For my second Underground article I’m going to bring back a column of mine that I’ve sadly neglected over the course of Nationals: The Face Of Modified. As the name implies, I’m going to run down all of the decks that I think are viable candidates for either the Last Chance Qualifier or Worlds 2011, give my analysis and include a decklist.
Please keep in mind that I like some of these decks more than others, so some of these lists may not be 100% perfect (if that’s the case though, I’ll certainly make a note saying as much).
This is gonna be a long one, so let’s get on with it…
ReshiPhlosion
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Pokémon – 17 3 Reshiram BLW |
Trainers – 29 4 Pokémon Collector |
Energy – 12 12 R |
OR
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Pokémon – 20 4 Reshiram BLW |
Trainers – 28 4 Pokémon Collector |
Energy – 12 12 R |
pokegym.netAs you can see, the main difference between these two lists is the Supporter line. Some members of my team swear by the solid shuffle draw of Professor Oak combined with the often last ditch effort of Professor Juniper, where as others are all about the ability to have only straight draw with Sage’s Training and Professor Juniper.
I myself am not really sure which one is correct, which is why I’ve included both lists. I think I’m leaning toward the Oak and Juniper list, but I’ll admit that that’s only because I’ve tested that one 5× than I’ve tested the second list, along with the fact that I kind of hate Sage’s Training as a card (even though I can concede that it works very well in this deck).
It’s also important to note that while Sage’s gives you the ability to dig for a lot of cards and discard junk or energy, you also take a big risk, which is why you have to thicken up your Reshiram and Typhlosion lines. In the end though, besides obviously making the list tighter and harder to work with, I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing.
4 Reshiram probably isn’t necessarily in any other build, but the higher Typhlosion line you can squeeze into your build without sacrificing consistency in other areas the better. Two Typhlosion is the magic number you’re looking to have on board at any given time, so it’s nice to be able to pack a third in case of Reversal/Muk shenanigans.
Speaking of magic numbers, you’ll notice that both lists give you the ability (disregarding Junk Arms, etc.) to get 5 Reshirams. After tweaking these numbers again and again, I’m sure that this is the correct amount. Our theory has been that, in a worst case scenario you should be able to take 1 Prize with each Reshiram, so having 5 available before having to deal with Junk Arms is a solid balance between consistency and room in the list.
I’ve seen a lot of lists that include a hard-up 4 Reshiram/4 Revive, but I haven’t found those to be nearly as successful as 5 Reshiram combinations.
pokegym.netRescue Energy is one of the cards that was a last minute cut and I’d love to get back in. For a long time I was behind the rest of my group (and seemingly the world :p) and was running 2-3 Rescue Energy and foregoing Revive completely. Although I understand that this was strictly incorrect, I still think that Rescue has its place, and have been working to fit it in.
In the end, though, I just don’t see where it goes. I suppose you could justify cutting down to less Reshiram in each list, making the argument that you can use Rescue on anything, not just Reshiram and other basics, but I don’t think that’s a very good argument.
Probably the biggest misconception I see about this deck is that Ninetales is what makes it works. It absolutely isn’t. Ninetales is a great draw card and there’s no reason to forego including it, but it’s not the be all-end all that makes this deck work, and it never has been.
I’ve seen too many players open Reshiram with Collector in hand, and get out Cyndaquil and double Vulpix, only to have their Cyndaquil reversal/KO’d, setting them behind a turn and often times losing them the game completely.
However, as a smart player you can use this same situation to your advantage. If you Collector for Quil, Quil, Vulpix, your bad opponent will often think that you’ve just made a huge misplay and it’s key to kill your Pix. So they Reversal it and Sonic Boom. Then you Rare Candy into Typhlo and KO their Yanmega on Turn 2. Yanmega for a Vulpix? Seems good.
As of writing, this is my number-one choice for the Grinder. It has decent matchups across the board, and doesn’t get outright crushed by anything in particular. Your MagneBoar matchup isn’t the greatest, but I don’t see that (even with the new Twins innovations that have been sprouting up) being too widely played.
pokemon-paradijs.comThere may be some rogue decks I’m forgetting about as well, but again, you should be worrying about the majority of the metagame, and not focus too much on less relevant decks. The two biggest advantages ReshiPhlo has in my mind are the fact that it’s mirror match is pretty simple: Don’t rely on Typhlosion to power your guys up, and you’ll always win the Blue Flare race.
That’s obviously easier said than done, but it works and it’s not a difficult strategy to figure out. The second is that it wins the Donphan and Yanmega wars. It 1-shots Yanmega outright, and if you’re smart there’s essentially no way that a Donphan can kill a Reshiram first, except through the use of multiple PlusPowers and/or Heavy Impact shenanigans.
The only clear disadvantages I would give this deck is that if some kind of secret water deck pops up from somewhere you basically have no line of defense, but I’m not sure if you can rely on that kind of thinking.
It also struggles against any decks that can consistently hit for lots of damage (like the aforementioned MagneBoar), but most lists these days are focusing on disruption and sniping tactics over huge damage and ultra-consistent 1HKOs.
MagneBoar
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Pokémon – 19 1 Magneton TM |
Trainers – 27 4 Pokémon Collector |
Energy – 14 |
pokegym.netBecause this deck has been talked about to death (I suppose not so much the Twins version, but not a lot changes anyway), I’m not going to write too much about it. If you’re a subscriber to Underground and you haven’t been made aware of this deck already, I’m not sure what articles you’ve been reading.
So I’m going assume for the rest of this portion that you know how this deck works, and am going to skip the list analysis and go straight into how I think it will fair at Worlds.
Before I do that though, I’d point you to Chris Fulop’s newest article, wherein he talks about this deck at length, and has some really great suggestions and testing results. There’s a reason why he’s one of the best players in the world and arguably the best/most popular writer on this site. If you’re legitimately unsure what this deck is and how it works, check it out for a full run down.
Let me give you a little backstory, if you’re not already familiar: My friend Isaiah Middleton traveled to Japan during Spring Break, and attended several HS-on Pokémon tournaments where the majority of the top decks were all Emboar/Magnezone.
He came back and shared this information with our team. Shortly after States we built the deck and started testing it with what limited information we had of HS-on. We all loved it, and were sure that it was the absolute number one play.
However, as we got closer to Nationals and started testing other decks (all of which will be discussed in this article), we slowly started to realize that, although MagneBoar was good and probably still tier one, it was slower than the majority of the metagame.
pokegym.netWe would have problems where the MagneBoar player would spend his first 4 turns Eeeeking while the Yanmega side of the table would have already had 2 Yanmegas up and would be sniping for days.
We were still very confident in the deck (maybe just because we discovered it “early”), but admitted that it had its faults, and I don’t think any of us thought it was the clear choice.
I can still honestly say that if I were to have attended Nationals, I would’ve gone in prepared to play MagneBoar though. I still thought it was the best deck, even if it wasn’t by the widest margin. After the Nationals results came out and it only put one player in Day 3 (and a local player, at that), we were pretty sure that the deck was dead.
All of us were super bitter that we had wasted our time thinking we were on top of the format (in hindsight we were on top of the majority of it, it was just bitter berries speaking) while testing this god-awful deck. I don’t think any of us touched the deck again until the Twin version was brought up.
I first heard about this version through Amelia Bottemiller. She had it built and showed me it, and we played a few games. I was impressed by it, but still felt it was quite clunky overall. I was having a discussion during our ridiculous 12-hour testing session where I said something along the lines of, decks that use Twins, like the VileGar deck from last format, shouldn’t “need” them as much as “want” them.
VileGar was just slow, it wasn’t necessarily clunky. I feel like MagneBoar NEEDS Twins to be able to function, and that just isn’t the type of deck I want to play at the most important tournament of the year.
Don’t get me wrong, I certainly haven’t tested too extensively with this deck, and if I build it today and it crushes everything I’ll certainly play it, but for now I don’t think I’m even going to take the time to build my own IRL version of it, and will just test with and against it at testing events.
I honestly kind of hope this deck does well as I love the concept, but in my hearts of hearts I can’t say objectively that I think MagneBoar is the best deck for Worlds.
MegaZone
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Pokémon – 23 3 Magnemite TM |
Trainers – 27 4 Pokémon Collector |
Energy – 10 |
pokemon-paradijs.comThis might be my favorite deck in the format at the moment. The ability to have fast Yanmegas with disruption and sniping, as well as having damage fixing with Kingdra and the late-game huge damage ability of Magnezone makes this deck just seem too good. Plus, I heard it won some kind of little tournament in Indianapolis or something? Probably irrelevant…
You’ll notice that I didn’t include a list without Kingdra, and that’s because I feel like foregoing Kingdra is a strictly incorrect decision. Don’t get me wrong, Kingdra isn’t an amazing card and I can certainly see not including it, but when the rest of the world is going to be playing some form of Kingdra, you are essentially conceding the mirror by not including it.
With that out of the way, it’s only the line of Kingdra that you have to decide upon. I personally like 2-1-2, as I feel it’s just the most consistent way of including it, and having 2 Kingdras on board is ridiculous. However, a lot of my friends who are far better players than I am have been switching to 1-1-1, 1-0-1, or even 2-0-2 lines.
In the end, I obviously think 2-1-2 is correct, but I’m not sure that there’s any clear cut, black and white answer. Play what feels best to you, but make sure that you can get Kingdra online consistently enough to perform well in the mirror match.
I’ve also seen some lists incorporate Pachirisu, but I would advise against that. It’s not a bad card if you can fit it in, as it gets energy on board for Magnezone and can get the donk on 50 HP basics, but I just don’t see what you cut for it.
The first thing that springs to mind is the Kingdra, but I’ve already gone over why that’s a necessarily play. I suppose you could try and cut some of the babies/Manaphy, but that seems pretty bad as well. Overall, Pachirisu might be the 64th card and would certainly be worthy of a sideboard slot, but that’s not the world we live in.
pokemon-paradijs.comOne thing I’ve noticed about my list that differs from others is that I’ve switched the Rainbow completely for Water. I’m sure this isn’t my own innovation and I don’t claim it to be, but I haven’t seen it being done a whole lot around the internet.
My reasoning for this was simply that I’m never going to hard attack with Yanmega. If I’m forced to do that I’ve already lost the game, and I might as well not be placing extra damage counters on my Pokémon to fuel Yanmega snipes. I could even see cutting a W for an L to be completely honest, but I think I have the right amounts of both in the list above.
The only disadvantage is that MegaZone, and Yanmega decks in general have a huge target on their back at the moment. There are going to be tons of them in both Worlds and the Grinder, and in turn there is going to be a ton of hate for them in both of those events. I’m still confident in the deck, but if you register a MegaZone list at either event you should be certain that you can master the mirror and all of the hate decks.
If Worlds were taking place tomorrow, I would without a doubt narrow my testing down to MegaZone and ReshiPhlosion, and work from there. That’s almost where my testing is heading now, to be honest, but luckily we’ve got a little bit more time to pound things out.
Regardless of how you feel about playing with this deck (I know there are a lot of people for whom the deck just doesn’t mesh with), you at least need to test with it, know how it works, and know how to beat it. Otherwise your Worlds event is going to be full of bitter bellossoms.
MEGAZORD
I wrote an extensive article on MegaZord (Yanmega, Zoroark, Donphan) in a recent non-Underground article, so please check that out for more info on this deck.
Zekrom
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Pokémon – 9 4 Zekrom BLW |
Trainers – 37 4 Dual Ball |
Energy – 14 14 L |
Zekrom is an odd deck. I’m not sure where it fits into the overall metagame, and it’s hard to really rank it into anything like a tier. On one hand, it’s a completely luck reliant deck that sometimes just doesn’t go off, and has almost no back up plan. On the other hand, it won two out of the three National Championships that it was legal for.
The list above is pretty standard, I think. I don’t feel like you need Cleffa, but Tyrogue is too good not to play in my opinion. Other than that there shouldn’t be too many questions about anything, as far as I can tell. One small thing I will address is my love of Reversal/Circulator.
As you can see, almost all of the lists I’m using are defaulting to 3 Reversal and 1 Circulator. At first I was all about 4 Reversal at all times, but Trevor Whiton and Zane Nelson convinced me to try the 3/1 combo out, and I love it.
Obviously Circulator is nowhere near as powerful of a card as Reversal, but I’ve won countless games, especially with Yanmega/Kingdra based decks that include a sniping factor, with a late game Circulator where my opponent has no choice but to promote something that I can 1HKO that turn, for game.
I would never run more Circulator, I don’t think, but I’d urge all of you to consider it as a 1-of in your lists.
There’s not much more I can say about Zekrom. I personally won’t be playing it for Grinders, but there are plenty of players in my circle who are strongly considering playing it as an “all or nothing” choice.
You either get the nuts every time and have easy games all the way through the grinder (Note: Most of the people who are thinking of playing this are doing so for the Grinder, I’m not sure if anyone is considering it a strong Worlds play), or you can’t get the combo off, you lose round one, and can drink away your sorrows after a super quick first round.
Everything else
I’ve covered all of the decks that I think are either good plays, or will be played a lot. Even still, there are some decks that I think you’ll end up seeing, but not ones that I’m confident in doing particularly well. If none of the above decks suit your tastes or you need a wider gauntlet to test against, consider some of these…
LostGar
pokemon-paradijs.comI’m more of a fan of LostGar than most players, to be honest. Amelia Bottemiller built a MewGar a few months ago, but we both agreed it was pretty bad with Donphan and Yanmega running around. We kind of gave up on any kind of Lost World/Gengar based deck until a few weeks ago when we decided to try a LostGar version.
As it turns out, the deck is better without Mew. Gengar is an inherently powerful card, Twins is amazing, and you have a ton of support in Mr. Mime, Spiritomb, and the like.
One of the biggest pieces of solving the puzzle is Slowking and Mime Jr. I know, it sounds gimmicky. If I were reading this a month ago I would be loling all over the place. But it works. Even if you don’t have Slowking up, stalling with Mime Jr early game isn’t the worst thing you can be doing.
Lost Zone a card out of their deck all the while having a 50% chance of being invincible the next turn, as well as the slight chance of speeding up your win condition? I’ll take it. Slowking just helps this get along it’s way too, as you can put a Pokémon on top, a junk card 2nd from the top, and then Mime Jr all day.
Overall this is kind of out of my mind for now, as it’s an awful play for the grinder (being best two of three and all), but when I qualify for Worlds I’ll definitely give it another look.
Mew Box
Not really sure how to describe this deck, or what it’s called. I’m referring to the Mew Prime deck w/ Vileplume that uses things like Crobat Prime, Muk, Yanmega Prime, and the like. I’m honestly not all that acquainted with the deck, so if I’m leaving some important out, I apologize.
There was a time when I didn’t believe in this deck at all. I thought Mew was pretty awful (although I still do, to an extent) and just didn’t see how it won games. Then my friend Zane Nelson built it and proceeded to dominate me with it for 5 hours straight one night.
After looking over the deck and understanding it a little bit better (although I’ve only played 3 games with it) I still think it’s not an incredibly viable choice, but I wouldn’t write it off either.
I think Zane himself put it best when he said “Okay, if you guys don’t want to play it that’s fine, but you at least need to get some testing in against so you know how to BEAT it”, and he’s completely right, if you don’t have a battle plan against this deck, it will hurt. This is probably less relevant to those of us who aren’t yet qualified, as I feel like it’s not a very good Grinders play, but it’ll still be out there.
Tyranitar
A little has been written about Tyranitar, but I’m surprised there hasn’t been much more. Not so much because it’s a good card, but because it seems like a league-popular card, and something that non-competitive casual players would be all over, and therefore want to bleed into tournament play. I guess maybe people have legitimately tested it, and found out how bad it was?
I tested this fairly extensively, and I’m just not feeling it. It has it’s advantages, but it just seems so much worse than other Stage 2s you could be playing. The only time I’ve ever seen Tyranitar perform well is in lists that are so techy they don’t work half of the time, and that’s not my style.
It’s out there, I guess that’s all I can say.
Kingdra/Mandibuzz
pokegym.netProbably almost irrelevant now that Yanmega is owning everything, but Kingdra/Mandibuzz is a more legitimate deck than I had thought, and if you’re playing the grinder, it may be an option for people who can’t afford $60 Yanmegas but want to play a MegaZone like deck.
If you know how to play against MegaZone you should be fine, and if you are one of those people who can’t afford Yanmegas, this isn’t too bad of a choice.
Cinccino
First off, I don’t know anything about this deck. All I know is that I’ve heard a lot of talk about Japanese players being big on this card. It may be because they have a different format that includes Catcher and a handful of other metagame changing cards, but I thought with all the talk it was relevant enough to at least bring up in this article.
The only information I can provide is that we tested Yanmega/Cincinno for a little bit, and it was awful. It ended up winning games, but couldn’t do it consistently, and every game it won it had to drag it out, and would’ve lost if the luck of either player went the other way. Not a safe play whatsoever.
That’s all I’ve got for this week. See you at the World Championship!
xoxo
kw
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