Hawaii-Blog #2 - The Schedule
Still in Berlin, but the smell of Hawaii is already in the air... welcome to this second entry! In our first entry we introduced the six players of Card Leaders who are going to Worlds next week. Today we want to present the schedule of the journey which is going to start on Monday.
World Championships 2012
The official Pokémon World Championships 2012 website launched a few hours ago. Much information about Worlds can be found there, but only our blog will give you a special view on the tournament - the Card Leaders players will do a lot of coverage.
Worlds will take place at Hilton Waikoloa Village, which is located in Hawaii's Big Island. The Pokémon fun itself will start next Friday. Some players are already there and the Card Leaders are going to follow on Monday. Karl, Dennis, Marcel and Ole booked their flights together a couple of months ago. Back in December, no one of them already had their invites secured, but especially Karl and Ole were doing very well. While Dennis didn't expect to collect enough Championship Points over the second half of the season, Marcel tried his best to do so. After the last Regional Championships had been played, neither Marcel nor Dennis had many additional points.
The last remaining invites were given out at National Championships. Dennis grabbed this last chance and won his invite and Travel Award by going second with his Terrakion / Mewtwo deck. Marcel didn't do well enough and will have to play the Last Chance Qualifier, which is going to take place on Friday.
When all competitors of this year's Worlds are determined, the tournament itself can begin. After a great Opening Ceremony the first round will start. But before all of this is going to happen, a lot of preparation has to be done.
Pokémon Playtesting and Preparations
Finding the deck to play at World Championships is not as easy as it sounds. To choose a deck for Worlds means to choose THE DECK which you are going to play the whole tournament. You can't switch your deck - you can't even change one single card. Everyone wants to find the best deck to play. There are a lot of decks that can be considered the best decks.
First of all, there is Darkrai. There is no doubt that Darkrai decks are the strongest decks in the format. But which variant of Darkrai is the best to play? Darkrai / Mewtwo, Darkrai / Terrakion, Darkrai with both Terrakion and Mewtwo, Hammertime... it's a tough decision.
At German Nationals, no Darkrai player managed to reach Top 4 in Masters. There were Terrakion / Mewtwo ("Karl's Trick") and Celebi / Mewtwo / Tornadus (CMT) instead. Obviously no player decided for the right Darkrai variant - or none of them played well enough. CMT and Terrakion / Mewtwo are strong decks too - there is also Zekrom / Eelektrik that made Top Cut at US Nationals. But playtesting showed that Darkrai decks are the best if played right.
Everyone of us tried to play a lot of different decks. The Tier 1.5/2 and Rogue decks have to be mentioned, too. US Nationals have been won by Klinklang, which we expect to be played at Worlds, too. Vileplume variants like Vanilluxe, Accelgor, The Truth etc. are also good choices to reach Top Cut. Entei-EX seems to be a solid deck. Even a Kyurem deck is doing well at the moment. There are a lot of possibilities - it's our job to make the best choice.
The Departure
Monday, 6:50am, Berlin-Tegel airport. The Lufthansa flight will take us directly to... Frankfurt. From there we finally head towards the USA - San Francisco will be our next stop. Lots of hours later we will finally (hopefully) arrive in Kona, Hawaii. Hulagirls are waiting for us, four coconuts will fall down from the airport's palm tree... perfect weather in paradise!
Thanks to time shift we're going to arrive on Monday, too. But the flight will be long, very long. What are we going to do in the airplane and at the airports? Maybe the airplanes have special Pokémon seats where Worlds competitors can playtest the whole flight... well, this dream is unlikely to come true. But hey, Monday is Dennis' birthday! We're going to party all day! The day will be longer as usual - it will be the longest birthday of Dennis' life!
There's another Card Leader whose (ninth) birthday is he 6th of August - Thoralf. Jan and Thoralf are going to follow Karl, Dennis, Marcel and Ole two days later. On Wednesday, the Card Leaders team will be complete and ready to rumble! We try to do another blog entry before we depart to Hawaii - be sure to check the Cardleaders.de Worlds2012 site!
