For our summer Sunday league, we hosted a retro tournament with the PRC-GRI format (North American Internationals 2017 format). We had 9 participants bringing a wide variety of fun decks to the table.
I played Jesper Eriksen’s Passimian/Mew list that he played in NAIC 2017. I used to play Passimian a lot in 2016-2017 season and really love the deck. I’m always drawn to single-prize attackers that hit hard.
Pokemon (10)
4 Passimian SUM 73
3 Mew FCO 29
1 Remoraid BKT 32
1 Octillery BKT 33
1 Tapu Lele-GX GRI 60
Trainers (46)
3 Professor Sycamore BKP 107
3 N FCO 105
2 Lysandre AOR 78
2 Teammates PRC 141
1 Professor Kukui SUM 128
4 Nest Ball SUM 123
4 Ultra Ball FCO 113
4 Puzzle of Time BKP 109
4 Rescue Stretcher GRI 130
4 VS Seeker ROS 110
3 Trainers' Mail ROS 92
2 Pokémon Catcher BKP 105
1 Town Map BKT 150
1 Energy Loto GRI 122
1 Field Blower GRI 125
1 Special Charge STS 105
1 Escape Rope PRC 127
2 Choice Band GRI 121
1 Float Stone BKT 137
1 Sky Field ROS 89
1 Brooklet Hill GRI 120
Energy (4)
4 Double Colorless Energy GEN 74
The deck isn’t the strongest and it’s quite meta dependent whether it’s a good choice or not but I like the deck which is more important to me than winning.
It has some really great matchups in the format thanks to weakness but has a couple of pretty much auto-losses (as we’ll see with my report below) because its limited damage output and relative low HP Pokémon.
Tournament report
We had 9 players and we played 4 rounds of best of 1 Swiss with a 4 player Top Cut.
Round 1: Loss against Decidueye-GX
My first round opponent was my training partner from before the tournament and I knew he had brought a couple of options to the tournament. Unfortunately for me, he decided to play Decidueye-GX (instead of like Volcanion EX that I had really good matchup against). It’s one of the decks I consider an auto-loss for Passimian.
Decidueye-GX has 240 HP and it can ping 2 damage counters anywhere each turn. When your opponent has 3 or 4 of those on the field, they can KO Mew before it gets to attack or take out a Passimian in two turns. That’s too much for this deck, especially since Passimian is capped at 180 damage (attack with Mew with 4 Passimian on bench = 130 + Choice Band = 160 + Kukui = 180) at the best.
They also played Tapu Koko that spreads damage across the bench. It was bit annoying as it sped up their ability to take bench KOs with Decidueye but I hit weakness against it so it’s not usually a card I hate to see.
Due to its ability damage, it cannot be stalled which makes this matchup even more difficult.
I even prized two Passimian, making it difficult to put any big pressure early game. It didn’t really matter though, I would have lost this matchup at least 95 out of 100 times.
Round 2: Win against Greninja BREAK
Greninja BREAK with Shadow Stitching Greninja is a nice matchup but I still don’t quite know who is favoured. Maybe 50/50?
It was a very back and forth matchup where I basically managed to run my opponent out of resources and won by KOing their last Pokémon in play.
I was worried that combination of Giant Water Shuriken (60 dmg to bench as ability) and Moonlight Slash (80 dmg) would get rid of my Passimians and Mews quicker than I could return the favour but I think my opponent misplayed a bit as they focused on Shadow Stitching.
Sure, it turned off my Octillery and Mew but it allowed me to hit 3 times with each Passimian and take 2-hit knock outs. Since I ran a tight deck with all my attackers being basic Pokémon and having plenty of recovery cards (Rescue Stretchers, Special Charge and Puzzle of Time + Teammates engine to find them), I was able to recover and re-setup faster than my opponent.
Round 3: Win against Mega Rayquaza EX
My third round was against one of the classics of this format: Mega Rayquaza EX. Two things helped me grab a victory: their slow start and the fact they benched two Hoopa EXs during the game while trying to get their energies to the board.
I didn’t KO a single Rayquaza. I took two prizes from Tapu Lele-GX they used to attack in the early game and then KOd two Hoopa EXs thanks to weakness when attacking with Mew.
If they had found more energy in the early game and kept their bench small (mainly just Rays and Tapu Leles), I think they would have had a great fighting chance. Not complaining though!
Round 4: Loss against Mega Gardevoir EX
Ooh boy. Going into round 4, we had multiple players at 2-1 so this was a win-and-in match for me. We discussed an option of intentional draw (ID) in jest but I generally despise the idea of them so I rather play and lose than ID. I think it’s poor sportsmanship in general to agree on a result rather than playing for it and there are reasons why most sports don’t allow game fixing.
My opponent played this fun Mega Gardevoir EX that fills the bench with cards like Hoopa EX, Shaymin EX and Sudowoodo and then using Gardevoir’s attack, discards them. It’s another auto-loss for Passimian.
Mega Gardevoir has 210 hit points and its attack does 110 base damage. So I can’t 1-hit KO it and it doesn’t need any bench Pokémon to take my Passimians out so it can recover quickly even if it draws poorly. He even played Pokémon Center Lady to heal his Gardevoir to prevent me from knocking them out.
I did manage to sneak in a Hoopa EX KO when he left one on the board but then next turn he discarded everything that wasn’t Mega Gardevoir from the bench to guarantee I had no chance to win.
Wrap up
I finished with a 2-2 record, tied with 4th place. They beat me in Swiss so I conceded the top 4 spot to them before we dug deeper into resistances because I felt it was fair.
The tournament was won by a Zoroark BREAK/Drampa GX deck (a great matchup for me) that beat Mega Gardevoir EX in the finals. Other top 4 decks were the Decidueye-GX that I lost to in round 1 and Espeon GX/Garbodor (another great matchup for me).
I had a lot of fun. I’m too old to consider 2017 particularly retro but I don’t let linguistic disagreements ruin my fun of playing the game. For me, retro is anything before Black and White since B&W is still legal in currently played active formats Expanded and Gym Leader Challenge.
After the tournament, we also got to play with my new Pokemon TCG Lost Zone 2 player shared deck cube which is such a fun 2 player shuffle up and play experience where we share a deck, discard and lost zone.