Fairy Fairly Good

Bulbapedia

Hello 6P! Welcome back to another article! Sheffield Regionals just took place this past weekend and we had some very cool, albeit not surprising, results.

If you recall from my last article, I put out a tier list which I firmly believe is correct. Now, let’s take a look at the Top 8 players and decks from Sheffield:

1. David Ferreira—GardEon
2. Logan Madden—PikaRom
3. Fabien Pujol—Pidgeotto Control
4. Martin Guilbert—Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel
5. Gustavo Wada—Ability ReshiZard
6. Robin Schulz—Ability ReshiZard
7. Jack Culkin—Green’s ReshiZard
8. Bryan de Vries—PikaRom

I had classified all of these decks as Tier 1 or Tier 1.5. Mew Box is the big missing deck here, but it barely bubbled out in 9th place. Malamar is the only Tier 2 deck to have a showing inside the Top 16 and Top 32 of the Regional. All the rest did not make it into the money for the first Regional of the season.

Robin’s Ability ReshiZard

Looking forward to Atlantic City (USA) + Köln (DE) and how Sheffield’s results will affect the metagame, I think the Ability ReshiZard lists will look a lot more like Robin Schulz’s take from this weekend with 4 Fire Crystals and a Blacephalon UNB. His list is located below:

Card Choices

13 R Energy, 4 Fire Crystal, 1 Blacephalon UNB

Having 13 versus the previous 18 Fire Energy weakens your Victini p late-game strategy significantly, as you are no longer able to 1HKO any TAG TEAM with it, but this opens up a new attacker that is just as, if not more, lethal. I found that stretching to get 12-14 Energy in the discard pile + 2 in play for Victini was extremely rare and fortunate if you pulled it off, but holding 2 Fire Crystal plus a few extra Energy in hand is much easier to pull off for that 2nd big TAG TEAM KO. Blacephalon offers a huge advantage over Turtonator as it doesn’t need the Energy to be in play to reach for that key 300 damage number.

1 Reset Stamp

I also think the addition of the Reset Stamp was a great call by Robin—even if you don’t get to use it every game because it’ll inevitably sometimes be Dedechanged away—as there will be games that it’ll help. Of course, its purpose is not to make your opponent brick but to reduce the odds of them pulling off a 5–7-card combo they might need to KO you, with a 2–3-card hand versus a 6–9 one.

1 Fiery Flint, Other Options

I found the 1-of Fiery Flint questionable with the Fire Crystals and Giant Hearth available. I’d argue there’s merit to a bunch of other cards instead, like:

• A 2nd Reset Stamp to hopefully not lose both to Dedechange
• 1 Stealthy Hood to allow Victini p to attack despite Wobbuffet LOT being in play
• Channeler to bypass weird effects, more specifically Tag Purge
• A 4th Giant Hearth, which also acts as an extra layer of defense against Power Plant stopping your Dedechange
• A Tapu Fini UNM for the Blacephalon-GX matchup, even though it is already highly in your favor
• A Hoopa UNM for the Malamar matchup, as combined with Ninetales it can be incredibly strong to snipe Malamars and bypass Spell Tags. This and the Tapu Fini take advantage of the fact that the deck is already running 4 Pokémon Communication.

That’s basically the only card I would change from the list as it stands right now, and I fully expect Ability ReshiZard to be the most popular deck at Atlantic City/Köln given how accessible the Reshiram & Charizard-GX promo is now. Granted, both Jirachi and Dedenne-GX are not exactly cheap, but they have been available for over 8 and 5 months respectively, so most players that want to use them will likely have them by now.

GardEon

pokemonkorea.co.kr

The big surprise from Sheffield was Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX winning it all. Not because the deck isn’t good or powerful—it’s the best one to abuse 4 Power Plant in order to counter a heavy Ability metagame, while having a lot of healing and Fairy Charms at its disposal. The reason that it surprised me was the fact that you have to make compromises in order to counter specific matchups.

In order to counter the main Tier 1 and Tier 1.5 decks, you need a combination of the following:

• Enough healing cards (Great Potion, Mixed Herbs, and Super Scoop Ups) to counter the Giratina LOT’s overwhelming damage
• 2 Fairy Charm L to counter PikaRom
• 2 Fairy Charm P/Ability to counter Mew Box
• 1–2 Fairy Charm UB to counter Blacephalon-GX decks

And on top of all this, GardEon doesn’t have a great ReshiZard matchup from my testing; you’re usually just hoping for a good Reset Stamp. Perhaps the winning list had something new and obscure that was previously unthought of in order to have a stronger ReshiZard matchup, or maybe David simply dodged it. As of writing this article, there is no information on David’s list and nothing special has been mentioned about it either.

My best guess is that it had 5 total Fairy Charms—2 Lightning, 2 Psychic, and 1 UB—in order to try and have an answer for everything. The Fairy Charms combined with Reset Stamp are powerful, and they’re devastating when combined with the 6-Energy Magical Miracle-GX. Your opponent has to be very lucky to immediately deal with a 0-card hand plus damage denial.

Steadfast Against Stall + Mill

An appealing thing about GardEon decks though, is that with 4 Power Plant and access to Magical Miracle, it usually doesn’t have to worry about Stall or Mill decks as they’re hard-pressed to function with a 0-card hand. Fairy Song is also a great attack to counteract any Energy denial shenanigans they try, and as long as you spread your Energy initially and wait for a Tag Switch to pull off Magical Miracle-GX, Articuno-GX’s Cold Crush-GX is also easily dealt with and not impactful.

Reset Stamp in the Meta

One thing I have noticed in the metagame is that Reset Stamp usage seems to be on the lower side of things. The average number now seems to be 1 for most decks, and some opt to run 0. This is especially beneficial for a Green’s Exploration and Coach Trainer-based deck, which wants to accumulate a lot of resources in hand to make sure it can react to whatever the opponent is trying to do.

I believe this win will embolden GardEon players that might’ve been on the fence about it for Atlantic City/Köln and give them a confidence boost, so expect to have to deal with more Fairy Charms in the near future at your local League Cups. Perhaps consider including Lysandre Labs back into PikaRom and Blacephalon-GX decks.

Mew Box

pokemonkorea.co.kr

Unfortunately it seems like my plans haven’t changed for the season, and even though I’ve already booked EUIC on a whim because the flight was cheap, I still don’t plan on traveling too much in the beginning of the season. Having said that, if I were going to Atlantic City, Mew Box would be my number 1 option for the tournament. The deck’s adaptability is incredible as it allows for complex win conditions to be achieved as you have a bunch of different and extremely powerful attacks to choose from. The new Hidden Fates Charizard-GX also adds an insane amount of power to the deck, as having access to a 300-damage attack in Flare Blitz-GX for only RRCC is ridiculous in a TAG TEAM format.

I regret not playing the deck at Worlds, not because it won, but because it is a deck I genuinely enjoy using and I feel like it rewards high-level play. Having said that, I’ve played the deck at 2 Cups and have lost in Top 8 and bubbled out, so no great results so far, but the metagame down here has also become incredibly hostile against it with even Ability ReshiZard including Power Plant to try and slow it down.

Jirachi vs. Pokégear 3.0

These harsh conditions plus fellow writer Gabriel Semedo’s article has led me to give Jirachi-based Mew Box a try and I’ve been quite liking it so far.

There are of course many advantages for playing Jirachi over Pokégear 3.0, the main card that was cut to make room for Jirachi. Some of these advantages are:

• Reusability; Pokégear 3.0 is one-time use vs. Jirachi which can relied upon more than once.
• The reach of 7 cards vs. 5 cards is compensated by the fact that you can choose any Trainer card and not just Supporters.
• There are many situations where the missing piece is not a Supporter but rather a Giant Hearth to find Energy, a Custom Catcher pair, or even a Cherish Ball to search for the right Pokémon.
• The extra Switching cards needed to make Jirachi viable indirectly benefit your PikaRom matchup by providing more outs to the Paralysis from Tandem Shock.
• Finally, and the main reason why I decided to work Jirachi into the list in the first place, is late-game Reset Stamp defense. In any game you get ahead, Reset Stamp is a way your opponent might try to make a comeback. By having Jirachi available, you are able to find that crucial card your opponent tried to make you miss by playing the Reset Stamp.

Current List

This is what my list currently looks like, and what I’m confident I’d play in Atlantic City if I end up going:

Alternatively: Tapu Fini UNM over Wobbuffet LOT

I’ve gone over why each attacker is here in previous articles, and Gabriel also went in depth in his article as well. Overall, you’re trying to achieve versatility, Energy acceleration, and protection from opposing TAG TEAMs as well as sniping capabilities to pressure set-up Pokémon. The most recent addition is Charizard-GX HIF, which saw heavy play over the course of the weekend in Sheffield. All the lists shared so far included it, and genuinely, there’s no reason not to. 300 damage seems to be the magical number to hit nowadays in this heavy TAG TEAM metagame, and Flare Blitz-GX is the most cost-efficient way to do it.

The Keldeo Threat

It’s well known that Keldeo-GX is a big threat to Mew Box, and there are two possible approaches to deal with that coming into Atlantic City/Köln.

Option 1: Greninja-GX DET + Rainbow Energy

The first one is shifting into Rainbow Energy usage over the Psychics, and adding a copy of Greninja-GX DET to use Mist Slash to bypass effects on opposing Pokémon. This would help not only against Keldeo-GX’s Pure Heart Ability but also with the Fairy Charm P or Fairy Charm Ability in GardEon decks.

In order to accommodate this, I would take out the 3 P Energy and substitute them for Rainbows, switch the Viridian Forest to a Heat Factory {}, and switch out the Wobbuffet for the Greninja-GX. Seeing how Robin’s list makes Victini {} a non-threat now for this deck, there is no need to stop it from attacking anymore.

(An extra benefit of using Rainbow Energy is that if a Reshiram & Charizard-GX attacks into a Mewtwo & Mew-GX with Flare Strike for 230, attaching a Rainbow and copying our own Outrage produces an immediate 1HKO for only 2 Energy!)

Option 2: Giratina LOT

The other way to try and deal with Keldeo-GX is adding in a Giratina LOT, which, since we have P Energy in the deck, can be powered up to attack as many times as necessary since it can come back from the discard pile and get powered up by Turbo Strike.

Of course, the aim is to keep the deck consistent, and Keldeo-GX barely showed up in Day 2, but since Day 1 of any big Regionals basically has every deck being played, it’s worth considering playing some of these adaptations in order to deal with cards that will simply auto-defeat your deck otherwise if used correctly.

Final Thoughts

Sheffield Regionals was super interesting to see play out, and the results were what you would expect with perhaps a few decks overperforming such as the champion GardEon.

That will be all for today. I hope you enjoyed reading, and I look forward to my next article in the weekend leading to Atlantic City + Köln. Thanks so much for reading, and as always feel free to reach out on my social media for any questions related to the article. Until next time!

…and that will conclude this Unlocked Underground article.

After 45 days, we unlock each Underground (UG/★) article for public viewing. New articles are reserved for Underground members.

Underground Members: Thank you for making this article possible!

Other Readers: Check out the FAQ if you are interested in joining Underground and gaining full access to our latest content.