ADPZ onto Week 2 of the Players Cup, Why I Switched Decks, On the Seeding + No Shows, and ¿Hablas Español? “We had taken inspiration from my fellow Mexican player Oliver Rochin Montijo and his Limitless Invitational Top 4 deck. As you can see, though, that list included a bunch of techy cards such as Tool Scrapper, Metal Frying Pan, Chaotic Swell, and Mallow & Lana, none of which really help in any way in terms of getting the GX attack off on turn one. I decided to cut all the fluff and max out on counts of cards that I deemed were crucial when going for the combo, and this is the list I ended up with: Maxing out on…
The Five Archenemies of UPR–RCL (and How to Thwart Them), Universal Techs, and Picking a Deck for the Players Cup “There are a lot of cards in the current format, which means there are inevitably going to be cards that win certain matchups almost all on their own. In an event like the Players Cup, where two losses means you’re out, and one loss means you’re playing a lot more rounds, taking auto-losses to certain cards or decks is not something that you want to do. I still contend that this deck is a trap and never beats competent players, but it consistently does alright whenever the timing is right for it. There are a number of ways that the…
My Top 5 Decks for Week 1 of Players Cup Bracket Play (Including: Spiritomb, Baby Blowns, PikaRom, Dragapult, and Zacian Combo) “Spiritomb/Ultra Beasts is a deck that emerged after the metagame was already established. If the metagame stays the way it is, then we have a great deck, but if opponents make a few changes to prepare for Spiritomb, it loses a lot of potential. In addition, it is a deck with very even matchups, without great advantages or disadvantages. Spiritomb needs other attackers because alone it will not be able to close out a match due to its low HP and limit of 4 copies. As much as you use Ordinary Rod or Lana’s Fishing Rod, you still need more…
Thoughts on Worlds 2021 News, 4th Place Magcargo Mill @ Unofficial Japan Nationals, and 1st Place ADPZ @ Special League Ginza “the news: So far London is where Worlds 2021 will still be held given that it should have been our 2020 Worlds location. This makes sense and I’m not surprised to see Pokemon want to stay in London for Worlds. Personally, I’m not too excited about Worlds being in London only for the fact that I’ve been there for every International Championship thus far. Still, those that never been will appreciate the location more. I’m all for having Worlds in another country since we’ve only ever had it outside of the US one other time (Vancouver, Canada back in 2013).…
A New and Improved Way to Play Cinccino Control “Without further ado, I present to you the new and improved Cinccino Control: Considering that the deck focuses on Energy denial, most of the list should be fairly self-explanatory. However, there are some very unorthodox includes that I feel need to be elaborated upon. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Why is there a Shuckle-GX in a competitive deck, let alone a Control deck? Shuckle-GX is not only one of the most out-there inclusions, but also one of my favorite mechanics the deck has to offer. Spiritomb cannot handle Shuckle. The Spiritomb matchup becomes one of the most…
This Pokémon was born from sweet-smelling particles in the air. Its body is made of cream. (Milcery)
Fire Box Box and Zacian V/Lucario & Melmetal-GX, A More Well-Known Pair of Decks, Updated, to Compete with Tier 1 “You may not realize it, but Fire Box is the deck with the best placements in big tournaments this season. Since Worlds 2019, Fire Box placed Top 4 @ Worlds 2019 by Tord Reklev, 1st @ LAIC 2019 by Robin Schulz, 2nd @ OCIC 2020 by Zach Lesage, and 1st @ Limitless Q2 by Masato Shimada. The deck has been strong since the beginning of the season until now because it still has the best gust effect in the game, which is Nine Temptations. Ninetales TEU gusts Pokémon from the opponent’s Bench—without the use of a Supporter—and the deck still…
Players Cup Positivity and a Cluster of Cool Concepts, Including Zacian/Galarian Perrserker, Cryogonal/Absol, Cryogonal/Cradily, Archeops, and Meganium Box “At first glance this deck seems really weird. However, it’s probably the most “meta” deck that I’ll be talking about today. The theory here is that I can 1HKO literally any Pokemon in the game with Zacian V. The deck caps at 340 damage, but in reality you’re probably not ever going to need to hit that. 320 is much more realistic and is conveniently enough to 1HKO Dragapult VMAX. The thing I really like about this deck is that you can play it in so many different ways. I think that it has favorable matchups against every other Zacian…
Evaluating My PikaRom Play, Combo Blacephalon, Techy Dragapult, and General Thoughts from Playing in the Various Online Tournaments “Watch: I want to delve deeper into the second game from the Winners Finals match vs. Tord and provide an analysis as to why I in fact did not get “unlucky” to not draw the Electropower to basically seal the game. Instead, I actually didn’t play optimally the previous turn, and this will hopefully show why it’s so important to look back into what you could’ve done better in every match, rather than blame losses on luck. Here is the crucial turn where 1 Electropower off of this Dedechange hand would’ve allowed me to KO the Dragapult with Energy and…
Analyzing the Results of the Players Cup Kickoff Invitational and Limitless Invitational “While analyzing, it’s important to realize that the Players Cup Invitational actually happened two weeks before it was broadcast. This means that it was played with the mindset of Limitless Q4, which occurred on the same weekend. It’s possible that different decks/lists would have been chosen if the tournament was a few weeks later—namely Spiritomb. I’m only going to cover Spiritomb, Dragapult VMAX, and Zacian V in this article. Blacephalon UNB and PikaRom are the other two decks in the popular five, but nothing drastic changed from those decks since Limitless Q4 or even Q3. Their average placements across both…
Water Mew3 Box and Silvally-GX/Alolan Persian-GX, Two Crazy Decks to Compete with Tier 1 “If I had to list in order the best decks of the format, this would be my list: Dragapult VMAX PikaRom Zacian Combo Baby Blowns Spiritomb Dragapult VMAX is my favorite deck due to the extremely strong attack and high HP of Dragapult VMAX. If you get a Dragapult VMAX with two Energies on turn two, you don’t need anything else to play against most metagame decks. By focusing the deck on being consistent to do this, you already have enormous strength in your hands. The deck doesn’t need Crushing Hammer, Giant Bomb, Spell Tag, or any other techs, it…
Jumping nimbly about, this small-bodied Pokémon takes advantage of even the slightest opportunity to disorient larger opponents. (Rookidee)
Zacian/LucaMetal, Learning Lines of Play, the Players Cup, Growing as a Player, and on Using Articles “Before anything else, I feel the need to briefly touch on the subject of the Players Cup. The qualifying system itself is terrible, and requires an undetermined amount of Event Tickets on PTCGO, rather than any semblance of skill, to earn a spot in the Online Qualifiers. There’s also this tiny little issue with the leaderboards not showing all of our earned “Tournament Rep.” For me at least, it doesn’t show around 66% of my Rep, and I’ve seen and heard of similar numbers throughout the community. However, this is actually not a huge problem in my opinion. If everyone…
Blacephalon and Dragapult VMAX (My Two Favs to Grind With), Thoughts on PTCGO + the Players Cup, and Limitless Invitational Meta Musings “So far, my favorite decks to grind with have been Baby Blacephalon and Dragapult VMAX. Baby Blacephalon has been a new interest for me as I usually despised playing against it, and in general I felt like Welder decks were too hit-or-miss. Having played a lot with it recently though, with the mentality of “if you can’t beat them, join them,” I’ve enjoyed using it. Blacephalon really focuses on perfect sequencing and rewards optimal deck-thinning to put yourself in great spots where you’re basically guaranteed to not miss KOs, on top of trading extremely favorably against the big TAG TEAMs…
Highlighting Three of the Top Performing Decks from Limitless Q4, Including Zacian V/Combo, ADP/Spiritomb, and Spiritomb/Ultra Beasts “via: This combo is why the deck has combo in its name and is a force to be reckoned with, even against Fire-based decks like Blacephalon. To do the combo correctly, you have to: Use Oranguru SSH to place Jirachi Prism Star on top of your deck. Then use Mr. Mime DET to replace one of your Prize cards with the top card of your deck (i.e., Jirachi Prism Star). You will know exactly where Jirachi Prism Star is because you can put it wherever you like into your Prize cards. Once you take a Prize, you simply remember to…
An Introduction to Flygon/Torterra (aka Flyterra), the Missing Link of the 2010 DP–UL Format “Some Modified formats were better than others, and some of those formats have been more fondly remembered than the rest. What makes one format better than another is a topic for a different day, but I believe there is no denying that it is the case that some formats are just better and more fun to play. The allure of what made those formats so great has led to a growing movement within the Pokemon community to “go back in time” to play and revisit these formats. One of the most revered Modified formats of all time was DP–UL, which…
An In-Depth Look at Cinccino Mill in the UPR–RCL Format “Part of Mill’s strength as an archetype lies in its ability to adapt to the metagame and survive most shifts in the meta. An example of this is Mill’s adaptation to counter ADP-GX with Zacian V (ADPZ) during the UPR–SSH format. Initially, Mill ran 4 Crushing Hammer, which made the matchup fairly reliant on flipping heads on Crushing Hammers. At this point, Mill had two major questionable matchups: ADPZ and Mewtwo/Malamar. Fire Box was also a threat; however, Fire Box saw a huge fall-off in play as the format developed further. In an attempt to improve its ADPZ matchup, Mill…
Intense hunger drives it to extremes of violence, and the electricity in its cheek sacs has converted into a Dark-type energy. (Morpeko)
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