Today was the "capstone" event for my League's inaugural attempt at a Gym Leader Challenge League. Several highly expensive full-art Trainer cards, as well as some expensive energies from the Heart Gold/Soul Silver era of the TCG, were up for grabs.
Knowing my Fairy Control deck has issues with actually closing out games, despite the myriad changes I've made to speed it up and provide it more consistency, I elected to play my Water GLC deck instead. This may have been a mistake, as I went 1-3, but there's honestly no way to know whether or not I would have fared any better - or any worse - if I had played my Fairies instead.
With 12 total players, we had 4 rounds of Swiss before cutting to a Top 4. As I said, I went 1-3, so I did not make the Top Cut.
Game 1 vs Water - Loss
A player who, by their own admission, spends around half their time thinking about Water decks, their list had a far more focused game plan. On top of this, they had a much easier time getting set up, doing so much more quickly than I did, leaving them in a far better position to make use of their resources. It was a relatively quick affair, with me getting beaten pretty handily.
Game 2 vs Grass - Win
My one win for the day, because it was basically the exact opposite for me. I got set up splendidly and took fairly quick control over the game. Veluza took early knockouts, passed its energy on to Shady Dealings Inteleon via Filet Memento once it was knocked out, with the spy lizard covering most of the rest of the game for me. A lucky triple heads from a Scale Hurricane Butterfree took down Inteleon, however, leaving Baxcalibur to finish out the game for me, taking out the Butterfree and a Beedrill in short order once it was promoted to the active spot.
Game 3 vs Fighting - Loss
A game that was frustrating to me for one major reason: Most of my energy was prized, as was one of my two energy search cards. My opponent ran roughshod over me with Buzzwole, and there was nothing I could really do to stop it. Even if I had, by the time I had gotten anything that could've potentially stood a chance, my opponent was down to one prize and had a Steelix on the bench prepared to finish the game out with its Earthquake.
Game 4 vs Grass - Loss
My final game for the GLC event, this game was mostly a close-feeling back and forth between us. Both Veluza and my Rapid Strike Wishiwashi came and went, putting in a ton of damage thanks to Baxcalibur enabling me to quickly power them up, but when my opponent managed to get a Zarude set up to one-shot my Wishiwashi, the game turned around quickly against me. I needed to get my energy back from the discard pile, and wound up trying to fish for cards that would let me fill my hand and hopefully get Superior Energy Retrieval.
I realized, after the game as I was talking with my opponent, I could have just used the Evolution Incense I had in hand to grab Shady Dealings Drizzile and go fetch my copy of Nessa, then used her to get my energy from my Discard, which I could've then used to power up Baxcalibur to take Zarude out. My opponent had nothing but "support" Pokémon left in play at that point, so there's a distinct possibility that I could've turned the game around from that point. But, to my great consternation, that was a line of play that didn't even attempt to occur to me while I was in the middle of the match.
Post-GLC/Conclusion
After taking some time to cool my head - my last two matches left me somewhat tilted - myself and one of the other Professors elected to pull out our Switches and play the best TCG Format: VGC.
Using "Regulation H" rules, which meant no Restricted Pokémon, we had a fun set of three games. I lost the first two, but won our third and final game. The VGC was much-needed after my GLC losses.
But I digress. I'm realizing more and more that I don't know how much fun I really have playing the Pokémon TCG, even as I continue to enjoy my Professor duties for the League. At least twice in the past month, both during GLC events, I have found myself getting needlessly frustrated and getting incredibly tilted. While Standard, which I play less frequently, has still been mostly enjoyable, I'm still finding myself at a point where I'm overall having way less fun with the TCG than the time I spend playing it is worth.
I will likely try to step away from playing the Pokémon TCG, at least for a while. I've been meaning to make that change for some time, but I keep finding myself roped into playing despite my intention. I'm going to continue my Professor duties for my local League, I enjoy the community too much to step away from that entirely. I even have more Professor "things" coming up in the near future - I plan to attend the Pokémon Professor Conference in about two weeks, and I submitted an application to hopefully work as staff for an upcoming Regional in my area (though I have no idea at this point whether or not I will be selected), so we'll see how things go for me from here.
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