica has never been surrounded by as
many guys in the real life as the girl is in the picture...)
2x Nightly Garbage Run (For those of you who know what this represents,
no explanation needed. For those who don't know, it...um... aah,
represents a series of rather illegal activities that happened @ Pickett
County High about a year or so ago. What that is, it's for me to
know.... and I really wish I didn't.)
4x Computer Search (I actually wrote the story on my computer. Hmm.)
4x Item Finder (You need to do Research! And that's what Sherlock 2 on
my Mac is for! Woohoo!)
1x Narrow Gym (Sometimes my friends and I play at each other's houses...
the playing area gets rather small, don't you think?)
1x Rocket's Minefield Gym (The Pickett County High Gym after basketball
practice when the cheerleaders want to practice... hey, it happens.)
1x Chaos Gym (The Merchant Gamer erupts into Chaos every once in a
while...)

Energy: 12
4x Double Colorless Energy (Double, double your refreshment, double,
double your fuuunnnn....)
8x Psychic Energy (Even writers need energy... unless you have a
ghostwriter :-P

The Matches! But first....

 Much has changed since you last joined us. We discovered that Kyle
Warden sure is a gracious winner, but a John Covington-esque loser. When
my cousin and I left the Gamer last month, Kyle (with encouragement from
Cory Beasley) appealed to Charles, the Gym Leader. Because of the
whiner, Charles relinquished his duty as tourney organizer, and said
that if there were to be anymore tourneys that Mike Wudhapitak would
have to run them. As the result of my good friend Mike becoming
organizer, the Morgan parents made it utterly clear to their children
that they were NOT to participate in any of Mike's tourneys. The John
Covington Elite Four dissolved a bit ago, leaving a disgruntled Cory and
a missing Willie Lee. So tempers are flared everywhere. <sigh>

 Why can't we all just get along?

 So on Saturday I drive my one hour from Byrdstown to Cookeville,
actually it was an hour and a half, I drove slower due to the fact that
on the C.B. the truckers said that the Smokies were wall-to-wall from
Livingston to Cookeville, so I had no choice but to drive slowly (I have
to pay my own insurance).
 When I arrive, it's 11 a.m. There is one Magic the Gathering player.
Oh, well. I need to build a deck for the tourney anyway.
 I struggle between two deck choices: Magnificent Seven and Yiffin' with
your Mind. If you want, I'll email the decklists to you. When Mike
finally arrived, he told me to forget both and construct my last tourney
winner. Especially throw in Erika's Dratini. As many as I can find.
 He was right. Hmm. Haymakers...

But on to the matches! It was round robin with only five players, best
two out of three.

Match #1 Cory Beasley and that Bug deck.

 It's hilarious, really. Before the tourney he rebuilt his Haymaker to
play in the tourney. Seeing the threat, I made sure he lost. So he
rebuilt the Bug deck with Jumpluff and Koga's Beedrill and Scyther and
who-knows-what-else.
 So I lost to him. On purpose. Great idea, huh?
 So now enters the tournament a mediocre player with a mediocre deck.
Life is good. Trap. Topdeck an Oak? Oh, I just took my last prize with
the puffball. Status effects caused enough problems for me to consider
Full Heal Energy or Miracle Berry. My biggest problem, ironically, was
my Chaos Gym. Cory kept flipping heads while I hit tails, but Mewtwo was
able to dispatch  a young Hoppip at the end thanks to a successful Gust
of Wind and PlusPower.

Christian Brown: Classic Haymaker, no removal, Good Manners.

 I finally got to analyze his deck to see why he doesn't run removal. He
runs much energy. Better safe than sorry, I guess.
 But after trapping him, he'd wind up with the wrong energy, a Lightning
energy on a Hitmonchan doesn't do very well, does it?
 This kid is a true Pokemon Player, he plays well and for fun.
 In game three, his Hitmonchan had three energy and dispatched my 'Tuff
with one hit. But then I found out why I love MP Mewtwo so much... he
was fully charged with 60 damage on him on my bench. I dispatched
Hitmonchan and took my last prize.

Mystery Kid! A Pojo-esque Dark Raichu, Electrode, and Base Zapdos deck.

 1st game: Trapped his hand, got rid of Dark Raichu. Wiggly ate some
Pikachu...
 2nd game: Trapped his hand, second turn Do The Wave for 90 against his
Zapdos, ahh, Bliss.

Virgil Pool: Psychic Deck

 We should of been nicer on him... he had just learned how to play. But
Wiggly waved his basics away (including a very scary Base Dragonair) in
the first match. Jiggly killed a TR Dratini with a Pound and two
PlusPowers.


 With much realization I have seen that the game is broken. I must be
slow. Mike awarded me with $10 store credit and Christian with $5 store
credit. I purchased two Gym: Challenge packs and received... spraint. I
was hoping for for another TR Zapdos or at least something of Blaine's.
Oh well. I'll buy Base Set next time.

Props:
Mike: If there is anybody who can run two tourneys at once (Pokemon and
M:TG) it's this guy. We wouldn't have tourneys if not for him. Everybody
say "thank you, Mike!"

Virgil: We'll help build you another deck. Really, we will.

Christian: He has a reputation to uphold, and he holds it well. Very
well behaved.

Mystery Electric Kid: Interesting Deck. Dark Raichu rocks. Not Raichu.
DARK Raichu. Maybe I'll reconstruct my Dark Charizard deck and we'll go
at it someday.

Slops:
Cory: Were you a sailor in a past life? You can cuss two hours straight
without repeating yourself.

Covington: I don't eat at Cracker Barrel anymore, thank you very much.
Being the website designer for the Pickett Chamber of Commerce, I'll be
sure to inform your managers of your nocturnal activities. Oh yes, and
those decks that disappeared last night...? We'll find them. If we
don't, well, things happen....

Some cocky little kid: We had league afterwards and this kid that showed
up said that he could beat Mike in Pokemon. Since we run in an Elite
Four formation now (Christian, Cory, Me, Mike), each of us took the
liberty of winning as fast as we could against him (except Mike, who
doesn't own a Pokemon deck yet. But when he needs it he borrows the
Raindance deck that has half of each of our cards in it.

Kyle Warden: That whole ordeal last time wasn't very nice. An attitude
like that may let you win on "Survivor" but it doesn't fly in the real
life.

The Morgan Family: One verse, then I'll shut up: "And be ye kind one
another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's
sake hath forgiven you."
-Ephesians 4:32
I don't know what Mike did to tick you guys off, I really don't care. I
would hope that both groups would settle the squabble. Forgive, forget.
Moving on.

The first part of my story will be released soon. You may be a little
lost without knowing about what goes on in Pickett County, but there's
Pokemon references abound. Plus, you get to peer into my life. I really
don't care if my U.S. History Teacher says that doing such a thing is
egotistical. Sometimes, that's just what needs to be done. Release
history, so that others can learn from the mistakes from others. You can
request it by writing to:

jonathonwarden@netscape.net

....after reading this I would hope that you owe me a response, anyway.
If you want the deck plans for Yiffin' with Your Mind, The Magnificent
Seven, or my Cousin's Haymaker that I built for him that nearly beat me
in the last tourney, drop me a line. I look forward to it.

"Some of them liked it, some of them didn't."
-Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, on the board's reaction to the commercial
"1984".