624 results for: tournament report
A Poképarent’s Guide to Getting Started in Competitive Pokémon + 2× NAIC Top 8 Juniors Report “Because I am a dad of Pokemon people, people ask me how to get their kids into competitive Pokemon all the time. I have seen lots of opinions on this, mine is “win or go home.” And here is what I mean: Winning is a three step process in Pokemon. Equipment. Have the right cards. Pokemon prints lots of bad cards and a few good cards. If you don’t have the good cards, you simply lose. Jason Klaszynski, playing a theme deck, loses basically every game he plays against someone with a top tier deck. If you don’t have the…
Crafting a New Version of Decidueye, Brit’s 2017 NAIC Run, and “Good Not Good” “I think it is very difficult for some players to stomach the notion that other are better than them. This is no doubt (at least in some part) a general psychological response and it is simply hard to stomach propositions such as “simply not good enough” or “my opponent just outplayed me” but I think that acknowledging such an idea is important or even necessary to becoming better players ourselves. For instance, if we use running as an analogy, I do not think anyone would really be upset at the assertion that someone who has been running marathon for years…
Weekend Review and Aftermath of the Inaugural North American International Championship “Personally, Indy was not a particularly remarkable event. Going in, I didn’t have all that spectacular an idea of what to play, but knew I’d default to Espeon/Garbodor if a better option didn’t present itself. We started off our testing with M Gardevoir-EX STS, and saw mild success on Wednesday night. We led off Thursday morning’s Gardevoir regimen with something of a classic speed-Darkrai-EX BKP list, which thoroughly trounced Gardevoir. Then, it faltered against Greninja and Volcanion. In the process, we got the sense that the deck wasn’t truly consistent enough to be a real contender. So, we moved on.…
Standard v. Expanded, Juniors Recaps of Salt Lake City & Roanoke, Points, and the Box-Out! “Let me start with some thoughts on the Standard format compared to Expanded. When you look at our results, it is clear that we do much better in Expanded than we do in Standard so there is clearly bias. Regardless, my argument in favor of Expanded is this: First, the variety of cards allow for more deck consistency and this should theoretically decrease variance. Cards like Colress, Computer Search, and Jirachi-EX make decks more consistent, preventing dead-draw failures. I am an advocate of ban lists as the meta evolves, but bigger card sets create more creativity as long as we…
Xander’s Top 4 Mexico City Regionals Report and Review with Espeon-GX/Garbodor “The aspects I loved from Colin’s list were the Pokemon line, 8 Psychic Energy, and 2 Hex Maniac. Multiple top-notch American players chose to play Decidueye-GX/Vileplume, so I tossed in the 2nd Hex Maniac the morning of. Originally I had 4 Professor Sycamore, but dropped down to 3. The goal of the list was to make the deck as consistent as possible. Delinquent should be better than Team Rocket’s Handiwork, but it was lackluster. I used it effectively 4 times throughout the tournament. Once was against Volcanion, where I actually caught him with 3 cards in his hand. It won…
A clever combatant, this Pokémon battles using water balloons created with moisture secreted from its palms. (Drizzile)
Adjusting to a More Methodical Format, The Rise (and development) of Zoroark, and Owls Reborn “After Danny Altavilla’s top 4 performance at Madison Regionals, my focus quickly shifted from Lurantis to the new deck. I watched the official stream for most of the event, and Daniel’s list seemed to have minimal difficulty against everything except for the other new contender, Metagross-GX. This problem, I thought, could be easily remedied by adding in Flareon AOR into the deck. Theoretically, this would give the deck a stronger matchup against Metagross, and any Decidueye-GX deck that might still be lingering around. For reference, here is the list that Danny played in Madison (and would go on to win…
Madison Finalist Regional Run with Metagross-GX and Projections for the Land Beyond “Now, how does one conclude that Metagross-GX is the proper selection for any tournament, let alone a Regional that served as my last hope to vault into the Top 16 race? Well, for starters, apparently the key to that answer is to have the right group of friends, as Metagross had only fleetingly crossed my mind prior to 5:00ish Friday night. Sure, John Kettler and I identified it as having potential on a Super Rod Cast episode we did together, but it certainly wasn’t on my radar as a play. In fact, my list of potential plays at that point…
Xander’s Seattle Recap, Methods and Madness for Beating Garbodor, and a Patient Waterbox. “Going into Seattle, I knew that Garbodor would be a threat. Usually at the arrival of a new set, the meta retains itself with very little improvement. What everyone in the room found was a spew of Garbodor. I decided to go back to my roots and play M Gardevoir because its bad matchups would decline in popularity. M Rayquaza and Decidueye/Vileplume were the bad matchups before, but with Tapu Lele-GX, Decideye became an easy matchup. Had I known how amazing and prevalent Garbodor would be, I probably would have played a different deck, or a less Item-heavy list. Here’s how my…
A League Cup w/Sylveon, The Rise of Garbodor/Espeon-GX, and Misadventures in Seattle “Below is the list I used to win the League Cup, however I will only talk about why I wouldn’t use this deck again in the foreseeable future: As I mentioned before, I chose this deck because I knew I’d be able to capitalize on misplays every round and it happened just like that. My opponents would play into Delinquents, they would try to avoid Team Flare Grunt, and thus hold energy, only to be punished by a Team Skull Grunt or a Plea-GX by Sylveon. As rounds went by, though, and I got to finals, my opponent had finally figured…
Recapping the Toronto Emergents “My brother, Alex, dispensed with even the minimal testing that I did and resolved early in the evening to simply play Groudon. My testing yielded nothing to unseat that idea, and once Night March was tabled by the seemingly imminent rise of Giratina, I was left to return to Groudon myself. The list, though, was a matter of intense debate between Alex and I (and, once he got on board, Sean Foisy). Since our experience in Portland, Alex has been insistent on including a Hex Maniac to shore the Darkrai/Giratina matchup. Personally, I believed the energy denial we included was…
With sly cunning, it tries to lure people into the woods. Some believe it to have the power to make crops grow. (Morgrem)
Recapping Roanoke, Perfecting Performance, and Talking Toronto “It was clear that the majority of top players in the community went with Decidueye or Mewtwo this weekend, with a smaller (but certainly not insignificant) chunk electing for Speed Dark, Volcanion, and M Rayquaza. A few, like Grant and Peter Kica (M Gardevoir PRC/Garbodor), took shots with unknown options, but most stayed with standard fare. I fit into that category myself, electing to pilot Decidueye/Vileplume. There was no especially brilliant reason for that choice, and my peers articulated its merits quite well last week, so I’ll refrain from doing so here. My only other viable option was M Rayquaza-EX/Gumshoos-GX, which was Sean…
Reflection on Preparation and a Misadventure in Gardening from Brazil “Before the International Championship, the Salt Lake City Regional took place and the top tier decks seemed pretty definitive to me; with Tier 1 comprised of Decidueye-GX / Vileplume, Volcanion-EX and Turbo Darkrai decks. Following closely behind would be M Mewtwo-EX, M Rayquaza-EX, M Gardevoir-EX, Gyarados and Lapras-GX. After taking a look at the latest Brazilian Spring Series League Cup Results, no deck stood out as a surprise or something unexpected, but rather it was simply surprising to see M Rayquaza-EX decks and others taking more CP than Turbo Darkrai. Volcanion and M Ray being so successful down there made…
Learning from Loss, Mailbag, and Top Trio for Brazil “A month ago, I was primarily focused with dealing with the sheer amount of hype that Decidueye/Vileplume carried. Now that time has passed and the format has settled somewhat, I have had time to test out the deck in a competitive environment as well as observe counters arise, and see the deck (expectedly) lose some of its popularity. Somewhat controversially, I remained skeptical of the deck right after the Melbourne International, and I believe that my opinion has been somewhat validated by many of the results we have seen. In a lot of ways, the format did shift to counter Decidueye,…
Umbreon-GX and Adapting for a Smaller Metagame “Coming off of my Australian 2nd place performance, and given the overall strength of the deck, it was hard for me to consider playing anything other than Decidueye/Vileplume. However, I had been down this road before with Greninja, where I’m stubborn and refuse to adapt or change decks based on previous experiences rather than on results or reality. Don’t get me wrong, Decidueye is an incredibly strong deck, but every opponent I’m up against here in Mexico expected that deck from me. Thus, Wobbuffet and extra Hex Maniac, even in decks such as Volcanion, were becoming the norm. Other players…
Salt Lake City Recap, Analysis, and Greninja Reboot “I came into the week prior to the event not too sure what I wanted to play. It seemed as though Yveltal/Garbodor could be well-poised — and it’s relatively consistent, which is more than I can say for most of the format — but I was hesitant due to its myriad of 50/50 matchups and the West Coast’s propensity for playing Speed Dark regardless of its actual viability for a given tournament. That really only left M Mewtwo, M Rayquaza, and Decidueye/Vileplume as choices. I really didn’t want to play any of the 3, but knew I especially was hesitant…
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)
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