TCG Beautifly
There was nothing special about that day; just an ordinary trip to our local hobby store. I was browsing, looking into the glass cabinets underneath the counter. Then, the stack of flyers on top of the counter caught my eye. I picked one up, hardly daring to believe it.
A new set of Pokémon cards was coming out soon, EX: Deoxys. But that wasn't the exciting part. A pre-release tournament was being held, for once in my area.
Back at the time that this was happening, I was a huge fan of the TCG series. I still like collecting and battling now, but not as much due to the price of cards and lack of people to play with. It was 20 dollars to take part in the competition, and I persuaded my mom to allow me to go by showing her the amount of cards you would receive for that price (10 packs). In the end, I was allowed to go.
Several weeks later, it was finally tournament time. Within the 25 or so people that took part in it, there was an amazing range of ages, from kids my age to adults. We were each given 6 packs of cards to build decks from, with energies supplied.
As I opened my packages of cards, saving the package, cries of, "I got the first Deoxys!" and "Second Deoxys!" and so on laced the air. It was almost a little inspiring to hear, since childish as I thought it was, it showed that there were kids and adults that still loved Pokémon.
I'm not the best deck builder, and I never have been, so my deck wasn't what you would call amazing. It was decent, at least in my opinion, with several Rayquaza and Deoxys. Perhaps if I had infinite time and an unlimited choice of cards, it would have been better, but given the circumstances, I was rather proud of my deck. Soon afterward, the battles began.
One battle was very intense, and neither player seemed to be winning. I was using a Lunatone and Solrock, and in the end, the entire battle rested on one coin flip. It flipped in my favor, luckily.
I lost several of the battles as well. The one that stands out clearly in my mind was against a boy two or three years older than me. The battle started off like nothing special. I attacked with whatever Pokémon I had handy, not battling with any particular strategy. It seemed he was doing the same. A Wurple sat innocently among his benched Pokémon.
As the battle progressed, he evolved his Wurple into a Silcoon. I still saw no special threat in that, and continued to battle like I normally would. Before I knew what had happened, Silcoon was evolved into a Beautifly.
He switched the new Beautifly to the active Pokémon space, and I realized there would be trouble. The Beautifly sported a wicked Pokébody, one that allowed it to double the damage it dealed out once it had taken a certain amount of hits.
The Beautifly wasn't a flimsy bug, either. It had a good 90 or so hit points. None of my current Pokémon could deal that much damage at once, so I simply attacked it, doing about 20 damage at a time. This lead to my own doom, since I was inflicting the damage that would activate the Beautifly's Pokébody. But what else could I do? If I didn't attempt, my Pokémon would faint, anyway.
Unfortunately, my weak strategy didn't work. Once Beautifly's Pokébody had been activated, my Pokémon merely didn't stand the chance. None of them lasted long enough to take the powerful butterfly out of play, so the lone bug destroyed my deck, and I lost.
Despite my loss, I felt strangely successful. After asking my opponent, I reached across and carefully held the card that had so neatly destroyed my deck. The holographic card shone like any other, but it seemed to shine with a legendary status. I read over the attacks and Pokébody on the card, seeing exactly how well they had worked.
Returning the card, we told each other, "Good game". And those two words turned out to be an understatement. Despite that I lost, this battle was most definitely worth it.
