Hi everyone. This is blog post 02 where I attend another Perfect Order Prerelease Event. It is at the same place shortly after the first one as described in blog 01.
Yeah, I pretty much make a day trip to Toronto.
Note: This post is long. Read and see what you want. Most of the first half of this post is copied and pasted from blog 01.
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Perfect Order Prerelease Tournament Events
In the Pokemon TCG, prerelease events are great for players and collectors to get cards early before the main set release date. For a new player, prerelease events are a good first event instead of heading into the wild wild west of the Standard format.
In a prerelease event you pay a fee for:
- Tournament entry
- One build and battle box kit
- Two booster packs (some stores may do something else)
One build and battle box kit contains 4 booster packs, one preconstructed deck, one code card for the online client game and a list of cards in the set.
In the Toronto area, a build and battle box kit usually at around 70 CAD to 90 CAD. Paying a prerelease tournament fee of 40 to 50 CAD is pretty good. You get cards early and the price per pack on a cost basis is cheaper.
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Deck Building Info
Your build and battle kit comes with a 4 booster packs and a 40 card pre-constructed deck. You randomly get one of 4 preconstructed deck archetypes with a promo card. Each deck has its own pros and cons along with useful (Trainer) cards from previous sets.
This reddit post contains useful decklist info. Below, I post screenshot decklists images.
Tournament Structure
This second prerelease event is still at Banana Games in the downtown Toronto area. The first one I went to was at 1PM and this was at 4PM.
There are 3 best of 1 swiss rounds of 30 minutes each. For every win you get, you receive 1 extra pack at the end. If you win all 3 rounds, you get the maximum of 3 packs. This is not easy though. Some particpants can get lucky pulls, more optimized decks, lucky draws, lucky matchups and so on.
If an opponent has a Mega Pokemon ex or even Pokemon ex and you don't, you are not favoured. Not many people get 3 wins and 0 losses. Two wins and 1 loss is more achievable and you still get good prizing.
Most participants are here for the cards and the lucky pulls.
Some Other Stores Do Other Formats & Prizing
There are some prerelease stores that do less competitive prizing where everyone regardless of their win-loss record gets 2 or 3 extra packs at the end of the event. You just play for fun.
Some other places do either:
- A Best of 3 format (too rigorous for a casual event I think)
- More than 3 rounds
- More competitive prizing where you need at least 2 wins to earn bonus packs.
For me, I am used to a pack per win prizing. I do find it fair overall. In every round, you are playing for something.
My Deck + My Initial Pulls
I got the Serperior grass deck again. No Poke Pads again. Boo! I did get one Poke Pad from the initial 6 packs (4 packs in box and 2 packs).
As we were opening packs, there were a few guys going crazy with their pulls. It seemed louder at this prerelease compared to the first one a few hours ago.
Before starting round one, I did notice that 3 players were staff members. I am not sure how I feel about this. One staff member playing to make the number of players an even number is okay. But 3!? Plus I know 2 of them are regular players and the third one is someone I've never seen before. This third one is a Youtube of sorts as I did see her show off her pack pulls.
Round One
My first round opponent came in slightly late. At one point, I thought that I would get a free win or a bye. She just came in late.
I figured that she was new player as I had to explain setup rules. What did not help me is that I could find a Basic Pokemon in my starting 7 card hand three times. I mulliganed 3 times in a 40 card deck with 7 Basic Pokemon. Very unlucky to start off. I had to explain to my opponent that she had the option to draw 3 cards before we started turn 1. She did and who wouldn't draw extra cards?
The matchup was my Grass deck against Doublade. This is not a favourable matchup for me. Given that my opponent was new, I had some outs to win. Nope. I get dead draws with not many draw Supporter cards. She plays normally with Doublade and knocks out whatever I had with ease. A Judge Supporter could not save me here. No comeback win here.
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This loss was maybe one of my worst losses. Mulliganed 3 times and the dead draws was super unlucky. My opponent did play normally and just attacked. (I would do the same.) It was also my second time losing to a brand new player. This one felt worse than the first time. Very humbling and annoying.
Post Round One Stuff
Because I was tilted, I walk around, go to the washroom, look outside the window and talk to some other players.
I heard that one of the round 1 opponent friends was talking the her. He was like "I was surprised you won that.". Me too. (lol?? nervous laugh)
There was a small Beyblade tournament going on nearby. It was for the little kids ages 7 to 9. It was kind of entertaining to watch.
Near the end of the 30 minutes for the round, there was still one game going on. As people were bored and waiting, they hover and crowd around to see this match. It was a Barbaracle mirror match between two first time players. Imagine playing for the first time and getting a crowd around you. That would be a bit nerve wracking. I watched a little bit of it but stepped away as I could not see well.
Round Two
This round 2 matchup was much more favourable for me. I was against the Barbaracle deck. After 5 minutes in this match, I knew this guy was a regular player. He knew the rules, his shuffling was decent and his pace of play is kind of fast. For a 0W-1L match, this is kind of crazy. One of us would end with 2 losses.
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I end up taking the win here. Type advantage is too powerful. The opponent did have a nice play of using Landorus and Premium Power Pro to knock out one Serperior. Having two copies of Judge is kind of digusting. Anytime my opponent would gain more cards, I happened to find Judge to disrupt his large hand down to 4 cards. The second Judge must have been triggering for him. I felt bad for him. This guy is too good to be at 2 losses after 2 games.
Round Three
At round 3, both me and opponent were at 1 win and 1 loss. I thought I would get a free win as my opponent did not arrive on time. He came in late. I was chatting to the people next to me as I waited.
The opponent did arrive late. It was a Serperior mirror match. Maybe the Serperior player win I guess (bad pun).
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I end up winning this one in the end. This match did end later than most of the other matches. A lot of turns were taken for evolving and setting up Serperiors.
My opponent had this one weird turn where he used Rosa's Encouragement to get 2 Grass Energy from the discard to his Serperior. Then the 3rd grass Energy never appeared. If it did, then he gets a one hit Knockout on my Serperior, making it tough for me. Instead, he did something like 80 damage.
I sensed my opponent had a dead head in the mid/late game. He did have 1 card in hand at one point while I had something like 7 cards. For the win, I played a slower management setup style game. This is not my usual play style but this tactical approach was better given that mirror matches are not easy in general.
Extra Packs, Closing Notes
Even though I got super unlucky in game 1, I managed to win my next 2 games to achieve 2 wins and 1 loss. As it was a pack per win, I win an extra 2 packs. Here are some other images. (I lost track of the order I took pictures.)
Next weekend, I have a third Perfect Order prerelease lined up. It is not often I do 3 prerelease events for a main. With this Perfect Order set, we have an upcoming new format and I do want Poke Pad. (Some guys go crazy and do at least 4 prerelease events or more. These are degens I think.)
See you next time.
Thank you for reading.