624 results for: tournament report
Unfortunate Off-Meta—Gardevoir-GX/Swampert—for NAIC (Oops…), and Rearview-Mirror Thoughts on the 2018–2019 Competitive Season “I was one of the lucky players who got to spend almost two weeks in the city of Columbus this June. Because of this, my friends and I had quite a bit of time to test and figure out our play for NAIC. We knew that we were going to try to avoid playing a meta deck, but I still had some reservations about this idea, as shown in my last article. Before I go into the week, let me describe our testing process: First, we would build whatever deck we were on at the time on PTCGO and try…
An NAIC Recap, What Made 1st–3rd Unique, My Own Tournament Report, and Reflections on Losing Your Head “At the Origins Special Event I chose to try and refine an idea that seemed particularly good at the time, Zoroark-GX paired with Silvally-GX and Persian-GX. I had done minimal testing with the deck besides the Thursday night before the event and I tweaked a few card counts to my liking, such as 2 Judge in the list. The event concluded with my final record being 4-2-1 after losing two sets to unfortunate prizing, but I still netted a Top 32 finish. I decided that the Silvally-GX build of Zoroark-GX might not be the best one over the course of…
A Full Look at Hoopa Wall Stall (Tournament Report, Deck Updates, and In-Depth Matchup Guide) for Madison “As per my last article, my top two decks for Santa Clara were Midrange Zoroark and Vileplume Stall. I ended up going with Stall; however, I decided to make a few key changes prior to the event in order to stay ahead of the anticipated metagame. Here is the list I played at Santa Clara: Through testing I found that this package was ineffective at setting up multiple Vileplume throughout a single game. This led me to explore different options. I knew that counters to Vileplume, such as Stealthy Hood and Stage 1 attackers, would be present and therefore I could…
A Santa Clara Tournament Report with the 1st Place ReshiZard, What I Learned From My Losses, the PikaRom I Didn’t Play, and Oh Yeah Madison “I’ll be the first to admit that I was ill-prepared for the inaugural tournament with Unbroken Bonds and hoping for some last-minute miracle of a deck to fall into my lap as I boarded my flight to Santa Clara. I was dead set on playing PikaRom or a Mill list similar to the one that Peter Kica wrote about in his article last week. I had found so much success with PikaRom in the past and the deck was testing well online, but at the final hour its flaws began to unravel themselves. Before I go into what went wrong…
Santa Clara Regionals Wrap-Up, Featuring: A Zoroark-Less Top 8, an Analysis of Kian’s 1st-Place ReshiZard, and Other Important Takeaways “To start things off, let’s take a look at the Top 8 after the Swiss rounds (along with final placement in parentheses): Alex Schemanske—Reshizard (2nd) Michael Catron—Zapdos/Fighting (3rd) Kian Amini—Reshizard (1st) Jimmy Pendarvis—Shedinja Control (5th) Mike Morton—Zapdos/Ultra Beasts (4th) Preston Ellis—Lucario & Melmetal-GX/Vileplume (6th) Azul Garcia Griego—Shedinja Control (7th) Marcus Dodson—Pikarom (8th) There’s a ton to break down here, so let’s get right to it. First, I would like to focus on what wasn’t present in the Top 8… Zero Zoroark-GX decks in the Top 8 is quite the rare occurrence. We don’t have a full metagame breakdown (yet), but…
Its tentacles tear off easily, but it isn’t alarmed when that happens—it knows they’ll grow back. It’s about as smart as a three-year-old. (Clobbopus)
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…
Highlighting Denver’s Unexpected Standouts: Bodybuilding/Zoroark Control, Draw/Celebi & Venusaur-GX, and Order Pad/PikaRom “Denver was a lot of fun and here’s a quick report on how my games went: Denver Regionals / 640 Masters / SUM–TEU Day 1 R1 — Alolan Muk/Garbodor/Psyduck — WW R2 — Zoroark-GX/Lycanroc-GX — WLL R3 — Buzzwole-GX/Zygarde-GX/Lycanroc-GX — WW R4 — Zoroark-GX/Lycanroc-GX — WLL R5 — Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel — WW R6 — Pikachu & Zekrom-GX/Zapdos — WW R7 — Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel — WW R8 — Regigigas/Hoopa — WW R9 — Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel — ID Day 2 R10 — Zapdos/Buzzwole/Nihilego — LL R11 — Pikachu & Zekrom-GX/Zapdos — WLW R12 — Buzzwole-GX/Lucario-GX — WW R13 — Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel — WW R14 — Pikachu…
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,…
Attendance at Tournaments, Commentating (Drama in Storytelling), the Grind, Marketing, and a Funny Story “There was some chatter on Facebook about how attendance was down at tournaments, possibly due to the Expanded format or rising prices. I wondered if there was a way to get a little bit of science applied to the problem. I asked Christopher Schemanske if he had a data set I could use for a quick linear regression and of course he did. So here is what I did: I looked at every Regional in the last three years and scored it on several attributes… Format Year Quarter (to attempt to control for “people stop playing at a certain point”)…
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…
What appears to be an iron helmet is actually hardened hair. This Pokémon lives for the thrill of battle. (Perrserker)
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…
A Top 16 Collinsville Tournament Report with PikaRom “Hey what’s up my guys! My name is Evan Gregory, and I play the Pokémon TCG competitively. I have played rather casually for about five years now, hitting a couple of Regionals here and there; however, this year, since worlds is in D.C., I have decided to shoot for my worlds invite. Starting with a poor Q1 with only 2 Challenge wins and a Cup top 16, I turned things around at Roanoke, where I placed top 32 with Blacephalon. After that I cranked out a Cup win, top 4, and top 8. Then taking a break through January, skipping…
The Collinsville Meta, the Future of Standard, Variance Got Me, and What’s “the Play” Now? “We saw a Blacephalon/Naganadel deck take the win this past weekend. Zapdos/Jirachi and Zoroark/Lycanroc made up a major portion of the meta, Stall is back (and causing me a major headache), and the top players brought a variety of decks to the event. What influenced these plays though? Blacephalon was, in retrospect, the obvious choice for the weekend, having a borderline free matchup against Zoroark, 50/50s against Pikarom and Zapdos, and a chance against the Stall decks. The Zapdos and Zoroark players were influenced by the results from OCIC. Zoroark was still a very strong play for the weekend, and…
Synthesizing Collinsville’s Results at the Dusk of SUM–TEU Standard (and an Electrical Stab at Expanded) “1st Zach Lesage won the tournament with his tried-and-true Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel deck that he has played at almost every tournament since its release. This came as a surprise to most players, including myself, as there was little reason to believe that the deck could compete with Zapdos. For an incredibly linear deck like Blowns, the two-shot nature of Zapdos/Jirachi should be overpowering due to its extra consistency and capability to attack immediately. However, Zach’s list contained a 1-1 Alolan Muk line, which is something I’ll touch on in a bit. 2nd Surrounding the success of Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel was Zoroark-GX/Lycanroc-GX/Lucario-GX. Basically, this deck…
Primal Groudon in Dallas, Bans in Expanded, and Swampert in Standard (Pre-Team Up) “I’m trying to think of another deck that has had such longevity in the field of viability, and I’m drawing a blank. There have been no Regionals since the initial rise of Primal Groudon that I feel the deck has been utterly unplayable. Dallas was no exception to this. We saw a few vastly different takes on the deck this past weekend, all of them viable in their own right. My build was built more as an attacking–mill-style deck, whereas the others we saw focused more on healing their Groudon rather than alternate attackers. Hours of testing with my friend,…
Its tentacles tear off easily, but it isn’t alarmed when that happens—it knows they’ll grow back. It’s about as smart as a three-year-old. (Clobbopus)
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