I woke up at like 6am, since I went to bed early and I'm just one of those early wakers. My friend Max came by at around 8am. We stopped at Wawa because I needed to break a $20 for tolls and start my day off with a fresh strawberry banana smoothie. We drove 75~ miles(90 minutes) to Secaucus,and were about 250th in line -- the line went inside, which I didn't realize immediately, so I thought it was much shorter. Right after arriving a few people came up to me after seeing the Mighty Ducks shirt -- Human and a few other kids whose names I cannot remember unfortunately(no offense, I barely remembered my social security number when they asked for it). I met up with Chalkey and FiveKRunner shortly after arriving and traded FiveK his team that he decided to use at the last minute instead of whatever he had prepared.
We waited around for a bit, Expert Evan and Gouki Shinkou showed up and we talked on the phone -- they were about 100 people back in line, but we could see each other. Eventually Matt Amato and Carl showed up, and us being the terrible people that we are, we let them join up with us in line instead of hanging out at the back -- at this point it wasn't close to 768 yet so really there's no moral dilemma here anyways.
We talked for like 2-3 hours until we registered. My memory of my matches is sorta fuzzy, but I'll try to piece them together.
Round 1 was versus a young kid from a group that had been in front of us in line. I either 4-0 or 3-0'd him, I felt bad but pokemon is srs bsns.
Round 2-4 are sort of a blur. I can sorta remember the battles but not what order they were in.
I went against a TR dialga/tyranitar team and had the misfortune of a move missing versus dialga that resulted in trick room going off. I managed to stall the TR out, and barely squeaked out a win.
I went against a follow me togekiss + kyogre? team. Wasn't really expecting to go against it. One of my matches, I think this one, had a scarf smeargle in the back. It game out after I killed his Togekiss, and had me WORRIED. Luckily, the sleep didn't last forever and I managed to put smeargle in its place.
Also yeah, sorry for the crappy details, if any of these matches were yours, feel free to correct me!
Another match was against an azelf/scarf giratina team. The guy misplayed a few things, as did I. If he had done a few things differently, he might have won -- I mispredicted versus his explode and lost my 75% palkia to it at one point, but that wasn't enough to keep me down.
Yet another match was against a guy whose team I can't really remember outside of swampert -- he didn't use any ubers, and unfortunately could not stand up to the might of Palkia and Giratina.
Almost all of us ended up in the finalists' lounge. Carl and FiveK were the exceptions :[ We had a nearly 2 hour lunch break -- Me, Carl, Amato, and my best friend who I've known for 19 years Max all went to Subway and had lunch.
We got back, I drew a purple card, which means I made it top 32 immediately. Chalkey drew a purple as well, and Max drew a green so he was in the top 47(one person got DQed for hacking.) Max won his top 47 match and advanced to top 32, at which point he lost to a guy we have dubbed "the plaid shorts guy" for reasons that should be obvious. I avenged my best friend in the next round.
My next match(top 8 I think) was against a guy who led with cress and shuckle. Due to the nature of my team, I completely dominated him -- not much more can be said. It clearly worked for him up until that point, but my team was pretty close to the hard counter to his.
My top 4 match was against a good friend of mine who I practiced with prior to attending, Chalkey Horenstein. I sorta knew what his team was, at least the general theme of it. This gave me a slight advantage since I knew what I was up against. The match was I think 2-0, although truthfully I can't remember. The most memorable part of it is that they sent us to the wrong DSes at first so Chalkey ended up having my team and I had his team. We realized this prior to the match starting(or us even selecting our pokemon), but it caused a bit of panic since initially we thought they lost our carts.
My finals match was versus Matt Amato. He was running Topogre, and if there's one thing I prepared for it was Topogre. I 4-0'd him, not really a lot to say. I don't think I saved the battle -- it'll be online later anyways. He did good getting that far, especially given he doesn't play regularly :)
Props:
Godudette, OmegaDonut, and Zog for supplying me with RNGed pokemon for my team.
Timetwister for hatching OmegaDonut's Infernape so it hatched shiny.
TPCI for constantly changing their tournaments to better serve the fans.
My friends in the MIGHTY DUCKS for being awesome.
Carl, FiveK, Max, Matt and Chalkey for being awesome and hanging out with me all day and making the day memorable even if I didn't win. This is just as much a friends thing as it is a competitive thing.
omg Ian Garvey wtf for showing up and providing live play by plays of the last 2 matches on IRC on his laptop for my fellow ducks.
Max for giving his Ducks shirt to Chalkey for the top 4 match.
Chalkey for performing a strip show mid-match during our final 4 match and switching to his Team Magma shirt.
Slops:
The lack of chairs. Seriously. Make the tables a little higher and give us CHAIRS. Marriland was awesome near the end though and got someone to bring me one after I mentioned the whole "I CAN HAS CHAIRS???" thing to him while in the final 4 finalists' lounge.
Me for being so exhausted that I can barely remember shit. If I forgot to give a shout out to anybody, I'm sorry -- as I said earlier, I could barely remember my SSN(and I'm 22, I know it by heart) by the end of the day.
The fact they didn't play the Duck Tales theme song, despite repeated requests :[
------
Overall I had a great time. My feet are killing me, and I'm a bit hungry, but besides that I'm on CLOUD NINE. Winning first place means I don't have to drive 11 hours to Indianapolis, which was the plan until today -- I was going to nats regardless of if I won today, if not purely to hang out with the ducks. Having a second DS will be nice as well, so I can trade with myself without having to borrow Max's DS. I'm looking forward to nationals :) The oddest thing I can say about today is that in some ways the early matches against lesser competitive people were MORE challenging, purely because they didn't follow the online train of thought -- no protecting, mostly brute force. The fact I also went against several things that I already knew gave my team trouble didn't help, of course.. but I prevailed! :D
Maybe I'll post pictures later, haha.
Edit: PICTURE TIME!
Pictures! Since they're pretty big I'm just gonna post thumbnails with links.
Pregame(9AM-1:30~PM):
After the fun had begun(1:30PM to 3~PM):
Group pictures after I won(7~PM):
There are some other pictures that either weren't that interesting/clear or duplicates. Those can be found at http://s462.photobucket.com/albums/qq349/grafeisen88/VGC NJ 2010/?start=20
We waited around for a bit, Expert Evan and Gouki Shinkou showed up and we talked on the phone -- they were about 100 people back in line, but we could see each other. Eventually Matt Amato and Carl showed up, and us being the terrible people that we are, we let them join up with us in line instead of hanging out at the back -- at this point it wasn't close to 768 yet so really there's no moral dilemma here anyways.
We talked for like 2-3 hours until we registered. My memory of my matches is sorta fuzzy, but I'll try to piece them together.
Round 1 was versus a young kid from a group that had been in front of us in line. I either 4-0 or 3-0'd him, I felt bad but pokemon is srs bsns.
Round 2-4 are sort of a blur. I can sorta remember the battles but not what order they were in.
I went against a TR dialga/tyranitar team and had the misfortune of a move missing versus dialga that resulted in trick room going off. I managed to stall the TR out, and barely squeaked out a win.
I went against a follow me togekiss + kyogre? team. Wasn't really expecting to go against it. One of my matches, I think this one, had a scarf smeargle in the back. It game out after I killed his Togekiss, and had me WORRIED. Luckily, the sleep didn't last forever and I managed to put smeargle in its place.
Also yeah, sorry for the crappy details, if any of these matches were yours, feel free to correct me!
Another match was against an azelf/scarf giratina team. The guy misplayed a few things, as did I. If he had done a few things differently, he might have won -- I mispredicted versus his explode and lost my 75% palkia to it at one point, but that wasn't enough to keep me down.
Yet another match was against a guy whose team I can't really remember outside of swampert -- he didn't use any ubers, and unfortunately could not stand up to the might of Palkia and Giratina.
Almost all of us ended up in the finalists' lounge. Carl and FiveK were the exceptions :[ We had a nearly 2 hour lunch break -- Me, Carl, Amato, and my best friend who I've known for 19 years Max all went to Subway and had lunch.
We got back, I drew a purple card, which means I made it top 32 immediately. Chalkey drew a purple as well, and Max drew a green so he was in the top 47(one person got DQed for hacking.) Max won his top 47 match and advanced to top 32, at which point he lost to a guy we have dubbed "the plaid shorts guy" for reasons that should be obvious. I avenged my best friend in the next round.
My next match(top 8 I think) was against a guy who led with cress and shuckle. Due to the nature of my team, I completely dominated him -- not much more can be said. It clearly worked for him up until that point, but my team was pretty close to the hard counter to his.
My top 4 match was against a good friend of mine who I practiced with prior to attending, Chalkey Horenstein. I sorta knew what his team was, at least the general theme of it. This gave me a slight advantage since I knew what I was up against. The match was I think 2-0, although truthfully I can't remember. The most memorable part of it is that they sent us to the wrong DSes at first so Chalkey ended up having my team and I had his team. We realized this prior to the match starting(or us even selecting our pokemon), but it caused a bit of panic since initially we thought they lost our carts.
My finals match was versus Matt Amato. He was running Topogre, and if there's one thing I prepared for it was Topogre. I 4-0'd him, not really a lot to say. I don't think I saved the battle -- it'll be online later anyways. He did good getting that far, especially given he doesn't play regularly :)
Props:
Godudette, OmegaDonut, and Zog for supplying me with RNGed pokemon for my team.
Timetwister for hatching OmegaDonut's Infernape so it hatched shiny.
TPCI for constantly changing their tournaments to better serve the fans.
My friends in the MIGHTY DUCKS for being awesome.
Carl, FiveK, Max, Matt and Chalkey for being awesome and hanging out with me all day and making the day memorable even if I didn't win. This is just as much a friends thing as it is a competitive thing.
omg Ian Garvey wtf for showing up and providing live play by plays of the last 2 matches on IRC on his laptop for my fellow ducks.
Max for giving his Ducks shirt to Chalkey for the top 4 match.
Chalkey for performing a strip show mid-match during our final 4 match and switching to his Team Magma shirt.
Slops:
The lack of chairs. Seriously. Make the tables a little higher and give us CHAIRS. Marriland was awesome near the end though and got someone to bring me one after I mentioned the whole "I CAN HAS CHAIRS???" thing to him while in the final 4 finalists' lounge.
Me for being so exhausted that I can barely remember shit. If I forgot to give a shout out to anybody, I'm sorry -- as I said earlier, I could barely remember my SSN(and I'm 22, I know it by heart) by the end of the day.
The fact they didn't play the Duck Tales theme song, despite repeated requests :[
------
Overall I had a great time. My feet are killing me, and I'm a bit hungry, but besides that I'm on CLOUD NINE. Winning first place means I don't have to drive 11 hours to Indianapolis, which was the plan until today -- I was going to nats regardless of if I won today, if not purely to hang out with the ducks. Having a second DS will be nice as well, so I can trade with myself without having to borrow Max's DS. I'm looking forward to nationals :) The oddest thing I can say about today is that in some ways the early matches against lesser competitive people were MORE challenging, purely because they didn't follow the online train of thought -- no protecting, mostly brute force. The fact I also went against several things that I already knew gave my team trouble didn't help, of course.. but I prevailed! :D
Maybe I'll post pictures later, haha.
Edit: PICTURE TIME!
Pictures! Since they're pretty big I'm just gonna post thumbnails with links.
Pregame(9AM-1:30~PM):
After the fun had begun(1:30PM to 3~PM):
Group pictures after I won(7~PM):
There are some other pictures that either weren't that interesting/clear or duplicates. Those can be found at http://s462.photobucket.com/albums/qq349/grafeisen88/VGC NJ 2010/?start=20
