Jon Eng
Author Archive
Bio: I first picked up cards in 2010, went to my first event in 2012, and have been in love with the game ever since. I am currently in my 3rd season as a master. Last season was my best season to date, and I can’t wait to try to do even better this season! Here are some of my more notable accomplishments in Masters:
Top 32 Regionals x5
Top 16 Regionals x5
Top 8 Regionals x3
Top 4 Regionals x1
Finalist Regionals x1
Top 64 IC x2
Top 32 IC x2
Top 16 IC x1
Finished 11th in North America 2018-19 Season
My Current Fav (PikaRom) for Phase 2 of the Players Cup II (and a Recap of Phase 1) “In my last piece I mentioned that I would be keeping it simple and probably just forcing what I thought was the best deck at the time for all 50 keys, effectively guaranteeing my qualification as long as I played well. This deck for me was ADP. For some of the tournaments I used the list posted in my last article, but for the others I switched over to a build that used Clay as opposed to Professor’s Research. The Clay build was a bit riskier, but I felt that over the course of multiple events it would overall be…
How I’m Approaching the Players Cup II and My Two Current Favs, ADPZ and Eternatus VMAX “To start, I’ll do a brief summary of how the qualifier period of the Cup is structured: Unlike the original Players Cup, Pokemon has now added Tournament Keys to the game. These keys are given to every account to ensure that everyone has the same amount of opportunities to qualify. You are only given 50 Keys, so use them wisely. My plan is to space out the tournaments I play in over the entire month. My main goal with this is to use very few Tournament Keys early, when you know everyone will be hungry to play, including the better…
Aggro Vikavolt V for the POG “To start, this is a pretty aggressive take on the deck. There are lists that are more control oriented which isn’t by any means wrong, I am just a bigger fan of this version of the deck. I think that Vikavolt is extremely strong in the expected meta and can handle pretty much anything that you throw at it due to its versatility of being able to lock your opponent while also being able to win Prize trades with big swings. This take on the deck wants to Item lock your opponent early in combination with cards like Crushing Hammer,…
Sitting Out the Players Cup, Qualifying 101, My Personal Preparation Process, Trends from Limitless Q3, and Hybrid PikaRom for Q4 “To start, let’s go over the Players Cup and what I do and don’t like about it. The Players Cup is Pokemon’s attempt at bringing competitive tournaments with actual prizes—undoubtedly worth playing for—to your homes amidst this quarantine we are in. The fact that they are even doing this is immediately a plus in my mind. However, I do have some criticisms. For one, we all know about the Event Ticket situation right now. These tickets are essential to play in tournaments, but they are so scarce. Some lucky players have saved them up over all this time (since the…
Looking Back on My Time in the Game, from Greenhorn Junior to Successful Senior and, at Long Last, When We Left Off, Top-Ranked Master “Now I don’t know how I want to break this up yet, but a good place to start would probably be my introduction to Pokémon as a concept entirely. This is going to be a flashback all the way to 3rd grade for me. I was a kid who had his small set group of friends, and frankly, without them, I don’t know if I would’ve fallen in love with Pokémon the way I did. It’s weird to look back and think about the butterfly effect in terms of where you started and ended up, but I’m certain that these…
It emits psychic energy to observe and study what’s around it—and what’s around it can include things over six miles away. (Orbeetle)
Where We Left Off, Decks I’m Worried About for Toronto, and Tanky/Tooly ADP, My Fav Play for this Weekend “If you recall, my last article was about my experience at OCIC with my very aggressive PikaRom list. I also went into how I think the deck should be built moving forward. While I do think that PikaRom is super solid in a vacuum, I don’t believe that it is the play for Toronto. The meta has a few pillars that it has trouble getting past. Its current ADP matchup is slightly negative, it struggles with Baby Blacephalon, and it still struggles with fringe decks like Obstagoon and Mill. Now this isn’t unheard of for PikaRom. In the past, it’s…
T16 @ OCIC w/ PikaRom, Why I Played It, Match Recaps, Matchups In-Depth, and Updates for the New Meta “Going into the event I knew I wanted to play a tried and true concept. I feel as if this is almost always correct at ICs like this when a new set drops. If you recall, I played a very vanilla, aggressive, and consistent Mewtwo deck to LAIC back in November, in hopes to beat out people trying new concepts that the slower TAG TEAM Supporters brought us. It went decently well as I did make it to Day 2. It was also reassuring to see some other people have more success than I saw, using the same ideology. I…
T4 @ Dallas w/ ZoroGarb, Other Good Expanded Decks, Idea Dump (Sword & Shield Edition), and an Early UPR–SSH Tier List “Leading up to Dallas, my group and I had tested several decks, all of which felt relatively mediocre in comparison to Turbo Dark, which left us with the question “Why aren’t we just playing Dark?” To tell it short, only one of us ended up on Turbo Dark. I can’t speak for the others, but the reason I didn’t end up playing it—despite it being a sheer powerhouse of a deck—was because I didn’t feel as if I had enough options to outplay my opponent when I was playing the deck. The deck felt too reliant on if you could…
UPR–CEC Standard Meta Review, the Rise of Malamar, and Expanded Mewtwo Box “The first event of UPR–CEC Standard was the LAIC. There we saw some new ideas flourish, but the big trend I noticed among top players was that most of them stuck to what they knew was good, confident that they’d get at least a decent finish. This was shown by Robin Schulz winning with Ability Zard. Another example is both myself and our own Rahul Reddy playing similar Mewtwo decks comparable to the old version that had proven to be good. This event highlighted: what Mewtwo could do with the new tools, how Ability Zard was still strong despite falling…
Jon’s LAIC Report w/ Mew Box and Updates for Daytona Beach “As said before, I played Mew Box due to it being a proven inherently-strong deck. This and the fact that it has a good matchup against ADP, one of the most hyped decks going into the event, meant to me that it was at least a reasonable call. This was my first time playing Mew Box ever in a sanctioned event, so I knew I’d have to be super careful with my plays. To start, here’s the list I played to the event: Note: I’ll go into card decisions later when I talk about the updated list. The event for…
Aided by the soft pads on its feet, it silently raids the food stores of other Pokémon. It survives off its ill-gotten gains. (Nickit)
ZoroGarb for Portland, Jon’s Idea Dump (UPR–CEC Edition), and Charizard & Braixen Hand Lock for LAIC “-1 Cobalion-GX -1 Mr. Mime PLF +1 Garbodor GRI +1 Brigette For the most part, I thought Michael’s list was perfect. It was well suited for the expected meta. However, to the surprise of some, Archie’s Blastoise, arguably the most hyped deck going into the event, didn’t have a single spot in Day 2. This wasn’t even due to the deck doing poorly or having a poor place in the meta, it was mainly because not many people played it. The changes I’ve made to the list are under the assumption that the same will hold true in Portland. Cobalion…
PikaRom Tuned and Matched Up for Knoxville “This was the list I played in Atlantic City. I played it alongside my main testing partner, Tanner Hurley. The other person in our squad was Adler Pierce, the person who pitched us the idea in the first place. Adler played 2 Hoopa as opposed to 1 Hoopa and 1 Absol. Adler made Top 64 and Tanner made Top 32 alongside myself, so I’d say the tournament for this list was a success. Going into Atlantic City, I had definitely done my fair share of trash talk about PikaRom, stating that it simply wasn’t a good enough deck anymore, and…
Idea Dump Updates, the Not BDIFs, and ReshiZard’s Matchups In-Depth for Worlds “Dark Box ended up being quite strong, but it failed to beat ReshiZard no matter how many techs I tried to fit in. It also heavily relied on getting both a Sneasel and a Poiple down on the first turn of the game, and when that didn’t happen you’d be slowed down a lot. Overall, it’s a good deck, but I don’t think now is its time to shine. No matter what I did, Beheeyem would not cooperate with me. This was probably the worst of the decks that I tested solely because against some matchups, you just fizzle out.…
The Latest on ReshiZard + PikaRom and Jon’s Idea Dump for Worlds “To start, I want to put in that this list is based off of one that our very own Peter Kica posted on Twitter. I made a few adjustments that I thought were appropriate. A lot of PikaRom lists in the past included high counts of Jirachi to help with consistency and getting as early of a Full Blitz as possible. Now that I’ve had a little time to test, I can say that Jirachi doesn’t fit in this deck as well as it used to. It makes you quite slow versus the mirror, which will be quite popular, and…
Matchup Guides for Malamar & Friends and Ability ReshiZard for Origins + NAIC, and Some Words on the Final Stretch of the Season “This list is one that Grant Manley recently posted and had success with at League Cups, so all credit goes to him. I’ve never played Malamar to a major event before, so it would be weird having Origins or NAIC as the first time I’ve played it in a grand setting. However, after careful consideration and testing, I think that Malamar might actually be worth it this time. This matchup is one of your easier ones, but if the Green’s ReshiZard player draws well and plays the matchup correctly then you could see some issues. The way they should be…
The __________ of the Galar region are brave warriors, and they wield thick, tough leeks in battle. (Galarian Farfetch’d)
16 articles written
8× Worlds qualifier
Playing since 2012
@Jonner909
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