624 results for: tournament report
A Juniors Recap of Dallas Expanded and St. Louis Standard “We spent a lot more time preparing for this event than usual due to the 6 week break between Memphis and Dallas Regionals. This long stretch, without any significant tournaments, meant players could theory and test solely on Expanded decks. I want to share some of my insights on Juniors metagaming, how the Masters meta evolved for Dallas, and how we decided to play Wailord. The Juniors metagame is an odd paradox that is both easy and hard to predict at the same time. An easy trend to see is whatever topped the last Regional in the Masters division will…
Brent on Parenting a Junior + a Senior, The State of the Circuit, and a Midpoint Reflection on the Season “Pokemon tournaments have never been bigger! For that matter, this is a very reasonable year to go get your invite. I have always said “mo’ is betta'” for Juniors going to the World Championship and the stars certainly seem appropriately aligned to get plenty of Juniors out there. I feel like Pokemon is reading what I am writing, because they lowered the kickers to 48 kids, essentially giving out Top 16 points at most Regionals, which is good given the “box-out” that I wrote so much about last year. Having said that, it is worth taking a moment to mention…
Brit’s Dallas Experience, Zoroark/Counters, Plus Standard Observations and Options “Dustin Zimmerman, a former SixPrizes writer was the main architect of the list but I believe that he received his own inspiration to build the deck from one of Christopher’s reports of a Zoroark-GX/Lycanroc-GX deck that played a few copies of Counter Energy. The idea was to use the simple, but strong, core to any Zoroark-GX to carry the initial weight of the deck. Instead of using a backup Stage 1 attacker to hedge against other matchups or try to counter a certain archetype, we would rely on some choice colorful basic Pokemon and Counter Energy to steal games from…
Talking Texas, Exploring Expanded, and Synthesizing Sydney Standard “As I start writing this, my brother is sitting on his win-and-in with the Groudon list we both played today, and should he manage to pull that out and get on a run tomorrow, this will sound a lot different than if he loses right now. So that I get the same impression across either way, here’s how I ended up with Groudon: A read that Night March would be big. As it happens, I think this was only a mild miss—Night March was mildly present, but not the overwhelming entity some thought it’d be. I was confident in the Night…
Mapping Out the Dallas Metagame, Travelling with Toad, & Whale Watching “Looking forward to the Dallas Regional Championship, I think the metagame is going to end up looking something like this: Zoroark-GX Variants (40-60%) Seismitoad/Zoroark (15-20%) Golisopod/Zoroark (10-15%) Zoroark/Alolan Muk(10-15%) Zoroark/Lycanroc (5-10%) Night March (10-15%) Trevenant BREAK (5-10%) Garbodor Variants (5-10%) Fighting Stuff ie Donphan/Buzzwole (5-10%) Gardevoir (1-5%) Beach Decks (i.e. Wailord/Primal Groudon) (1-5%) Turbo Turtles (1-5%) Dark Decks (1-5%) Other (1-5%) As you can see, I still expect to see the decks that utilize Zoroark-GX the most to be immensely popular. I don’t think this metagame spread prediction is particularly out there, but should give people an idea of what…
With a lithe body and sharp claws, it goes around stealing food and eggs. Boltund is its natural enemy. (Thievul)
Christopher and Xander’s Chicago Cup Reports, Recaps, and Recommendations “Oh, Expanded. I’ve only played in 2 Expanded tournaments in the past year and a half, with those being Collinsville and Daytona Beach Regionals. Needless to say, Expanded is not my forte, nor my preferred format. I know many people that love Expanded to death, yet I prefer Standard. At least this weekend gave me an opportunity to play VS Seeker again, but I can’t say for certain that my opponents enjoyed playing against me. With no practice in the format and little reason to play anything more complicated, I threw together Trevenant. This list is not too far off…
Pablo’s Memphis Recap, Review of Expanded, and Ultra Prism Highlights “The next big Standard events are Leipzig and Sao Paulo Regionals, and surely these will reflect much of what happened in Memphis. In North America, however, Dallas Regionals is in the Expanded format. Zoroark-GX/Lycanroc-GX was already an established archetype there, and it should continue to do well in the upcoming event, as Ultra Prism won’t be out yet. Japan’s tournaments have definitely been trend setters so far for our Expanded metagame, and the most recent concoction is a direct counter to Zoroark’s dominance in their format: Buzzwole-GX/Garbodor. Resembling the Landorus-EX/Garbodor of seasons past, Buzzwole could be a great counter to…
Xander’s Zoroark/Lycanroc Memphis Recap and Review “I performed less than ideally with a 5-4 finish. This is the worst I’ve done at a Regionals ever, tied with my 5-4 finish in both Orlando and Anaheim Regionals last year. I thankfully got underserved T256 points, but I’m still incredibly disappointed. I played a less than ideal Lycanroc/Zoroark list, was fairly unlucky in my mirror matches, but also played imperfectly. Overall, I made too fancy of a list that is more fitting to Golisopod/Zoroark. Lycanroc/Zoroark doesn’t need as many healing cards, otherwise the deck falls behind on Energy attachments. I think I would’ve done better if I had…
One Family’s 2017-18 Season So Far and a Look at the Makeup of Junior Top 16 “Initially, the 2016-17 invite CP Requirement for Juniors was set high at 400 CP. With only 3 quarters of League Cups accounting for a maximum of 300 CP, a Junior had to make Top 8 at a Regional or place at an International to get an invite. Fortunately, TPCI adjusted the requirements midway through the year, lowering the threshold to 350 CP and slightly bumping up the points earned at different events. This allowed more Juniors to make Worlds and relieved the pressure to have to place at a major tournament or have no chance of getting an invite. Fast…
Xander’s Thoughts on his London Experiences and the State of Penalties “Leading up to the tournament, as usual, a majority of my “testing” comes from discussing ideas in group chats and reading articles. I don’t have much interest in dedicating myself to creating perfect lists for new archetypes. However, I find it incredibly cool how innovative Tord’s winning list is compared to list standards of the past. I’m glad that deck building is a skill within Pokemon because it adds another element to the competition. As I said in my past article, Drampa/Espeon/Garbodor (with an interchangeable focus) and Gourgeist were my two plays for the tournament. I had brought the cards…
Its conspicuous lips lure prey in as it lies in wait in the mud. When prey gets close, ________ clamps its jagged steel fins down on them. (Galarian Stunfisk)
Christopher’s 2017 European International Championships 3rd Place Weekend Review “We’ve been in a bit of a lull since Vancouver provided us the last Regional Championship over a month ago. In fact, in something of a rarity these days, before London players were coming off two full weekends where the most competitive event anyone on earth could play was a League Challenge. Shining Legends never really got a good introduction to competitive play; League Cups and ARG inherently aren’t the same as regional-scale events. Coupling that with the fact that Crimson Invasion became legal only on the first day of play, the stage was set for something crazy to go…
Pablo’s Vancouver Regional Champion Report with Gardevoir-GX “Hola people! October has treated me very well, and honestly, the past couple of months have probably been my peak so far in my Pokemon career in terms of consistency and performances. I’m sure a lot of you are aware how last season I struggled to get good finishes outside of Australia, but now I have a Regionals win under my belt to add to my Top 8 at Worlds. I’ve started off the season on the right foot, despite below average League Cup finishes (25/100 possible CP). I now have a total of 365, which puts me comfortably in the…
Xander’s T4 Run in Vancouver, Garbodor/Drampa vs Gardevoir, and Shining Legends Thoughts “Heading into the tournament, I was thinking about playing Vikavolt/Tapu Bulu. After Hartford’s failure, I was pretty much done with Fire decks. As much as everyone hates the word “playstyle” in Pokemon, there is some basis in the argument that playing certain archetypes leads to better success. This can be chalked up to a higher comfort level with certain decks, rather than a specific style of choice. For example, I’ve continuously performed better with M Gardevoir and Garbodor decks throughout my past two years. I have yet to make Day 2 at a Regionals or above with any other deck…
Examining Espeon in Expanded, Fort Wayne Recap, and Looking Beyond “As the high of Worlds wore off and the reality set in that Fort Wayne was, uh, imminent, I have to say that I tested more for this event than any other in recent memory. Perhaps, in hindsight, that’s not the best plan in the universe (I played 0 games with Metagross before Madison, and 0 between Portland and my run in Toronto with Groudon…), but it’s important nonetheless to have a grasp on the format’s inner workings. I was excited to get back to somewhat stable ground after meandering through the end of 2016/17’s Standard format, so it’s ironic…
6th Place Worlds Recap, Adapting Espeon for BKT-On, and Tinkering with Trevenant ” 3 Eevee, 2 Espeon-GX I have received a lot of questions as to why I played a thinner Espeon-GX line, which I can now go into detail about. While Espeon-GX is an incredible attacker in the early game, it becomes less and less useful as the game progresses. This makes it hard for me to justify including a beefy Espeon-GX line instead of increasing my consistency and/or adding utility cards. I never had a problem finding Eevees in the early game, and only once during the tournament did I wish I had a third Espeon-GX. Overall, I would say…
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)
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