Grant Manley
Author Archive
Bio: My name is Grant Manley, and I’m a competitive Pokémon TCG player from NC, USA.
Besides Pokémon, I enjoy soccer, strategy games in general, and chess.
Manectric/Garb, Mega Sceptile, and Carbink BREAK for Expanded Regionals in San Jose “A lot of people do not like Mega Manectric in Expanded anymore because it only does 110 damage and rarely OHKO’s things. While Manectric only has a few Day 2 finishes, its matchups are actually incredible and it beats nearly everything relevant in Expanded. I played it at Philly and ran into a few too many bad matchups, narrowly losing to Donphan, Rainbow Road, and Groudon twice. Fighting decks are awful matchups, but luckily they are not very popular right now. I lost to Rainbow Road because I dead drew the first game and committed to Jolteon-EX in the second,…
The Standard Tier List and Top Five Plays for Orlando “Tier 1 Mega Mewtwo (ref.) Rainbow Road (ref. 1, ref. 2) Volcanion (ref.) Yveltal/Mew (ref.) Tier 2 Mega Scizor (ref. 1, ref. 2) Vespiquen (ref.) Mega Rayquaza (ref. 1, ref. 2) Greninja (ref. 1, ref. 2) This is an ordered tier list, so I expect Mewtwo to be the most popular deck at Orlando Regionals. It already seems to be popular at League Challenges, as every other post on Virbank is something like “Obligatory I won my LC with Mewtwo 15/500.” It is a solid deck that has seen a lot of coverage, and it performed well at the Alter Reality Gaming…
Powerful Plays for a Fun-Filled Future Format “The first thing to do after a rotation is to take stock of everything that was cycled out of the format. In this case, every one of the top four decks suffered a fatal blow. Night March loses everything. Trevenant is no longer playable without Trevenant XY and its Item lock. Vileplume/Vespiquen loses Battle Compressor. Seismitoad-EX is forced out of Water Box. Bronzong PHF and M Manectric-EX are gone too. We lose some other relevant Trainers such as Xerosic, AZ, Korrina, Sacred Ash, Dimension Valley, and a few more. For more on the rotation, check out the previous analyses from Russell LaParre and Ryan Sabelhaus.…
Nationals Report, the Night March Phenomenon, Karen’s Dilemma, and Decks for Worlds “I played this monstrosity for the tournament. My second pick was M Manectric-EX/Giratina-EX/Trevenant-EX, followed closely by Vespiquen/Bats and Animal Control. This was another attempt at a deck that could do everything. Unfortunately, June was a busy month for me. I did not get to test this deck or many other concepts nearly as much as I would have liked to. My most extensively tested decks were the ones that I shared with you in my last article. In hindsight, I should have actually played either Animal Control or Vespiquen/Bats for the tournament. I played this deck because it beat everything…
Lightning-Lock Revisited, Animal Control 2.0, and the Bats and the Bees for US Nationals “You may recognize this deck from my last article, but it’s gone through some significant changes. I’ve been tweaking it since Georgia Regionals and I still like the concept. This list is basically an attempt to do everything. It embodies the saying: “Jack of all trades, master of none.” Lightning-Lock is purely an anti-meta deck. I took Jolteon-EX, and built a deck around countering Jolteon’s weaknesses so that it beats every meta deck. Of course, it has some flaws and is not perfect, but overall it performs well and I definitely consider it to be a strong contender for Nationals.…
Apparently the itch of its teething impels it to snap its jaws at anything in front of it. (Chewtle)
Greninja and Lightning-Lock (Jolteon/Regice) for Week 3 and Beyond “Greninja is quite a familiar deck by now. After Grafton Roll made Day 2 at Florida Regionals with it in the Winter, Greninja took off in popularity during States. The appeal of Greninja is that it has an alternate win condition of simply setting up. Of course, every deck has the three direct win conditions: draw 6 Prizes, KO your opponent’s last Pokemon, and deck the opponent out. Over the years, we have seen some other decks with alternate win conditions. These are a set of conditions that will always (or almost always) lead to one of the direct win conditions…
Improving Meta Decks to Create the Three Best Decks in the Format “Shuffling is a funny thing. There are so many ways to shuffle your deck efficiently, and it seems like every player you encounter shuffles in their own way. Shuffling is something that occurs many, many times in one game, yet it is something that isn’t talked about often. I don’t think shuffling is a big deal, and I don’t care how my opponents shuffle as long as I can see that their cards are moving around so that they do not have any idea where a given card may be. As for me, I don’t have a stylish shuffle. I…
Predicting and Dissecting the Top Decks of States “With a brand-new format, it can be difficult to predict what is going to appear. I am going to look at results from Cities, the ECC, the Week 3 Regionals, general hype, and PTCGO to help us determine what we will encounter in the XY-Generations format. States are all going to be Standard, and the most recent tournament cycles that used Standard were Cities in the US and the ECC in Europe. While these tournaments did not include BREAKpoint or Generations, there’s only so much the meta can change with the release of one and a half sets. To get…
Virginia Regionals Report and Back to Standard “In the weeks leading up to Virginia Regionals, I considered every possible deck and card combination that I could think of. The Expanded format is unbelievably ripe with options and it was difficult to decide on one deck that could beat all of the top tier decks. While a few meta decks are similar in some ways, they are all quite different as well and it was difficult to pin down a deck that could deal with each and every one. This was reflected in the results, as the only rogue deck that made it to Day 2 was Eelektrik…
Transitioning from Standard to Expanded and Plays for Winter Regionals “While I have not yet played a ton of Expanded games, I have had the opportunity to play quite a few games with some specific decks which I will share later on. While the same game of Pokemon is being played, I can definitely feel that Standard and Expanded are completely different formats. This section will serve as a refresher for those of you who have been playing in the Standard format and need to prepare for the Expanded format, including myself. The single most different thing that stands out to me the most is the reintroduction of N into…
Via the protrusion on its head, it senses other creatures’ emotions. If you don’t have a calm disposition, it will never warm up to you. (Hatenna)
Cities Reports (Weeks 1–4) and Anti-Meta Plays for Standard “I did not attend any Cities on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but I attended two in North Carolina on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t think that my Day 1 list is very good so I will only include it for reference in case you are interested. The idea of this deck is to work like a normal Sceptile deck, and to only use Giratina-EX to beat Night March and Vespiquen which are two of Sceptile’s few bad matchups. I didn’t face a single Night March or Vespiquen all day, so I basically ran M Sceptile-EX with five dead cards. I ended…
Discussion and Analyses of Competitive Rogue Decks for the Standard Format “Giratina-EX paired with Reshiram is something we have already seen a bit of, so this isn’t the most creative deck. Later on, I’ll share plenty of new and unorthodox decks. For now, I do want to go over one of the more fun (in my opinion) decks to play that happens to be well positioned in the meta. While we might see Giratina/Reshiram actually become a Tier 1 contender, it is looking to be a decent anti-meta deck too. Giratina’s Chaos Wheel shuts down Special Energy attachments among other things, hurting almost every deck out there in some way or another.…
Top 8 2014 US Nationals Report with TricRoar “In the weeks leading up to Nationals, I could never really decide on a deck. The closest I came to settling was with Yveltal/Darkrai/Garbodor; I tested that deck extensively. I, like, many other players, really liked the most hyped deck due to its speed, power, and versatility. You could go “steamroll mode” with Yvetal, “lock mode” with Garbodor, Sableye, and Hammers, “reaction mode” with Darkrai, Keldeo, Druddigon, and Bouffalant, or even a mix of the three during one game. However, I eventually decided against Y-Garb because I definitely did not like the prospect of facing mirrors and Raichu all day. After…
33rd Place Worlds Report “To start out the season I use various decks at Battle Roads including Darkrai/Hydreigon, Darkrai/Terrakion, Eels, and Big Basics to rack up 50 quick Championship Points. At Regionals, I played RayEels and went 3-3. This was fairly disappointing as I traveled pretty far to Philadelphia for that tournament. But I knew there were still plenty of opportunities to gather the 350 remaining CP I needed. In the Cities format, Boundaries Crossed was released and I was unable to get the cards to use Blastoise/Keldeo. Instead, I went to 6 Cities using various decks such as Quad Tornadus, Darkrai/Hydreigon, Eels, Hammertime,…
Thought to be the oldest form of _________, it moves in zigzags and wreaks havoc upon its surroundings. (Galarian Zigzagoon)
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