Hi there. This post is a local tournament report in the Pokemon trading card game. I used an ancient box deck in a local tournament in the Toronto area. Even though I live outside of the Toronto downtown core area I do take the time and travel from outside the Toronto area to Toronto to pick up some cards and do some shopping.
The Ancient Box Deck & Why I Chose This?
This is the Ancient themed Pokemon deck that I went with in this local tournament. It is pure single prize deck with no Pokemon V or Pokemon ex. There is one rulebox Pokemon which is Radiant Greninja for draw power.
Pokémon: 6
2 Koraidon SSP 116
1 Munkidori TWM 95
2 Great Tusk TEF 97
1 Radiant Greninja ASR 46
4 Flutter Mane TEF 78
4 Roaring Moon TEF 109
Trainer: 16
3 Ultra Ball PAF 91
4 Earthen Vessel PAR 163
4 Explorer's Guidance TEF 147
2 Counter Catcher PAR 160
2 Trekking Shoes ASR 156
3 PokéStop PGO 68
4 Professor Sada's Vitality PAR 170
1 Night Stretcher SFA 61
1 Superior Energy Retrieval PAL 189
2 Super Rod PAL 188
3 Pokégear 3.0 SVI 186
1 Pal Pad SVI 182
1 Secret Box TWM 163
3 Nest Ball PAF 84
4 Ancient Booster Energy Capsule PAR 159
1 Boss's Orders PAL 172
Energy: 1
7 Basic {D} Energy Energy 15
Total Cards: 60
I may be off by 1 or two cards compared to the real life deck. I copied this from my Pokemon TCG Live game account.
Core Cards In Deck
The main idea for the Ancient deck is to use Roaring Moon as a main attacker. As more Ancient cards are in your discard pile the Roaring Moon Vegenance Fletching attack damage increases.
Four copies of Explorer's Guidance are needed to dig through your deck. Look at 6 cards and take two. The other four are in the discard pile.
Professor Sada's Vitality is cruicial for the energy acceleration and the draw power.
Max out on the Earthen Vessels to search for Basic Dark Energy and to increase Ancient cards in the discard pile.
Ancient Booster Energy Capsules are helpful for boosting the HP of your Ancient Pokemon. Go from 130 or 140 HP to 190 to 200HP for a single Prize Pokemon. Very helpful in some instances.
Two copies of Great Tusk are in here as an alternate Pokemon. Sometimes you don't have Roaring Moon available so you use Great Tusk as a bit of a wall and to mill cards from the opponent's deck in the early game. Great Tusk can be used for alternate endgame cases where you can discard the last few cards of an opponent's deck. If the opponent has no cards to draw and the start of the turn then you win as well.
The new Koraidon from Surging Sparks has brought Ancient decks somewhat back to life. It is of the Fighting type which is underrepresented in the current metagame. The first attack requires two Colourless Energy but you need a different Ancient Pokemon that attacked in the previous turn. I put two copies just in case against Miraidon ex decks, target Fighting weak cards like Fezandipiti ex, Rotom V, Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex.
Four copies of Flutter Mane are helpful in the early game sometimes. As long as Flutter Mane is in the Active Spot you disable any effects of the opponent's Active Pokemon. Flutter Mane has one retreat cost which is helpful for pivoting between attackers.
Radiant Greninja is the main Draw engine here. Discard Dark Energy goes well with Professor Sada's Vitality.
Tournament Format
I would like to name the store but I could not. See later below about prizing. The store is in the downtown Toronto area. As there was a large Toronto Regionals tournament in the area the turnout was expected to be low here. There were 3 best of one matches where each match was 30 minutes each. For every win you got one Prize Pack Series 5 (picture below).
Those who went winless as in zero wins were entered in a raffle draw for a Prize pack. This is to keep players from being discouraged and come back into the store.
Round One
I find the first round to be the toughest for some reason. You never know how the opponent is in terms of skill level. It has also been about 6 months since I played in-person against others. Note that I play regularly offline with a sibling so my in-game mechanics, knowledge and shuffling skills are kind of sharp.
I recall starting with a Roaring Moon in the active. The coin flip was in my favour so I chose to go first. (Ancient Box decks should choose to go first always.) The opponent appeared to be playing a Lost Zone deck with a Comfey in the active.
The exact details were fuzzy but I do recall knocking out a Comfey and a Cramorant with a Roaring Moon. He did manage to knockout a Flutter Mane and damage one of my Koraidons for 90 damage with a Radiant Greninja after using a Mirage Gate (with at least 7 in Lost Zone).
It was then my turn. I noticed his large hand size and small deck count. In the previous turn I did ask how large his hand was. I thought it was 10. His hand size was 14 cards which does happen in Lost Zone games.
Because I do run 2 Great Tusk in my deck, I figured that I was use Ultra Ball and try to use Professor Sada's Vitality. The plan for this turn was to win via deckout. If the opponent had no cards to draw at the beginning of his next turn then I get the alternate win condition instead of the common winning condition of earning 6 Prize cards. I do get the combo of Great Tusk in play with Professor Sada's Vitality to retreat an Active Roaring Moon with two Energy, power up Great Tusk and attack with Land Collapse for the deckout win.
I figured I would take a chance and go for the win at that turn. Sableye was something I expected later in the game. I found out later in the tournament that he had Pikachu ex and Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex for the late game. As I had 4 prize cards left, if I took a knockout then I would have 3 Prize cards left and Roxanne would be an option for the opponent.
The opponent admitted to me that he played greedy with the drawing cards with Fezandipiti ex. He forgot about Ancient Box decks and the existence of Great Tusk.
Round Two
My second opponent was the Round One opponent's girlfriend?? Or sister?? Not sure. She played Charizard ex which was a matchup that I think is not favoured for Ancient Box. Plus I have found it difficult to win against Charizard with this deck.
I don't want to get into too much details but this opponent seemed new to the game and/or was not familiar with Ancient themed cards. Her setup was not great and she never got Fire Energy into play.
I go 2 wins out of two.
Round Three
My third round opponent was playing Gholdengo ex with the new gimmicky Togekiss evolution line. I used to play a lot of Gholdengo ex before Shrouded Fable and Surging Sparks. I know the ins & outs of the deck very well. In addition I know that Gholdengo ex is not great against single prize decks. The Togekiss card is too gimmicky and luck based for me to use when I practice with Gholdengo. However if the opponent gets it out early and gets lucky coin flips then Gholdengo is favoured.
The opponent's start was super lucky. His first turn was going second. I recall him playing two Buddy Buddy Poffins to set up 3 Gimmighoul and one Togepi on his Bench. His active Pokemon was Manaphy.
I remember starting out with a Great Tusk in the active spot and discarding cards from his deck. This deck discard is to be annoying and remove potential key cards from the Gholdengo deck. It is also to buy time to get Ancient cards in the discard to increase damage for Roaring Moon's Vengeance Fletching attack.
My opponent gets the first knockout on my Great Tusk with Gholdengo ex. He is at 5 Prize Cards left versus 6 for me. I then use Koraidon with Counter Catcher to knockout his early Togekiss.
As long I played okay the Roaring Moons had enough firepower to knockout the 260HP Gholdengo ex. With the Togekiss Gholdengo ex build Gholdengo is the draw engine and the only attacker. If the opponent is attacking with Gholdengo ex then I can knockout his draw engine pieces one by one. That was a weakness I can exploit and one of the main reasons I chose Ancient Box. It had a decent Gholdengo ex matchup.
When I got to one Prize card left compared to his 3 or 4 he played Roxanne. He shuffles and draws 6 cards and I shuffle cards and the redraw two cards. I think I drew a Nest Ball and one Pokegear. The Pokestop stadium was in play.
In my next turn I got lucky with the Pokegear and got my fourth Professor Sada's Vitality to power up my Active Roaring Moon. Then I was able to attack for the game. I go 3 wins 0 losses win this small local tournament. Yeah!
If not for the Pokegear luck the opponent may have pulled the comeback win against me. The opponent and his friend were relaxed chilled dudes.
Other Stuff
Before the tournament started there was some guy that was being a bit too social, loud and annoying. He was claiming that one of the card store employees should replace our current Prime Minister in Canada. The dude had one of those paper playmats and no card sleeves. He was claiming that Salvatore was a good card. (Not many competitive decks other than maybe Gardevoir + Banette use Salvatore)
During the rounds this same guy was quite loud while talking and playing. I think he was distracting the Yugioh players beside us. I don't think he did well. He left quickly at the end of the tournament as we did prizing.
There were quite of few kids at the card store. It was the second day of this Canada temporary tax break holiday. Trading cards like Pokemon, Yugioh, One Piece, Magic The Gathering did not have the 13% HST tax added (in Ontario). Sports cards had tax added still for whatever reason.
Tournament Conclusion
I ended this tournament at 3 wins 0 losses taking first place. Prior to this I have not played in-person events for 6 to 7 months. I play in-person against my brother so my shuffling speed and metagame knowledge is still okay. My mindset now is to play the Pokemon TCG more for prizing. These regionals and championship points stuff is too much as I am older. I can understand the desire to compete during the teenage and young adult years but there are other things to watch for as you get older.
In terms of prizing, there was a bonus. Earlier in this post I mentioned I prize pack per win. I should have received 3 packs and a promo card but I got double. It was 6 prize packs and a promo card! The organizer doubled the prizing as there were not many people. There were 8 of us but he gestured the shh hand signal lol. This is why I can't name the store.
Here are the cards I got plus promo card.
Going to local Pokemon TCG tournaments is one way to get more playable cards. The ones with the stamp on it are not for retail sale.
At the store I did buy some Japanese cards. These are more for playtesting with my brother casually. One dollar each for the Pokemon ex and 50 cents for that Earthen Vessel (top right). In total 5.50 CAD. Playing with Japanese cards is more cost effective than buying extra copies of the English versions of cards you have. (I don't read Japanese but I do know the card effects)
