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A Brief NAIC Report and Lists Ft. Scizor, Yveltal, Rayquaza, and Xerneas “In writing this article I originally only planned to write about a couple of ideas, but thanks to a schedule shuffling I had a little too much time to contemplate and ended up with this wild stream of consciousness. Some of these concepts are much worse than others, but I think exploring some of the more gimmicky concepts out of the gate is good for your own creativity and is always going to be much more fun. It’s good practice to keep an open mind with a new set to try to find something that can fit into the meta,…
The US+CA Delegation to the 2018 World Championships by the Numbers “This year started off with a few interesting announcements: a relatively low CP bar for Day 1 (compared to historical barometers) and the removal of the best finish limit for Regional Championships. With the low bar came a new set of incentives for chasing the Day 2 bye, which I’ve blogged about, and a new set of players who saw their first Day 1 invite on the horizon. The removal of the best finish limit only created a perception that Day 2 would be harder, which set this race up to be even crazier than last year. I’ve argued extensively…
Initial Thoughts on Celestial Storm and How to Properly Evaluate New Cards “Without a doubt the most hyped card from Celestial Storm, Rayquaza-GX has been at the front of everyone’s mind in these weeks leading up to the World Championship. It’s easy to buy into the hype, as Rayquaza boasts a very threatening attack when combined with energy acceleration, and definitely has the potential to go off in the early turns and completely take over games. To be honest with you, I haven’t been too impressed with Rayquaza thus far. I’ve been playing around with a few lists, and this is what I’ve mostly settled on right now. Although Rayquaza-GX is a…
A Look at the Stars in the Upcoming Celestial Storm “Sceptile Unfortunately, as clever as this seems on paper for dealing with the Buzzwole swarm, I don’t think a soft-lock Stage 2 prevention mechanism is going to be something with all that much potential in the end. Maybe back in the Forest of Giant Plants days we’d have had something to work with here, but since Grass is mortal, there’s probably not as much as we’d need. Shiftry-GX Normally, I probably wouldn’t even mention this, but considering Grass is the competitive equivalent of a desert wasteland in this set, I’ll toss it a mention. Confusion is never a bad thing…
Reviewing the Top Finishers from NAIC with an Eye to Worlds “I think that this deck might not be “the play” for the World Championships, but I also feel that this deck is almost never a bad choice for an event. It is incredibly consistent, and allows more experienced players to take advantage of all the options it has and outplay the opponent. 2 Tapu Lele-GX, 4 Brigette I have been asked about this a lot, so I feel I should address it here. Having the 4th Brigette instead of the fourth Tapu Lele-GX slightly increases your chance of using Brigette on the first turn of the game. This is because you…
It uses its long tongue to taunt opponents. Once the opposition is enraged, this Pokémon hurls itself at the opponent, tackling them forcefully. (Galarian Linoone)
Podcast Ep. 21: The Best Decks from NAIC “In the first episode post-NAIC, Mike is joined by 3 guests who piloted unique decks and decklists to strong finishes at said event. Philip Schulz discusses the unique Zoroark list that he took to a Top 32 finish and Tord finished 2nd place with. James Arnold discusses Yveltal BREAK, a deck he piloted to Top 64 and similar to that which other players including Aaron Tarbell saw success with. And our own Jimmy Pendarvis talks about Zoroark/Golisopod/Delinquent and how it carried him to Top 4! A must listen episode for anyone looking to build good decks (which should be everyone, I…
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Looking Behind to NAIC and Looking Ahead to Celestial Storm’s Worlds Format “R1 Buzzwole/Lycanroc WW R2 Espeon/Garbodor WW R3 Tord Zoroark LL R4 Tord Zoroark LL R5 Ultra Necrozma/Malamar LWW R6 Greninja LWL R7 (no show) W R8 Xerneas BREAK WLT R9 Lapras LWW As you can see, had I played Zoroark/Golisopod, I would’ve probably ended up beating the Buzzwole/Lycanroc and Espeon/Garbodor decks, then proceeded to lose to the auto-loss matchup of the resource denial Zoroark deck. Would’ve then went on to beat a Malamar deck, only to succumb to Greninja’s Shadow Stiching in Round 6. Perhaps I would’ve lost Round 1 to Buzzwole, or perhaps won Round 6, but hindsight is…
A Season Wrap-up and Report from North America Internationals with Zoroark-GX/Decidueye-GX “International events matter—IC’s and foreign events. I have yet to confirm this with Christopher’s data, but I’m fairly certain that every member of T16 went to 3 Internationals or more. I personally went to 3, but only received points at one: Brazil! I’d say that the only reason I stayed in Top 16 this time was because of my good finishes at Regionals. I had an insane run from Portland to Madison which set myself up to chill for the final few tournaments of the year. A balance between consistency and deep finishes is required to make T16. At the…
Christopher’s Tip and Tricks to a Day 2 Worlds Run for 2018/19 “For some perspective real quick, I believe I traveled more than any other NA16er this year, and this is what my travel year looked like: Or, you can see the States a bit better here: Realistically speaking, that was probably as much travel as anyone could’ve put into this year’s race without being truly overzealous—and arguably, I was overzealous! If I had to do it again, I’d: Eliminate California. As a Midwest/Great Lakes player, California is an obnoxiously expensive place to get to—and the tournaments aren’t even that small to compensate! In its place, even a weekend off entirely would’ve…
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Reviewing Malamar/Psychic for NAIC ’18 “Psychic Malamar is in an interesting position in the meta in that it is the only deck that has a reliably favorable matchup against what most consider to be the BDIF Buzzwole-GX/ Lycanroc-GX. The downside is that it also has the hardest loss to its bad matchup Zoroark-GX out of all 3 pairs in the triangle. Malamar is also quite a popular deck because, in my opinion, it is the easiest of the top 3 decks to pilot effectively. So, as a deck that is relatively easy to play and is able to boast a favorable matchup against the best…
Powerful legs and jaws made it the apex predator of its time. Its own overhunting of its prey was what drove it to extinction. (Dracovish)
Alolan Ninetales, Tapu Bulu/Vikavolt, and Volcanion with an Eye to NAIC “Volcanion-EX has fallen quite a long way from the very start of the season and is close to forgotten at this point. I personally think this to be the weakest of the three decks I will discuss today, but after reading through recent League Cup results, I have seen that it is showing some signs of light and so I wanted to discuss it. Since the rise of Zoroark-GX, Volcanion-EX was able to maintain some semblance of a presence by somewhat “countering” the best card in the format. Zoroark-GX lacks any meaningful way to do much beyond a 2HKO while…
Looking at Zoroark/Lycanroc’s Chances for NAIC ’18 “Psychic dudes Second Mew-EX: I like this inclusion more in ZoroPod as you can copy First Impression to utilize Grass Energy. In this deck we will almost always just copy Riotous Beating. This deck needs more Buzzwole help than ZoroPod does, however, so a second copy of this is definitely considerable. Mewtwo EVO: Mewtwo has been the go-to one-prize Psychic attacker for a while now and for good reason. I spoke quite a bit about Mewtwo in Gardevoir and it has some similar applications here. Being able to Brigette for Mewtwo is important and it trades 2HKOs with Baby Buzzwole.…
A Pair of Looks at Buzzwole/Lycanroc and Buzzwole/Garbodor for NAIC “4 Buzzwole, 1 Buzzwole-GX Baby Buzzwole is one of the best attackers in standard currently. It’s bulkiness makes it quite hard to deal with for Zoroark decks, and they only get one prize when it is KOed. Against opposing Buzzwole and Malamar decks, having GXs on the board is a liability because the match turns into a prize race. Buzzwole-GX still serves it’s purpose though, being able to take KOs on Pokemon that are hard for baby Buzzwole to deal with, such as Golisopod-GX. 2 Rockruff, 2 Lycanroc-GX Lycanroc-GX is an incredibly powerful card in the current metagame. Bloodthirsty Eyes…
A Review of Zoroark/Golisopod and its Matchups for NAIC 18 “Since the decks inception at the EUIC back in November, it has been a mainstay in the metagame with varying degrees of popularity. Ranging from the most played deck, to the worst Zoroark variant, this deck has been through it all. Up until recently, it was deemed ‘not good enough,’ as we’re currently in a OHKO format. However, on paper, this deck’s damage output indeed doesn’t seem as impressive as dealing over 200 damage with Knuckle Impact or Photon Geyser. Yet, the combination of typing, consistency, and versatility actually makes this deck the strongest Zoroark variant for this particular metagame.…
Looking at Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar for NAIC “12 open spots The above list is close to the bare minimum on the type of cards that can be played. That’s not to say some open slots are immediately filled for consistency reasons, like the 4th Malamar, 3rd Metal Energy, and 2nd recovery card. However, there are many different ways to take the deck, and different techs are required. As an overview, a Parallel City version works, a hyper consistent version works, and a single-Prize Pokemon version works. Beast Ring works, and Professor’s Letter works too. The path you take is dependent on the matchups you’re trying to hedge,…
Watch your step when wandering areas oceans once covered. What looks like a stone could be this Pokémon, and it will curse you if you kick it. (Galarian Corsola)
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