I am pretty sure that this is the latest tournament report ever, EVER!
So it has been more than 2 years since we went to the 2010 Pokémon World Championship in wonderful Kona HI.
I did not play and did not try to grind in , I just went along for the ride. However I did enjoy myself mostly and think it was totally worth it to go.
Before I talk about the event, a little back history. We started playing the card game late summer 2008, I found it to be challenging and fun and we really enjoyed it, even if we did not know what we were doing. Looking for tips on the net I found out that the World Championships were being held in Orlando. We were very excited and a group of 10 of us went to it, we had a great time. However, once again we had no clue how to really play, we had been playing for all of 3 weeks at that point.
We had such a great time we wanted to go to more events, I looked it up and found an upcoming Battle Road, we went and did as well as noobs always do. We were pretty bad, on the way home from Orlando we talked about how insane it was how the other players got set up so fast (I so miss Claydols).
That is when it hit us, using powerful Pokémon does not really make a deck, your cards need to work together. We then started looking at PokeGym and those type of websites. We did a few net decks and finally understood what it was all about.
In Florida States that year both of the kids came in 6th, in Regionals, 3rd and 6th again. We did make it to St. Louis for Nationals that year, but did not do so well, however we understood what needed to be done in order to win more.
The 2009-2010 Season we played a LOT and went to every event we could. We did well and when Faron got the invite we really wanted to go. However money was an issue, so that is where this website was born!
Thanks to everyone that donated to helping Faron get to Hawaii, it was touch and go for a while, but that last week we got a lot of unexpected donations.
Hawaii was fun, even if we only got to go for the weekend, no joke, Friday got there, left Sunday night!
The event however, it was a letdown. It did not feel like a World Class event, it felt like a slightly nicer Regional event. It was not particularly well run if you ask me, lot of confusion and misdirection. Maybe I am spoiled by the PTOs that we have in Florida, they run things so well anything else is just not that great.
It was hard to watch Faron play, no really it was, they had the juniors down in this pit and it was impossible to see them. It was nerve-racking, win-lose-win-lose and then win out the final 3 and then come in 17th with a 5-2 record. However that is how it ended up, I am not one of those parents to stand around and yell at their kids to focus on winning more. I spent most of my time out on a couch outside the event hall. I would have been on the net posting updates, but the hotel wanted like $14 for wi-fi access, absurd!
Since Faron came in 17th and the cutoff for Top Cuts was 16, we went sightseeing the
next day rather than going to the tournament. We made the right choice. Had a great time going around seeing things.
So that is my report, very worth going, but somewhat of a letdown.