Babes and Wiggles (Getting Tuff with Lass) v1 (Fighting/Grass)
By PokeVorlon
At the Pokemon League, Last Picture Show
Sheffield, England

Wednesday July 19th 2000
16 Participants

Well, my first tournament and first opportunity to write a Killer Deck
Report. I've been going to the Pokemon League here for 2 weeks although I've
played the game for longer than this. The tournament rules were six prize,
single elimination. Although there were around 50 people present at the
league, only 16 of us played in the tournament.

As I hadn't played a Pokemon tournament before, I wanted to put together
something which would give me a reasonable chance. In the past I had
preferred to use Haymakers or other fast decks; but always decks with a
little stability or decks that were solid on the counter attack. I like
stall decks; but they're just not my type. Therefore, I decided to put
together a variation on Speed Tuff:

x15 Pokemon
x4 Hitmonchan
x4 Scyther
x4 Jiggly Puff
x3 Wiggly Tuff

x27 Trainers
x4 Pluspower
x4 Computer Search
x4 Professor Oak
x3 Bill
x3 Item Finder
x3 Gust of Wind
x2 Scoop Up
x2 Nightly Garbage Run
x2 Lass

x18 Energy
x14 Fighting Energy
x4 Double Colourless Energy

When making a Speed Tuff, I couldn't decide whether to go with neutral
colour Pokemon and use Potion and Full Heal Energy, or to use a Haymaker
type and normal Energy. Eventually I settled on Haymaker type. I figured
that, Pokemon aside, while the side effects of these energies would be
missed, the fact that they didn't count as Basic Energy may well hurt if I
came across a focused Energy Removal deck. Using Basic Energy allowed for
Nightly Garbage Run to negate such an eventuality, while Scoop Up could be
used as a form of Switch, Potion and Full Heal combined (Remember with Scoop
Up that the Basic returns to your hand and can be replayed; with Speed Tuff,
this ability alone is almost as essential as Pluspowers or Oaks). Having
decided to use normal Energy, I settled on Hitmonchan instead of Electabuzz
for two main reasons; that he is an excellent Wiggly Killer, Scyther or No
Scyther (I hoped my Pokemon's weakness and resistance's would compensate for
the quantity of Fighting Resistant Pokemon out there). Secondly, should I
end up against an Energy Removal deck, while I still have a Hitmonchan with
1 Fighting on him, I still have a chance.

Anyway, the tournament started. At first glance there were a couple of stall
decks (one with Moltres, one with Alakazam), one Dark Water deck, a couple
of Haymakers, my Tuff, and a few Psychic/Something Else decks.

Round One: vs Robin with Psychic/Grass.
I started with a lone Hitmonchan.but with an Oak in hand! My main concern
was stopping the Abra's from evolving, so I ended up using Gust of Wind with
Pluspower and Jab in the first two turns for two prizes. While this was
going on, I was Oaking, Computer Searching and Item Findering my bench,
while building a Wiggly. After the Abra's, I Waved Robin's Oddish using
Pluspower, benching him. Pluspower was probably overkill, but it was better
safe than sorry.
6 Prizes Left.
1-0

Round Two vs Amy with Psychic/Electric.
This game my opening hand was awful: 1 Hitmonchan, 3 Fighting, 1 Item Finder
and 2 Wiggly's. My opponent started with an Electabuzz and Jungle Pikachu on
bench. I went first, drew a Computer Search, attached a Fighting and
reluctantly searched for and used Oak. One turn down and 2 Wiggly's in the
Discard pile! My opponent played Slowbro and Thundershocked without
paralysis. I breathed a sigh of relief, played the Jiggly I'd drawn and KO'd
Electabuzz. This was replaced with Pikachu who soon became Raichu. I Gusted
Slowbro (I figured Chan could handle the Electrics, but that taking out the
psychics was top priority), Special Punched, Pluspowered and got the KO.
Next turn, Raichu was Special Punched. I took my third prize, benching my
opponent.
6 Prizes Left.
2-0.

As a side note, round Two saw battle's between the two Stall Decks (I was on
the next table; seeing Alakazam Damage Swap against Moltres Wildfire was
something to behold), and Haymaker vs Dark Water. In the Stall game, Chansey
was able to KO the Moltres, giving the win to the Damage Swap. Though I
didn't see the Dark Water vs Haymaker game, I think Dark Blastoise and
Gyrados got the better of the basics, though I'm not sure.

Round Three vs Scott with Dark Water.
This deck was a combination of Blastoises and Gyrados, supported by
Drattini's and their Dark Evolutions. I knew something was going wrong when
I had to mulligan, allowing an Evolution deck to draw an extra two cards.
Then I went and lost the toss, doh!
Thinking back, this was a strange game. In the whole match, I drew only 1
Bill, no Oak or Computer Search, 1 Hitmonchan, 1 Jiggly and 2 Pluspower. The
rest of the cards I got were either Energy, Scoop Up, Nightly Garbage Run or
Lass.
Oh well, at least I got to start with Scyther. On my turn I drew a Hitmon,
allowing a quick couple of Jab's combined with Gusts of Wind and Pluspower
to take out the Tragikarp's. One of them escaped however, and my opponent
proudly evolved him into the 100 hit point Abomination. Thankfully, Scyther
came to the rescure and was able to cut Gyrados down to size. By this time,
using Dark Dragons, my opponent had filled his bench and even had a Dark
Blastoise. Given My bench still only had the lone Jiggly, injured Hitmon and
Scyther out front, I wondered whether the Wiggly's would better be suited to
the other bench. Thankfully however, I only had 2 prizes left to draw. A
Gust of Wind for a Drattini took care of one of them. The other was left
down to Scyther and Dark Blastoise. All I can say is thank heaven for
Pluspowers.
6 Prizes Left (Somehow).
3-0.

In the other semi-final, a different Haymaker played the Damage Swap. As Mr
Mime proved useless against the Magmar's, Electabuzz's and Hitmonchan's  (It
was a 3 Energy Haymaker which also used Scyther), Chansey was left out front
to take a beating. Soon Haunter replaced Gastly and Gengar replaced Haunter.
After Chansey was sacrificed (double edge twice), the ghosts cleaned up,
Damage Swap winning on prizes.

Final vs Andy with Damage Swap.
Before the tournament even started, Andy predicted that we'd meet in the
final. He was using a tweaked version of his Alakazam-Chansey-Mime-Gastly
deck. I'd played the previous version the week before, using my Dragon
Haymaker (a fun deck using Movie Promo Dragonite). Previously we had each
won once. This sort of final seemed fitting.
As matches go, this battle is quite interesting. A Speed Tuff tries to play
a fast, short game. The aim is to draw many, many cards, Wave with a full
bench ASAP and hopefully win by benching the opponent. Compared to this,
Damage Swap attempts to dictate the game. While the deck isn't defensive,
Damage Swap doesn't aim to win quickly, but instead plays for a long, solid
game, potentially decking the opponent. These two conflicting styles make
such a game interesting to watch.
When playing a Speed Tuff, there's two schools of thought on how to tackle
Damage Swap. One is to slow down the drawing in order to prevent early
decking, and instead play a much more refined game. The other idea is to
play to the usual, if not even more intensive, speed of Tuff, reasoning that
as decking is usually the Speed Tuff problem, the best way to tackle a
strategy that wants you to deck is to beat the strategy head on. I went for
the second approach, thinking if I slowed down my deck to meet my opponent,
I'd be playing his game and he would have already won the psychological
battle.
Therefore on turn 2 I Computer Searched for Wiggly, replaced, Oaked, Item
Retrieved and Oaked again, getting a full bench by the third turn. When Mr
Mime replaced Chansey, he was Jabbed by Hitmon. With Mime out of the way, I
used Wiggly to Wave the Abra's, Alakazam's and Chansey's.
It's a shame that Andy got a bad draw. His previous game had been drawn out
and after shuffling, all his Energy, Pokemon and Trainers were together in
the deck. While my fast start was a factor in the match, had he got a turn 2
or 3 Alakazam, things may have been very different.
Prizes Left 6.
4-0.

For winning, I got my Rock and Water badges, a choice of Bodyguard or
Lockdown (I chose Lockdown - I needed a Laprass), League Pikachu and
Aerodactly pre-release. All in all a good tournament. Speed Tuff suits me.

Props and Slops are beginning to seem outdated:

The Good: Finally getting to play in a tournament, finding a deck that I
like.
The Bad: That Andy got a bad draw.
The Ugly: That I have to take the train in order to find a Pokemon League
near me.

PokeVorlon
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