Tournament Report

All This Yelling Is Making My Throat Sore: Spring Regionals Report

Hello Hat Lovers!

Today I’m going to show the team I used to get 7th place in Washington Regionals and 2nd in Utah Regionals. Mark also took 2nd at Washington Regionals with this team (be on the lookout for his report on Nugget Bridge). Originally we were only going to Washington but once the Nationals Stipends were announced we decided to fly to Utah to give us a better chance of earning a stipend.

Going into Regionals I didn’t know what I wanted to play. My goal for Washington and Utah was to get enough points to earn a travel award to Nationals and to get a Worlds invite without needing points from Nationals. Getting two top 16 finishes be good enough so I decided I needed a team that would be able to go X-1 in Swiss reliably.

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Premiere Challenge Update

Hello Hat Lovers!

I won my fifth Premiere Challenge last weekend. The tournament only had 6 masters so this post is more of an update then an report.

I played the same team that I used for the last PC:

Salamence-MegaMetagrossLudicoloPolitoedTerrakionThundurus

The only changes I made were replacing Meteor Mash with Iron Head on Metagross and getting better IVs on my Politoed and Terrakion (0 attack on Politoed and 31 HP on Terrakion). As with the last PC I knew that this team would be good against the Victoria metagame.

I want to take a moment to talk about how ridiculous 6 person tournaments are. If a 6 person tournament doesn’t sound prestigious you don’t know the half of it. Of the 3 rounds we played I got paired down twice and didn’t face the players that got second and third. The player I faced in the last round got fifth place and was one more critical hit (from a Leaf Blade no less) away from beating me and winning the tournament.

This brings me up to 300 CP. Since I’ve maxed out my best finish limit at PCs I can now go full NFG for the rest of the Premiere Challenges this season. I’ve had a lot of team ideas that are probably really bad that I’ve been ignoring until now.

~Max

When the Togekiss Nation Attacked: 1st and 2nd Place Premier Challenge Report

Salutations hat lovers, R Apha Bagelbagel here!

I recently competed in back to back Premier Challenges and earned my first tournament win on the second day. The first day wasn’t too shabby either as I picked up a second place finish, and both results knocked off half of the hilarious amount of top four finishes I have on my best finish limit.

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Dropping Raindrops & Rocks: 1st Place Premiere Challenge Report

Hello Hat Lovers!

I played in another Premiere Challenge in Victoria this weekend. I didn’t expect to see many faces from Vancouver, but we got a couple players come over to play. I needed to reach the finals in order to get CP from this event and I needed to win in order really make it worth it.

The Team:

After the last set of Premiere Challenges in Victoria I decided I want my team to be ready for each event before the day of the actual event so I decided on my team two days in advance and assembled it the night before. I decided I wanted to use Terrakion and Thundurus as I could stack the odds in my favour with Rock Slide and Thunder Wave. Thundurus can also use Swagger on Terrakion to power it up, which is an idea I’ve been wanting to use all season but never made a team to do it with.

Me and Mark originally had Rotom-W and Weavile on this team. I found that these two Pokemon weren’t working out as well as I would’ve liked so I dropped them and added the rain duo to help out against Pokemon like Terrakion, Landorus and Heatran.

The team was stacked with fast Pokemon, but every member of the team had a respectable amount of bulk. When Terrakion’s 91/90/90 defences make it the frailest Pokemon on the team you’re doing something right.

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2nd Place Oregon Regionals Report

Hello Hat Lovers!

Mark, Trevore, Chase, Jason and myself all drove down to Portland last weekend to compete in Oregon Regionals. Trevore, Chase and Jason all played in TCG Regionals on Saturday and then in a League Challenge on Sunday. Me and Mark played in a Premiere Challenge on Saturday and in VGC Regionals on Sunday.

We got in around 1:30 AM after getting lost a couple times and our TCG friends were up until 5AM preparing their decks. This made me incredibly thankful that I had decided on my team well in advance. We got up at 7AM to deliver them to the event. I made top 8 in the Premiere Challenge. I changed some of the items for the PC so that if I faced the same people at Regionals they would have false information on the team. The item changes were not ideal for the team, but they were worth trying.

Chase made top cut and stayed up until 3AM deciding on what deck to play on Sunday. We got up again at 7AM to get to the event in time for registration. There were 175 masters registered, giving us 8 rounds of swiss and a top cut of 8. Only 8-0 and 7-1 records were ensured a spot in top cut, with two 6-2 records making it.

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