TCGONE 2004 Tournament Report 2/19/21 - 1st Place

(This is a tournament report I posted to the Snowpoint Temple Facebook group)

After a lot of RS-PK tourneys, I’m glad I was finally able to play in a format I'm actually decent at! Thanks to Jay Hornung reinvigorating the 2004 meta, I was expecting some fierce competition in this tourney, so I chose to run Crobyss for its favorable matchups against top tier ex decks like Blaziken and Swampert, as well as pretty even matchups with the rest of the meta. I was seriously considering bringing my pet Regirock/Bellossom deck, but I was scared of Gorebyss running around and settled on something more reliable. Crobyss has its strengths in Crobat HL disrupting the opponent’s hand and high-damaging poison, and Gorebyss HL being an incredibly strong attacker that can use the opponent’s energy drops to its advantage. The list I usually run has a 4-3-4 Crobat line and a 3-3 Gorebyss line, but I switched it around to better take advantage of Gorebyss as a attacker. It also freed up a spot for another Psychic energy, which was much appreciated.

The matchups:

R1: Exploud W

R2: Shiftry W

R3: Jumpluff/Gorebyss W

Finals: Shiftry LW

R1 vs Mark235 with Exploud (1-0)

Probably the best match I played today in terms of evenness. He was slowly pressuring me with Breaking Sound, so I held off on evolving my benched Clamperls until I absolutely needed to. Crobat was huge in the early-midgame, constantly poisoning the active and discarding cards with Flutter Trick (including an ATM Rock that could have absolutely crippled me later on). Once I got down to 2 prizes I evolved my Clamperls and started overwhelming him with energy. Very close game though, could have gone either way.

R2 vs Dewgonnadie with Shiftry (2-0)

This could have easily gone south. He built up a Shiftry with a Warp Energy and 2 Darkness energies and could have wiped anything I put in front of him. I ended up getting a fully powered Crobat in play pretty early and started poisoning him, forcing him to retreat and hinder his setup. Once he got his Shiftry powered up, I only had a Dunsparce and a Clamperl with one energy on the bench. He could have OHKO’d my active Crobat, but he played a Desert Ruins which caused our hand sizes to no longer match. I knocked out the Shiftry with a Gorebyss the following turn.

R3 vs professoroakes with Jumpluff/Gorebyss (3-0)

This game had me nervous in the beginning, but it gradually snowballed in my favor. This was the first time this tourney I had to play against another Gorebyss deck, so I knew that the damage was gonna add up quick. He got a decent board up fast, while I didn’t get a Dunsparce start and had to draw into my basics. Crobat once again was instrumental in the early game, barely tanking a powerful Mystic Water from Gorebyss that allowed me to retreat into my own Gorebyss and OHKO the opponent’s. Then I really hit the gas and Gorebyss started destroying everything, even with the Jumpluff line’s water resistance. Hitting through Jumpluff’s Fluff at the end was nice, too.

Finals vs Dewgonnadie with Shiftry (4-1)

Game 1: Not great. I was dead drawing and getting overwhelmed by Shiftry, which was seemingly getting matching hand sizes whenever it wanted. Some early Boost Energies crippled my setup and left me scrambling to mount an offense. I wasn’t getting the evolutions or energy drops I wanted, so I slowly started sacking basics as I tried getting Crobats out to get some poison in play. Once I finally did get some sort of setup, his board was already stacked. Onto game 2.

Game 2: This game was a lot more even. We both had good Dunsparce starts and started swinging out of the gate. This time, I had trouble finding a Crobat so Gorebyss had to do most of the heavy lifting. I ended up getting a ton of energy on board, but Shiftry always found a way to knock pokemon out of my hand with Push Aside or do heavy damage with Supernatural Power. It ended up being a last-prize situation, where he was in a position to OHKO anything on my board if we had matching hand sizes. So, I decided to take the ultimate gamble and Shaman to 0 so he had the least likelihood of matching my hand. Then I brought his Shiftry close to a KO with Gorebyss. But then, his turn timer ran out the next turn, so I finished off the Shiftry for the tournament. I don’t know exactly what he had in hand, but it’s unlikely he would’ve been able to finish me off, since he didn’t have any Darkness energy left in deck to fix numbers and had 5 cards in hand. Still, I would’ve preferred that the tournament didn’t end like that.

Props:

-Switching my energy lineup from 4 Psychic/3 Grass to 5 Psychic/2 Grass right before the tourney began was probably a smart move, Gorebyss really put in work.

-Crobat for being an absolute boss with Triple Poison (and Flutter Trick was pretty handy too)

-Warp Point for that one time it was clutch in game 2 or game 3 or something, idk

Slops:

-Desert Ruins for not being useful once lmao

-ATM Rock for not being useful once lmao (Still would never drop it though)

-Rare Candy is weird. I didn’t commit to a higher count because I thought I would just get Crobats out normally more often, which cost me in later games. Was considering dropping them for another Golbat and a flex card, but the possibility for an instant Crobat was just too enticing.

Overall, I’m satisfied with my performance today, Crobyss was definitely a good pick but it’s funny that 4 of my games were against decks that Regirock would’ve taken care of handily. So is the meta. Wtf is with all the Shiftry anyway? Anyway, excited to play in the next 2004 tourney, whenever that may be. Jay Hornung has put in a ton of work lately helping people get interested in this format, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the meta is gonna go next. Maybe Exploud will finally win something? Who knows.