We've just ran our second Pokémon Regional event here, and it was insane!
Once again, we used a nearby venue for capacity reasons, since our Gaming Centre is currently not large enough to fit all of the players in the event
We had a real rise in skill level this time in comparison to last event - many competitive decks from the new Lost Origin format made an appearance thoughout the tournament, and people had a real struggle to make it into top 8.
After our 5 rounds of swiss, we had a top 8 cut - this means that at the end of the normal rounds, the top 8 players go head to head in a single elimination format. This means having a better placement in top 8 is also important, as the higher you are in that at the end of swiss, the easier your opponents will be going forward.
We had a fairly nice cut of 3-2, however due to a lot of ties in the later rounds of swiss, no one actually ended up on that record! This meant that the last slot in top 8 went to one of the five people on 2-1-2, Alex!
Top 8:
A very interesting line up of both decks and players in our Top 8 here. For named players, 3 of our last Regional's Top 8 made it through this time once again, out of the 7 in attendance. Included in that is last event's winner, Jake. For decks, 4 of the 8 decks were variants of Palkia, with 2 being the tried and tested Inteleon and the other being the new more-aggressive Kyurem build. The 1 Duraludon took the field by suprise as a fringe play with the introduction of Lost Origin, meaning Mew players were cutting their Echoing Horn. Arcanine was the most unexpected deck to make top 8, with the deck having counters to most meta decks in the format. Lost Box and Zoroark were expected signs of the new format to come, after Lost Box had won Peoria Regionals the week before, and Zoroark having some small hype going into future events after that.
Going into Top Cut, 1st seed plays against 8th seed, 2nd against 7th and so on. This meant the matchups were as follows:
Palkia took a clean 2-0 against Arcanine, after playing around the counter of Flapple effectively. Lost Box beat Palkia Inteleon, since it has the ability to swing the matchup using echoing horn, zigzagoon and sableye to knock out 2 sobble. Palkia Kyurem beat Duraludon, since the matchup is heavily unfavoured for the deck (Duraludon cannot live through a Kyurem swing, once it sets one up). And finally, Palkia Kyurem beat Hisuian Zoroark, after some unfortunate draws game 2.
Top 4:
Palkia Kyurem took the round against Palkia Kyurem here, because of the matchup being especially hard for the Inteleon player. Kyurem is too hard to knock out in 1 hit using Palkia, so Kyurem allowed Jake to win the prize trade. Lost box beat Palkia Kyurem just barely in time in game 3, after a long back and forth where Rick was able to establish a checkmate scenario for game.
Finals:
This was an intense Finals match, with both players having previously came Top 8 in our last Regional event (and Jake having won). Game 1 and 2 were very back and forth, but Game 3 Rick was forced to Lost Zone a psychic energy with the other 3 being prized. Because he didnt have access to Sableye, he could not take any prizes to get more, so his deck shut down and Jake took his second win!
Congrats to Jake for once again winning the event, proving he's the player to beat! On top of that, congrats to our Top 8 for making it so far!
Some notable things from the event:
A massive thank you to anyone who came to the second of our Regional events! Like before, it was absolutely fantastic to run and judge, especially Top Cut, and I'm looking forward to our next one, on the 6th of November! Grab your ticket below if you're planning on coming down to that one!
