Our local Pokémon TCG community organised an 8 player retro tournament and this month, the format was Worlds 2006 format, one of the better ones in Pokémon TCG’s history.
This format is intensive. Thanks to lower damage values and less powerful Trainers, there are not a lot of one hit KOs or trivial ways to take KOs on the bench so you need to think how to best use your resources and attacks. Sometimes, it might not be best to do 90 damage on a 100HP ex if they can retreat it to safety and put the pressure on you.
I love that about it. When I play Standard or GLC, it’s mostly just using all the best things available and taking big KOs. This format requires you to think way more and the games are much slower and more back and forth. As I said, we played 40 minute best of 1 and a lot of games went to time.
The deck
I brought in my beloved Ariados/Flareon (or Flariados amongst friends). I don’t play exactly this 2006 Worlds format regularly (my favourite format of the era is the popular Ruby & Sapphire—EX Power Keepers, also known as RS-PK) but I only had to switch two cards (-2 Windstorm, +2 Energy Removal 2) so I got to play a deck that I’m very familiar with and enjoy playing.
(I did not find the two Energy Removal 2s in time so I drew my own.)
# Pokémon
4 Eevee (DS 69)
4 Flareon ex (DS 108)
1 Espeon ex (UF 102)
4 Spinarak (UF 75)
4 Ariados (UF 2)
1 Ditto (RG 4)
1 Girafarig (LM 16)
1 Holon's Magneton (DS 22)
# Trainers
4 Battle Frontier (EM 75)
4 Professor Elm's Training Method (UF 89)
4 Rocket's Admin (TRR 86)
4 Mary's Request (UF 86)
3 Steven's Advice (PK 83)
4 Super Scoop Up (DS 100)
3 Great Ball (RG 92)
2 Energy Removal 2 (UF 82)
# Energy
6 Grass Energy (RS 104)
2 Fire Energy (RS 108)
4 Multi Energy (PK 89)
This deck has many interesting decisions to make. Your main attacker is Ariados:
Ariados (Stage 1, evolves from Spinarak) : Grass : 70HP
{C} → Reactive Poison : 10+
Does 10 damage plus 30 more damage for each Special Condition affecting the Defending Pokémon.{G} → Spider Trap The Defending Pokémon is now Asleep and Poisoned. Before applying this effect, you may switch 1 of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon with 1 of the Defending Pokémon. If you do, the new Defending Pokémon is now Asleep and Poisoned. Your opponent chooses the Defending Pokémon to switch.
To do big damage with the first attack, you need to have the defending Pokémon on multiple Special Conditions. There are two ways to set them in this deck: Spider Trap can choose which Pokémon to bring to front and make it Asleep & Poison and evolving Flareon ex adds Burn and Confusion. With two Special Conditions, Ariados hits for 70 base damage and adds 10 for poison or 20 for burn.
Flareon ex (Stage 1, evolves from Eevee) : Fire : 100 HP
Poké-POWER ⇢ Evolutionary Flame Once during your turn, when you play Flareon ex from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokémon, you may choose 1 of the Defending Pokémon. That Pokémon is now Burned and Confused.
{R}{C} → Flame Screen : 30
During your opponent’s next turn, any damage done to Flareon ex by attacks is reduced by 20 (after applying Weakness and Resistance).{R}{C}{C} → Heat Tackle : 70
Flareon ex does 10 damage to itself.
The deck also plays Espeon ex that when it evolves, allows you to choose one opponent’s Pokémon to devolve. That can finish evolution Pokemon after doing 80-90 damage with Ariados.
Eevees on a bench is a key resource. If you have none, you can’t do 70+ damage on a fresh defending Pokémon or devolve. You don’t want to evolve them into Flareon ex nor Espeon ex until they give you maximum value. The deck plays four Super Scoop Up which can make such a big difference: flip tails and you’re out of Eevee resources or flip heads and you can reuse them the next turn.
Flareon ex has good sounding attacks but my advice is not to attack with it unless you absolutely have to or you’re going to win the game. This deck wins by being a single prize deck and sacrificing Flareon ex is almost never worth it.
Ditto is super valuable. It gives you an out to either extra Spinarak or Eevee based on your need. If I can choose, I always choose to swap it with Eevee for powerful abilities but sometimes you need to bring a new Spinarak into a play so you can keep attacking.
It’s good to treat this deck as a control deck. Punish your opponent for evolving too early or bringing expensive retreaters to the bench. Retreating a Pokémon is expensive in this format with little energy acceleration, expensive attacks and not a lot of trainer support. You can often run your opponent out of resources, especially in a Best of 1 match if they aren’t familiar with the deck.
Tournament report
We played 3 rounds of Swiss with a 4 player top cut. 40 minutes per round, best of one. All five matches on my tournament were very good, back and forth matches like this format so beautifully creates.
Round 1: Win against Jolteon ex spread
My first match was against a fun Jolteon ex spread deck. Jolteon ex pings 1 damage to everything on opponent’s board when it evolves and then done more damage on attack based on damage counters on the defending Pokémon.
Ariados’ effectiveness proved really good here: single energy to attack and being single prizer against an ex deck helps with prize mapping.
It was a really tight match. We were both at 1 prize when my opponent ran out of steam and couldn’t attack so I took the last prize on a sleepy Jirachi.
Round 2: Loss against Arcanine ex
I misplayed this because we only realised in finals that Ariados’ weakness is in fact psychic and not fire, oopsie. I’m not sure if it made a big difference here anyway.
Arcanine ex is a really tough matchup. Its Poké-Body Fire Remedy is such a strong counter to this deck: attaching a basic Fire energy to it heals all Special Conditions and 10 damage and my deck is all about Special Conditions.
I also had very slow setup, I used Girafarig like twice in the beginning before I got the deck running and at that point, my opponent had strong Arcanine ex and Houndoom line on the board and steamrolled me.
Round 3: Win against Dark Tyranitar/Electrode ex
I was worried about round 3. Not only is the deck really good, I’ve lost this matchup against this very strong and experienced player so many times.
I managed to use Ariados’ Spider Trap to bring up Electrode ex to the active and trap it with sleep and poison, preventing them from blowing it up. Those 2 prizes turned out important. I got two more prizes from them knocking out their own Electrode ex and then a combination of Espeon ex’s ability to devolve their Dark Tyranitar and an Energy Removal 2 to remove the last energy on their other Dark Tyranitar which gave me enough time to finish the game.
Top 4: Win against Arcanine ex
For top 4, I was matched against the same Arcanine ex deck from round 2. Somehow miraculously I managed to beat it. I got a really good start and took out the first Growlithe before it evolved. Then, eventually I had enough steam to keep the attacks going and combining with well timed Flareon ex drops to get close to KO.
It was a thrilling match. By the end, I was pumped with adrenaline as I calculated the last moves to beat my worst matchup in the entire tournament.
Finals: Loss against Magcargo/Ludicolo
The final match was quite amazing. We ended up going full 40 minutes + 3 turns and I made a wrong judgement and blundered. I managed to stall a lot with Spider Trap and when I realised they are drawing a lot with two Ludicolo’s and a Magcargo, I decided to try a deck out strategy.
I got them to basically an empty deck but they had a Team Rocket’s Admin to refill their deck in the last round before time. Going into last two turns (one for each), we were both at two prizes. We agreed that if at the end of turns, we would still be tied, we’d play more turns until someone takes a prize.
I had two options: Spider Trap stall for more turns or take 1 prize and hope they couldn’t return the favour. I took the KO but they had Pow! Hand Extension to gust my Flareon ex and take the winning KO with Ludicolo thanks to the weakness.
We had a chat after the game and he told me he had no other outs so I could have stalled for another 10 minutes or so and won by deck out. I did not have a way to win on prizes though.
Despite the loss, it was a fantastic match and I had so much fun.
Prizes
Our card seller partners offered some prizes which was a lovely surprise. I got a 3 booster Poké Ball thing from Korttistoppi’s Jesse and pulled two IRs! And I got a pack of Eevee sleevees (Sleevees?) from PPPS’ Collectibles. Thanks to both for supporting the tournament ❤️.
We have a lovely tradition where participants sign era appropriate cards and then they are distributed to participants in order of placement. I got this beautiful Onix to add to my Pokédex Binder to replace a generic one.
I also pulled nice IR Milcery and IR Garganacl from the prize boosters.
After the tournament, I bought two Japanese Storm Emeralda boosters and pulled a Mega Golisopod ex and Mega Golurk ex to add to my Japanese collection.
