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2nd Place 2014 Oklahoma States Report “Going into States, I was sitting at 480 CP, so I was pretty comfortable. I only had to hit a Top 16 at one of the upcoming State Championships I was going to be attending, which I felt was fairly easy to do. Before I start talking about my performances, I’ll take a look at what was going through my mind before I ended up choosing my deck for the first week. I was pretty set on a Plasma-based deck after my article a couple months ago, and it was the only thing I had really tested extensively. On my…
Dissecting and Improving Pidgeotto Control from AC/Cologne for Knoxville “Frankly, I wasn’t surprised to see Pidgeotto Control do well. It can do great things in 50-minute Bo3 with a long Game 1 and dismantle inexperienced players if they make a mistake. That being said, it requires a fair bit of knowledge to play, and mistakes with the deck don’t go unpunished. Two completely different variants did well: Sander Wojcik’s teched version and Grant Manley’s Jirachi version. Sander wrote a great post in Heyfonte summarizing the subtleties in his and Grant’s list, so I greatly urge you to check it out. Both lists are also available online on Heyfonte and Limitless.…
A Charlotte Primer, a Trio of Zoroark decks, and…Mega Sceptile? “I have been enamored with the consistency of this deck recently. It is much more consistent than the other Zoroark decks because the deck runs seven “attackable” Energy cards—Energy that can be used to attack for just one attachment. This is a huge boost to the deck, as Zoroark variants like Lycanroc, Weavile, and Gardevoir require either multiple attachments beyond using Riotous Beating or cannot be fully utilized until later in the game. Golisopod, therefore, is the most consistently powerful in the early game. My current list for this is a mash up of Igor Costa’s and Benjamin Pham’s. I…
This hungry Pokémon swallows Arrokuda whole. Occasionally, it makes a mistake and tries to swallow a Pokémon other than its preferred prey. (Cramorant)
Fire Box Box and Zacian V/Lucario & Melmetal-GX, A More Well-Known Pair of Decks, Updated, to Compete with Tier 1 “You may not realize it, but Fire Box is the deck with the best placements in big tournaments this season. Since Worlds 2019, Fire Box placed Top 4 @ Worlds 2019 by Tord Reklev, 1st @ LAIC 2019 by Robin Schulz, 2nd @ OCIC 2020 by Zach Lesage, and 1st @ Limitless Q2 by Masato Shimada. The deck has been strong since the beginning of the season until now because it still has the best gust effect in the game, which is Nine Temptations. Ninetales TEU gusts Pokémon from the opponent’s Bench—without the use of a Supporter—and the deck still…
Brave and prideful, this Pokémon dashes airily through the forest, its steps aided by the psychic power stored in the fur on its fetlocks. (Galarian Rapidash)
A First Look at M Rayquaza-EX for BLW–CEC, Expanded, Dallas “This card was good when it came out. Now that it has more support like Triple Acceleration Energy and Magearna UPR, it has a way to hit 270 on turn 1. I have been grinding games with this for a while and it has actually been standing up to the format rather well. Even the single-Prize decks like Ultra Necrozma are very beatable. There are way too many cards in this format with Abilities that would singlehandedly prevent us from winning the game. Sudowoodo GRI is the biggest one, but things like Xurkitree-GX and Keldeo-GX can also cause us issues.…
Alex’s London Internationals 2016 Tournament Report “As many of you saw from my last article, I was very heavily favoring Greninja before London. I put countless hours into perfecting the deck, almost only playing the deck against Yveltal/Garbodor. Christopher Schemanske and Connor Finton have my utmost gratitude for playing the matchup over and over with me; I surely played it over 50 times in 10 days. Unfortunately, I slowly found the matchup to favor Yveltal, especially as the Yveltal player grew more and more experienced with the subtleties of Greninja’s play. I tried every tech I mentioned in my last article, and they all seemed to…
Cooking Up Jurassic Park, Mega Alakazam, Silvally-GX, and Garchomp/Lucario for Portland “Looking forward to Portland, it seems to me like Standard has begun to centralize itself now that a lot of the dust regarding Ultra Prism has begun to settle. It seems rather clear that the format is Zoroark Decks, Buzzwole decks, and then everything else is Tier 2-3 at the moment. Portland Regionals is in a unique position considering we have a promo card, Lucario-GX, becoming legal just before the event and looking to make an impact. I’m uncertain if Lucario-GX will actually make a huge impact, but the card is interesting enough to warrant some attention and testing. Today…
1st Place Seniors 2014 Alabama States Report “About three weeks before States began, I decided that a Virizion/Genesect variant would be the ideal deck for me. I realized early on though that a straight, streamlined version of the deck would not be optimal for multiple reasons: With Rayquaza/Emboar/Delphox decks around, having a deck that is all weak to Fire will almost always result in me losing. I refused to play a deck that had any severely bad matchups. Yveltal-EX caused me trouble in testing with a straight Virizion/Genesect deck. This is mainly due to them being able to 1-shot a Genesect-EX sometimes. In addition, the ability of…
It’s highly skilled at tap-dancing. It waves its cane of ice in time with its graceful movements. (Mr. Rime)
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