Malibu City Championship

It was a gorgeous Saturday morning, my favorite weather, LA after a cold rain: crisp and clear as crystal. Sarah and I saddled up for the ride up to Malibu public library for the Pokémon city championships. You never know with the McClure tunnel, but I rolled the dice and took the freeway up to PCH. Empty. And although PCH was still recovering from a variety of mud slides, both lanes were open and we bopped along effortlessly, with the traffic thin enough to steal glances at the dark ocean without fear of a head-on collison.

Given the light traffic, we got there early, saw a buddy from our gym who also had arrived early, chatted a bit, and decided to hit the Starbucks at Crosscreek for refreshments. Sarah and I played a hand in the car whilst we sipped our respective brews, and ate the yogurt and bananas we brought with us. When Kim arrived, he got the library meeting room opened and the few of us there on time began setting up the room. I wondered if there would be a light turnout, always a good thing for us beginners. However, by 10 a.m. there were about 45 people of all ages, ethnicities, economic strata and expertise writing out their reg form and deck registration. I was particularly pleased to see the van of kids from South Central LA.

Clever girls that we are, we had filled out Kim's handy decklist BEFORE we drove up, and thus did not have to sit and copy out our deck contents by hand. While others toiled over this task, we walked around and checked out their decks. Clearly the Team Rocket Returns deck release had had an impact on deck construction (see PreRelease entry). Gone were the leaf decks, and to our surprise we saw no TeamMagma or Blaziken decks. Instead everyone seemed to be playing Dark Dragonite decks with their awesome energy transfer Poké power. Serious bummer there. They can just keep moving energy around as needed, from bench to defender and back again.

Sarah and I had discussed our goal for the day. We just wanted to win one game. Well, that was my goal, though Sarah said she hoped to win more than she had at the El Segunda City Championship. There, Sarah playing in "10 and Under" had taken fourth place with two wins. Now she would be playing in "11 to 14," a much more populated and experienced group of mostly male players. She was going to have a tough time, even with her fairly awesome electric deck.

The first round started. I chatted up the fellow I was playing. He had considerably more experience. He had driven down from SLO. He was playing a leaf deck of mostly Sceptile. I got lucky and, with my newly tweaked deck, got my dudes out, evolved, and fired up, pretty quickly. The game lasted a while. In fact, when they called time I won because I was ahead on prize cards, 2 to his 3. I was stoked!

Sarah was not as lucky and feeling a little blue. Lest you worry over her, let me tell you she then won two in a row, ending the day at 2 wins and 3 losses. I, on the other hand, went straight downhill, ending with one win and four losses, two of which were flukey heartbreakers. Check out this one. We set up our cards; we each see we only have one basic. We're both feeling a little vulnerable. We turn them over. I go second. He puts an energy on his Something EX but can't attack. I put an energy on my little Zubat. I roll, but can't paralyze him. He pulls out an R-Energy which gives his EX enough power to faint my 40 point Zubat, and wham. That's it. Neither of us has anything on the bench, and he wins. Everyone sitting around us felt bad for me; that's how unusual and stunning that was, and there was nothing I could have done to avoid it.

We had fun though. We saw all our gym buddies. We saw decks other than those we always see at our own gym. And...we found out about the next Pre-Release. It's next Saturday in Irvine, same place as the Team Rocket Returns pre-lease last November. This will be the pre-release for EX Deoxys Pokémon. Should be some good psychics, which is great as I've been dying to make a psychic deck every since I found out I couldn't use my first one as it was made of 'unmodified' cards.