Falling Short with Lurantis in St. Louis, An Assessment of Decidueye as BDIF, and Following Up with New Concepts in Standard “Ultimately, I failed to perform but I do think this deck is worth considering for the right metagame. I’ll detail a brief report of my tournament below but there was never a game where I drew poorly or felt the deck was inferior. It was an experience reminiscent of when I played Mega Scizor in Fort Wayne where I needed matchups to fall a certain way and they simply did not. Here’s how the tournament went: R1 Volcanion (Ryan Sabelhaus) (LL) R2 Greninja (WW) R3 Lycanroc-GX/Eevees (WW) R4 Mega Gardevoir STS (WW) R5 Volcanion (LL) R6 Yveltal/Maxie’s (Igor Costa) (LWL)…
1st Place League Cup Report with Seismitoad/Crobat, Owl v. Bat for Spread, and Tauros-GX Hype “So before we jump into the various decks I have prepared so far for Sun & Moon, I briefly want to go over a report of the last League Cup I was able to attend. In my last article, I indicated that I had two Cups left to attend but unfortunately I was unable to attend one of them, leaving me with only one opportunity to try and replace a 15-point finish for the quarter. According to Pokemon.com, my final League Cup was scheduled to be Standard, and after having a poor performance with Turbo Darkrai in the week prior,…
An Analysis of the ABC Metagame, the Last of PRC–EVO, Nash’s Choice, and League Cups with Toad/Bats + Turbo Darkrai “I use the word “observe” with clear intention above, as unfortunately I was unable to participate in the format as much as I would have liked to. In my last article, I spent some time discussing my lackluster performance with Mega Scizor at Fort Wayne and highlighted my favor with Yveltal/Garbodor but outside of a League Challenge that occurred shortly after my article was released (which I would win with the exact list included in my last article) I was unable to attend either Dallas or Athens Regionals, both of which I wish I had been able to make. I spent…
Giving Up on Gardevoir, Jump-Cut to Fort Wayne, On the Success of Yveltal/Garbodor, and In the Lab for San Jose “My last article, if you’ll recall, focused entirely on Gardevoir and how I believed it to be the best deck in the format and at the time, I wholeheartedly believed this to be the case. However, the metagame began to shift in a direction where I suddenly became uncomfortable with it as a viable option. I tested, tested, and tested Gardevoir continuously even after writing my article and I believe I arrived at the perfect list for the deck but the emergence of several new decks began to shake my confidence. Scizor as an archetype always existed but it never…
Orlando Report, Aside on Shuffling, An Evolving List, and Matchups Examined “This is the very beginning list that Mees Brenninkmeijer and I came up with and played for our first Regional Championships of the year. Initially, we tried to base the deck off older lists for Mega Rayquaza and then we diverged to try and include cards better tailored for Gardevoir. Conceptually, both decks are very similar but Gardevoir, in my opinion, is far superior because it has better typing, is far less reliant on Sky Field, and has better recovery options versus the dreaded Parallel City + N. The deck has picked up considerable amounts of popularity since the start of…
Searching for an opponent to test its skills against, it emerges onto land. Once the battle is over, it returns to the sea. (Grapploct)
San Fran and Back Again, Perfect Blue, Sleeper Hits for Phoenix, and the Top 5 NA “My time in California this year was just an absolute blast. This was the first real vacation I have been able to take in years and I cannot even begin to talk about the wonders it did for my psyche and mental health. Two weeks before the World Championships took place, I ventured out west and stayed for about a week and a half at a house in Berkeley with my long-time friend and teammate Mees Brenninkmeijer and several other players from the Netherlands. During this time, we were able to do a ton of sightseeing and of course begin…
Why Zee Gee, Ranger Thoughts Revisited, Really Really Rogues, and A Look at the 2017 Circuit “Last article, I spent a good majority of the space detailing my favor for YZG and I am happy to report that I am still optimistic about the deck. Compared to the list I discussed last time, the deck has changed drastically in its approach, but I believe that it is very close to being perfected. Both Jimmy McClure and Curtis Lyon talked to me about the potential of a YZG list without any EXs, including Shaymin-EX. At first I was somewhat apprehensive about the idea but seeing as I had never tested it, I decided that it was at least worth trying.…
Nationals Report, My Retrospective Play, On the Supremacy of Night March, and GOing Home “As I spoke about in great detail in my last piece, the Water Box deck had captivated my interest. Despite my teammates Curtis Lyon and Mees Brenninkmeijer having somewhat run-of-the-mill results (a top 32 and 11th place finish, respectively), I was optimistic in their views on the deck and continued to test the deck exclusively. In my games, we became split on whether or not Trainers’ Mail was needed in the deck. Everyone knows that the card is basically never bad, but is it really necessary? The debate raged on as Nationals grew closer and closer and I inevitably decided to…
Personal Musings, N-Vestigations, Dark Origins, and a Whole Lotta Water “Briefly before jumping into the deck discussion portion of the article, I want to talk about what I perceive to be responsible for the biggest shakeup in the Standard format: N. Ironically, it was not anything new, but a card that debuted in 2011 that gave us the change we needed. Most notably, I think N weakens Night March because it adds a disruptive component late game that prevents the Night March player from easily amassing every answer they need to finish out the game (through chaining Teammates and Puzzle of Time). Standard was also lacking a diverse Supporter pool…
In Defense of Pile Shuffling, Sleeper Hits, BREAKing Point, and Decks of FATE “However, before we get into the real meat of the article, everyone here at SixPrizes has briefly detailed their shuffling methods and I would like to do the same. For me, shuffling has always been somewhat of a difficulty as I have never quite been able to tackle bridge shuffling, among other things. For my entire life, I have been eluded by various basic motor skills and so some very rudimentary aspects of shuffling prove impossible for me and my preferred means to shuffle may seem a bit primitive. In fact, Curran Hill usually made a point of making fun…
Its majestic horns are meant only to impress the opposite gender. They never see use in battle. (Dubwool)
On Banishing Battle Compressor, Yveltal at States, and Night Marching Forward “In one of Erik Nance’s most recent articles, he discussed the disappearance of the tournament report and how no one seems to write them anymore. I remember in my younger days, how I would go to PokeGym and look up certain players by their username just so I would be able to read about their past tournaments from formats I never competed in. It was always incredibly fun for me to read the reports of certain players because they definitely lent themselves to a certain type of writing that does not exist today. Ultimately though, these posts were just as…
Hyped Concepts, Tested Favorites, and the Puzzle of Puzzle of Time “Without further ado, let us get into the real subject matter of this article. State Championships are fast approaching and I am struggling to analyze everything that I need to in order to be totally prepared. Unlike Ancient Origins and BREAKthrough, I think that our newest set really has a lot of potential and many new cards that are competitively viable. Standard, as mentioned before, is a slower game than Expanded due to a lack of high-pressure cards like Hypnotoxic Laser and a moderately worse and less reliable Supporter pool. One thing that I have observed as a popular trend…
Thoughts and Methods for Cracking the Format “My main purpose for this article, however, is to try and walk everyone through my thought process for the Regionals this weekend. I am convinced now more than ever that it is the time for a rogue deck to arise and conquer the field. I cannot remember a time where the format felt as “defined” as it is currently. There are a very finite number of decks and almost no one seems interested to diverging from this established order. I’m sure that a large amount of this is due in part to the menial impact that Ancient Origins and BREAKthrough…
Mostly Missouri Cities Roundup and Out of the Ordinary for Winter Regionals “Previously, I noted a moderate lack of ambition had prevented me from attending the initial round of Cities, however I managed to reignite some of my competitive fire and attend six events in total. I had a blast at all of these tournaments and was able to compete in an almost even split of Standard and Expanded. Naturally, I want to talk about most of these performances in some detail but as many of the articles this month have been giant reports about every event that someone attended and I do not want to produce another article like that so I…
Crafting Crobat for Competitive Play, Meta Updates, and Rogue Highlights “With all that said, I am pleased to report that though I have yet to play in an event since Fall Regionals, I follow the game and the results of various metagames very extensively and so even since my previous article just a few weeks ago, I have new opinions on decks and tech choices. Unsurprisingly, many of the decks that have been highlighted by myself and many other 6P writers have been very popular early on at City Championships. Night March, Vespiquen, Tyrantrum, and Lucario decks are as popular as ever and seem like they will stay at the…
It digs up the ground with its trunk. It’s also very strong, being able to carry loads of over five tons without any problem at all. (Cufant)
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