22 results for: BLW–TEU
The Quiet Days and Second Wind of My Pokémon Career, Including the Most Unbalanced Decks I’ve Played, from 2013–2014 to Now “Ah, where were we? After 2013 Worlds, BLW, EPO, NVI, and DRV were rotated. Since the early Black & White sets started off slow, and because power creep really ramped up started at NXD, very few important cards were lost to this rotation. In addition, several of the powerful cards had already been reprinted: Terrakion got a secret rare in BCR; EPO Item powerhouses Pokemon Catcher and Max Potion got theirs in DEX and PLF; and the staple supporters Professor Juniper and N were spared too. The main exceptions were Eelektrik NVI and Crushing Hammer EPO. Virizion-EX/Genesect-EX PLB was the…
Meta Shifts to Hartford, How to Counter Shock Lock, Plus Zoroark/Vespiquen and Buzzwole/Garbodor/Jirachi for this Weekend “But before anything else, I want to talk about how the Daytona meta is likely going to impact what we see in Hartford. Over half of Top 8 was made up of Control decks Zoroark/Garbodor and Archie’s Blastoise fell off the map in Day 2 Seismitoad is back and still a major threat Shock Lock made two consecutive Top 8 placements by the same player Pikarom is easily the strongest deck in the game But what does this all mean? Hot Take #1: We should see more people playing Shock Lock. How does the game deal with this though? There…
EUIC Tournament Recap, Innovations, Our PikaRom List, and Vespiquen Honed for Hartford “EUIC was unique in that a new set wasn’t legal for the weekend of the tournament. This was the case for the first two Internationals of the season in São Paulo and Melbourne, where Lost Thunder and Team Up effectively debuted. I’m not sure which I prefer, but I was glad for the change of pace. A major tournament in a developed format (such as SUM–TEU) isn’t bad to have, as most decklists are established, so discussions center more around optimization rather than new ideas. Though, there were a fair amount of innovative decks and lists in the tournament that…
Recapping the BLW–TEU Format, Expanded Now, and Hitmonchan for Hartford (with Many Matchups!) “The first Expanded Regionals to include Team Up was in Toronto way back in early March. There we saw Jimmy Pendarvis’s Night March march its way through a Day 2 field of multiple Trevenant BREAK decks. I personally played Hitmonchan/Wobbuffet and managed to get Top 16. The next weekend we were in Greensboro where we saw Andrew Martin take down the event with Drampa-GX/Garbodor, a rather different yet clearly powerful choice. I once again played Hitmonchan/Wobbuffet and found myself in 20th place for Top 32. Finally, only but a little more than a week ago we were in Daytona Beach…
Daytona Top 8 Recap, Archie’s Blastoise and Shock Lock for Hartford, and a Bonus ZapBeasts List for the EUIC “For the most part, the metagame in Daytona was as expected. There were a ton of Archie’s Blastoise, Pikarom, and ZoroGarb decks in the field. This centralization of the metagame tends to happen when we have had so many major tournaments in the same format. Day 2 of Daytona is where things got interesting. We saw that many of the decks that did well in the field were not in the Big Three. Instead, many old favorites came out to make a big showing: Rahul Reddy’s 10th place Vespiquen/Flareon deck showed that even with the changes in the game over…
If its fleece grows too long, ______ won’t be able to move. Cloth made with the wool of this Pokémon is surprisingly strong. (Wooloo)
ZoroGarb 2.0 and PikaTickets for Daytona “I personally believe that Justin Kulas and I came incredibly close to achieving the perfect list for Greensboro. Here is said list: Going forward, I’d say that this list is a perfectly acceptable choice to play in Daytona this weekend. It’s one of the most consistent lists that still includes tech cards for nearly every matchup; however, I believe there are cards that are better in the list now that we’ve seen Drampa/Garbodor win an event and Pikarom make a comeback. There are a few key changes that I believe allow the deck to handle almost any matchup we’re going…
Inspecting the Big Two (to Counter) for Daytona and Bringing Back Bees “Zoroark has always been a juggernaut in Expanded since its initial release. Kian Amini and company piloted a Zoroark-GX/Alolan Muk deck to great success at the first Regionals that the deck had been legal for, in 2017, and it set the standard for all Zoroark-GX decks moving forward. Zoroark has a few cards that make it as powerful as it is currently. The first of which is Exeggcute PLF which has the Ability Propagation. Zoroark-GX can abuse this Ability by using Trade without the drawbacks of discarding a card from their hand. Combined with Colress and Brigette, the deck can set…
Alolan Exeggutor, Yveltal BREAK, and Lucario-GX/Omastar on Display for Daytona “The above list was piloted to a 28th place finish at the Toronto Regional Championships by my good pal Franklin Percic. When I first read that Alolan Exeggutor months back, I immediately thought it had potential in Expanded, and was beyond hyped to see Frank find success with the deck. The goal of the deck is to get three of your Exeggcute PLF into the discard pile with one Alolan Exeggutor in play and a Double Dragon Energy attached. Pulling the Exeggcutes into your hand with their Propagation Abilities allows you to then discard all three for a whopping 180…
Powerhouse Plays—Nightmarch/Lucario-GX and Archie’s Blastoise—for Daytona “This was the Nightmarch/Lucario-GX list I played in Greensboro. This take on the deck began a few weeks prior to Toronto Regionals where we saw Jimmy Pendarvis take down the event with a similar list. Since Greensboro was being held only one week after Toronto, I knew going into Greensboro that there was going to be an influx of Nightmarch counters, such as Oricorio GRI 56 and Karen, included in a lot of decks. We even saw Azul’s 2nd place list run Articuno ROS 17 as a soft answer to Nightmarch. Although I knew this, I still went with my…
Profiling Zapdos/Lycanroc-GX in Standard and Recapping Archie’s Blastoise in Expanded “Coming into the tournament, I knew that Zoroark-GX/Garbodor would be a relatively safe play. I liked the list I had posted because it was consistent against everything, and should I dodge Pikachu & Zekrom-GX, the deck would work well. I liked having the extra Rescue Stretchers, Garbotoxin, etc. for my other matchups rather than the specific anti-Lightning cards that didn’t even make the Pikarom matchup favorable. Both versions of Zoroark-GX/Garbodor were my fallback, and it was good to see that some people had success with it. Alex Schemanske finished in Top 8 and Arlo Neel in Top 4. Justin Bokhari,…
It stores poison in an internal poison sac and secretes that poison through its skin. If you touch this Pokémon, a tingling sensation follows. (Toxel)
Recapping Toronto’s & Greensboro’s Top 8s, Exploring Expanded with Celebi & Venusaur-GX, and Rating Rayquaza for Daytona Regionals “The change in Top 8 decks between weekends was astounding as six of the decks that Top 8’d in Toronto vanished in Greensboro. Trevenant BREAK became a non-factor for this weekend as the field had figured out how to prepare for it moving forward. Greensboro saw these decks featured in its Top 8: 2 Archie’s Blastoise 2 Pikachu & Zekrom 2 Zoroark-GX/Garbodor 1 Drampa-GX/Garbodor 1 Shock Lock At the end of 14 rounds of Pokemon, we found ourselves with Shock Lock at the top of the standings. Many people, including myself, were under the impression that there was no answer…
The Greensboro Meta, Popular Decks, We’re Seeing Shifts, and Detailed Analysis of the Winner, Garbodor/Drampa-GX/Sigilyph-GX “The Day 1 metagame breakdowns have been posted on the RK9 Labs Facebook page for each event, and it is super interesting to see the shift in decks from one weekend to the next. These are the top five played decks from Toronto and Greensboro, per their data: Toronto Pikachu & Zekrom-GX (43) Archie’s Blastoise (38) Lucario-GX (30) Zoroark-GX/Garbodor (29) Hitmonchan (22) Greensboro Archie’s Blastoise (57) Zoroark-GX/Garbodor (49) Pikachu & Zekrom-GX (47) Hitmonchan (28) Trevenant (23) Both Regionals had similar attendance (358 and 389 Masters, respectively), so it’s interesting to see how the meta changed from “unknown” in Toronto, with no…
Recapping Toronto’s Headlines, the Two Paths, and on Trevenant, Zoroark/Garbodor, and Night March for Greensboro “Players had been clamoring for a Lusamine ban for quite some time, and about a month ago TPCi listened, giving it and Delinquent the boot from the format. While it’s probably not a good use of anyone’s time to envision how the results of Toronto would’ve looked had those two cards been legal, I think we can all agree we likely wouldn’t have seen such a diverse metagame under the old ban list. Even more importantly, the community has expressed almost unanimous positivity regarding the state of Expanded, following Toronto, which I never would’ve predicted three months ago. When was…
On Trevenant’s Torontonian Reign, the Future for Trees, the Case for Counterbox, and My Play (ZoroGarb) for Greensboro “As we know, the Toronto Top 8 was made up of these decks: 4 Trevenant BREAK 1 Night March 1 Archie’s Blastoise 1 Counterbox 1 Zoroark-GX/Garbodor It’s not hard to see that Trevenant BREAK dominated the event, despite its lack of a 1st or 2nd place trophy at the end of the weekend. At the end of Day 1, there were two Trevenant BREAK decks at the top of standings; both included a Pyroar FLF line! This was an unexpected tech that swung over the Pikarom matchup. Once the Pyroar was set up, it was already game over. Going first,…
T64 Toronto Report, PikaRom’s Revenge, and Contemplating Yveltal BREAK for Greensboro “Toronto went decently well for me, netting me another 50 Championship Points with a 48th place finish. I played an adaption of Pablo’s Buzzwole/Jirachi/Garbodor list that he wrote about in his last article. Based on the most popular decks (Pikarom, Archie, ZoroGarb, and Lucario), I should have had a free walk into Day 2 at least. However, TOM (Tournament Operating Manager) had other plans for me. Instead of the heavy counts of meta decks I hoped to play against, I managed to hit a whopping two total. R1: BuzzGarbShrine WW (1-0-0) R2: Mimigar/Omastar LWT (1-0-1) R3: Zorogarb WLT (1-0-2) R4: Fighting…
Sudden climate change wiped out this ancient kind of _______. This Pokémon absorbs others’ life-force through its branches. (Galarian Corsola)
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