the light house by: P. Tooey Tivoli student center, Denver CO WCSTSQT Saturday October 13th about 80 people all together The light house: pokemon(19) 4 Mareep 3 Flaaffy 3 Ampharos 3 Cleffa 2 Murkrow 3 Gligar 1 Magby Trainers(20) 4 Prof. Elm 4 Double Gust 3 Focus Band 3 Moo Moo Milk 3 Super Scoop Up 3 Sprout Tower Energy() 3 Dark 2 Rainbow 16 Electric I think that's thae proper count, I don't have my deck list with me. Any way: Me and my mom got up at 6:11 am and left from Fraser CO at 7:11. it was a white knuckle drive going through berthoud pass because of road construction and blizzard conditions. then we get stuck at a traffic jam for an hour because some idiot had the bright idea to go wreck his semi smack in the middle of the high way. he was towing all ready wrecked cars so they had to clear those away too. it seemed as if some one or some thing was trying to keep me away from the qualifier! Finally we make it to Denver just in time to register and sit down. the judge gets up and announces all the rules and then answers questions. this takes about a half hour. then we get to sit around while the pairings are figured. after they post it and I find out where I'm sitting and sit down, the battles begin: the battles were six rounds of swiss: Some of the finer details have slipped my mind so bear with me. Battle one vs. Luke with psychic and water We set up and I see he dosen't have a very well put together deck, probably something slapped together over night. he puts up two Brock's Likitungs. I can't quite remember what I had except a Murkrow. I put out a Sprout Tower attach dark, I think, and pass, he attaches and passes. I power up Murkrow and eventually power up Murkrow and defeat the Tung's. then he sends out Slowpoke. I mean look and then owned him from there, eventually winning by prizes. 1-0 three points Battle two vs. ? with Meganium, Dark Dragonair and E's Vileplume this battle was pretty fun, hard but fun. all though it sound like a willy nilly deck, it was actually pretty good, with Dark Dragonair getting out evolutions. this battle is pretty fuzzy but I do remember him using Blaine's QUiz #3 (i think it was #3, it was the one where you guess the lengths) I only guessed right once. I also remember that I played basically the whole game with a fully powered Ampharos with focus band. it came down pretty close but I ended up getting all six prizes. 2-0 six points battle three vs. ? with Sabrina's Alakazam this was the slowest battle I have ever been in! I got out Murkrow with 2 Dark, but he got Unown D out. I got the Unown active and mean looked. I feint attacked a poke or two very slowly. I was going to move on to his Alakazam when a judge came over and said that dark energies didn't count toward benched pokemon, but it was too late to take back the KO'ed pokemon. so I directed Murkrow's wrath to the one poke I could hit: Unown D. when I knocked him out I figured that Murkrow could stick around at least on turn, then I would fall back on Ampharos. but I learned an important lesson during this battle: always assume your opponent has something up his sleeve, do not under any circumstances get careless. during the turn after Unown D left. He sent up Sabrina's Alakazam, played a resistance gym, and elmed to refill his deck with the enourmous hand he had been accumulating over the course of the game, witch saved him from decking. the he mega buned my Murkrow, KOing it. I sent up Ampharos. we duked it out for a bit, then time was called, he had four prizes, I had one. Darn! I could have got that last prize had we played a little bit longer, getting only two point for winning by time, as opposed to three by prizes would eventuall cost me the top 8. 3-0 eight points In between I played a few practice rounds, winning one, i think and losing horribly to a Donphan. then I talked for a little bit until they posted the pairings and I sat down. This was one of my favorite battles even though it was the worst loss in card game history, (or something near it .) the reason it was fun was because the kid I played was really cool. when he came to the table and sat down, he looked at me with the "evil eye," I decided to return it. "why are you giving me the evil eye?" he said "I'm not giving you the evil eye, you were giving me the evil eye and I'm returning it with a solemn expression," I said. "oh," he said. "Stop giving me the evil eye!!" this would become a running gag between me and him for the rest of the day. after we had set up the TO said tho the room in general that we should only be shuffling by now. luckily the TO hadn't seen us and we put away our cards, "we weren't set up, were we?" I said hintingly to "Sparky," as I refer to him, (I actuall forgot his name, but that's his "nickname"). He caught on and said to the guy next to him who was Jesse, a guy I know from one of my leagues, "You didn't see us setting up did you?" Jesse had actually seen us set up early but was a nice enough guy to play along, "Why, no, I didn't see anyone setting up at this table," he said. then all three of us turned to the guy who Jesse was playing, who was looking at the table behind us and hadn't been listening and I said, "You didn't see us, DID you?" he was totally clueless, "huh?" he said. "you didn't see us set up, did you" Sparky said slamming his fist into his other hand. "no," he said, still totally having no idea what we were talking about. it was so funny. battle five vs. Sparky with Tyranitar. I started with Mareep he started with Larvitar then next turn Pupitar, 'nuff said 3-1 eight points while we were waiting for the pairings to be posted, I talked with Michael of Team Springs and Sparky. We were going on about how the aliens were all around us, when ever somebody looked at us we would be all: "He's an alien, their all around us, converging on us," and "There all aliens, it's a conspiracy, a conspiracy I tell you!" then we got our pairings and sat down. Battle 5 vs. ? with Steelix, Sabrina's Alakazam This was by far my best battle, I murkrow locked a Slowpoke and feint attacked his Onix's in just the right way to get around his Gold Berries. 4-1 11points the time between the posting of the top eight is a blur but I do remember going up to the place where they had posted the rankings and finding out I was 10th or 11th. I remember many serious swear words dancing across my mind. If I had just drawn that last prize in the long battle with the Alakazam deck, I might have been in the Top 8. now I had to win my sixth round or bust battle 6 vs. ? with Donphan and Kabutops. I had Gligar and Magby, he had Donphan by turn two, and two Tyrogue on the bench. He rapid spun out Magby, I retreated, attached a dark to go with the dark to go with the rainbow, and flipped heads to knock out the Tyrogue. then I sent up Magby. he flipped heads and rapid spun. If my deck had a neck I would have snapped it for giving me such a horrible, horrible, wretched, wrected hand. Oh, well. After the battle Muk007 came up to us and asked who won, when we told him, he told th guy I had battled that he was in the top 8. amazingly, I didn't even make the top 16! that loss had cost me more than I had figured. I only got a promo Entei. Props: to Sparky for making Top8 to Michael for making top8 to Murkrow to Ampharos to Focus Band to any one who can do well with a non-archetype deck to good sports to God, he's cool Slops: to Donphan to any deck that beats me in the future to bad sports to all people who play pokemon only for the prizes to me for sucking it up so horribly it's not even funny to my demented Piloswine, Super Hog (see 'original home work by P. Tooey, Disco and Super Hog in the CCG tips for either October or September.) and that, my friends, is that. Email me at mr_poppenheimer@hotmail.com for deck fixing or talking, no porn, viruses or girls begging for my phone number I'd like to give a shout out to any one living or visiting in Fraser, Tabernash, Granby or Winter Park playing pokemon to e-mail me or come to my pokemon league at the divide condo's in C3. I am sick of being the only person in Fraser CO that plays pokemon! Any way, this is P. Tooey, the lone Fraser ranger, signing off.