Almost Hay
                     Water Season SWISS tourny 
                        By Johnny Kettler
                       Texas Game Company
                          Allen, Texas
                        Sunday, 10-27-02
                      about 12 or so people

(Skip this paragraph if you don't give a crud)
Hi everyone! It is your favorite (everyone laughs loudly in Patriarch's face) tournament author dude. If you might be wondering why I skipped the Psychic tournament, all I have to do is say this: 6 people only. Yep, that is ALL. PERIOD. First round: bye. Second round, close game, but no cigar for my opponent. Third match, no competition (tourny wins: 4/6).

If you skipped that paragraph then you are a very wise person :) Anyways, I changed my deck a bit from last time, but overall it is still the same Almost Hay:

Almost Hay

Artifacts (1):

1 Jester's Cap topdeck :D

Pokemon (16)

2 cleffa (genesis)
2 electabuzz (base)
2 rocket's zapdos
1 rocket's scyther
2 scyther (jungle)
1 scizor (promo)
3 onix (genesis)
3 steelix

trainers (23)

3 Oak
2 Elm
1 Research
2 Com. Search
3 Pokemon Trader
3 Energy Removal
3 Gold Berry
3 Focus Band
3 Gust of Wind


Energy (21)

3 rainbow
3 metal
3 DCE
4 grass
8 lightning

Round 1:
Johnny              Cliff
Almost Hay 2002 VS. Almost Hay 2001?!

Yup. Believe it or not, this dude found an exact copy of my deck on the net. At first I thought it would be a tough game, but then I remembered that it was an outdated, mediocre version of my current Almost Hay, from over a year ago! Anywho...

My start was good. I had card drawing power, a buzz as my solid starter, and a Focus band to boot. He however, had two scythers. The first turn I energize buzz, band it, and oak. I now have the Steelix line, Rocket's Zapdos, and a cleffa. Eventually, the game got to such a level that Steelix and Steelix brawled. With the sheer advantage in tools and energy, I killed his first Steelix, then a buzz, and then another Steelix. However, a second buzz managed to slay Steelix. Safe to say, I killed buzz with buzz.. At the end, I got out a second steelix to kill off a Skarmory he played earlier and one of his turn 1 scythers to win me the game (1-0).

Round 2:
Johnny         Danny
Almost Hay VS. Dark/ Metal/ Water Removal deck that can work!

Great start. I got out a buzz versus an eevee and a dratini. When he evolved to umbreon, I was about to own it, but he switched for dratini. No matter. I knew he planned to build it up and murder me later, so I used gust of wind to kill it. As for the remaining poke Dratini, I'll let you use the context clues to figure it out :D (2-0)

Round 3:
Johnny         Warren
Almost Hay VS. G8R

Very good game, considering he coulda owned with his G8R should I not have ER'd it. I managed to kill an Elekid and a 'dile, but the game elevated from chump change to top dollar. Steelix Versus G8R: A match worth pay-per-view. Sadly, that fight ended in a draw when I was forced to stall long enough to kill G8R with Rocket's Scyther. I dealt only 80 damage, and was murdered shortly afterwards. When I finally managed to kill the dude with a buzz, I gained control of the game, being able to gust out any g8r or dile he played. (3-0)

Round 4:
Johnny         David
Almost Hay VS. Commons deck!

David, the other really good dude at my league, now plays an all-commons deck. A long while back, I gave a challenge to a few peeps to build all-commons decks. However, neither of us remembered that I was not playing with my Dark Octillery deck, so this meant serious ownage. Second turn steelix mean anything to you? Although he managed to kill a cleffa, I gained control with the steelix by killing Gligar. Since his ride was there, and we both realized that he would've lost within 3 or so turns, we ended the game early, since you can't kill steelix with commons! (4-0)

Aftermath: Of course they gave out lots of promo cards. I got 5-7 or so foil water energy, along with promo cards galore!
By the way, it really pays off to play magic along with Ptcg if you don't already. I myself managed to trade an Oak's research for a swords to plowshares! A SWORDS I TELL YOU! A SWORDS!!!

If you wish to reply to my article in a positive or negative way, E-mail me at: thegreatcell@aol.com