I tend to focus on writing on tourney reports, and will give unadulterated, blow-by-blow accounts of them to the best of my ability for you guys to enjoy. Expect more of such reports in the form of my articles (or should it be vice-versa? o.O) in due time.

A shoutout to 6p forum moderator MewJadester for scouting me out based on my report written elsewhere, and giving me the much-needed (really much-needed) encouragement to take a step forward and present my works on the international stage for the World to see. Another thanks to Adam for allowing me to post my Wall of Text here to sting your eyes with. Thanks guys!

Here’s a rather lengthy report for my BR. I have taken part in a Battle Roads tournament over the weekend, and did well. I submitted this report at the forums of my local Pokemon TCG playing fraternity, but MewJadester, the moderator at 6P.com’s forums, scouted me out and encouraged me to submit this report on the site. Thanks to MewJadester for the opportunity to show others how I went about with my game and I hope to receive some advice to up my playing standards.

In this report, I aim to capture the thought processes behind my deck choices and my moves for every game, as well as the emotions that I felt during each of them. So this report would be pretty big, even it is was a report for a BR. Also, I have this bad habit of writing excessively… so if you can put up with my nonsense, then read on!

Preface

1. How I Arrived at My Deck Choice

Basically, I wasn’t caught in the same “trilemma” that I was caught in during States. Call of Legends prior to States brought LostGar to the table for me to consider, and Gigas intrigued me at the very same time too. This time, we had Black and White, which did not alter my field of vision too much. Zekrom and Reshiram would be great cards, but more so for the next format only.

Certain additions like Professor Juniper definitely gave a leg up to decks like Gyarados this time around. However, for someone like me who doesn’t consider Gyarados as one of his choices anymore, it did not prove to be too much of a factor to consider when deck building and deck choosing. Rather, I would keep a look out for it when facing it though. However, in the deck building phase, it was not accounted for.

I really liked SP at this point, seeing that it has the ability to answer most decks out there. Even with rogue decks where little can be known until the game itself begins, LuxChomp gives one a great capacity to work and play around the opponent and take the win away from them.

My friend at league took out a Cincinno proxy deck to face me prior to B&W release and scans (AND THAT MEANS POKEMON CATCHER IN SAID DECK) and my LuxChomp comfortably played around it with cheap kills on Mincinno and Promocroak G chains to lay down KOs on Cincinno.

Instances like this just kept proving to me LuxChomp is as versatile as I had wanted it to be for a tourney setting. It was certainly a great choice and had earned its keep as “BDIF” in my eyes.

The real problem, however, lies in two main areas.

1. Techs

2. New B&W rulings.

Under the techs department, LuxChomp has no lack of options. The question, however, is which techs to squeeze into a space of 60 cards without affecting consistency too much. Which are the priorities? I felt that my old LuxChomp deck was able to keep up with majority of the decks out there. However, there were a few threats over the horizon.

A great example of a looming threat would be VileChamp. VileChamp was certainly at the top of the “must beware of” list in my book. After hearing that outstanding players like Curran Hill, one of the top rated players in the World currently, saw his VileChamp deck take a 19 – 3 record to bring him to such a position, I knew that it was a pure anti-SP beast that I had to worry about.

A deck that I first saw two friends at league work on is now being played more frequently, and I’m sure the threat would spread to my area as well. Sure enough, I saw some VileChamp players in Battle Roads, and I did face off against one of them.

I knew I had to adapt with the times, so my techs and build would have to be different. I need to squeeze in stuff, badly. There is a space of 60 cards to deal with, and some essentials I just cannot do without. I would have to shave my SP tools line as well as a few luxuries that I had relied on as crutches to ensure that I could fit the needed techs in.

This would also demand sharper and more efficient play from me, as I would have to use every single resource I could grab in the most frugal and economic fashion humanly possible for the right situations. A feat that can only be accomplished after much practice.

Another large wave that hit the metagame was the new B & W rulings, the most notable of which dictated that T/S/S can be used on the first turn by both players. This means that by and large, players who went first would have a great head start. I did not think much about this till I saw the monstrosity that was SableDonk.

Here’s what I mean. Let us use Uxie Donk to compare matchups. LuxChomp can hold its own against Uxie Donk, bringing the match nearly down to 50 – 50, since it was all down to a dice roll. If I get to play my T/S/S, I would abuse the consistency of SP decks to flood my bench with high hp SP to avoid the donk, then wrap up from there.

The reason why it was not completely 50 – 50 was simply because you might be able to get the better end of the coin flip, but there will be the rare instance of drawing into a bad hand and so you would not be able to flood your bench in time. However, it was a better deal than most other decks happened to be getting anyway.

This time round, with SableDonk, the coin flip factor would be taken away if my opponent nails a Sableye start. Now its coin flip + whether or not my opponent opens with Sableye. I would get donked like no one’s business afterwards. I would then put my matchup at a paltry 30 – 70 or even 20 – 80 through playtesting, and it scared me very much, seeing that it would be popular for its efficiency and simplicity.

So I considered, for the very first time, putting an entire playset of Sableye into an SP deck. Sablelock did it, why can’t I? My faith in my decision to do this was bolstered by reading about JWittz’s success with “LoxChomp” at his States, coming in 2nd in a highly competitive States Championship with top players in it.

If LoxChomp could overcome such great competition and take both top spot (J-Wittz and his brother went to top 2 with LoxChomp) WITHOUT B & W RULES FOR SABLEYE TO ABUSE, why can’t I use it with rulings to my advantage right now? I was certainly not top class in the game like the aforementioned, but it was certainly a tantalizing idea.

The premise was basically taking a ChenLock deck and replacing the Blaziken FB lines with Luxray GL lines. From a LuxChomp player’s perspective, it was to take a LuxChomp deck and jam 4 Sableyes into it. With new rules, it would become a greater beast than it already was at the Wisconsin States that J-Wittz and his brother took it to. I had great confidence in it, with such good players succeeding with it, and with the new rules buffing it up further.

As a bonus, problem #1 of techs was solved. Honchkrow SV was conveniently fitted into a typical LoxChomp list, as well as the energy required for it. Speaking of Honchkrow SV, Darkness Energy took the place from Call Energy at this point.

Call Energy was a consistency booster, and gave you something constructive to do when you started first and allowed you to even the odds somewhat by giving you an option to shore up your board control when you can’t play T/S/S.

This time round, starting first does not involve you twiddling your thumbs, so what better to do than to beef up the energy lines with Special Dark Energy Cards to increase my ability to grab a donk, or at least a chance to grab the first prize?

It’s also great to utilize against Spiritomb’s Darkness Grace attacks and punish them for setting up against you, as well as take the prize lead, and hopefully power past the trainer lock to obtain some form of board control back by disrupting their set up, evening the field up.

Finally, throw in Normal Dark Energy to make it searchable by a T1 Cyrus. SP Radar for Crobat G and grabbing a Normal Dark Energy allows you to snatch up a first prize quickly and handily for some situations.

So out with Call Energy, now relegated to a (mostly) early game only consistency booster and otherwise filler energy, and in with handy, donk-grabbing, prize-snatching Dark Energy Cards, also a great fuel for Honchkrow SV.

Back to Big Daddy (Honch)Krow, Honchkrow SV answers many meta decks, with Honchkrow SV being a sickening hard hitter vs SP (and though it is not meta, Gigas as well as random tank decks) a good wall, stall and striker vs Donphan and/or Machamp, potent irritant for careless Gyarados, Kamikaze fighter vs VileGar, overwhelming sweeper vs LostGar, and not to mention epic Switcheroo agent for Expert Belt holders like Magnezone Prime, which is a mere Murkrow (energyless, awesome!) away. It’s a crazy 1 – 1 line of tech-ish madness, and won me over well and truly.

So it became from LuxChomp…

This made me LOL the first time I saw it, but my friend had other plans for the picture…

… to LoxChomp… the LuxChomp deck that has the locking and disruptive properties of SableLOCK!

A work of sheer genius by my good friend in my league, Xiaomage2. IN PAINT. Look at how the words were rendered, right from the attack names that blended in nicely with the yellow background to the “LuxChomp C GL” text, beautifully crafted, pixel by painstaking pixel.

2. Playtesting Process

This was the singular major flaw in my preparation for the BRs. For some reason or the other, I was unable to playtest sufficiently with my deck, and only had one session of major tweaking with it, then left it as that. I felt that post-tweak, I was quite happy with the result, but felt that I had too many cards inside the deck.

This involved me going to my local community’s forums deck help section with my 63 card decklist and asking for advice on how to slice and dice it into a proper 60 card one. Thanks guys for your help once more! You gave me awesome insight into what my deck should and should not include, and this was instrumental to my results at Battle Roads.

In terms of actual practice with the deck, I did very little. I playtested mostly against metagame decks online in the comfort of my home and the convenience of my portable laptop. DialgaChomp, Gyarados, VileChamp, SableDonk, etc, just to name a few. I partially neglected the fact that my metagame tends to have more rogues than your typical one, and did not account for it.

Fortunately, this did not prove fatal to me, as my encounter with rogues were few and far between, by and large occurring within the first round of the tourney or so. I guess my tendency to play against either meta decks or unfavourable matchups in tourneys served me well this time, in an ironic twist no less.

Playtesting sessions with my team and Trick Room/Battle Frontier (initiatives set up by the TO in my area to boost out playing standards and inject fun into the Pokemon TCG experience) gave me a limited measure of practice, and I was mostly relegated towards taking the role of a spectator most of the time.

However, “watch and learn” was an adage I tried to adopt when I came across such match-less sessions, and I was able to garner invaluable information about the metagame, as well as gain added insight towards deck-vs-deck interactions, which was very educational indeed.

Finally, right up to the day before Saturday’s Battle Road’s I phoned my good friend in my league, Jeremy, when he was in the middle of a function for extra tips. Sorry to Jeremy for bugging him, hope he doesn’t mind! As usual, he gave sound advice, which I heeded to great effect the following day and the day after. Thanks man!

I did some last-minute playtesting the night before against SableDonk and VileChamp to shore up my responses against these 2 new threats. It turned out to be the right thing to do.

Battle Roads 14th May 2011 Saturday @ Aggro Gym

So the big day is here. I opted to go to Aggro Gym (one of the leagues in my area) for the BR. I saw that there were only 2 possible SP players there max, and most likely they were DialgaChomp players for Honchkrow SV to truck past eventually. With respect to this, I replaced the Dragonite FB in my deck for an Ambipom G as it generally is more useful than Dragonite FB’s non-SP matchup, and increases my chance for a donk.

I went to MacDonald’s for lunch and nearly lost my way, wolfed down my lunch and downed a can of SUGAR-FREE RED BULL for awesomeness’ sake. I would keep the sugary one for top cut if I ever made it there.

Red Bull Count: 1

Ujin Yumeno, the Head Judge of the tourney, briefed us on the tourney rules. There would be 4 Swiss Rounds and a Top 2. I knew then that the tournament would be highly unforgiving in nature. In order to reach the minute top cut in a bid for the position of the winner of the tourney, rounds 1 – 3 cannot be lost.

Even if one match was thrown away in these rounds, it would be likely my unfavourable resistance would catch up and a 3 – 1 scoreline would still not be good enough to save me. Only round 4 could be lost, and if that did not help matters, my round 4 opponent is odds-on to my top cut opponent.

It would not bode well if round 4 was lost due to an unfavourable matchup, as this would spill over to the top 2 and result in the likely double whammy to my ratings. Tough conditions were laid out, and I needed to stay in the game at all costs.

So eventually the pairings were up and I was against…

Round 1 versus Xion J. (Yanmega/Cincinno rush deck)

My opponent was a new player to Aggro Gym. He started the game one month ago. He was slightly dismayed at battling me because Wallace, League Leader of Aggro Gym introduced me to him and mentioned that I was quite experienced in the game. Not the best way to introduce me. Regardless, we sat down and began the match.

I opened with Promocroak to his Yanma start, and I had a Luxray GL benched. He had another Yanma at the back as well as a Mincinno. Immediately I knew to take out Mincinno first, as it is a problem that is hard to bring down without expending lots of resources or starting a Promocroak G cycle, which might involve breaking the Cyrus chain.I went first and used Pokemon Collector to develop my board and prepared for the game. I also got a Sableye from Pokemon Collector to build my board position and hand content further.

I immediately used Leap Away, keeping my Poke Turn handy if I ever needed it. I was successful and so my Poke Turn could be kept for another day. I then promoted my Sableye SF to active position. I was deciding between taking the first prize or using Impersonate for Cyrus’ Initiative to disrupt him, since I had a decent start and I could afford to disrupt him to widen the gap between our hand content and board position.

However, I saw Mincinno on his bench, an indicative of a rush deck, and I did not want hand him the first prize. Moreover, I was more than well-equipped to return the KOs with what I had in hand for the next couple of turns, so I decided not to leave it at the mercy of coin flips and chose the more prudent path of taking the prize lead and maintaining control in the prize exchange.

It turned out my choice to go for the prize exchange game was right in the end, but more on that later. I handily took my first prize with a special darkness energy attached to Sableye for an Overconfident KO, but not before developing my board with Collector for Uxie, Luxray and Promocroak. Uxie scored a Cyrus Conspiracy to get me in the game. He bounces back with a Yanmega Prime Sonicboom KO on my Sableye. 5 – 5 prizes.

My benched Luxray came out, but instead of hitting Yanmega Prime right back, I bright look a benched Mincinno for the KO via Flash Impact (30 went to the 90 hp Promocroak G), for I knew Yanmega Prime can be consumed later. If a Mincinno becomes a Cincinno, that’s trouble for me. Sure enough, he had enough resources to grind out Cincinno next turn and hit me hard with PlusPower IIRC. 4 – 4 prizes.

I was prepared for his Cincinno by benching a Promocroak G early on and Promocroak G was sent out to deal some major kickarsery. I broke the Cyrus Chain at that point and went for Aaron’s Collection and an additional Energy Gain. He retaliated with another Cincinno. 3 – 3 prizes.

Aaron’s Collection did its work and I got out a Promocroak G and Psychic Energy. With the Energy Gain I have prepared, I hit his Cincinno once more for the KO, and prepared a Luxray GL on the bench. He belted his Yanmega and hit me for Sonic Boom. 2 – 2 prizes.

At this point, with the commanding presence of the Expert Belt, the pace became accelerated, and the effects of Red Bull and the hot sun worked my body up to the point where I could hear the adrenaline pumping right through the entirety of my being. I promoted my Luxray GL, then I whittled my hand down by abusing Poke Turns via Crobat G onto Yanmega, hoping to score the win, and used a Pokemon Collector for the last Uxie I had been saving up.

I hit a Premier Ball but not the lightning energy required, nor an Energy Gain (not that I expected it to still be in the deck, for I used it thrice already). So I got my newly refreshed Luxray GL Lv. X to use bright look on a benched Mincinno, which I believed was his 4th and last one. I had a very good flow of DCEs as my Garchomp line was sorely underused. Now DCE started flooding into my hand.

I decided to put this to great use and hit Mincinno with Snap Attack, but not before benching Garchomp C to stay in the exchange.  He returned the KO with his belted Yanmega Prime to wall and stall, as well as threaten a KO if I could not take down this beastly dragonfly. 1 – 1 prizes.

I walled with Luxray GL Lv. X and prayed he did not have sufficient PlusPower to go for the KO. I charged up my Garchomp C with a DCE, realizing I made a minor misplay by not promoting Garchomp C Lv. X, then retreating for Luxray GL Lv. X to wall.

Perhaps I was taking for granted that he showed no signs of running any hand disruption cards and focused on using hand refreshers and other staples like Copycat and Pokemon Collector (brilliant for modifying your hand size across a range).

If he ran Judge and used it, I would have to count on my 2 – 2 line of Garchomp C to get it back, for I expended all my SP Radar already. He didn’t disrupt my hand and my Garchomp C Lv. X was safe. So he opted to hit it off with a 40 hp snipe on the Uxie, apparently not being able to KO my active Luxray GL Lv. X.

I laid down Darkness Energy on Garchomp C, promoted it to active spot, levelled up and used Dragon Rush on Uxie to seal a frighteningly close first game by a prize margin of 1.

1 – 0

I was very happy that in the first round, where the deck’s consistency and ability to run through enough cards to get what I required was tested, I emerged the victor. Indeed LoxChomp did run like a LuxChomp in a sense where I could comfortably take 6 prizes in 6 turns (or close to it) if need be. The deck’s basic purpose was fulfilled and appropriately so in the first match.

The basics were done with, and perhaps in the second round something else might be tested, like the deck’s ability to utilize its techs effectively. I talked to my opponent and little more and complimented the speed of his deck and the ease of which he tuned his hand size. He also told me my deck idea was good and I thanked him for it. After exchanging pleasantries, we went our seperate ways.

From what I had seen from the players (these were threats, some of which I would see later in the day, so I had to mention names) who sat next to me, Febri A. was running a VileGar with Blaziken FB tech, a significant threat to me. He was unfortunately done in by Elias’ EmboarTress deck, a deck that I also felt threatened by due to its sheer unpredicability.

Ryuto and Kennard were the only other SP players around, so I kept an eye out for them. Ryuto was done in during round 1, but Kennard prevailed. Terry, to my relief, was running Reshiboar, making my removal of Dragonite FB a safe choice.

I didn’t get to see what Nelson was using as he was farthest from me and the glare of the sun obscured my view of his playing table. I assumed he was playing his favourite deck, Gyarados, given the he donked his opponent on that round, something to be expected from his speedy Gyarados build. If he was playing Gigas I would not expect the same outcome.

Remember what I said about testing my deck’s ability to tech in round 2? Pairings were announced and my opponent was none other than Irfan from Delta Gym (yeah another league’s name), using VileChamp! Honchkrow SV will have to earn its keep as a tech this time around, in order to help me deal with this nightmarish matchup, which if not teched for could be the cause of my demise.

Given the unforgiving nature of the tourney, I sincerely hoped that Honchkrow SV would see me through this tough match.

Round 2 versus Irfan (VileChamp deck)

Let me clarify by saying that at the moment when I sat down opposite Irfan, I had absolutely no idea what he was playing. I knew his brother Idhizar did well at States and reached the top cut with a rogue deck. All I knew that he was from Delta Gym, which contains a good number of fine players. I braced myself for everything.

We shuffled our decks and I caught a glimpse of fighting energy sticking out of his deck. I paled, knowing that either Donphan or Machamp, or a mix of both makes for a tough matchup. After shuffling and cutting, we laid our basics down and began.

I opened a Sableye in active position and benched a Luxray GL. He opened with an active Spiritomb and an Oddish. Everything in my head clicked together and I groaned inwardly, knowing that a world of hurt was about to descend upon me.

I immediately switched to my modus operandi when dealing with Spiritomb-based decks: go for Overconfident, ASAP! I played Cyrus’s Initiative from my hand to see what’s up. Lucky me hit 2 heads with the dice Terry lent me, and I saw from his 5 card hand:

• Interviewer’s Question, Fighting Energy, Gloom, Fighting Energy, Machamp Prime.

I was half-tempted to take Gloom away by sheer reflex, but decided against it and let him grace for it. Who knows the other Gloom was prized and keeping Gloom in his hand proved to be a good time waster? The only instance where Gloom in hand was deadly at that point was for him to topdeck a Broken Time-Space, an unlikely outcome. Machamp Prime was next, but I also decided against it, seeing as it was unlikely he would topdeck a means to rush it out quickly.

I grabbed the 2 Fighting Energy and back in the deck they went. I knew that Machamp Prime’s “Fighting Tag” allowed even a Fighting Energy attached to a totally unrelated Pokemon early game to be a power source later on, and I wished to put him on backfoot ASAP to press my early game advantage.

This also forces him to waste his Interviewer’s Question and bring about a dilemma of whether or not to develop the board with basics first or to stay ahead in energy attachment if he were to topdeck a Bebe’s Search or Pokemon Collection. So he was left with a 3 card hand:

• Gloom, Machamp Prime, Interviewer’s Question.

I Impersonated Pokemon Collector to get rolling in order to thin my deck and hit my Special Darkness Energy sooner via Uxie. Murkrow, Uxie and Smeargle were the top picks.

Luxray and Uxie worked in tandem to try and get rid of Vileplume if the going gets tough, and Murkrow for the eventual Honchkrow SV to go toe-to-toe with all the Machamps out there. Smeargle boosted my consistency and deck speed to stay on top of the matchup.

I had a Pokemon Collector in hand to follow up with Unown Q attachments onto either Uxie Lv. X or Smeargle. On his turn he topdecked another Spritomb and benched it. He used Interviewer’s Question, and to my great relief hit only a Rescue Energy. He attached it to Spiritomb to keep the Spiritomb flow going to maintain the trainer lock while he was in damage control mode. Darkness Grace got him a benched Gloom.

I used Pokemon Collector from my hand to thin out my deck further, grabbing Unown Q to use on Smeargle and Azelf to see what’s up in the prizes that I should be taking on the same turn. Nothing stellar in my prizes, but enough to map out the pace of the game, spying 2 Cyrus’ Conspiracy in it.

I filled my benched with Luxray GL, Unown Q onto a Smeargle, Murkrow and Azelf. Finally I dropped Uxie and drew into a rich serving of 5 cards. I was rewarded with sweet stuff like a DCE, a Cyrus’ Conspiracy and YES A SPECIAL DARKNESS ENERGY. I attached DCE to Murkrow for the eventual Machamp SF, and hit it off with my first prize to stay ahead. I grabbed a Cyrus’ Conspiracy with great aplomb.

He rescued his Spiritomb back and used his 2nd Spiritomb to wall. Having topdecked nothing of consequence, he used Darkness Grace once more for a Vileplume to complete the lock, but not before benching his saved Spiritomb. I started the Cyrus chain, looking for basic darkness energy and attaching it to Murkrow. Having another Cyrus’ Conspiracy in my hand meant I could go for Bebe’s Search to grab Honchkrow SV later. I used Overconfident to nab yet another prize.

He put Spiritomb in front and topdecked Twins. A lucky break for him, seeing as he was running into a lot of obstacles against me, and no Machop by turn 3 was certainly a difficult situation he was caught in. Fair enough, he got a method to fight back and I tensed up in response.

He used Twins for what I believe to be a Machop and an Uxie, drawing many cards and developing his board somewhat. After attaching Fighting Energy to his benched Machop, he was forced to use Darkness Grace yet another time to get out a Machoke so that he could nail a Machamp SF eventually.

I used Bebe’s Search for a Honchkrow SV and hit an energy drought. I would need to use the other Cyrus in my hand to get the energy flowing again. I used Overconfident on his damaged Spiritomb once more to claim my third prize.

He used Professor Elm’s Training Method to search for a Machamp SF, and prepared Fighting Energy on his benched Machop, now a Machoke. His board development was disturbing indeed. He took my Sableye out and took his first prize card.

I promoted my Smeargle UD, prepared to hit something like a lone Judge, and being thankful I knew where the 2nd Cyrus’ Conspiracy was in my prizes.

I nailed a Pokemon Collector instead, awesome! I got out Lucario GL in case Uxie Lv. X wants to come out and play, Garchomp C for a late game cheap prize as I had Garchomp C Lv. X in my hand already, and Bronzong G to stay energy efficient. I retreated and sent out Honchkrow, while using Cyrus’ Conspiracy for lighting energy to attach to my benched Uxie. I put Garchomp C on my bench to be ready for cheap prizes. I hit Machamp SF for 110 damage.

Irfan decided to take the risk of using Hurricane Punch on my Honchkrow SV instead of charging up his Machamp Prime. Since he had rescue energy on Machamp SF now, it was just as well. With BTS, he can salvage the situation. The benched Machoke now evolved rapidly into a Machamp Prime. He used Hurricane Punch…

2 heads. 40 damage.

2 heads and consequently 40 damage was the average expected damage output on Honchkrow SV. Nevertheless I was nervous when he started flipping, preparing for the worst. I retreated my Honchkrow and place Uxie in front, with Lightning Energy on it from the previous turn. I attached Psychic Energy to Garchomp C, and went for Psychic Restore to the bottom of my deck for the KO, taking my 4th prize and freeing up bench space for a Pokemon to sit on.

I walled with Smeargle despite its weakness to fighting type, as it was the only free retreater that I could afford to let go. He rescued his Machamp line for another day, and walled with Spiritomb, apparently not having DCE to power up Crushing Punch. He used Darkness Grace to develop him board further.

I responded with a Honchkrow SV, this time not even using Portrait before I left, afraid of ruining my good hand. I benched my Bronzong G as I knew Uxie Lv. X was hardly an option now that it was out of the board, so Lucario GL has no place on my bench as of now in this round.

I got a Special Darkness Energy from my prizes to attach to Honchkrow SV and gave Spiritomb the KO for my 5th prize. He immediately responded with Machamp Prime in active position, but insufficient energy to use Crushing Punch on me.

However, at 150 HP, it was the only Pokemon that was able to wall me. He also had a benched Machamp Prime waiting behind to tag into.

He used Looker’s Investigation to shuffle away my hand and walled. I hit Machamp Prime for 120. He walled with his 2nd Machamp Prime via Fighting Tag. I hit it for 120, as I had nothing to do due to my hand being reduced to bits. Now we were at an impasse. He finally got enough energy to hit me with Crushing Punch, and did 40 and ridding me of my DCE. Leaving me with insufficient energy to use Riot. My bad hand did not help matters either.

I then saw a solution to grab the win. Not believing the simplicity of my final move, I double checked and triple checked, taking my time. Finally, with everything in place, I used Galactic Switch from Bronzong G to transfer the Psychic Energy on Garchomp C onto Azelf. I retreated my Honchkrow with Special Darkness attached to it prior and promoted Azelf to active position and used Lock Up to seal the game.

2 – 0

It was a close fight, where I prevented his Machamp Primes and Machamp SF from doing a world of pain to my SP deck in time. Prize counts can be deceiving, and had the match gone on, my crap hand, depleting energy count and almost dead Honchkrow would certainly level the field.

Granted, I was in a good position to kill 3 Machamps, that being 1 SF and 2 Primes, but that’s why it’s still close, and that’s why I managed to seal the game. I told Irfan that his deck scares me. He just laughed it off and said he wished he could have a slightly better start during the game. I definitely agree with him, and wished him better for the next few rounds.

I went around and I found out that Elias’ highly unpredictable EmboarTress deck finally crashed. I had to win round 3 in order to stay above and beyond the reach of such deadly decks and keep myself in the race for the spot of the winner.

At this point, only 4 people were 2 – 0. There was Nelson with Gyarados, Kennard with DialgaChomp and a Reshiboar. I was highly comfortable with all 3 matchups, but feared Nelson’s speed Gyarados the most, since I heard he donked once more to win.

I was afraid the same fate might befall me if he was running hot enough. I could not take a close look at his deck specifics and playstyle as he has finished his games too quickly for me to get a closer look. I felt I could disrupt and take cheap prizes of Reshiboar sufficiently, and my faith in Honchkrow SV has increased, and I clocked in enough practice against DialgaChomp and SP decks in general to feel at home against Gyarados.

Pairings were up and I was against…

Round 3 versus Kennard T. (DialgaChomp)

I would like to stop here for a moment and say I was very proud of Kennard for making it this far, with a deck that he seldom used no less. I have seen him use DialgaChomp on occasion during league, but LostGar was his main.

To top it off, DialgaChomp was an extremely tough deck to use, and it is not something you would feel right with taking into a competitive setting with little practice. Despite his relative freshness with the deck itself, coming into top 4 is certainly no mean feat.

Props to him for his achievement. Both of us were the only people flying the flag for Masters Gym (my league) in the relatively faraway gym location of Aggro, and I was happy that both of us made it to “top 4″. It was certainly unfortunate that we have to eliminate each other at this point, not having the chance to try and meet each other at the final round if we could help it.

Nevertheless, I felt whoever won this match deserved the right to compete in the top cut for Masters Gym by virtue of sheer skill via victory alone, and I hoped he shares the same sentiments.

As an opponent, I felt comfortable with the matchup, this being one of the metagame decks I have prepared myself against. Like your typical SP match, I would try to stay ahead in the colourless far.

My lack of Dragonite FB was hopefully offset by LoxChomp’s decidedly favourable matchup against DialgaChomp itself. Dialga G Lv. X and surprise techs like Drifblim FB would be trucked over by Honchkrow SV.

So my modus operandi was simple: keep an edge in the colourless war to prevent tank healers and snipers from coming in, then charge up Honchkrow SV to truck over during my “leisure time” aka when the colourless war starts to recede as he starts to develop his mid-game/late-game Dialga G Lv. X tank and/or Drifblim FB tech.

I should be able to gain an edge with the occasional Luxray GL Lv. X to increase my offensive capabilities to smother his defenses as well as some form of disruption.

However, the match ended up being simpler than I imagined it to be. I opened with Sableye SF for the 2nd time, and he opens up a lone Ambipom G. I had a dream start:

Luxray GL, Garchomp C, Sableye SF, Poke Turn, Pokemon Collector, Special Darkness, Pokemon Collector.

I could not remember what I topdecked. All I remember was thinking of how to donk him ASAP and get myself a guaranteed spot in top 2 without going through a long and tedious game. I used Pokemon Collector for Uxie, Murkrow and Crobat G.

I dropped Crobat G for a Flash Bite and used Poke Turn to hit him again. Ambipom G had 60 HP left. 10 HP away from the donk. My bench was Luxray GL, Garchomp C, Murkrow, Crobat G, and then I attached Special Darkness to Sableye and hit it off with Uxie to Set Up for 5 cards.

I felt going for the donk this way was safe. I used my resources to prepare for the matchup, with Garchomp C, Luxray GL and Murkrow benched, Sableye in active to disrupt and set up if the donk missed, and Uxie to get more resources before he could legitimately power spray.

The only card I squandered specifically for the donk was just one Poke Turn, which is seldom used in the SP mirror anyway, where prize exchange was the norm of the colourless war game, and only Luxray GL Lv. X abuses such luxuries often. As such, I was quite frugal with my resources, and felt that I did not overextend fatally in an attempt to donk.

I drew into 5 cards, and though I did not nail a Poke Turn, I got an Expert Belt instead to seal the game with a belted Overconfident attack. Expert Belt was included to shore up the Gyarados matchup as it was for Luxray GL Lv. X to truck with. Expert Belt also allows Promocroak G to deliver the OHKO onto Gigas as well as belted T-tars/Magnezones. Now it became my donking tool.

3 – 0

I apologized to Kennard for the unsightly donk and assured him his loss will not be in vain and I will do my best to represent my gym. Kennard was cool about it and showed me his hand.

Energy Gain and Metal Energy in his hand made for a great donking tool if he went first against most decks, but the rest of the cards were just more SP tools and energies that were only truly useful midgame. No supporters to get him started whatsoever.

I checked his topdeck and it was a mere SP radar. He would be saddled with a nigh unworkable hand if the match wore on for turns, so he was already resigned to be on the backfoot, softening the blow the donk had on him. He won his final swiss round later on to clinch 3rd place, as a consolation.

I believed that Nelson would beat the Reshiboar deck because he was using the Water type deck, Gyarados. The speed and ferocity of the deck coupled with the type advantage would allow him to clinch the victory. As I had resolved my game quickly, I hurried over for a closer look at his game, which was still ongoing. True enough, he took a prize already, while his opponent took none.

However, I sensed something amiss. Then it hit me… it was not Gyarados! Nelson was using SableDonk all along! SAY WUT. It was still his turn and he was continuously laying damage counters down for prizes then wrapping the game up with Overconfident. This changed things as I prepared myself against SableDonk for my last swiss round and for top 2. The report will shorten from here on as the next few matches would be against a donk deck.

Round 4 versus Nelson C. (SableDonk)

Even though I was guaranteed a place in top 2 by virtue of my good resistance, I still aimed to give it my best for this match. This is for a number of reasons.

1. You never know what might happen. A loss in this round might make me miss top cut, despite what statistics say. The chances are really slim, but I prefer to err on the side of caution.
2. It’s basic respect for your opponent.
3. Ratings (not a highly convincing reason given the event is a 4k one, but I will put it down nonetheless).
4. I want to use this opportunity to learn how to get the best of the SableDonk matchup in preparation for the top 2.
5. I could afford to exert myself a little, because if SableDonk does manage to face me in top 2, I would still have plenty of energy to spare as the match does not sap my stamina greatly. Both round 4 and top 2 can be tanked with a can of Red Bull in between.

I have never faced Nelson in a Premier Event before, but I have played with him in the early days of another league and he is a very formidable opponent indeed. I have heard of his successful exploits in the past, getting into top cut in Cities and in States, and now securing himself a top 2 spot here against me.

I braced myself for a wave of damage counters, and aimed to plough through whatever he throws at me with all that I have.

Playing against SableDonk is not as easy as avoiding the donk. Even if the donk was not accomplished, chances are, your opponent still has a good prize lead (this is for non-Spiritomb builds like mine), and he would have eaten up a huge chunk of time burning through his deck on his turn, leaving you with very little time to catch up and win on time.

This was how I lost against Uxie Donk at States top 4, when I avoided the donk in game 1 and game 3, but lost on time due to his one prize card lead. Normally avoiding the donk gives you the win under normal circumstances, but do remember that this is under tourney settings, and the prize lead needs to be closed timely.

I aim to watch my time for this one to avoid making the same mistake that I made during top 4 of States. I aim to play timely and wrap up the prize lead quickly after I tank against the donk attempt with my high hp basics.

Both of us opened with Sableye. In true 50 – 50 fashion, a coin flip decided who went first. I went first, and I immediately flooded my bench with high HP SP Pokemon and just one Uxie to Set Up for resources to respond against the KO. Nelson then took a super long turn, went deep into his deck, and knocked out my active Sableye SF and benched Uxie, taking a two prize card lead.

I went for the revenge kill with Promocroak, and his belted Uxie did me in Uxie Donk style. He had a 2 prize card lead maintained, taking 3 prizes to my 1. Ujin, the TO, then came over and announced that time was called. I was shocked that time had passed so quickly. I promised myself to watch my time more vigilantly from then on.

I used Luxray GL Lv. X to gust up a Crobat G for a cheap prize and hoped that he could not return the KO to seal the game. My 110 HP tank walled sufficiently. A Poke Turn later, I gusted out a cheap Crobat G prize to equalize the prize count by chaining Bright Look once more, and 3 turns were up, and sudden death came into play. He flat out ran out of resources then, and a Thrash Bolt won the game.

4 – 0

We had a 10 minutes break before our 1 hour long top 2 match. I took this moment to chug down a can of Red Bull to give me much needed energy, and my friend phoned me during this interval in a timely fashion to find out how I did. He congratulated me on reaching top 2 and I thanked him in return. I resumed chugging down Red Bull, this time it was not the sugar-free kind. This means business. Sugar = POWER.

Red Bull Count: 2

FINAL BOSS: NELSON C. (SABLEDONKKKKKKKKKKK)

*Insert super fast paced final boss battle music to reflect SableDonk’s speed here*

So we started off with a handshake as requested by Head Judge Ujin, and smiled at the camera. I was under the influence of Red Bull and attempted a trollish smile and decided against it last minute. So I tried to smile. I think I did a good job.

Game 1:

He opened with Sableye and Unown R on the bench. I opened with Smeargle active and Luxray benched. It took me a grand total of 3 seconds to say: “I scoop”.

0 – 1

If you are still wondering why I threw away the match so quickly, it’s because I did not want to make the same mistake I did against my top 4 States opponent in game 2, where he was in the prefect position to donk me, and he took a huge chunk of time burning through his deck to find the resources to deliver the donk. This contributed to me losing via time.

So, I did not want my opponent spending so much time killing me when I needed to stay on top of the clock to eke out a win for the next 2 games. My loss was assured, so I might as well minimize its effects on the game. I have lost the battle, but I will not let it decide the war.

Game 2:

I opted to go first this time, and my Sableye start assured that. I promptly flooded the bench to avoid the donk, then worked to equalize the game afterwards. He did flip many, many heads to cut me down to a lone Luxray GL with 3 damage counters on it, as I could only fill my bench to a size of 3, having Cyrus’ Conspiracy in my hand to look for a singular SP radar to fill my bench. It was a close shave indeed.

I dropped down a Seeker-ed Crobat G and used the Pokemon Collector the Cyrus’s Conspiracy netted me to flood my bench once more and stayed in the game. To my dismay, he cleverly played out the whole match despite me winning convincingly after I tied up the prize count after avoiding the donk. This was a great move on his part, as it gave me less time to wrap up game 3 with a prize equalizer if I ever avoided the donk.

1 – 1

I was now very concerned about the final game. He will definitely opt to go first, and if he starts with Sableye and/or I did not start with Sableye, I was as good as dead. The probability of him getting a win in this manner was exceedingly high.

Game: 3

I got a Sableye start, and hoped he didn’t. He opened with a lone Crobat G – YES! My Sableye’s Overeager Poke Body overides Nelson’s request to go first, so I went first and flooded my bench quickly and used impersonate for a Judge on him into a smaller hand to reduce the chances of him getting a convincing prize lead. His luck finally ran out this game.

All game he flipped heads more than the average number of times, and always scored the heads whenever he needed it the most, like crucial Super Scoop Up on Uxie when his hand size dropped to nearly zero. This time he halted in the middle of his deck, taking just one prize on my Sableye with an unbelted Overconfident.

I immediately went for Promocroak G to return the KO. Promocroak G was a very good instant killer on things like belted Sableyes and Uxies to tie up the match in terms of prizes.

He burnt through the deck a little more and made the odd choice of gusting out my Garchomp C with a double blower at one point to kill it, taking his second prize and still having some life left in his deck, as well as only one Special Dark to work with after the demise of his orginal Sableye.

I anticipated that he would be going Uxie Donk style, so I used Luxray GL Lv. X to gust up a cheap prize from a benched Crobat G to equalize the game, instead of Promocroak G, fearing the return KO to jeopardize the prize-denial scenario that I was trying so hard to enact and protect.

He emptied just about almost his entire the deck the following turn but did not nail a prize. I glanced at my watch, which all this time I had been frantically looking at frequently. In my nervousness, I also repeated ushered Nelson along with his moves, and I apologize for irritating him like that: I was just that agitated. Now, I relaxed a little, having reached the turning point in the game.

So I kept my board tight and my prize denial solid, using Poke Turn to chain Bright Look for cheap prizes to increase my lead. I have 15 – 20 minutes remaining in the game, and I laud Nelson for playing in such a timely manner and not use the moments where he had the prize advantage to slow the pace of the game down. He played out his turns in proper time, and I respect him for that.

Also worth honouring was the fact that he played till the end despite the matchup getting tilted to my favour after every turn. He resiliently started an Uxie + Expert Belt chain on my last prize, where I had to use Sableye to wall and Impersonate my last Supporter in the deck, Cyrus’s Initiative, to thin my deck and cut off the last Uxie in his hand to stop the cycle.

He took down Sableye and I thinned my deck (now less than 10 cards) sufficiently to get Honchkrow SV out, as I fully charged my Murkrow SV out when Sableye was there to wall, and used Riot to KO his now lone belted Uxie.

2 – 1

I won a Battle Roads!

I received many congratulatory well-wishes, and a sweet Victory Medal to boot. I felt grateful for the lucky breaks I had, most notably being able to open with Sableye 5 out of 7 games, which was above the average of 3 or occasionally 4 I reckon.

Despite matchups being either even (such as vs the rush deck where the 1st prize taker usually takes the game, and SableDonk of course) or unfavourable (I’m looking at you VileChamp), I was able to capitalize on my highly aggressive early game to take the lead and later on the game.

Luck of course played a part and my frequent Sableye starts were key to either 1) taking cheap prizes or 2) setting up my answer to the matchup. My matchups weren’t exactly cakewalks, pretty much the opposite in fact, but a bit of early game luck to offset my lousy luck in matchups and the versatility of Sableye gave me the games.

Another thing I was satisfied with was my configuation of 24 Pokemon, 25 T/S/S and 11 Energies. Some may feel that I ran too many Pokemon and too few Energies, but my good friends Jeremy, who ran the EXACT SAME configuration won the BRs in another location on the very same day with LoxChomp as well.

I felt the high Pokemon count enabled me to obtain great board control well very early in the game, and 19 basic Pokemon, all of which except Sableye and Unown Q were 70 hp and above, would pose a strong challenge for SableDonk to donk me if I went first. Even if I did not hit a Pokemon Collector T1 like in game 2, Cyrus’ Conspiracy netted me an SP Radar to fill my bench further and a Pokemon Collector for follow-up action.

That SP Radar used turned out to save me, as Nelson went on to flip a great number of heads. Post-Seeker and post-Overconfident, I was left with a singular Luxray GL on the field with 3 damage counters on it, and it was certainly close.

I dropped the Seeker-ed Crobat G and a Pokemon Collector for 2 SP and an Uxie to net yet another Garchomp C to fill my bench and take the game. 19 basics in an SP deck FTW for MD – BW format if you wish to have a solid chance against SableDonk.

I thanked those who wished me well and I followed my TO to the other event location to see how things went. I learnt that Masters Gym (this is the name of my League Shop) members Joshua, Nicholas and Jeremy all took the top 3 spots and was proud of them. Masters FTW!

I went home satisfied and intended to play in the next BR for hopefully another Victory Medal. I stayed prepared and playtested online with some friends with the VileChamp and SableDonk matchups again, and will continue to playtest more matchups for the metagame in my next BR.

Props and Slops

Props:

• Ujin Yumeno for being a great TO to host the BRs for this whole season.
• J-Wittz’s Underground article on his States run with LoxChomp to inspire me to play this deck.
• 21 singles in my deck to allow me to answer nearly any matchup.
• Sableye for being great in MD – BW and allowing me to tie up my 21 singles nicely.
• Jeremy for confirming that 24 P/ 25 TSS / 11 E configuration was viable in this format in an SP deck.
• Xiaomage2 for sick LoxChomp art. He is working on an entire SP toolset customized by PAINT alone for me to hopefully put in my next BR report coming soon.
• Players and friends in the community and various leagues/gyms for helping me playtest and giving me tips.
• Opponents for giving me a good fight.
• Kennard for flying the flag in a foreign league location with me using a difficult deck that was new to him, and doing well with it.
• MewJadester for recommending that I write this article to share on 6P with other 6P-ers.
• REDBULLZ

Slops:

• Can’t think of any, event was well run I guess?

Thanks for reading my lengthy report. Even though it was a BR, I believe in writing thoroughly as a good mental exercise for my brain to sift through my plays in greater detail, upping the standard of my play in the future (hopefully).

Will be back with another BR report soon! I’ve got 1st place in a bigger BR, going 7 – 0 in it, so look out for it during the week.

Medziddo’s Lengthy 1st Place BRs Report For The MD – BW Format! is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

Invites are up for grabs... will you get one?

BEWARE: If you thought my last article was long, this one is easily longer. So make sure that you have the time to read it well. I cover pretty much every aspect of the game this year and how you can help yourself to cope against players from all around the world. I hope you enjoy!

It doesn’t feel like it, but yet another season of competitive Pokemon TCG play is coming to a close. We’ve all played to the best of our ability across Battle Roads, City and State Championships which have all lead down to the final hurdle, Nationals.

This is the biggest tournament of the year for most players in the competitive community. It’s everyone’s chance to take on the best players from all over the country with the aim to become victorious. Only 50 invites for the World Championships are up for grabs which is what everyone is after, but to get one of those your going to need rating points.

So how do you plan on getting those key points and reaching the top cut of this huge tournament of great players? Your whole season has been building up to this moment with all the practice, testing and deck building you’ve done to get every one of your decks as perfect as possible.

This article is going to cover every possible thing you’re going to need to know about Nationals. It will be aimed at mainly the International players playing Majestic Dawn to Call of Legends, but players from all over the world can take note of the content here to get the best out of your performance at Nats.

The Build-Up

This is the most important part of the tournament, the build-up. This is the time where you are thinking about a huge tournament with every player in the country playing against you. You’re going to need to think about the decks you play the best, the cards you’ve tried and tested and the match ups you’ve perfected.

You may have been doing this since the start of the new season, which is obviously a good place to start, but now the countdown begins to the actual day and you may be beginning to panic.

Questions you may find flying through your head as the tournament dawns closer will include:

“What deck should I run?”

“How do I play against ‘insert deck name here’?”

“What list of my chosen deck should I run?”

“How many times should I practice each match up?”

“How many games should I play before the day?!”

All of these questions are ones we are going to have to answer to make sure we have the best possible chance of doing well.

The first one is probably the golden question for every player. So let’s go over how to choose the deck for you on the day.

Choosing a Deck

The most important factor when playing Pokemon is feeling comfortable and confident when you play. I feel that this is one of the main factors that lead to a good performance on the day of a tournament.

So when choosing a deck to play for this huge tournament, firstly go over what you have played for the majority of the season. If you have been playing a number of different decks to get a feel for each one, maybe pick whichever one you felt the most comfortable playing or the one you did well with.

Choosing a deck is one of the hardest things to do if you have had good experiences with multiple decks as you feel that you can do well with all of them. If you are one of those people then I would advise you to take each one through a vigorous testing session to find which one has the best all round performance against all the ‘meta decks’.

So what is this testing that I speak of? It’s one of the most important parts of deck building to make sure that you have the best possible chance against whichever deck you happen to face.

Maximise Your Testing

Testing is the biggest part of any competitive player’s time when they aren’t sitting at the tables at tournaments.

Testing, as many of you know, is when you put a chosen deck through its paces against every type of deck in every possible kind of situation. This helps you to memorise match ups as well as find out what cards you are going to need to squeeze into your deck list to cater for any weaknesses you find.

You may find that there are many weaknesses with the actual cards in your deck, or you may find that your ability in the match up is not up to par. This is exactly what play testing is for, to find out how to play against other decks and what with.

I don’t know about you, but I have found myself lost in some games when coming up against decks that you just aren’t familiar with. A memory from a City Championships comes to mind when I was playing against a SpeedFlare deck featuring Yanmega from Supreme Victors to focus on loading it with energy and attacking for some insanely high damage.

I was playing LuxChomp and noticed the Lightning weakness early on. However, missing vital Power Sprays on his Yanmega’s “Speed Boost” Poke-Power meant that he rolled through me, dashing my chances at a top cut finish.

It’s situations like these which play testing helps you with. Even though you may not find yourself testing against any random decks because you just don’t expect to face them, doesn’t mean that a strategy you have learned against another deck of the same kind won’t help.

So how do you effectively play test? To start you should think back to your past matches and bring up any games that you feel you played badly in or your deck just didn’t help you with and put them at the top of your list. Then follow your list up with the decks you definitely know you will come up against sometime in the near future and there you have your testing criteria.

After you’ve got a selection of decks to play against, take what you feel is your best list and play against friends/fellow players with them playing the decks you are struggling with. Even if you lose time and time again, you will be finding and trying out new ways to take on the match up, rather than tackling it with no prior knowledge.

After a fair few games with the same list, try swapping out certain cards you don’t find yourself using in this certain match up for ones that make it more favourable. For example, taking out a third Uxie from an SP list for a Dragonite FB will severely improve your SP mirror match.

After you’ve done this, play the match up again and again, trying out different ways to win and you may find the perfect strategy to take down those troublesome decks. All of these games will help you in the long run, not only against certain decks, but you will start to get used to playing your own deck in general.

While you are frantically testing against your personally toughest match up, you will have been switching cards back and forth from the binder to the deck and back again. Make sure you are taking note of the switches you are making so that you can reverse them if they don’t go well.

One of the hardest things about Nationals is that you need to cater as much as you can for every single type of deck out there rather than editing your deck for certain ‘local’ metagames. While testing certain match ups more than others and switching cards into your list, make sure that you aren’t taking out specific cards for other match ups and teching too heavily against a certain deck.

For example, like the change I mentioned earlier, taking out a third Uxie for a Dragonite FB is a great move when it comes down to the SP mirror, but when Machamp is sitting opposite you, you may have wished you had kept the third Uxie in there.

These are very difficult decisions to make as you don’t know what you are going to come up against during the tournament. However, you can make wise and informed decisions rather than making it guesswork. Like the example above, the choice between three Uxies and a Dragonite FB tips one of two match ups more into your favour.

So how can you choose? Well you need to think about which match up you are going to encounter the most and choose that one. In this example, Machamp isn’t going to be nearly as popular as SP so Dragonite FB will be the smartest option to choose even though there still is a slight chance that you could be paired up against Machamp.

With that slim chance there, make sure you do test the ‘just-in-case match’ too. Even though your testing shouldn’t focus heavily on working out how to beat unpopular decks, you should definitely test them a few times so you know what to do in case you face one. You’ll be glad you did when you’re sitting opposite an opponent playing a deck you have no idea about.

The more testing you can do the better. The more you play with your chosen deck, the better you will play with it across the board as well as against the matches that you have mostly been playing against. There isn’t much time left before Nationals now, but there is still enough time to get some testing in to prepare yourself for as many games as possible. Familiarise yourself with as many decks as you can so that nothing takes you by surprise.

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, you play at your best when you are feeling comfortable and confident.

What Am I Going To Play Against?

This section of the article is going to give you a detailed run down of the decks you are most likely to encounter when you sit down at the tables.

If you go over all of the games during your season so far, you can guarantee that most of the decks you’ve played against will turn up on the day. This will include any seemingly random rogue decks and possibly any new ones you have never seen before. Let’s have a look at the definite decks you will find across the tables.

LuxChomp

Yes, this word again. This deck has been the most successful deck for the past 2 years running now and it has only been getting stronger. What makes it even harder to play against is that every single build is slightly different, even though the main strategy is the same.

The success of this deck is based on its ability to tech and adapt for any matchup it likes. The SP engine in the form of Team Galactic’s Inventions and Cyrus’s Conspiracy makes the deck super consistent as well as giving the deck significant and unique abilities over other decks.

Luxray GL Lv.X is easily the most impactful card of the current format with its ability to drag up and KO your bench sitting Pokemon such as Uxie, Azelf and any low HP basics you are planning to evolve. Luxray’s Poke-Power “Bright Look” is the key to its success.

Bright Look comes into effect when Luxray GL Lv.X hits the field and allows you to choose one of your opponent’s benched Pokemon and switch it with their active. This allows you set up a cheap KO on a weak benched Pokemon or attempt to keep a high retreat cost Pokemon active.

Pair this with free retreat and ability to do 60 damage with just a Lightning and an Energy Gain and you have a very powerful card.

Not only can it take cheap prizes itself, but it can be an aid to a surprise KO if used correctly. It would be possible to use Bright Look to drag up an unsuspecting benched Pokemon, retreat via free retreat and the KO it with a different Pokemon. This strategy is also useful for dragging up a high retreat Pokemon and then snipe around it to keep your opponent locked while you take easy prizes.

Speaking of sniping comes the best in the format, Garchomp C Lv.X. Garchomp has a single Poke-Power and attack. The attack is where it shines by utilising Double Colourless Energy and Energy Gain to power up a 3 energy cost attack in a single turn.

The attack, “Dragon Rush”, forces you to discard 2 energy attached to Garchomp in exchange for doing 80 damage to any of your opponent’s Pokemon. This is a really incredible sniping ability when it can pick off unevolved Basics/Stage 1s and staple cards such as Uxie which we all have to use.

Its Poke-Power “Healing Breath” comes into effect when Garchomp C is levelled up. Healing Breath allows the player to remove all damage counters from all their SP Pokemon which is an incredible ability.

This means that you are going to have to KO all their SP Pokemon in one hit otherwise Garchomp C Lv.X will come by to heal the damage you’ve worked so hard to put on them.

To play against this deck you are going to have to play very tightly or have enough counters to deal with each aspect of their attackers. The problem with playing against SP is that it’s so fast that it can bounce back very quickly from a KO it has received just to return it.

It also has access to a huge array of SP Pokemon to use to their advantage that can be used to stall, poison or hit for weakness, getting a majority of one hit KOs on most of your Pokemon.

They have a way out to pretty much everything which is why it is such a competitive force at the moment. With so many different builds of the same deck, there’s no way of knowing what cards they have included until you see them. Cards like Dialga G Lv.X are used to shut down any decks that rely on Poke Bodies which causes VileGar all sorts of problems while Toxicroak G Promo and Lucario GL are set to deal with any big Fighting weak Pokemon such as Regigigas and Tyranitar.

If you are an SP player coming to Nationals, I would suggest to tech your list out to cater for the mirror match as much as possible while covering as many other decks at the same time. This means adding either Dragonite FB, Ambipom G or both to make sure that you win the Colourless war.

Speaking of the Colourless war, you are going to need to decide on whether to run a 2-2 or 3-1 line of Garchomp C Lv.X with the appropriate support. The way you run it is down to personal choice in my opinion but 3-1 is said to be the best play when it comes down to winning the mirror.

With the amount of SP Pokemon at your disposal, it’s tough to choose the right ones that will cater for specific match ups, but still fit with the build you are working with. Roserade GL works great against the mirror for locking non-SP Pokemon active as well as adding damage counters each turn to tank based decks, making them easier to KO.

Smeargle UD is also great in mirror for utilising “Portrait”, copying a Supporter from your opponent’s hand to use yourself. This can grab you a quick Cyrus or Collector, but be wary when using this late game as you could copy something like Judge or PONT, throwing your game completely off.

Teching against the mirror has a lot of options for SP players and you should try out each one to get the correct balance through effective testing.

Players of other decks should be very wary of LuxChomp if you aren’t already and make sure that you know this match up inside out before turning up on the day. LuxChomp has a strong presence in early, mid and late game which makes it such a top contender right now.

Trainer lock is very strong against this deck, but it does have way around this by being able to Bright Look and Dragon Rush Pokemon on the bench which are vital to a locking strategy. Some good luck on your part and bad draws on their part can make for a bad game for them, giving them limited options rather than the ability to search out what they want, when they want.

Unfortunately, luck is a big factor when playing against LuxChomp. If they do end up drawing badly for the first few turns, given you play it right, you can maintain the advantage and win the game even though LuxChomp’s ability to spring back is tough to combat.

Power lock is also strong against LuxChomp considering it utilises so many Poke-Powers. Mesprit is a very effective way to do this and slots nicely into decks that run high numbers of Seeker and Super Scoop Up. Being able to reuse Mesprit’s “Psychic Bind” is crucial to get a steady lead while they can’t use their entire deck of Poke-Powers however, you must be aware that they could Power Spray any attempt to lock them if they have 3 SP in play.

Umbreon UD plays a part in countering SPs high amount of Poke-Powers too by using “Moonlight Fang” to prevent all damage done to it from Pokemon sporting Powers. This means that they will only be able to attack with basics forms of their SP attackers, or have to snipe the bench to take prizes. An interesting tech to test further.

Being aware of Power Spray is also crucial when playing against SP, no matter which deck you are playing. Make sure you keep track of how many SP Pokemon they have in play before you plan the Poke-Powers you need to use in a turn.

‘Baiting’ a Power Spray is a crafty technique where you attempt to use a Poke-Power which isn’t really relevant to your turn to try and get them to use their Power Spray and then follow up by using a crucial Power and getting away with it. Be careful while doing this though as it could throw off your turn if you end up going through with a Power you don’t actually want to use.

Splashing in Colourless Pokemon with at least a 60 damage attack is a very good idea because you will be able to get rid of Garchomp C Lv.Xs early on. This is much easier for those people already playing SP as there are a lot of options, but those playing Stage 2 decks will struggle fitting these in.

It’s definitely impractical to fit things like Dragonite FB into a deck that just doesn’t run Double Colourless Energy so what are you supposed to do against this powerful deck?

All you can really do is play your best. I can’t stress enough that you need to test this match up extensively because there is no doubt that you will come up against it. No matter what deck you are playing there will be a way to play against it even if you have no obvious counter.

Tank decks have a good advantage against LuxChomp as they can’t deal massive amounts of damage in one go meaning that they will have to attack more than once to get through your defences. This makes decks like Steelix, DialgaChomp and even Scizor Prime good choice in an SP heavy metagame, which Nationals will be.

Machamp will be an option to play this year considering how much SP will turn up, the only problem is that it won’t have a very good match up against everything else as well as SP still having an answer to it. SP can still win the match up with enough practice, skill and luck which makes playing Machamp a risky move especially when match ups across the board aren’t great.

Overall, this deck will turn up in high numbers especially because Luxray and Uxie Lv.X are both pretty cheap to buy now considering the situation in the US. However, this means that a lot of players may pick up the deck only a short time before Nationals and you need experience with the deck to take it a long way.

This can be good for people that have been playing the deck for the whole season as experienced players will have played the mirror match a hundred times over.

The most popular deck in the World is bound to get even more popular just before Nationals so make sure you don’t get caught out.

DialgaChomp

This is the second of the SP-based decks I have on the list and it shouldn’t be taken lightly just because it doesn’t see as much play as LuxChomp.

DialgaChomp features one of, if not the strongest trainer locks in the format with the ability to lock your opponent, but not yourself. If you pair that with the ability to tank with Special Metal, healing via Garchomp C Lv.X and full access to the SP engine and you have a top contender.

The main strategy of this deck is to get a Dialga G using its first attack “Deafen” as soon as possible while starting to set up another one on the bench with Special Metal Energy. This is why Deafen is such a strong defence against most decks.

Being able to lock your opponent slows them down while you go ahead and start setting up your Dialga, ready for some heavy hitting next turn. With attacks such as “Second Strike” and “Remove Lost” hitting for 90 and 100 respectively when paired with an Expert Belt, no Pokemon is going to last long with no way to one hit KO it with Special Metals attached.

Remove Lost also has the chance to Lost Zone multiple energy attached to the defending Pokemon with lucky heads flips. This can starve you of energy pretty quickly so be aware that this can happen.

Not only can this Pokemon hit for high damage and take a strong hit, but Dialga G Lv.X has a Poke Body to shut down many decks. “Time Crystal” comes into effect as soon as the Level X hits the field and its effect shuts off every Poke Body that isn’t owned by an SP Pokemon. This means that Spiritomb AR, Vileplume UD and any other Pokemon that have strong Poke Bodies are rendered useless until Dialga G Lv.X is dealt with.

This can obviously make VileGar’s life very hard. With Dialga G Lv.X being able to shut off Spiritomb and Vileplume’s Poke Bodies, there will be no trainers in hand to deal some decent damage with Poltergeist. It also doesn’t help that Dialga boasts a -20 Resistance to Psychic making it difficult to do anything of use if the Level X hits the field.

To get around this deck if you’re paired against it you are going to have to out speed it or hope that they can’t get the Deafen lock on too early. Whether you are playing SP, VileGar or anything else, you need to do all you can to stop that Level X hitting the field with too many Special Metals attached. You either do this or take cheap prizes around the tank to keep up with the prize exchange.

Out-speeding it is definitely the way to go, but all is not lost if they do manage to set up rather quickly. Just as another note, you could consider using Drifblim UD as a counter to any tank decks if you are really struggling against them.

SP players should take advantage of the trainer lock by grabbing crucial resources such as Poke Turns and Power Sprays to use when the lock is broken, but Power Sprays are key to taking down the tank by being able to stop Garchomp C Lv.X’s “Healing Breath”.

Doing this will either force them to keep a damaged Dialga on field or make them Poke Turn it up and start again. If they do choose to Poke Turn it, make sure you take full advantage of this and get cheap Kos while you still can.

Make sure you use your Colourless counters to full effect here if they are forced to use “Dragon Rush” to score a prize. This means you can limit the amount of Healing Breaths they can use as well as scoring simple prizes.

Any other decks should do as mentioned above and keep Dialga off of the board for as long as possible. Build damage onto it fast before they can start using Healing Breath to take off the damage, or focus on attacking around the tank to stay in the prize exchange is a good approach.

Play this like any other SP game and you will be able to cope with it. I personally think that this is a very underrepresented deck in the current format being caused simply by its slower set up than LuxChomp. But when this deck sets up, it can take prize after prize, Lost Zoning your vital energy with nothing you can do to come close to knocking it out. Definitely one to watch out for.

Sablelock

The third and final SP deck on this list and it is a very tricky one to play against. This deck combines the traditional SP Engine and Garchomp C Lv.X with Pokemon such as Sableye SF and Honchkrow SV. Featuring a heavy lock and disruption strategy behind these big attackers means that you won’t have any resources to set up while they take board control.

Sableye SF is the perfect starter for this deck making full use of its “Overeager” Poke Body to go first and grab the first Supporter with “Impersonate”. Impersonate allows the player using the attack to search their deck, choose a Supporter and use the effect of it as the effect of the attack.

This means that you can grab a really quick Supporter ahead of your opponent in preparation for your next turn. However, this attack is primarily used to search out the Supporter Cyrus’s Initiative to start the disruption.

Cyrus’s Initiative gets you to flips 2 coins and for each heads you can look at your opponent’s hand, choose a card and place it at the bottom of their deck.

Getting 2 heads on this attack can be crippling for the opponent. Being able to drop key search cards from their hand such as Bebe’s Search, Pokemon Collector and Cyrus’s Conspiracy means that they can start to set up while you rely on top decks, hoping to stay in the game.

As mentioned earlier, this deck can be really tricky to play against. If they don’t roll well on Cyrus’s Initiative then you will have a better chance of staying in the game, but all you can do if they hit some crucial heads is to make sure your deck is consistent enough to come back from it. Including cards such as Professor Oak’s New Theory and Copycat ensures that you can refresh a bad hand if this kind of situation arises, the only problem is drawing into it at the right time.

In the UK, this deck hasn’t seen much play but has 3 main variations. These are straight Sablelock, Sablelock with Luxray GL and Sablelock with Blaziken FB.

Straight Sablelock is out to get the lock on you as soon as possible with the aim to maintain the lock with cards such as Chatot G being able to control the cards you are relying on to draw.

Expect to see it more teched out with cards such as Dragonite FB for the SP mirror and Honchkrow G can be thrown in for cheap snipe knock outs or to grab 2 Team Galactic’s Inventions, namely Power Spray, to help the lock further.

Sablelock with Blaziken, or ChenLock as it is more commonly known, has much more attack power than the traditional Sablelock. The inclusion of Blaziken FB and the Level X means that the deck can start to incorporate more attack power into its build, something that the original Sablelock is possibly lacking if the lock isn’t successful.

Putting in these cards would possibly be at the cost of Chatot G so hopefully you can break out of the lock a little bit quicker than against the traditional build.

The third variant of Sablelock is probably the newest and comes with Luxray GL Lv.X to include further disruption with “Bright Look” and take cheap prizes when combined with “Flash Impact”. The inclusion of this makes the list pretty tight and means the luxuries of the traditional list such as Chatot G and Honchkrow G must be placed aside to fit in a decent Luxray line.

The inclusion of Luxray GL Lv.X also improves the Gyarados match up fairly heavily considering the original Sablelock can have a tough time against it. This means that the list will probably contain Lucario GL just to tip the match up even further in Sablelock’s favour.

If you are playing against Sablelock with Gyarados, be wary of Judge, Luxray GLs and Honchkrow SV as all of them are designed to slow you down or take down your attacker before you power them up.

Speaking of Honckrow SV, this is one of the most powerful Pokemon in Sablelock. Slipped into Con Le’s winning deck list of US Nationals in 2010, this card can utilise both Special Darkness and Double Colourless energy to hit for very high amounts of damage in the mid-late game.

Its attack “Riot” for just a Dark and a Double Colourless does 30 base damage but adds 10 damage for each unevolved Pokemon in play. This makes it a great attacker when you are playing against the SP mirror, even though it has Lightning weakness.

Its Poke-Power “Darkness Restore” is why Gyarados players need to watch out for this heavy hitting bird. When they use this power, your opponent can pluck any Basic Pokemon from your discard pile and place it onto your bench.

As most of you know, Gyarados needs 3 Magikarp in the discard to maximise its damage output, but with Honckrow dragging them out and placing them on the bench, Gyarados’ output is limited. If you know that Honchkrow will be hitting the field soon, make sure you keep a “Psychic Bind” going with Mesprit LA or make sure your bench is full at all times to avoid this from happening.

For players of any other deck, you will need to avoid the lock at all costs to beat Sablelock. There isn’t much you can do about this during the first few turns, but if they flip poorly with Cyrus’s Conspiracy, make sure you take as much of an advantage as possible before they can make any sort of comeback.

While doing this however, make sure you are wary of specific techs such as Toxicroak G Promo and Lucario GL so that you can figure out which variant of the deck they are running. SP players should play this as a mirror match would go and try to get a KO on Honchkrow before it does too much damage with Luxray GL Lv.X.

VileGar players are going to struggle with this match up as Sableye can utilise its Overconfident attack to KO your Spiritombs as you put damage on them with “Darkness Grace”.

The only thing you can really do against it is get a quick Vileplume lock going along with simply out speeding them to get using “Poltergeist” as soon as possible. Locking their trainers is a bit of a blow for Sablelock as utilising Poke Turn and Energy Gain is key for its revenge KOs, so make sure you can keep this going as long as possible.

Another note is to keep wary of any Luxray variants you may come up against as they will Bright Look your Vileplume and attack around it or just move your Spiritomb out of the way to allow their use of trainers. The heavy Darkness typing of the deck also hurts your matchup as Honchkrow can cause you some trouble.

Just try and get rid of Murkrows before they evolve or get rid of it as soon as possible by using “Shadow Room”, making full use of Honckrow having a Poke-Power.

As mentioned earlier, this deck isn’t very popular in the UK but with Sami Sekkoum taking it to London States and winning the tournament with just the straight build, we may see a rise in numbers. He played a lot of unfavourable match ups that day and managed to still take the tournament by playing smart and as well as he normally does. This will open people’s eyes to how well Sablelock can do and will possibly get people into testing with it, possibly taking it to Nationals.

Overall, this is a very strong contender for the title. With the correctly teched version being able to stop almost any deck with its severely crippling lock, you can probably expect to see a couple of these on the day.

VileGar

This deck will without a doubt be up there with the most popular plays of the day. With one of the easiest set of Pokemon to collect for the list apart from a few, many people will pick this up and play with it as it has some very strong match ups across the board.

The strategy behind this deck is to keep a trainer lock hold on your opponent from the first turn by using Spiritomb AR as a starter. The basic form of Gengar, Gastly SF can also hold a strong trainer lock from the start with its “Pitch Dark” attack.

However, Spiritomb is the ideal starter as it can use its first attack “Darkness Grace” to begin evolving Pokemon on turn one, in exchange for putting a single damage counter onto it.

Being able to search out any evolution from the deck and place it onto a benched Pokemon turn one is a very powerful ability, this means that you can start building up an essential Vileplume to keep the lock for the whole game.

Spiritomb’s trainer lock only goes as far as being in effect while it’s active, so how are you going to keep the trainer lock going? Vileplume UD is the answer. Vileplume has a Poke Body called “Allergy Flower” which stops both players from playing trainers while it is on the field.

Trainer lock will cripple a lot of decks which run things like Expert Belt and Team Galactic’s Inventions as they will have to play without them for the time that Vileplume is on the field. Getting this out quickly is very easy by using Spiritomb’s Darkness Grace turn one to get Gloom going and then again on the second turn to get out Vileplume if it isn’t in your hand.

This means that a strong and efficient trainer lock can be sustained so that Spiritomb doesn’t have to stay in the active spot.

So why does this trainer lock need to be maintained? Well that is where the main attacker Gengar SF comes in. Gengar has an attack called “Poltergeist” which does 30 damage times the number of Trainer, Supporter and Stadium cards in the opponent’s hand for just a Psychic and a Colourless Energy.

With Vileplume and Spiritomb keeping your opponent from playing trainers, they are sure to be staying put in their hands ready for a Poltergeist for some high damage.

This is where the maintenance of a trainer lock is most important as you need the opponent to be holding a fair amount of trainers to deal high damage while they have limited ways of getting rid of them.

As well as Poltergeist, Gengar has another attack called “Shadow Room”. This attack, for a single energy drops 3 damage counters on any of your opponent’s Pokemon, but where it really shines is that it can drop 6 damage counters on any Pokemon with a Poke-Power.

This means that those Uxies and Azelfs sitting on your opponent’s side of the field are waiting to be sniped off for cheap prizes when paired with cards like Crobat G. This means that VileGar can still hold its ground in the prize exchange even if the trainer lock isn’t maintained.

Gengar has two other features that make it such a powerful deck. The first is its Poke-Power “Fainting Spell”. When Gengar is knocked out by damage from an attack, the opponent flips a coin and if it lands on heads, the attacking Pokemon is also knocked out.

This can put you at a serious disadvantage in the long run as an attacker you may have worked hard to power up will have been KO’d simply because of a coin flip. SP players will not be able to Power Spray this either as it doesn’t happen during the opponent’s turn, but rather in between turns.

This makes it very hard to get around so things such as poison damage, placing damage counters and Uxie’s “Psychic Restore” are the only ways to avoid a dreaded Fainting Spell flip.

The final attribute of Gengar is the Level X. It has a useful Poke-Power called “Level Down” which forces the opponent to shuffle any Level X on the field into their deck. This is obviously very powerful against SP when paired with a trainer lock as they have limited supplies to get their Level Xs back with supporters.

The attack “Compound Pain” can also get a couple of cheap KOs by being able to hit 30 damage on all of the opponent’s Pokemon with damage counters already on them. This can net a couple of prizes in one turn so be wary of leaving damaged Pokemon on the field which are very close to being KO’d.

Playing against this deck can be tricky and you will have to think ahead before deciding what to place on the field and keep in your hand. SP players will either need to relieve the trainer lock early on by Bright Looking away Spiritombs or by dragging up Vileplumes when they hit the field to KO with Uxie Lv.X.

Doing this will leave you with all your TGIs free to play getting you cheap KOs around the board while Gengar sits there attacking for low damage with Poltergiest.

Any other players will need to utilise their Bebe’s Search and fellow supporters well to keep the trainer count in their hand low. Limiting Gengar’s attack power is key to winning this match up as they won’t be able to get enough damage onto your active to KO it.

You will also need to be careful about playing Uxies and Azelfs as mentioned earlier as they will be picked off by Gengar’s Shadow Room if Poltergeist becomes too weak. Only play them if you are desperate for more cards or you have a healthy enough of a comeback ready to keep up with the prize exchange.

KOing a Gengar in one hit is hard for any deck that doesn’t run Dark types in their list so the only other thing to do is hit around it as much as possible to take prizes. This will also mean that you don’t run into any Fainting Spells to take down key attackers. A useful trick is using Uxie’s Psychic Restore to put Uxie on the bottom of the deck after applying damage, meaning that you can avoid a Fainting Spell flip if you are only 20 damage away from a KO.

Be aware of Seeker when playing against this deck if Broken Time-Space is on the field. While you are piling damage onto Gengar, ready to KO it another turn with Uxie, they can use Gengar’s free retreat to skip to the bench and then use Seeker to pick it straight up ruining all of your hard work.

This is a very popular strategy for recycling Gengars when playing against VileGar so make sure this doesn’t happen by keeping track of their Seeker use throughout the game.

Also be careful if you are running Level Xs as Gengar Lv.X can get rid of them with a simple Poke-Power, not only getting rid of your Level X, but lowering your active’s HP as well.

This means that they need fewer trainers in the hand to grab a prize and makes your life harder to fetch that Level X back while under trainer lock. SP players will need to keep Power Sprays handy if Vileplume isn’t in play, or have supporters ready to search the Level X back the next turn.

I predict that a lot of VileGar will be at Nationals, probably coming second in numbers below LuxChomp simply because it’s a cheap alternate to SP that is still very competitive. To cater for this, make sure you have enough outs in your decks to function well under trainer lock.

Running more Supporters like Bebe’s Search and PONT can get you out of tight situations when faced with trainer lock. Players may want to run Dark techs if their VileGar match up does become a huge problem.

You will need to knock out Glooms before they become Vileplumes or Haunters before they become Gengars if you want to stay ahead of the game. This will keep you free from trainer lock for long enough to set up a decent set of attackers as well as being able to slow them down before they get any Stage 2s set up.

Early prizes via the knocking out of Spiritombs will be handy when playing the deck, but don’t be taken by surprise if they have a couple of copies of Twins to make up for this. You will need to slow them down as much as possible to get set up before they lock you from doing the same.

This is definitely a match up you should test thoroughly as I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these make the top cut. The strength of being able to lock half of your opponent’s deck from the game makes for a very strong strategy which can hit hard and sweep in a couple of turns. Watch out for this one.

LostGar

Talking about VileGar means that I must mention the other variant of Gengar, LostGar. This deck hasn’t been doing too well considering everyone thought it would be the most broken deck in the format, but the version which has been causing a stir in the metagame is LostGar with Vileplume.

This version of LostGar has already taken a Nationals title in Finland this year, beating numerous LuxChomps in the top cut to become victorious. This deck pairs the ability of lost zoning Pokemon, making them useless for the rest of the game with Vileplume’s ability to lock trainers aswell.

Gengar Prime sits at the heart of this strategy as its first attack clearly shows. “Hurl Into Darkness” for just a single Psychic energy allows you to look at your opponent’s hand and put as many Pokemon you find there for each Psychic energy attached to Gengar into the Lost Zone.

So if you have 2 Psychic Energy attached to Gengar Prime when using the attack, you can put two Pokemon you may find in your opponent’s hand into the Lost Zone for the rest of the game.

But why would you want to put Pokemon into the Lost Zone and not take prizes? Well here enters Lost World, one of the most hyped cards of the season. There was a ton of speculation as to whether this card would get released in HS: Triumphant and everyone breathed a sigh of relief when it wasn’t, but when Call of Legends was released along came this very card.

Lost World is a stadium card that allows you to announce yourself the winner if your opponent has 6 or more Pokemon in the Lost Zone. This means that without taking a single prize, you can still win the game. This caused uproar in the Pokemon community upon release, but the sheer amount of teching against it and how it struggles in top cut meant that it didn’t do nearly as well as many people predicted.

This all changed when the European Challenge Cup took place. This tournament saw Andrea C take his version of LostGar all the way to the finals only to lose against LuxChomp with Weavile G. This was LostGar’s first major triumph in a tournament and the variant that Andrea played was also talked about a lot.

He paired Gengar Prime with Vileplume UD and included a Gengar SF tech which is the version that I think some people will be brave enough to take to Nationals.

As mentioned in the VileGar analysis, Vileplume UD locks both players from playing any trainer cards as long as it is on the field. This paired very nicely with Gengar Prime plucking Pokemon from the opponent’s hand to render them useless for the remainder of the game as it not only stops them from playing key Pokemon, but it stops them playing their trainers to make a come back as well.

Vileplume is also there to fuel the inclusion of Gengar SF’s Poltergeist attack. Also, mentioned in the VileGar section of this article, Gengar SF can build up some high damage and take multiple prizes, turn after turn.

This strategy made up for LostGar’s original flaw, taking prizes under a timed format. With the winning condition completely ignoring the taking of prizes, LostGar was struggling to hold its own when it came to playing in a best of three format, but that is where Gengar SF comes in.

If there isn’t enough time to get the Lost World strategy going, then the player can switch to a VileGar strategy to lock their opponent and start taking prizes the traditional way. This leads to a stronger top cut game as the player of the deck now has the option of taking prizes rather than lost zoning Pokemon.

This deck obviously has a strong match up against SP as it can hurl Level X Pokemon from their hand into the Lost Zone, crippling their strategy. The only way to play around this is to only grab the Level Xs when you are going to play them in the same turn to avoid them getting lost zoned.

Playing around the early trainer lock and getting KOs early is also the way to play against this deck. The deck plays very similarly to VileGar so what you have learned from playing against that is what you should apply here, while still being wary about the Lost Zone.

If you play smart with your Pokemon searches while attempting to stop Vileplume hitting the field, you should have a good chance against LostGar. Playing creatively to time is also a good strategy as they need to set up and play fast to meet their winning condition.

Gyarados will have major problems with this version of the deck. Being under early trainer lock stops you from playing Junk Arm to get Magikarp into the discard pile early on before they get lost zoned. If Gengar Prime hits the field fast enough to lost zone just one of your Magikarps, you are going to have a tough time coming back.

Just one of you Karps being lost zoned means your total damage output drops by 30, without a way to get it back. The inclusion of Vileplume also stops you from playing Expert Belt, Pokemon Rescue and Warp Point which are all vital cards to get going and get a few cheap KOs.

The only thing you can do is try to out speed the deck and have all Magikarp in the discard pile before Gengar Prime hits the field. Regice deals with a starting Spiritomb, but it is a very hard match up to play against for Gyarados players.

Cards to watch out for in this match up include Spiritomb TM. This is the ‘other Spiritomb’ from Triumphant which has a Poke-Power called “Spooky Whirlpool”. This Power forces you to shuffle your hand into your deck and draw 6 cards, which doesn’t sound too bad, but the reason they are doing this is to ruin your efforts of keeping Pokemon out of your hand.

The luck of the draw is all you can rely on when they play this card unless you can Power Spray it if you’re playing SP or keep a Mesprit bind early on.

You should also be wary of Twins in this game seeing as they have no intention of taking prizes early on. While you are getting KOs on their Spiritombs and benched Pokemon they can be using high counts of Twins to grab any two cards from their deck, a very reliable way to get set up as quickly as possible to make a comeback. Don’t get caught off guard thinking that they won’t be able to search things out when they will potentially have Twins ready to propel their set up.

Mr Mime CL is also one to watch out for as its Poke-Power “Trick Reveal” allows them to look at your hand to see how many Pokemon you are holding before they Hurl Into Darkness or find out how many trainers you have before using Gengar SF.

However, when they use this card, the opponent has to show you their hand also and make sure you use this to get a decent insight into their next few turns.

Using this information can help you to understand whether they have the ability to carry out certain moves in the next few turns. In my personal experience against LostGar, this has helped me to mould my next few turns as I know what they will and won’t be able to do depending on their top decks. Keep this in mind when they play this card.

The final card you will always have to keep wary of is Seeker. As in the VileGar match up, Seeker can help them to heal off Gengars and let them put it straight back down again through the use of Broken Time-Space, but this card serves a dual purpose in LostGar.

Not only can they heal off Pokemon by picking them up, but they force you to pick up a Pokemon on the bench and place it into your hand, perfect for them to hurl away next turn.

To play around this, just make sure you have a pretty good choice of Pokemon to pick up as you don’t want to be picking up fully powered Pokemon or Level X just for them to get rid of. Having the choice to pick up an Uxie or Azelf after use means that you won’t be losing anything too valuable to your game.

Overall, like VileGar, this deck has strong match ups across the board. Gyarados as mentioned earlier is going to have a really tough time against this deck if it gets going quickly enough. I don’t think it will be as popular as VileGar when it comes to Nationals, but I’m sure we will see a fair few Gengar Primes in their builds. Make sure you test this one as much as VileGar as it can be a very tricky one to get out of.

Gyarados

Yes, I can still function, thanks to BTS (Caution: May cause harder matchups against other Stage 1 or Stage 2 decks.)

This deck has seen a major fall in play since City Championships due to all the LostGar hype going around at the time. Even after we saw that LostGar just wasn’t as popular as we all thought, people haven’t been picking Gyarados back up even though it is still a more than viable deck.

Gyarados focuses on getting 3 Magikarp into the discard pile to fuel its attack “Tail Revenge”. This attack does 30 damage times the number of Magikarp in the discard pile and it’s one of the fastest decks out there. By using Sableye SF to grab a quick Pokemon Collector on the first turn, you can search out Magikarps and Regice to start discarding those fish.

Regice is one of the most important cards in the deck to make use of its Poke-Power “Regi Move”. This Power allows you to discard 2 cards from your hand and then force your opponent to switch an unevolved active with one of their bench. This is a perfect play against a Spiritomb start to move it out of the way and get out of a trainer lock early on.

This deck will start off fast by eventually having a Gyarados with Expert Belt attached filling the active spot and hitting for a maximum of 110 damage with 3 Karps in the discard.

Other cards which will aid this strategy include Junk Arm, Broken Time-Space and Super Scoop Up which all focus on abusing Uxies, fast evolution and the discard of cards in the hand to reuse trainers that have already been played. That makes for quite a speedy set up with an incredible amount of recovery too.

Playing against this deck can be difficult simply because it is so fast. Taking out Magikarps early on for cheap prizes does seem like a good idea, but that does just help them further towards their strategy, fueling Gyarados’ attack, so if you do this make sure you’re ready for a counter attack.

Gyarados relies heavily on Expert Belt and Rescue Energy and it may struggle if they just can’t draw into these fast enough. If this is the case during a game against this deck then you should take full advantage. If they can’t get the Rescue Energy out quick enough, try to get rid of that Gyarados as soon as possible to put their fourth Magikarp into the discard pile rather than them getting it back.

This will make their job much harder to try and retrieve their lost Magikarp as cards like Pokemon Rescue are not very searchable.

It’s also worth taking advantage of them not being able to hit an Expert Belt if this is the case during a game. This means that their damage is limited to only 90 for that turn meaning that they won’t be able to knock out many Pokemon in one hit, unless Crobat G is put to extensive use.

Any deck playing against Gyarados should be wary of the use of Mesprit and Seeker. Mesprit can keep a very strong power lock over you for around 3 or 4 turns if flips on Super Scoop Up go their way. This can be crippling in the early game if you are holding on to a crucial Uxie, ready for a “Set Up” that you just can’t use.

Mesprit can also be dropped just before you attempt to “Flash Bite” to tack on the damage you need for a KO on Gyarados. This can leave you in a tight spot, not being able to pull off the turn you have been planning for a while so get your Flash Bites in as soon as possible and plan them as far in advance as you can.

You need to expect the play of Seeker as well when playing against this deck. You should be wary of them playing this card when you haven’t been able to KO a Gyarados in a single blow. If Gyarados has been damaged heavily during a previous attack, your opponent will attempt to use Warp Point and get it to the bench and then use Seeker to nullify your damage and, in conjunction with Broken Time-Space, they will be able to put it straight back down and start fresh.

This can be very annoying when you are under strict power lock for a number of turns and are just out of reach for the KO. Try not to let them catch you off guard with this strategic move.

A final card I just mentioned, Warp Point, will potentially cause trouble when you haven’t got them under a form of trainer lock. Thinking you have a Pokemon up front with enough HP to take a hit can be proved wrong when they drop Warp Point and force you to drag up one of your weaker basics just to get KO’d for a cheap prize.

Be wary of this when playing this match up and don’t leave yourself thinking that they won’t be able to take a prize during that turn. Keeping a fairly set up Pokemon on the bench for this kind of situation is recommended.

If you are playing SP, make sure you have a Lucario GL handy to take care of Gyarados’ very useful +30 Lightning weakness so that it’s much easier to knock out with Luxray GL Lv.X’s “Flash Impact” or “Trash Bolt”.

Trash Bolt is a nice way to go if they have managed to get the Expert Belt for Gyarados as Flash Impact will be 30 damage short even with Lucario’s help. Flash Bites from Crobat G can help, but finding three of them for just one Gyarados KO is difficult to do with limited Poke Turns.

Try to get Trash Bolt going if you can along with keeping Aaron’s handy at the right time since you’ll be discarding energies pretty quickly.

Expert Belt is also an option for you if you are struggling against Gyarados with SP. Attaching this to your Luxray means that you can one hit KO a Gyarados with Trash Bolt without the need for any Crobat drops. However, this card isn’t easily searchable unless you are behind on prizes and run Twins (which I would suggest anyway).

Anything that isn’t SP should try their best to get damage on the board quickly and try to get the KOs on Gyarados before Rescue Energy or Expert Belt hit. If you feel Gyarados will be a threat during your Nationals then definitely run some form of hand disruption such as Judge or Looker’s to slow them down after they have grabbed Magikarps with Collector.

If you are running a deck based off of trainer lock, you should have a decent chance against this deck. If you are in a position where you can have two Spiritombs on the field then take it so that they can’t use Regimove to move the lock out of the way. From there you should be able to keep the lock on for long enough so that they can’t get a fully powered up attacker going until it’s too late.

I appreciate that these will be hard to fit into decks that just don’t have room for it. Saying this, I don’t think that Gyarados will be that popular in the UK, simply because of the amount of VileGar that will be there. Trainer lock really hurts Gyarados especially if they can’t utilise Regice to move Spiritomb out of the way when two are on the field. There will be a few out there so make sure you try out the match up in your testing regime just in case you come across one.

Magnezone/Machamp

Magnezone Prime was a somewhat overlooked card when it was released because everyone was focusing on the Poke-Power rather than the attack. With the loss of Claydol leaving everyone frantically finding a replacement, as soon as they saw Magnezone’s Power they were thinking they had found it. But then they looked at its retreat cost and disregarded it completely.

This was until the European Challenge Cup took place and a deck involving Magnezone and Regirock LA was the only deck in the tournament to go undefeated (6-0) in swiss.

This sparked a crazy amount of speculation even while the tournament took place as people originally thought that the build featured Machamp Prime as well as Regirock, but this wasn’t the case.

This advance speculation of the list bore a new deck, Magnezone/Machamp which has been very successful during the States season this side of the pond by taking several top cut spots over the London/Bournemouth weekend.

This deck combines big HP stage 2 Pokemon that can hit for some very high damage fairly quickly. Machamp covers all SP match ups fairly easily and the inclusion of Machamp Prime can keep the damage coming against all other decks. Being a very new deck on the scene makes people wonder how to play against it when they are sitting opposite and can cause a very quick loss if you don’t know what you’re doing, so I would check in on this part to prepare.

This deck is focused on hitting for high amounts of damage while recycling energy and attaching it multiple times per turn to fuel this. Magnezone’s attack “Lost Burn” is at the centre of all this as it does 50 damage times the number of energy you choose to throw into the Lost Zone for just a Lightning and a Colourless energy.

What makes this attack even more powerful is that the energy can come from any Pokemon on your side of the field, not just the ones attached to Magnezone.

Using Lost Burn can rack up some serious damage when you use it in conjunction with Junk Arm and Regirock LA. Regirock has a Poke-Power called “Regi Cycle” which allows you to discard 2 cards from your hand and then choose a Fighting Energy from your discard pile.

You are then allowed to attach this energy to Regirock. Pairing this with discarding the energy in the first place with Junk Arm makes it a bit easier to get multiple energy attachments per turn.

Hopefully you can see the synergy already between these two Pokemon as you are attaching energy without using up your attachment for the turn, which means more fuel for Magnezone’s Lost Burn.

Furthermore, you may also be able to see the synergy with Machamp Prime seeing as there is the inclusion of Fighting Energy to combine with “Fighting Tag”.

Some variants don’t choose to run Regirock or Lighting energy and use it to combat an SP heavy metagame by just using Machamp SF and Rainbow Energy to fuel Magnezone instead. This means that you have a strong answer to SP, the highest deck count in the country, as well as a strong output against any other decks which straight Machamp struggles with.

So what should you expect when facing this deck? You should definitely expect to come up against some pretty bulky stage 2s with high HP and hard hitting attacks. You should also expect to have a tough game when facing this deck when it’s fully set up.

Trying to disrupt them is good at first, but they will have a way out every time when they get Magnezone going. By using its Poke-Power “Magnetic Draw” Magnezone can let the player draw until they have 6 cards which means using cards such as Judge will be almost useless.

Speaking of Judge, they are sure to have a high count of these due to the sheer fact that they can be drawing cards from it as mentioned earlier. The usual risk of running Judge is that you aren’t going to know what you will draw yourself even if your opponent is in the same boat.

It is a great disruption card to knock your opponent off course slightly, but the strength of the card in Magnezone focuses on the fact that you can give your opponent a relatively small hand, but make yours larger using it.

Even after using Judge, with multiple Magnezones in play they can use Magnetic Draw more than once in any given turn. This means they can Judge, use the Poke-Power, use the cards they drew and then use another Magnetic Draw from a different Magnezone. This isn’t an unlikely situation when facing this deck since they will more than likely be running a very thick line of it seeing as it is their main attacker.

If you aren’t seeing a second Magnezone for a while, make sure you are ready for some heavy Machamp attacking. If they haven’t had a second Magnezone in play quickly then you can expect them to have gone heavier on the Machamp lines than Magnezone, making Machamp the main attacker. If this is the case, be wary of a Machamp Prime inclusion which helps with their late game and even further with their match ups against anything that isn’t SP.

If you are playing SP, then be very wary of this match up as it is definitely out to get you specifically. The high HP of Magnezone and Machamp means that you won’t be one-shotting them at all and without many bench sitters, there isn’t really a way to get around them either. What you need to do is utilise your Lucario GL and Toxicroak G Promo (if you choose to run it) to their full use.

Being able to hit for Magnezone’s weakness is a definite plus as they will be attacking with it at some point during the game. A Promocroak can one hit KO a Magnezone Prime following a KO with just an addition of a Flash Bite from Crobat G. This can really hurt them if they are running thin on the Magnezone line and gets rid of their main source of draw power.

To deal with Machamp, you’re going to need to play a little smarter when using SP. Uxie will be your main Pokemon here, but not always using the Level X to get the one hit ko. If you need to stretch a little too far to get the KO in one attack, then just use a basic Uxie to “Psychic Restore” for 50 (without Lucario GL) and follow up with a “Dragon Rush” to finish it off.

This can be tricky to pull off, but it can leave your opponent in a sticky situation if this is their only strong attacker on the field.

To keep up with the quick prize exchange, setting up a Dragon Rush plus Flash Bite on a benched Regirock is something to keep in mind. This will net you a cheap prize when you desperately need it. Not only this, but Regirock is a nice target for Roserade GL to stick in the active spot with “Poison Bind”.

One of my personal favourite SP techs can lock Regirock in the active spot with a high retreat cost and no access to its Poke-Power. Sure, this deck will run Warp Point, but if they are low on cards and there’s nothing else you can do, attempt to pull this off by dragging them up with Bright Look and locking them in place.

If you aren’t playing SP, you will have a more pleasant time, but don’t think that this decks SP hate keeps you safe. You will need to play incredibly smart to keep on top of prizes and keep track of all their energy use throughout the course of the game.

Through my experience of playing against the deck, keeping track of what energy they need to attach and where is a very beneficial thing to do. This can help you to work out whether they are likely to pull off a return KO with Lost Burn or Take Out.

This deck will utilise Broken Time-Space to keep the bulky stage 2s coming fast and this could work to your advantage if you are also playing heavy stage 2 lines. If your Broken Time-Space just isn’t drawing from the deck, wait for them to play theirs and use it to full advantage.

This will increase your speed up to the same point as theirs and you will need to attempt to maintain the exchange from there.

One thing I must mention is that if you are playing a trainer lock based deck, then be wary that they may include a single Spiritomb AR just for situations like these.

Trainer lock would originally hurt this deck a lot considering the amount of trainers they need to run, so the inclusion of Spiritomb allows them to search it out with Pokemon Collector and start evolving by using Darkness Grace. Doing this means the deck can still set up and start taking prizes fairly early on.

VileGar is still a strong play against this deck seeing as the trainer lock hurts them in general even with a single Spiritomb inclusion as well as the type advantage over both Machamps. Anything else can struggle with this really bulky deck and a quick start on your behalf can get rid of basics and stage 1s before they become troublesome.

This deck will be very sparse at Nationals, but if you are expecting to be hitting the top tables I’m sure it will be up there and you must be prepared for it. Play testing against variants of this deck is a good idea, with or without Machamp Prime as this can be a very tough match up if it goes on for too long.

Machamp Variants

Machamp has seen a huge decline in play since City Championships seeing as Gyarados was seeing more play along with the fact that other things apart from SP were gaining popularity.

The thing is that Machamp thrives in an SP rich metagame, but when it comes to playing against other decks, it starts to have some issues. It has a terrible match up against VileGar due to trainer lock and Psychic weakness and loses almost every time against Gyarados as it just can’t get enough damage on the board with Gyarados’ Fighting resistance.

So why mention the deck? Well there are two main variations of the deck that can still hold their ground in a competitive environment. The SpeedChamp variant focuses on speed and setting up a turn one “Take Out” to start ripping up basics and a fairly new deck involving Vileplume UD locks the opponent as much as possible to stop them setting up while Machamp ‘Takes Out’ the opposing field.

I feel that SpeedChamp still has some sort of chance in this format simply because of how fast it can be against most things that aren’t Spiritomb. The deck thrives of off using a huge number of trainers in the first turn of being allowed to get out a Machamp SF as quickly as possible to start taking out basics before the opponent can evolve.

Using a combination of Poke Drawer +, Unown R, Uxie, Junk Arm and Warp Point, SpeedChamp has the perfect recipe to grab all it needs to bring forth a fully powered up Machamp turn one. Poke Drawer, Unown R and Uxie all help with getting as many cards from the deck in a single turn as possible which can be great, but can also cause the losses as well.

The downside to this is that there isn’t any control over the cards you draw, so when playing this deck you will be relying on the luck of the draw heavily even though you are running high counts of all the cards you’ll need.

As you may have figured out, the speed variant of Machamp has very strong early game presence but deteriorates very quickly after the first few turns if it is missing certain cards to complete its strategy. This is where you can take advantage of this and start working on getting the KO on unfinished evolutions of Machamp which your opponent has spent most of their resources trying to build up.

This could be where Machamp Prime comes in as it will add to the late game by being able to build it up on the bench ready to initiate “Fighting Tag” to bring it into play and start dealing some seriously heavy damage. Fighting Tag, as mentioned in the Magnezone part of the article, allows you to switch the active with Machamp Prime and move all energy attached to the active onto the now active Machamp.

This is great for getting a heavily damaged Machamp SF out of the active spot as well as being able to power up the Prime in just a single turn.

The downside to including this is that the deck may be drawing the Primes during the quick set up rather than the Stormfront counterparts to pull off the early KOs, which can become frustrating. With it hurting consistency quite a bit, people may end up not liking it altogether and taking it out which keeps it at a strong early game again, but leaves the deck with no way to sustain the later stages. This is probably one of the main reasons it isn’t played much competitively anymore, it’s just a bit too luck based.

Pair this with the fact that it struggles with anything that isn’t SP and you have a deck that relies too much on the matchup it gets and even if it does get the correct ones, it isn’t guaranteed a great set up every game. The uncertainty of this deck hurts its playability even if there are subtle ways to improve the late game.

If you do end up coming across the speed variant of Machamp during the tournament, there is no way to out speed it so you’ll have to take a different course of action. Taking advantage of their bad draws is a great strategy and you need to be taking a prize per turn to stay in the game.

One turn of missing a prize could cost you the game in the long run. They will probably take risks to draw more cards from Uxie like evolving prematurely and if it doesn’t pay off, you need to get rid of the incomplete evolutions as soon as possible.

SP players will struggle against this deck simply because it is such a direct counter to them. As mentioned earlier, try your best to keep up with cheap prizes off of bench sitters such as Uxie by using Dragon Rush or Flash Impact following a Bright Look. Machokes sitting on the bench should be your main cause for concern as it will cause you some incredible troubles when it becomes a Machamp SF.

Uxie Lv.X is your main source of one hit KOing active Machamps that are causing you trouble when paried with a Flash Bite and Lucario GL. The main issue I found when running into Machamps is that when an Expert Belt is attached, Machamp becomes too far off the one hit KO to even try unless you are very lucky with your draws and have the resources available.

If you are put in this situation, focus on the bench KOs or try and tack as much damage on as you can with things like Uxie and even Azelf before you attempt a bigger scale attack. If you do put too much damage on Machamp for them to get wary of the KO, they will use a Warp Point and Seeker combination to pick it up and place back down in conjunction with BTS. This is a very common move so try not to influence their decision to do this or you will be in trouble.

Many people think that this is an autoloss for SP, but I care to differ. There are many things that you can do to slow them down or get consistent KOs on Machamps by utilising Premier Ball, 3-1 Uxie lines and smart Dragon Rushes. Another popular tech for these kind of games is Drifblim UD.

Not only can this card do the same amount of damage as Uxie Lv.X, but it is a Stage 1 meaning that Machamp can’t immediately follow up with a Take Out the next turn. This makes them rely on “Hurricane Punch” a lot more which can be very risky and can buy you some much needed time to set up some extra KOs.

Any other decks shouldn’t have too much of a problem if you are running evolutions, just make sure that you can set up at least one to stall for time if their set up is pretty fast. Just leaving an evolved Pokemon in the active spot can buy you some time while they attempt to Hurricane Punch for some risky damage output.

Utilise their Broken Time-Space use to flood the field with your evolved Pokemon and be wary of Warp Point as well, so try not to leave an evolved Pokemon active with a bench full of basics because they will still be able to return the KOs. Stick to this and you should have a pretty smooth game as most of the meta decks such as VileGar and Gyarados, as mentioned earlier, have very good match ups against Machamp in general.

Just a quick mention to finish off the Machamp section is that VileChamp has started seeing some play overseas, taking a States title over in the US. This deck is based more on slowing you down rather than trying to out-speed you by using Vileplume UD and Spiritomb AR as a starter.

Both of these will lock your use of trainers, slowing you down in the long run from using things such as Pokemon Communication to grab what you need to set up. Most decks have a way to counter trainer lock seeing as it very popular here in the UK, but pair that with the fact that your basics will be getting taken out as well and you can have a very tough game on your hands.

Setting up 2 stage 2s can be difficult for them so play this one out like the VileGar match up, but trying to get rid of trainers with things like Bebe’s Search doesn’t apply since it isn’t fuelling an attack. Your main approach should be the same as any Machamp variant, making sure you have some form of evolved Pokemon to answer to Machamp’s Take Out.

Finding a way to drag up Vilplume is also a good idea, but I would expect Warp Points to be in heavy count in this deck’s list so be wary of when to attempt this, or try and get rid of it as soon as possible by means of sniping or forcing it active. A steady, evolved Pokemon should have no problem dealing with this deck even with the trainer lock making it tricky to get going properly.

This variant of the deck is pure SP hate, so SP players will have a very hard time playing against this since the trainer lock plus the automatic KO of most of your deck really makes it difficult. A bad set up on their part should be taken advantage of by grabbing KOs on unfinished Vileplumes and Machamps with Vileplume being the priority to get rid of the lock.

Getting rid of the lock will allow a spurt of trainer action since they will have been clogged up in your hand, which gives you a lot to work with. Use your trainers to full advantage while you still can to grab the crucial Level Xs from the deck and save the Bebe’s Search for even tougher circumstances during the game.

Definitely test against both variants of this deck as facing one and not knowing what to do can give you a quick loss, potentially ruining any chance of doing well on the day. Not knowing how to tackle this match up can let your opponent roll through you in no time. Give them some trouble with some smart plays and they may struggle to claw a comeback.

A very tricky deck to play against so make sure you are prepared, even though there is little chance of this being played heavily.

Honourable Mentions

Along with all the meta decks mentioned above, there will be people taking fairly new or rogue decks too. These decks can catch you off guard and throw your playing of the deck slightly so make sure you keep a straight head and analyse the deck as much as you can during the game to make the correct plays at the right time.

Some decks may just be hard to figure out, but take your time and get to grips with them before you make any big plays. I’m just going to quickly go over two decks that will turn up in small numbers.

Steelix Prime

This has a lot of potential in our current format with its ability to take advantage of having a huge HP along with utilising Special Metal Energy to tank further. This deck takes a little time to set up so get your KOs in while you still can as Steelix can rack up some serious defences along with an attack that can hit for 120 with Expert Belt attached.

Steelix will also more than likely have the support of Blissey PL to use “Nurse Call”, getting rid of any damage you are desperately trying to pile onto Steelix or any other Pokemon. A good strategy against these types of tank decks is to Poison their active and start chipping away HP, but Steelix’s Poke Body “Perfect Metal” prevents status conditions, making it even trickier to do this.

Definitely one to watch out for as it is tough to take down once it gets set up. Its main weakness is its speed so try to get damage onto Pokemon as soon as you can to set up some big KOs later on and SP players can make full use of sniping around the main active to pick up some crucial prizes.

Scizor Prime

This deck is very similar to Steelix mentioned above as it can utilise Special Metals to rack up some serious damage and be able to take a decent hit as well. It can be a little slow to set up its main attack, but when it starts hitting with 3 or 4 energy, you could be in trouble.

Scizor’s Poke Body is also one to watch out for. “Red Armour” prevents all damage from Pokemon with Special Metal attached which includes Special Dark, Special Metal, Double Colourless Energy and Call Energy. This obviously makes Scizor a great SP counter as well as against any dark based decks such as Tyranitar.

Scizor can hold itself well against the meta with a great Poke Body and powerful attack, but it can be countered by Dialga G Lv.X. A popular tech in an SP deck which can shut off Scizor’s Poke Body and render it useless for the rest of the game. Due to Dialga having such a huge effect on the deck, you could expect to see a Blaziken FB or other fire tech to combat this and get a KO on Dialga as soon as possible.

To play against this deck you should play your Special Energy very carefully to make sure that you can start piling damage on fairly quickly to get the KOs. SP players can’t Dragon Rush Scizor by using Double Colourless so keep this ruling fresh in your mind while playing against it.

Any other decks should keep tacking damage onto Scizor while keeping Special Energy out of the game as much as possible.

That’s pretty much all I have in my brain in the forms of different decks, builds and how to play against them all. This article should have been able to cover pretty much every single deck and if I haven’t catered for some, that’s because you can apply the same strategies discussed here to other decks.

Overall

Nationals is an extremely tough tournament when you start moving up the tables. Building a deck to cater for every single match up you may encounter is even tougher, which is why it is such a credible achievement to do well in it.

This article was designed to help players of all ages and skill levels to either learn or remind them about the format we are currently in and how to play against a majority of the decks around and I hope I succeeded in helping everyone out in how to do well at Nats.

Just as a last note, UK Nationals is on the 29th May at Wicksteed Park in Kettering, Northamptonshire which is only 2 weeks away! That isn’t a whole lot of time to complete every bit of testing we would all like to, but I hope this guide helped you all in how to approach different match ups even if you didn’t get a chance to physically play them out.

You will be glad to know that this is that end of my monster article. I hope you all took the time to read it thoroughly and took at least something from it. If there is anything you would like me to expand on then please address me in the comments below.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed,

Dan (PokemanDan)

The Ultimate Guide to Inter-Nationals! is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

SP was a solved problem – Charizard, at the time, wasn’t, so I started working on it. In the Heart Gold/Soul Silver-on (HGSS-on) format, there are even more Pokemon that can be used in “toolbox” decks, so I thought it would be a good time to write an article about how toolbox decks are designed, and how to play them in general.

The Toolbox Philosophy

A robotic arm would be great in my toolbox!

Most Pokemon decks go by a simple philosophy of “bring out your main attacker, load it up, swing”, and their recovery strategy looks a lot like “build up another one on the bench, send it out when the first one drops”.

Our last two seasons have given us swarming Donphans, Jumpluffs, Kingdras, Machamps, Charizards, and all kinds of other Pokemon; but one thing was common: when players finally found optimal SP builds, they all rolled over and died. None of these decks had an advantaged matchup against SP, but why?

The answer is that SP, like all toolbox decks, uses a different philosophy. The philosophy is: “there is an efficient solution to every problem”.

A very good example in HGSS-on is an active Donphan Prime. Donphan Prime’s Poke-Body reduces damage to it by 20, it resists Lightning, and has a whopping 120 HP for a stage 1 Pokemon.

Even decks that don’t rely on lightning attackers have trouble with this monster soaking up their attacks and coming back with its own.

How does an average deck deal with that? By smashing away with a main attacker, or bringing up a secondary attacker that can hit for Donphan’s water weakness or resist its fighting attacks. These decks only run one or two attackers, though, and if none of those answer a given threat, they’re going to have to dedicate a LOT of resources (possibly multiples of a main attacker) to removing it.

How does a toolbox deck deal with that? By bringing up a silver bullet to Donphan, like Umbreon UD, which flat out prevents it from doing damage with its attack, or by bringing up a sniper like Garchomp C Lv. X, Blindside Honchkrow, or Mandibuzz, to take its 60 damage attacks and take prizes by sniping around its bulk. It may also bring up an efficient water attacker with a 1 or 0 energy attack to knock out the Donphan in one or two hits.

A toolbox deck is never assumed to have “everything”; obviously you can’t put every card in the game in a single deck. What a toolbox deck builder does instead, is analyzes the metagame, looking for the main strategies, threats, and situations.

Once a list of these has been put together, the deckbuilder looks for absolute, strong answers that can be brought out quickly. These are the keywords: absolute, strong answers, that can be brought out quickly.

Building a Toolbox Deck

The cornerstone of the SP Toolbox.

There are several types with boxes full of tools in the current Pokemon format, but the most obvious toolbox type is, and has been for several seasons, Darkness.

For this reason, this article’s deck design segment will focus primarily on toolbox dark; that said, Grass and Fire, and to a lesser extent Electric, Fighting, and Water have the tools and draw power to make toolbox decks work.

More Pokemon types can often help make a toolbox deck happen – LuxChomp decks are a perfect example, often running 3 types of energy, and often more than ten different Pokemon.

The first question to ask when building a toolbox deck is “what are the big threats in the current metagame”? Before you choose your main Pokemon, you have to be able to answer this question with absolute certainty – otherwise you may find yourself blindsided without a tool for a given situation, and having to fall back on thinner lines of heavy Pokemon, if any at all.

It is possible for a deck to win without a heavy attacker, again as proven by SP decks, which generally lack any Pokemon over 110 HP.

In the Heart Gold/Soul Silver-on metagame, the most basic threats any deck must be able to answer are:

1. Reshiram and Zekrom: These attackers are very similar and serve the same role: hit for 120 damage. Any metagame deck at all is going to need some way of dealing with these bulky dragons, as they will be the most common attackers in the format.
2. Donphan: The obvious counter to Reshiram and Zekrom, Donphan is bulky enough to take their hits, and is more or less guaranteed to start attacking on turn 2.
3. Machamp: A 150-HP stage 2 that can hit for 150 damage, but needs support and 4 energy to do so. An active Machamp Prime can shift the game immensely when it hits the active spot and loads up with its Poke-Power, “Fighting Tag”.

There are plenty of other threats in this format; Blastoise, Yanmega, Magnezone, Tyranitar, Gengar, Samurott and Vileplume are just the beginning. The best toolbox decks – the ones that may well win Nationals if it goes to HGSS-on – will have answers to most or all of these Pokemon.

Let’s start by compiling some efficient answers to the top three.

Reshiram and Zekrom are best countered by something that can one hit KO them, preferably while taking their attack. There are VERY few Pokemon in the format that can do this reliably, and even fewer who can do it for a low cost. Personally, I see four options:

• Wailord: Zekrom causes it problems, but it swallows Reshiram and Donphan easily, and is the only potentially competitive Pokemon in the format who can take a fully boosted hit from Machamp (the others being Dragonite TM and Ho-Oh LEGEND, neither of which are playable).It can also swallow up a Zekrom wounded by its own “Bolt Strike” attack. The downside – it needs to evolve, and use a massive four energy to attack or retreat.
• Zoroark: Zoroark with a Special Dark one-hit KOs Reshiram and Zekrom easily, but it doesn’t have the HP to do much in return, and using a DCE makes it fall short.
• Donphan Prime: Donphan puts itself in the top 3 by coming just short of one hit KOing a Zekrom for one energy, and being able to take a hit from almost everything in the format short of Machamp Prime or water Pokemon.
• Tyranitar Prime: It can take hits from Reshiram and Zekrom, and with just a single Special Dark, one hit KO back with “Megaton Tail”. The problem is, Megaton Tail costs four energy, AND Tyranitar is a Stage 2 Pokemon.

Donphan Prime’s biggest weakness is it only doing 60 damage for one energy, while damaging its own bench; it can attack for 90, but requires 3 fighting energy to do so, which becomes a liability if it gets knocked out.

• Water Attackers: Almost any decent water attacker can one hit KO Donphan Prime.
• Typhlosion Prime: Able to deprive Donphan of needed energy, and taking three “Earthquake” attacks, it can really slow down a fighting deck trying to put energy in play. The downside is it’s a Stage 2 Pokemon with a 3-energy attack.
• Mandibuzz and Honchkrow UD: Both are stage 1 Pokemon that resist fighting, and can use Donphan’s Earthquake to their advantage by sniping the bench for 50.
• Umbreon UD: While it only deals 10 damage to Donphan with “Moonlight Fang”, Donphan’s Poke-Body prevents it from doing ANYTHING to an Umbreon that has used Moonlight Fang. A second answer is recommended in this case, as taking twelve turns to knock something out is not generally a viable strategy. Use Umbreon to buy time, or consider multiple Special Darks or applying Poison or Burn to Donphan first.

Machamp Prime’s biggest weakness is that it needs a LOT of energy to do anything: a minimum of two fighting and another energy card to do a rather pitiful 60 damage, and four energy (or three and a Double Colorless Energy) to do 100 plus the number of damaged Pokemon on the bench. What counters that?

• Sigilyph BS (Battle Strength): Psycho Damage will do a base 80 damage to a loaded Machamp Prime for three colorless energy, making it very splashable. It also resists Fighting. The downside is the Machamp needs energy BEFORE you knock it out.The other downside is, this card has not been announced for North American release; given that the format lacks a serious Machamp counter, however, I suspect it will get thrown into our fall set.
• Umbreon UD again prevents any damage to itself by Machamp with Moonlight Fang.
• Wailord can soak up a fully boosted Champ Buster, and can do 100 damage to Machamp with Swallow Up if the Wailord remains undamaged.

There is one obvious commonality between these lists: there’s a Dark Pokemon on every one of them, which is why Dark has become the “go-to” toolbox deck. Looking at the other Pokemon on the threat list, one of Tyranitar, Zoroark, Mandibuzz, and Umbreon counters most of them – the bench-sniping Blastoise dodging the silver bullet and remaining a threat to this foursome.

With four Pokemon already in the deck, the sane decision is to likely accept Blastoise as a problem, understanding that it is a stage 2 that also attacks for four energy, so Tyranitar is a viable attacker against it, and can one hit KO with a special Darkness Energy.

Another option is to tech in a 1-1 Slowking, which improves the situation against Machamp Prime as well, by helping prevent both decks from drawing into the much-needed energy their main attackers require four of. Lost Removers can also be useful, to take care of Double Colourless Energy.

P: Flip 2 coins. This attack does 10 damage times the number of heads. CCC: This attack does 40 damage plus 10 more damage for each Energy attached to the defending Pokémon.

Trainers and Supporters for toolbox decks are much simpler, and mostly look the same from deck to deck: emphasize search above all else. 4 Bebe’s Search in the old format become 4 Pokemon Communication now, and should likely be supplemented with Junk Arm as well.

Junk Arm also lets you run a toolbox of singleton and two-copy Trainers for utility purposes; consider a single Dual Ball to get basics, Lost Remover, etc.

In basic-heavy toolbox decks, Dual Ball can be played, and Pokemon Collector is a must-have to match basics to evolutions in hand. Prof. Elm’s Training Method is a questionable Supporter given its ability to only fetch an evolution, but after a Collector start or a Portrait from Smeargle UD, it can fetch exactly what you need.

Stadiums should only be used if they destroy another deck’s strategy, or greatly support yours: for example an evolution-based deck before HS-on would run Broken Time-Space. A deck relying on Electric attackers might consider Ruins of Alph as a Donphan counter.

Toolbox Tyranitar

Here is a build for a Tyranitar deck using the above principles. I have tested this deck only somewhat, but feel it will do well. Note that it does not run single copies of any tools, as having them prized may disrupt matchups.

Playing a Toolbox Deck

Tyranitar: Friendship is Magic

Once you’ve filled your toolbox, it’s game time – but now you have a deck that is reactive, analytical, and generally hard to play. How do you turn that into a win every game?

The most important thing to know is your opponent’s deck, and what threats they are going to present. Going into a game blind, you have to quickly read your opponent’s first plays, and then start playing proactively.

Don’t keep responding to threats as he puts them on the board: predict his next move, and have your answer already coming out. Here are a few bullet points for how to play a toolbox deck:

1. Don’t give away the first prize, but expect them to take it. Most decks are going to be running with a purely offensive mindset, while you may be stuck with the wrong tool for the job in the active spot.Starting out is a toolbox deck’s worst position, as you don’t know what to get, and you don’t know what you’re going to have active. Twins is an excellent Supporter to cover this weakness, as it will let you get the tools you need to get out of trouble.
2. Make educated guesses. If you see your opponent starting Phanpy, you don’t have to see the Machop to assume Machamp is likely in the deck and that you should dig your Machamp counter out. While decks will have techs and alternate options that may force you to play reactively, try to play proactively as often as possible and look for answers to threats you see coming – once you’ve already neutralized the threats on the board, of course.
3. Lock your opponent’s weak arm. Whenever you have the ability, take what your opponent lacks away from him. If your opponent is trying to bring up an evolution, start sniping, or rig his draws with Slowking. If your opponent is low on energy, use cards that remove them, or try for quick KOs on loaded Pokemon. If your opponent relies on Rare Candy, force him to devolve.While you may not have all the needed tools, always use the ones you have. If your opponent hasn’t made a play in a few turns, one key card will probably set him off. It might be a good time to take a look at his hand if you have the resources to.
4. Always have a fallback. If you get caught without an answer to a given threat, you should have a general-purpose threat of your own to throw at your opponent to buy time, or even put him on the defensive.An excellent example Pokemon is Tyranitar Prime, which nothing in the format (barring Black Belt or Magnezone Prime) can knock out in one hit without weakness. Donphan Prime and Machamp are other excellent options, to give your opponent something else to think about while you dig up a more concrete answer. Sometimes, brute force even IS the answer!

The point of a toolbox deck is to rely on your search power, and have a hard counter to anything you see. If you find yourself slugging it out instead, you either need to re-tool your deck for the matchup, or if you already have the counter in your deck, get off the ropes and dig it up!

One situation a toolbox deck will often encounter is too few tools for a job. An example is the above Tyranitar toolbox deck vs Donchamp. Your Donchamp counters in the deck could be Sigilyph once printed, Yanmega Prime, Mandibuzz, and Umbreon.

Even assuming you have two of these in the deck, they will be filling multiple roles, countering Donphans, sniping, and otherwise making a nuisance of themselves – so you may have some of them in the discard when you still need them.

Recovery cards like Flower Shop Lady are key in a toolbox deck, but they don’t always show up when you need them. Be prepared to use a bit of creativity to get prizes, and know that sometimes you have to give away your lead (or a piece of it) to get board position and come back.

Hand size and board position is key to a toolbox deck: if your opponent has more tools than you do, your advantage is gone.

Closing

To wrap up, I think toolbox decks in general are an excellent choice for a HGSS-on format, and just because SP is gone doesn’t mean the age of the toolbox is over. While Tyranitar will be the de facto toolbox deck, I think there will be some potential for toolbox decks based around other main attackers as well, especially Yanmega.

There’s a good chance that such a deck, if built right, will have what it takes to win US Nationals instead of the currently expected Reshiram, Zekrom, or DonChamp deck – but we’ll have to see what the top players cook up, as they have far more time to tune and test than I do. Cheers!

Custom Tooled – A Guide to Toolbox Decks in HGSS-On is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

There will also be two honorable mentions for those two cards that look like others from Jungle.  This article is here to teach players a lesson, but hopefully you’ll figure it out before I give you the answer at the end of the article.

Without further adieu, I give you the top 10 cards from Black and White that remind me entirely too much of Base Set.

10. Zebstrika #42

Now here’s an overlooked card, and I don’t really blame you for overlooking it.  It has mediocre bottom stats and mediocre attacks.  Two for an attack that, if you flip heads, does 40 damage is terrible, and a second attack that does 70 damage for three, while doing 10 damage to itself is not a very promising card.

Heck, Zebstrika is one of the fastest Pokemon in the video game, and they don’t feel like giving him free retreat cost.  What’s up with that?

I could see someone messing around with him just because they like zebras, and it possibly making a good deck, but I really don’t see this one taking any championships, or even a City Championship or Battle Roads.

So why is he on this list?  Because…

This card reminds me entirely too much of Raichu

I don’t know if any of you remember this guy, but I bet the collectors know about this card.  About eight Raichu cards were accidentally printed with PRERELEASE in the bottom right-hand corner, making it one of the rarest cards to obtain in the entirety of the Pokemon TCG.

However, Zebstrika is not that rare, and I doubt it will ever be, but the similarities between it and Raichu are pretty astonishing.  They have the exact same bottom stats, and their HP is off by 10, and the attacks are surprising similar when taking into account power-creep.

For 3 energy, you do 20 damage with a chance of invincibility, and for 4 energy, you do 60 damage with a 50% chance of damaging yourself.  It astounds me just how similar these cards are.

9. Klinklang

Klinklang is arguably a very good card, and I was even thinking of making an awesome deck with it until I heard that Emboar had its phenomenal, cosmic power, Reshiram was also included in the set, and Max Heal wasn’t being printed.  I gave up hope on my Steelix/Klinklang deck because of those three reasons.

This card should not be overlooked though, because Shift Gear is a great ability that should remind you of some very good abilities in the past.  It also has a pretty decent 140 HP, which is nothing to scoff at, but nothing to be too proud of either.

(Any of you guys remember when we thought 100 HP was amazing? Then we said hello to Wailord ex.)

There are, of course, only certain combinations that you would want to try, but it could be worth some of the combinations, but I wouldn’t count on it due to the hype that fire has been getting.

This card reminds me entirely too much of Venusaur

What else is a bulky Pokemon that can move energy around at its whim?  Venusaur from Base Set, of course. Now, it’s not that his ability hasn’t been reprinted before, because it totally has multiple times (Meganium and Sceptile should be enough to prove my point), but the fact is that this ability is actually pretty good.

The ability to move energy around is a major theme in the Zekrom deck floating around right now, and I don’t blame them for using it.  Venusaur actually comboed quite nicely with an unexpected friend, Charizard, to prevent Charizard from getting knocked out with the used of Pokemon Center, and rearranging the energies attached to Charizard so that he wouldn’t lose them when he got healed.  Remember people, combos, combos, combos.

8. Sawk

A basic of 90 HP, weakness to psychic, retreat cost of one, and it does 20 for one and 40 for two.  Seems like your standard basic that you wouldn’t really feel comfortable playing with, especially since it’s hitting for a laughable 40 damage as its maximum output.

I don’t really see this card going anywhere, and all I see it doing is looking nice when you tell your friends that you have every card from the Black and White set.

This card reminds me entirely too much of Hitmonchan

Hey, look it’s Hitmonchan.  Not only do both of these cards line up by being the group of non-evolving fighting Pokemon from the original Red and Blue versions, their stats are nearly identical when following the trends of the power creep that everybody’s been talking about.

Compare 70 HP to 90 HP, compare the retreat costs, compare that psychic weakness, compare their attacks, compare the fact that both of these Pokemon are based on hitting things!  This is pretty dang close to being just a reprint of Hitmonchan with a different name.

7. Reuniclus

As we look at Reuniclus, we should already see its potential.  His attack isn’t great, but his power is what we look at.

Of course, we also know that we’re going to need to be paired up with someone who can take a hit in this format without immediately being knocked out by something commonly used within this format, meaning that Steelix and Scizor are pretty much out of the question with all the hype about Reshiram.

I could see him getting paired with a bulky basic or stage 1 Pokemon that could be picked up and reset fairly quickly with either Seeker or Super Scoop Up to get rid of all of the damage on your Pokemon.

You could also bring about some combination with Serperior to make sure that you heal all of the damage that you took from the previous turn.  It’s fickle, but still a possibility.

This card reminds me entirely too much of Alakazam

Remember this guy?  This Pokemon right here made an amazing combination with Mr. Mime, Chansey, and Scoop Up back in the day, making sure that you could tank as long as your resources could hold up to the possible thrashing that Haymaker could through at you.

It was a fairly good deck in the day, making sure that most evolution decks that didn’t rock status conditions couldn’t touch this deck.  So, looking back at an older deck may bring about new ideas

6. Professor Juniper

Alrighty, everybody has already gone over this card so many times that if this discussion was a park playground, I would probably try disinfecting it before I played on it.  However, this must be talked about, even though I feel like I’m beating a dead horse (pardon the expression, but at least I didn’t make it Pokemon analogy).

With the ability to be abused to draw a full new hand without the chance of drawing exactly what you but back in when using Judge, PONT, or Copycat can be very appealing.

I know that I’m probably going to be running at least two in each of my decks, but there are situations where I can see people saying that this is a waste of resources, and I will let them have their opinions, as I’ve seen this work in the past.  Wait, did I just let the Meowth out of the bag, because…

This card reminds me entirely too much of Professor Oak

Yes, the old Professor Oak.  Before he decided to visit you or tell you about his new theory, he was refreshing your hand to seven cards as a humble trainer.  This card was used in all decks back in the day, because acceleration was key to making it past Haymaker and setting up before your opponent, as almost all games are determined nowadays.

This card was probably more disastrous as a Trainer (now Item, because Professor Oak is now an Item available at your local PokeMart) than as a Supporter because you could play more than one in a turn, making you either set up amazingly well or deck out quickly.  With great power comes great responsibility, and this card has some great power.

5. Energy Retrieval

Just when it seemed that Pokemon was getting rid of all of our recovery cards, they came out with this one.  Bringing two basic energy cards to the hand at no cost is absolutely no laughing matter, making this Trainer, excuse me, Item card a great value.

There’s a very simple combo that can be made with this card and Engineer’s Adjustments, but it may not be worth it.  However, where this card can truly shine is with any Pokemon that has the power to dance!

(Yes, the Fandango is a dance. Wikipedia never lies ;P)

This card reminds me entirely too much of Energy Retrieval

Hey, look!  Same name, same type of card, and almost the exact same effect.  This one costs you, but it’s not too bad.

I don’t remember seeing this card getting any play back in the old days, but now that I see it again, I don’t know why.  Maybe it’s because we’re discarding more energy in this format, but that’s to be expected with the current power creep.  An interesting card that hasn’t seen the light of day since Base Set (not counting Super Energy Retrieval), now comes to you in a easier to use package at no extra cost.

4. Musharna

Here’s a card that many people have overlooked, and I don’t blame them.  It’s a stage one Pokemon where its strongest attack does 90 for two, but the attack requires that the opponent is asleep for this power to work.

There are actually a combo to make this work with Hypno, so this could make a fun league deck, but because this is a deck in a world of OHKOs, it’s unlikely that it will gain any popularity beyond a fun deck to play with the cards you don’t use.  I think I may write up a list for this deck just for fun, but with its flippyness (yes, it’s now a word).

This card reminds me entirely too much of Haunter

I don’t know if any of you remember this guy, but he was so much fun to play with in the Pokemon TCG video game.  Though we all know that sleep is hard to keep, this Pokemon scored me so many KOs that it wasn’t even funny.

A powerful disruptor to those who were unprepared to handle status conditions, even though sleep was flippy, kept most of them in check.  You know that 50% invincibility that everyone’s talking about with Cleffa?  It came in the form of a 50% chance your opponent has to Scoop Up or switch to get out of the sleep-lock.

I think one of the major things that we have to remember in this format is that special conditions can play a key role in this new format if used properly.

3. Emboar #20

Ah, Emboar.  Probably the most hyped Pokemon card of this whole set, and for a good reason, too.  With the ability to attach a fire energy to any Pokemon in play, this sets up many combinations with different Pokemon.

If only Flygon were still legal, I would have loved to play a deck with these two, but alas, that is only a Battle Roads dream, and I can’t play.  (If someone could represent this deck there, that would be great!)

Everybody’s thinking of Emboar/Magnezone, Emboar/Reshiram, Emboar/Emboar, Legend of Emboar, you name it, it probably has a working combination with Emboar in one way or another.

Okay, maybe I was exaggerating with that last sentence, but you can still see all of the potential that this card has.

This card reminds me entirely too much of Blastoise

For those of you who know, this Pokemon card was the first one to bring us energy-acceleration of any kind (not counting DCE, because it’s a regular energy card).

Now, we all know that Emboar just increased Blastoise’s power level over 9000 even more, just because it can attach to any Pokemon instead just Pokemon of the same type, but at the time, if you could set up before Haymaker crippled you, Blastoise could rip through just about any deck.

In a game that was much slower than today’s (anyone who still owns the TCG video game like me should know this), speed was one of your greatest assets, and Blastoise was a great help to get you set up quickly.

2. Revive

I really do like this card.  It may not exactly be the greatest card we have, but when we’re living in a world of Reshiram and Zekrom OHKOing each other, and they’re both basics.  Being able to pull them out of your discard pile and place them directly onto the bench is great for recovering and getting right back into the game when you’re being OHKOed.

There’s not really much to talk about with this card, and the only reason I’m even mentioning it is because it has great potential with bulky basics and the only way it would be even better is if you could Rare Candy it that same turn, but I’m pretty sure the rulings don’t allow for it.

This card reminds me entirely too much of Revive

Yep.  Pokemon basically reprinted a card that hasn’t been touched since the original card came out in, guess where, Base Set.  I’m not insulting Pokemon, but really?

Okay, to be fair, they did print Max Revive in Gym Challenge, but I don’t know what they were thinking waiting so long to reprint a card that had a lot of potential.

I’ll give them some credit though; the original Revive was terrible, mainly because Gust of Wind would allow your opponent to take care of that brand new benched Pokemon by taking it out in one hit.  Sorry to say, but it was because of that one card that Revive was never truly able to shine.

1. Pokedex

Hey, look!  One of the worst trainers that was released in this set!  Is there any reason to be playing this card?  I don’t think so, and I believe that many people will agree with me because Research Record is better than this card, even though, to quote Chris Fulop, “It doesn’t dig as deep.”

With that taken into account, why did I even bother bringing up this card in the article?  Well, you can probably guess right now that it’s because…

This card reminds me entirely too much of Pokedex

Ah, Pokedex.  Why did you return?  We didn’t use you at all when you came out, except maybe, just maybe, when we were tinkering with our decks, and when we got other Pokedexes (I think that’s the properly plural), they gave us a free shuffle and a rearrangement, not to mention PokeHandy, which turned out to be a staple in many a speed deck.

With the reprints getting better and better, why did we have to keep it the same as Base Set’s?  Why?

Honorable Mentions

These Pokemon weren’t in Base Set, but they do clearly remind me of cards that were printed in the Jungle set.  I hope by now you’ve seen what I’ve been trying to teach you all by showing you the similarities between these new cards and some old ones, but I wont’ straight out tell you until the end.  You have two more chances to figure out what it is.  Here we go.

Zoroark

This card has been getting some hype, and I’m not entirely sure that it’s warranted, but it’s definitely a card to look at.  With the ability to search out a card for you to place in your hand for one energy, this could play out well, but that’s not what the community is clamoring about.

Foul Play requires two colorless energy, or, you know, a Double Colorless Energy to use any of the Defending Pokemon’s attacks against it.  How is this good?  Well, let’s think about it.

The ruling states that if you don’t have any Fire Energy attached to Zoroark and you use Reshiram’s attack Blue Flare, you don’t have to discard any energy attached to Zoroark.  Hot dang, I’ll take two.  Wait a minute…

This card reminds me entirely too much of Clefable

Surprisingly, these cards are very identical in bottom-stats and the attack they have in common does pretty much the exact same thing.  Clefable’s Metronome was the bane of Charizard, allowing Clefable to hit Charizard for 100 damage at no cost.

And since PlusPower existed, you could essentially OHKO Charizard without discarding any energy.  Now, you can mimic this strategy with Zoroark.  Same premise, just replace Charizard with Reshiram or Zekrom and replace Clefable with Zoroark.  You see?

You’ve just created a great counter to the some of the hardest hitters in the current game by using a combo that has been in place for a long time now.  And the fact that it only requires a DCE and a PlusPower to use, it could be the next great tech.

However, you still have to look out for Donphan, but that should be too much trouble if this is just a tech.

Cinccino

I love this little guy.  Probably my favorite Normal-type Pokemon outside of the first 150.  And he’s not too shabby in card form either.  With 90HP and weakness to fighting, it seems like it could be a bad card, but when you see that it has an attack called “Do the Wave”, you know you’re in for a treat.

For a DCE (seems familiar, no?), you get to do 20 damage times the number of Pokemon on your Bench.  This means that you can do a maximum of 100 damage before adding anything else.  Not a bad trade, now is it?  Now, because I said an attack named “Do the Wave” gives away something inherently powerful, you will probably have noticed that…

This card reminds me entirely too much of Wigglytuff

The card from Jungle, doing up to 60 damage for three energy, or a DCE plus one.  A great card that started rocking the TCG because of its sheer damage output. (You have to remember, 60 damage was a lot back then.)

It had almost the same problems as Cinccino has right now (it’s weak to fighting and its damage output is based on the bench), but where Cinccino has to worry about getting OHKOed, Wigglytuff had to worry about not getting OHKOed and your opponent not dragging a weakling on your bench for a cheep KO with Gust of Wind.

It was a card with quite a few problems, but people still found ways to make it work.

In Conclusion

I hope you all have learned what I was trying to teach you, and that was that you can get some really good ideas by looking into the past.  I mean, sure, about half of these cards that I reviewed aren’t very good, and I doubt that they will be at all, but being able to recognize similarities between old and new cards, especially ones that have been used successfully, can make a world of difference when building competitive decks.

And because I know some of you SixPrizes members tend downvote if there isn’t a deck list, here’s that fun league deck with Musharna and Hypno that I talked about earlier in the article.  Enjoy!

(Note: This list was written in about 10 minutes.  It should still be pretty consistent, without considering the flips.)

The Top 10 Cards From Black and White That Remind Me Of Base Set is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

:(

I’ve recently read a thread written by a player in the SixPrizes forums. He said he made a mistake and wasted money on a bunch of cards that would be rotated out in a few months. I hate to say it, but he’s right. In fact, I’ve made a similar mistake before when I got components for a Speedrill deck that got rotated out after three months.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to build decks like LuxChomp at this point in the season. Suppose the average LuxChomp deck costs around $300 to build, and the next rotation’s in five months. To get an idea if you’re getting your money’s worth, simply divide the cost (that is, $300) over time (that is, five months).

The lower the value, the better. This is because in theory, as you play with or “use” your deck, the value of the deck (the initial cost you spent) decreases over time. In accounting, this is called depreciation. In the same example, the value of your LuxChomp deck would decrease by $60 each month ($300 / 5 months) – not exactly a good investment for your money.

Suppose you build a deck other than LuxChomp that costs as much to build but is still playable next season (that would mean another twelve months), the value of that deck would decrease by a much lower $17.65 each month – an obviously much better investment for your money.

I wouldn’t suggest new players to build decks for this season anymore, especially those who are just starting to build their own collections. I personally think it would be more economical to look forward to the next season instead. This article is basically a list of deck archetypes that would most likely see popular play next season.

SPECIAL THANKS

First and foremost, I couldn’t have made this compilation without the help of aaadams, airhawk06, baby_mario, blooper785con, CaptainX24, Crissxcross038, Genguy, indecarnive, kn3ll_, Kuprin, MrScaryMuffin, SomeR3j3ct, SoujiroElric, stalpno, Thegame8228, Vejita, and Vysekun.

I would also like to thank my friend, Nichollas Ong, for his insights on the current meta-game both in the Philippines and the United States. Without their collaboration, this list of possible deck archetypes for 2011-2012 wouldn’t be possible.

LIST OF POSSIBLE DECK ARCHETYPES FOR 2011-2012

• Deck Archetype (Cards Involved)
  - Deck Class/es
  - Bad/Good/Excellent Set-Up Speed
  - Bad/Good/Excellent Momentum
  - Bad/Good/Excellent Recovery
   
  

  WCC Sheer Cold: 50 damage. During your opponent’s next turn, the opponent’s Active Pokemon that was hit by this move can’t use any attacks. WWCC Icicle Drop: 80 damage. This attack’s damage isn’t affected by Resistance.

• BearDra (Beartic and Kingdra Prime)
  - Bash / Lock / Snipe / Tank
  - Excellent Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Good Recovery
  
• BearPlume (Beartic and Vileplume)
  - Bash / Lock / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• BearPerior (Beartic, Shaymin, and Serperior)
  - Bash / Heal / Lock / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Excellent Recovery
• BlastGatr (Blastoise and Feraligatr Prime)
  - Bash / Snipe / Tank
  - Bad Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• Cappuccino (Cincinno and Zoroark)
  - Bash / Donk
  - Excellent Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Excellent Recovery
• Cinccino (Cincinno)
  - Bash / Donk
  - Excellent Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Excellent Recovery
• DonChamp (Donphan Prime and Machamp Prime)
  - Bash / Donk / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• DonkPhan (Donphan Prime)
  - Donk / Tank
  - Excellent Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Excellent Recovery
• FeraTurn (Feraligatr Prime and Lanturn Prime)
  - Bash / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• Gothitelle (Gothitelle)
  - Bash / Lock
  - Excellent Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• HeaLix (Steelix Prime and Blissey Prime)
  - Bash / Heal / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Bad Recovery
• Jumpluff (Jumpluff and Sunflora)
  - Bash / Donk
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• KingPhan (Kingdra Prime and Donphan Prime)
  - Bash / Donk / Snipe
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• LostGar (Gengar Prime, Seeker, and Lost World)
  - Donk / Spread / LZ
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• MagneBoar (Magnezone Prime and Emboar)
  - Bash / Engine / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Bad Recovery
• MagneGatr (Magnezone Prime and Feraligatr Prime)
  - Bash / Engine / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Bad Recovery
• MagneGrowth (Magnezone Prime and Tangrowth)
  - Bash / Engine / Lock / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Bad Recovery
• MewPluff (Mew Prime and Jumpluff)
  - Bash / Donk
  - Excellent Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• ReshiBoar (Reshiram, Emboar, and Ninetales)
  - Bash / Engine / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• SamuGatr (Samurott and Feraligatr Prime)
  - Bash / Snipe / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• Scavenger (Kingdra Prime and Mandibuzz)
  - Bash / Spread / Snipe
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• Scizor Prime (Scizor Prime and Skarmory)
  - Bash / Tank
  - Excellent Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• ShayPerior (Shaymin, Serperior, and Max Revive)
  - Bash / Heal / Tank
  - Excellent Set-Up Speed
  - Good Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• TanBoar (Tangrowth and Emboar)
  - Bash / Lock / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• TanPerior (Tangrowth, Serperior, Shaymin, and Max Revive)
  - Bash / Heal / Lock / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Excellent Recovery
• TyphRam (Typhlosion Prime, Reshiram, and Ninetales)
  - Bash / Engine / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Excellent Recovery
• Tyranitar (Tyranitar Prime and Zoroark)
  - Bash / Spread / Tank
  - Good Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery
• ZekromIsu (Zekrom, Pachirisu, and Shaymin)
  - Bash / Donk / Tank
  - Excellent Set-Up Speed
  - Excellent Momentum
  - Good Recovery

GLOSSARY

Bash – A class of deck that relies on dealing a consistent heavy damage to Knock Out the opponent’s Defending Pokémon and take Prizes.

Donk – A class of deck that relies on Knocking Out the opponent’s Defending Pokémon in 1-3 turns before he/she could properly set-up other Pokémon on his/her Bench. The player automatically wins the game if the opponent doesn’t have another Pokémon in the Bench to replace his/her Defending Pokémon that was just Knocked Out. This always involves Basic or Stage 1 Pokémon with relatively powerful attacks that require little or no Energy.

Engine – A class of deck that relies on a card or a set of cards to provide consistent draw power – decks that have draw engines most often have excellent momentum.

Heal – A class of deck that relies on removing damage counters from the player’s Pokémon to prevent the opponent from taking Prizes – this usually involves using a certain Pokémon Ability or attack.

Lock – A class of deck that relies on preventing the opponent from doing a certain action (e.g. using Trainer cards) while usually dealing a moderate amount of damage, disrupting his/her deck’s momentum – this usually involves using a certain Pokémon Ability or attack.

LZ – A class of deck that does not rely on taking Prizes but on placing the opponent’s Pokémon into the Lost Zone. This always involves the Stadium card “Lost World” – the player automatically wins the game if he/she plays Lost World when the opponent has at least six Pokémon in the Lost Zone.

Momentum – A measurement on the ability of a deck sticking to its primary strategy every turn after properly setting up.

Recovery – This refers to the ability of a deck to recover its momentum after being knocked out of it.

Set-Up – This refers to the point in time (measured by the number of turns) that a player gets to bring out the key components of his/her deck’s primary strategy out into play.

Snipe – A class of deck that relies on Knocking Out the opponent’s weaker Pokémon to take Prizes, usually those sitting on the Bench.

Spread – A class of deck that relies on spreading damage (damaging multiple Pokémon at one time) for easier Knock Outs.

Tank – A class of deck that relies on Pokémon with high HP and/or lowering the opponent’s damage output per turn with an Ability, attack or Trainer (Item, Stadium, and Supporter) cards. This prevents the opponent from performing one-hit Knock Outs and taking Prizes easily.

NOTES

First and foremost, we really need better names for these deck archetypes. LOL.

As I’ve said earlier, I decided to write this article to help new players who have just started playing the Pokémon TCG get an idea of which decks they could build for the next season. I’m no expert – this is why I didn’t elaborate more on these deck ideas. I would like people to discuss more about them through the comments below.

As you have seen, I included a short glossary of terms in this article (explained to the best of my ability and understanding, but let me reiterate that I’m no expert).

The deck archetypes listed above were given a rough estimate of their performance next season after some discussion with fellow members here in SixPrizes, as there is no accurate way of measuring their performance at this time. A lot of factors, such as techs that would be included and the introduction of new cards, could either boost or dampen their individual performance next season.

In short, not all deck archetypes listed above are also going to be popular or competitive – remember that this list is based mostly on speculation.

One of the things that I didn’t get to include in the list is the average cost of building these deck archetypes – like their performance, they could not be measured at this time (even though the data would be quantitative). You can be sure that speculated deck archetypes like ReshiBoar and ZekromIsu are most likely going to be quite expensive to build in the future.

As most of you already know, the upcoming rotation would mean we would see a lot of changes next season. Pokémon SP, along with components of the overpowered SP engine, would be rotated out, drastically slowing the game next season.

Most deck archetypes in the current season require the same few starter Pokémon such as Sableye and Spiritomb, but I’ve been hearing people saying that there might not be a need for starter Pokémon in the next format as a result of the slowdown next rotation.

I’ve also been hearing, however, that certain Pokémon like Cleffa have a potential to be all-around starter Pokémon next season, but I have yet to check up on this.

The introduction of Black & White also gave us a lot of room for new deck archetypes, most of which were probably mentioned here (BearPerior, LostGar, ReshiBoar, and TanBoar are my personal favorites). In a format dominated by decks based on Pokémon SP, I must say that the next rotation would bring a refreshing change to the TCG. To be honest, I’ve been looking forward to it for a few months now.

POSTSCRIPT

This list is incomplete. I would encourage you to join our discussion in the forums – we would really appreciate your comments and suggestions. :-)

A Speculation on 2011-2012 Deck Archetypes is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

When HS: Unleashed came out, it seemed that many people were unimpressed with the set. In fact, people were quite upset with the set as a whole. Many slated Vileplume to change the entire metagame for Nationals and Worlds and expected Scizor to be a contender; however, they, along with a number of other great cards (e.g., Smeargle), were cut from the set.

Despite the disappointment, others flocked to powerhouses (Tyranitar Prime and Steelix Prime), hyped Primes (Kingdra and the previously cut Crobat), or the sparkly, new Legend pieces. No love was shown towards any of the other Pokémon in the set.

After some time, though, people began to see the potential behind the set’s prerelease promo, Blastoise. You could snipe anything for 100 damage with “Hydro Launcher”. Wow!

The only problem: it costs four energy.
The only solution: Feraligatr Prime.

Feraligatr Prime was still fairly new at that point, so I saw quite a few individuals tinkering with the idea. Setting up multiple Stage 2s was made easier then with the help of our good friend, Claydol. Unfortunately, Claydol soon saw its rotation and BlastGatr fell apart in the format. Then another non-holo rare from Unleashed, Floatzel, began to receive attention as a plausible partner for Blastoise, and Blastoise/Floatzel was born! The pair was (literally) made for one another! Not only that, but the deck was much speedier in comparison to BlastGatr.

Though fun and playable, however, the deck could not stand up to the test of the format, especially with Water’s nemesis, Luxray GL Lv.X. The deck also found itself starved for energy whenever Floatzel’s “Water Acceleration” was Power Sprayed. Like many other decks, Blastoise never really had its day in the format due to SP.

Our New Format

In an HS-on format, though, there are no Power Sprays stopping “Water Acceleration”. There are no Luxray GL Lv.X obliterating Blastoise. There are no Garchomp C Lv.X sniping Floatzel. Hell, there aren’t even any decent Lightning Pokémon in general, barring Zekrom and Magnezone, which typically one-shot everything anyway. Blastoise and Floatzel have finally found the time to make a splash!

Blastoise/Floatzel

The above list has three spaces that are open to personal preference. The list also seems quite standard, but extremely consistent and efficient. As with any deck, you should start with the most consistent build and cut cards from there.

The Pokemon

Cleffa: Unappreciated when it was released, Cleffa is finally making a showing in a number of decks in the HS-on format. Its ability to refresh your hand for no energy is fantastic and comparable to Chatot MD, especially because Cleffa has free retreat. Once you have a fine hand of cards, you can simply retreat Cleffa and begin attacking!

Until then, though, just “Eeeeeeek” away and fall asleep, thereby preventing damage from opposing Pokémon. Hand refresh is awesome in a deck like this because you can play out your hand of Pokémon and energy, and then throw the leftovers back into the deck for a fresh six cards.

Buizel: Like most preevolutions, Buizel is mostly used to evolve into Floatzel. If it is stuck in the active position, however, and you like to plan knockouts several turns in advance, Buizel’s “Muddy Water” does 10 to the defending Pokémon and 10 to a benched Pokémon.

This tiny bit of set up is perfect for later on when Blastoise needs to knock out something with 110 HP, such as Yanmega Prime.

Floatzel: Floatzel is Blastoise’s free retreating partner in crime. It has an expensive attack that you hopefully never have to use, but an awesome Poke-Power that allows you to attach one Water Energy to it without taking up your attachment for the turn. While this does not seem like much, it allows Blastoise to function in a format that will, presumably, rely on energy acceleration. And, I mean, ya know, Floatzel’s “Water Acceleration” has acceleration in the name! Pfft. You cannot even get that official with “Inferno Fandango”!

Having one Floatzel out permits consecutive snipes from Blastoise as you attach to Blastoise for the turn and then accelerate the Water Energy to Floatzel, which Blastoise moves to itself. Having two Floatzel out allows you to begin setting up another Blastoise while still maintaining the energy requirement to attack!

Squirtle: This Squirtle is lame, but it is the only one we have to work with in an HS-on format. Personally, I would rather have Base Set Squirtle in its place so there’s a chance of paralyzing the opponent. But no, we’re stuck with this. Oh well. At least its art matches the other Water-type Pokémon in the deck…

Wartortle: This guy is only in the deck if you are needing to manually evolve into Blastoise, because you have the Blastoise but no Rare Candy or you have the Rare Candy without the Blastoise, or, for some bizarre reason, you are being Item-locked. Unlike many intermediate evolutions, though, Wartortle is pretty decent: For one Water Energy, you can snipe anything for 20. This is similar to “Muddy Water” as you can set up a knock out on a bulkier Pokémon. Wartortle can also do 50 damage to the defending Pokémon in a pinch. So, while it’s not the best card ever, it is not terrible like Squirtle.

Blastoise: Finally, we have our star Pokémon! Blastoise has a great 130 HP, great Poke-Power, and great attack. His Poke-Power, “Wash Out”, allows you to move Water Energy from your benched Pokémon to your active. And, you know what, you can do that as many times as you’d like!

With Floatzel on the bench accelerating energy, Blastoise can easily power up its “Hydro Launcher” to snipe any opposing Pokémon on the field for 100 damage. This comes at a reasonable cost, though, which includes returning two Water Energy to your hand; if anything, you are just conserving energy in case Blastoise is about to be knocked out!

100 snipe is nothing to scoff at either, and Black & White rules make it even better. A Pokémon must now be in play an entire turn before being eligible for evolution or Rare Candy. That means Blastoise can snipe any Tepig or Vulpix before it evolves into the broken Emboar or draw engine that is Ninetales, respectively.

The Trainers

Pokémon Collector: Blastoise/Floatzel is a deck that must set up properly in order to function; Pokémon Collector is the greatest insurance to a proper set up. Opening with or topdecking one of these guys on the first turn is incredible. It allows you to pull from your deck any combination of Basic Pokémon, so by the next turn you can have two Buizel and a Squirtle all ready to evolve. It also means you can grab Cleffa to refresh your hand in case of a bad Professor Juniper, Professor Oak’s New Theory, or Copycat.

Unfortunately, Pokémon Collector has certainly lost much of its power with the rotation of Uxie, and it shows in this deck, too. Mid- to late-game Pokémon Collector are dead draw and usually end up as failed searches or Juniper fodder.

Pokémon Communication: This card became maxed out in nearly every deck because of the rotation, and such an increase is justified. The only way to currently search out Stage 1 and 2 cards is by Professor Elm’s Training Method and Pokémon Communication. The former, a Supporter, is subpar compared to the latter, an Item, because you can play as many Items as you darn well please. Communication also works well in conjunction with Collector as you can search out excess Basics and trade them for the real stars.

Professor Juniper: Personally, I have fallen in love with Professor Juniper. At first I was very wary about discarding my entire hand, but that has subsided for the most part. I initially only had one Juniper in the deck but have slowly added more, and I am currently contemplating adding a fourth. It’s that good, I assure you, especially in a deck that attaches multiple energy per turn.

Professor Juniper’s usefulness becomes obvious after trial and error. What I mean is that it takes a few bad discards (e.g., discarding Rare Candy, evolutions, etc.) before you learn when to and when not to play Juniper.

And, even after discarding useful Rare Candies or Wartortle, you begin to realize that they were necessary sacrifices to dig deeper into your deck. To win games your hand becomes the martyr and Juniper your savior.

Professor Elm’s Training Method: As previously mentioned, Professor Elm’s Training Method is a Supporter that searches out Stage 1 and Stage 2 cards. It is a fine card when you can use it, but there are usually better Supporters to use that turn. Nevertheless, when you want to ensure you get the Blastoise or Floatzel, just play Elm’s. Unfortunately, it will never be Bebe’s Search. Sorry, Professor.

Professor Oak’s New Theory (PONT): This deck possesses three generations worth of professors, and the third professor is Oak with his new theory. PONT allows you to shuffle your hand back into your deck and draw a fresh hand of six, akin to Cleffa, albeit a Supporter. In most cases, Professor Juniper is more handy than PONT, but PONT is great if you have a handful of evolutions that you cannot use just yet. Beyond what has already been said, there is not much else to say about this card.

Copycat: Like PONT, Copycat is a hand refresher in Supporter form. Just return your hand to your deck and mimic your opponent’s hand size. This card can yield huge hands if you are playing against decks with competent draw power, such as Ninetales.

I realize this and PONT means that there are four shuffle-draw Supporters in the deck and, while that may seem excessive, I would hate to rely on topdecks because of a lack of hand refresh. I’m sure you could cut one or two PONT and/or Copycat, but I would posit that you need at least two hand refreshers. The combination you choose will typically depend on individual playstyle. Clearly, I like to have options.

Switch: This deck runs a relatively heavy Switch count. I have found that Switch are pretty important in conservation of energy, as well as waking up those sleepy Cleffa so they can “Eeeeeeek” and continue to set up your bench and refresh your hand.

Switch also gets rid of any special conditions on Blastoise that may prevent it from using “Wash Out”. Most notably, using Switch and promoting Floatzel, who has free retreat, further promotes conservation of energy.

Rare Candy: Obviously, Rare Candy are a necessity in any Stage 2 deck, and Blastoise is no exception. This list runs four to increase the odds of drawing into it early game, as you want Blastoise out and sniping as soon as possible.

You will never use all four, so do not fear discarding one or even two with Professor Juniper. Unfortunately, Rare Candy have become “nerfed” (as everyone else calls it), so they will not be used as quickly as they have in previous formats.

The Energy

Water Energy: These worthless blue cards can be attached to Floatzel via “Water Acceleration” and manipulated by “Wash Out” to power up Blastoise’s “Hydro Launcher”. Derp.

Double Colorless Energy: These energy cards are worth a teensy bit more than Water Energy, but for understandable reasons. They provide two Colorless energy each, which is adequate enough to power up “Hydro Launcher”. You can attach one Double Colorless Energy to Blastoise and then use “Water Acceleration” to attach the Water Energy to two Floatzel, thereafter permitting Blastoise to snipe! It’s pretty good.

The Strategy

The idea of the deck is to set up a quick Blastoise and at least one Floatzel so you can begin sniping for 100 each. This is best accomplished by means of Pokémon Collector. If you start with a Buizel active, you should Collector for another Buizel, Squirtle, and probably Cleffa; if you start with Squirtle, Collector for two Buizel and a Cleffa; if you start with Cleffa, Collector for two Buizel and a Squirtle.

Ideally, by having at least one Squirtle and two Buizel out, you can evolve freely the next turn and begin attaching copious amounts of energy. Cleffa is a good choice, too, because it allows  you to refresh your hand if it does not accommodate the current game state.

By mid-game, you should have at least two Floatzel out for support, as well as another Blastoise prepared to take the active’s place. Likewise, it is good to have a benched Squirtle that is manually evolving or can be Candy’d into a Blastoise. This is also the time to hoard your Double Colorless Energy to attach to Blastoise.

While you have an attacking Blastoise, you should be sniping possible threats and taking cheap prizes on the opponent’s bench, as well as knocking out formidable active Pokémon, like Reshiram or Zoroark.

Possible Additions

Looking at the current list, there are three empty spaces that you can add in whatever. Currently, I have two Seeker and one Twins filling those spaces, but neither are truly needed. There are rarely any opportunities to heal damaged Pokémon on your bench, so Seeker’s only current use in this format is largely unneeded.

Not only that but it does not disrupt your opponent like it used to because, assuming they played a Collector the previous turn, your opponent can simply pick up a support Pokémon or non-evolving Basic, like Reshiram or Zekrom.

This deck also consistently sets up by or before turn three, so it is not slow enough to completely warrant the use of Twins. Theoretically, you could include several so that you can play Twins after a Cleffa is knocked out, but Cleffa usually survives all game because it cannot be damaged while asleep. Besides, Cleffa typically gives you everything you need anyway.

I initially ran two Junk Arm in my build but later took them out. After some consideration and others mentioning their compatibility with Professor Juniper, however, they should be added. They can grab Juniper’d Rare Candies or Pokemon Communication, and then, once you’ve cleaned out your hand, you can Juniper once more for an easy seven. I am not entirely sure why I took them out in the first place…

If you enjoy being on the wild side and flipping coins, consider adding Dual Ball to speed up the first couple of turns. They will set up your bench, like Collector does, and you can Junk Arm for more, all the while playing some other Supporter in your hand. PlusPower could be added, too, to ensure knock outs on active Pokémon with 110 HP.

In the first couple of playthroughs with this deck, I ran Flower Shop Lady for recovery. Like every other darn recovery card (e.g., Night Maintenance or Palmer’s Contribution), I always seemed to have it in my opening hand yet did not have it at the most inopportune times.

Also, in more cases than not, I would discard it with Professor Juniper, which immediately took away any chance of recovering my Pokémon or Water Energy. I decided to cut it from my list, which forces me to make tighter and more conservative plays. But, just because it did not work me, that does not mean it won’t help you; try it out and see if you even need it.

Speaking of cards that I previously cut, Stantler originally had the place of Cleffa. While it set up evolutions for the next turn, my bench became clogged and Pokémon Collector were even more worthless. I also had no way to recover from a bad hand, which Cleffa now mediates.

Smeargle is another starter to try, but I have yet to test it. Compared to Cleffa, Smeargle cannot support the deck if the opponent lacks a Supporter in hand; it also wastes an energy to retreat and can be damaged more easily.

Aside from those considerations, you can just beef up the count of Trainers already present in the list. I would highly recommend that fourth Professor Juniper, like I mentioned earlier. Or you can increase the energy counts or run a different starter.

But these are just things to keep in mind to maintain consistency. Techs, such as Cinccino or Zoroark, that work with Double Colorless Energy could be easily splashed into the deck, but I would suggest boasting consistency first, especially in such a different environment with new things to consider in deckbuilding.

Some Final Words

Blastoise/Floatzel has finally found a format in which it can perform how it was designed. It is a quick deck that is difficult to take down by most decks when set up, and the ability to snipe supporting Pokémon can have deleterious effects on your opponent’s game plan. The deck is also much speedier than its previous conception as BlastGatr, which, for whatever reason, is still considered viable.

Because the format is so fresh, I have yet to thoroughly test Blastoise/Floatzel against every conceivably competitive deck possible. Theorymon dictates that it has a decent game against most though. This, however, does not apply to decks utilizing Zekrom or Magnezone, which are a danger to any deck because of the fast and massive damage output by Zekrom and the tank-destroying capability of Magnezone.

Nonetheless, I highly recommend you all at least try out a build for yourself. Take what I’ve said into consideration or don’t. I do not much care, but I think it is a deck that has been widely overlooked by all.

Thanks for reading!

Making a Splash with Blastoise/Floatzel is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

This is my first written article for SixPrizes as you may know me as the one who makes the YouTube series PokeClass. If you haven’t seen it yet then please visit my channel here.

I’m going to focus this article on how I have developed my personal LuxChomp list from the very first Battle Roads tournament up until the present day. I will explain my changes, thoughts and analyse my final list right at the end.

So, to kick start this article, I’m going to give you a quick background of how I came to playing the deck in the first place.

2010 brought me my first, full competitive season in the Pokemon TCG. I had spent the summer after Nationals deciding what deck to build and take through to the new format Majestic Dawn onwards.

This was a tough choice for me as my card pool wasn’t huge and I had no way to test extensively due to there not being a league close enough to attend. Extensively researching decks and strategies on the internet didn’t really help either as it just gave me more decks to think about.

Then came a day where it was kind of decided for me. A simple trip to the local town led to the purchase of several single packs of Pokemon cards, which was usually what happened. I can’t remember which sets in particular they were, probably Unleashed since it was around that time, but one other set had slipped into the purchase.

A single Rising Rivals pack. Upon opening the pack there was no sense of getting anything decent since it was just a single pack, but to our avail out popped a single Luxray GL Lv.X. We were kind of stunned at our luck, but the first thought to enter my mind was, “I’m going to play LuxChomp”.

Seeing as the sheer expense of this card alone was enough to keep the deck out of my shortlist to choose, I now had the key part for just the price of a pack! I’m a firm believer in fate and this seemed to be my chance to give this deck a spin.

So that’s how I came across playing the deck in the first place. I was fully aware of the popularity of this deck in both the UK and the rest of the World as it was being played by the best players and winning heavily. The complexity of learning the deck was also a selling point for me. Before the 2010-2011 season, I was a fairly new player with little experience with different decks, so the learning curve the deck came with definitely helped with my decision to run it.

This whole season, I have only played with LuxChomp and I started with a list including Blaziken FB Lv.X along with some questionable deck choices. I still have the scraggy piece of paper with the list on, so here are the initial 60 cards.

The First List:

Autumn Battle Roads

As you can see, there are some strange choices in my list, the most strange to me being the higher count of Bebe’s Search than Pokemon Collector. This is the list I used during the first Battle Roads section of the season, so I’m guessing that the huge hype of VileGar upon the release of Undaunted caused me to use more supporter based search than trainer. I had also done a lot of testing against VileGar and a high Bebe’s count meant that I had a fairly consistent search of level Xs.

3 Call Energy? – Yeah, I was happy with this count even though 4 seems to be the more consistent choice. I just felt that I could get away with cutting it to 3 so that I could squeeze in the extra ‘anti-trainer lock’ cards. Looking back now I would probably bump this back up to 4.

Energy Exchanger? – I really liked this card when Undaunted came out as it was an option to search out Double Colourless Energy as well as to switch different types of energy for the one you needed without having to use up a Cyrus to get it.

This card actually helped me get Garchomp donks more frequently by grabbing Double Colourless while having an Energy Gain and Crobat G in hand.

Drifblim UD – This is probably a no brainer for most in the US considering the amount of Mewtwo Lv.X being played. Mewtwo wasn’t a popular card over here and in the time I’ve been playing I still haven’t played against one, so maybe a counter isn’t needed. However, this card is different as it can serve as a counter against tank decks or even get you a donk in certain situations with “Take Away”.

Drifblim also has an attack called “Balloon Tackle” which serves as a great Machamp/Uxie Lv.X counter to hit for weakness. Pair that with a free retreat and you have a very versatile back-up attacker for those troublesome cards.

Shiny Drifloon – I chose to use this as my pre-evolution of Drifblim simply because it had free retreat, making it nicer to start with and its second attack ‘Big Explosion’ is also very effective against Machamp if you’re desperate for a KO.

Professor Oak’s New Theory – With big news that the World Champion ran these in his LuxChomp, I decided to give them a go and with great results. There’s no feeling like drawing one of these when you have a hand of just a couple of cards.

This card has helped me out too many times when I’m stuck with a bad hand so I kept in two copies to keep the deck as consistent as possible.

The rest of the list seems pretty normal for an SP deck along with the popular new addition of Smeargle UD for the mirror match and even more support against VileGar.

I was pretty happy with how the list was testing and took the same list to two Battle Roads with decent results. I managed to get a 4th and 2nd place at the Battle Roads I attended and for the first time playing SP, I was pretty pleased. The list worked as well as it could and I found that I had the type advantage over a lot of decks with the addition of Blaziken FB too.

City Championships

After a pretty good run at Battle Roads came City Championships. I tried a lot of different lists during this time and used it to experiment a little bit. This probably wasn’t the best time to do it, but seeing as I didn’t do it at Battle Roads, this was the next best thing. All of my lists apart from the last one I tried contained Blaziken FB Lv.X

I don’t have the all of the lists for you, but here is possibly one of the strangest lists you have ever seen. I tried mixing parts of Sablelock together with Blaziken, Luxray and Garchomp, making for an extremely tight list. As you can see below, the list was pretty strange.

The Second Version:

This list is far from the traditional Sablelock list. You may notice that I have only 2 Sableye SF. Obviously used for its “Impersonate” attack, it was there to take advantage of Cyrus’s Initiative if started with at the beginning.

City Championships, if I remember correctly, were just after Triumphant had been released. This meant that Gyarados was highly expected as well as VileGar which had done well from the Battle Roads before. Let me just outline some of my choices this time around.

2-1 Luxray Lv.X – This change from 3-1 was made simply to make a tiny bit of room for more ‘tech’ cards against certain decks. Gyarados was a real threat at the time as my testing against it proved prior to these tournaments. I did find the 2 Basic Luxrays to be too little when playing Gyarados as when the first and the second, recovered, Level X was KO’d it was very difficult to get another one going again.

3 Pokemon Collector – This is the change I outlined from the previous list. VileGar wasn’t a massive threat, but I found that just the 2 Bebe’s Search covered me enough when paired against it. Also, grabbing basics when playing against Gyarados was key when trying to keep up with its new speed in the form of Junk Arm.

Honchkrow SV – This card was also directly aimed at the Gyarados match up. Being able to drag Magikarps from the discard with “Darkness Restore” as well as being able to hit for very high damage was very appealing when slipping it into the list. It also works well with Double Colourless energy which is an obvious plus while you are running four of them.

2 Sableye SF? – This was a very strange choice on my part. I really wanted to keep Luxray, Garchomp and Blaziken in the deck, but I also wanted to try the disruption side of Sablelock in there too. I was originally putting Sableye in the list to help against trainer lock as it could grab you some quick supporters when you were stuck from using anything else.

Bumping up to two was a poor choice as I still wouldn’t start with it consistently enough to Impersonate Cyrus’ Initiative and most of the time it just got stuck on the bench, taking up precious space.

Overall, you can probably tell that the first City Championships of my season didn’t go well. It was only a small one with 3 rounds, but I ended up going 1-2. I was presented with some bad luck by getting donked by Donphan twice in a best of three game, but my other two matchups were Gyarados.

I was fairly confident with this match up considering the amount of techs I had against it, but I only managed to win one of the games. The one I lost, I managed to get the game 1 win by using Honchkrow to maximum effect, but the clunkyness of my deck got the better of me in the next two games. I managed to scrape a win in the third match of the day by using Blaziken’s “Luring Flame” to full effect.

This poor performance at the first Cities really showed me how inconsistent I had made my deck by just trying to fit too much in to one build. It should either be one or the other, which is something I quickly learned after this day.

Next came the second of the three Cities I attended this year. I don’t have a deck list for this one, but I decided to go back to my old build only changing some of the high supporter count for trainers. The area I was playing in that day, Nottingham, is fairly well-known for running rogue decks and VileGar. Running into Spiritomb was something I wasn’t expecting for some reason and changing out some of my Bebe’s Search for Pokemon Communication quickly showed to be a bad idea.

After a bad start at the tournament, losing my first game pretty badly, I managed to bring it back up to 2-1 in a five round swiss. The fourth round brought me to a SpeedFlare deck, one that I was far from familiar with. This deck runs on a lot of Poke Powers and Poke Bodies, but I thought I had a decent type advantage.

However, my unfamiliarity with the deck paired with some missed Power Spray drops meant that he managed to take the final prize on the last turn of time when we were drawn on prizes.

Losing to a deck I had never seen before did dampen my spirits, but the point of this article is to highlight how losses should be taken note of and then used to improve your deck before the next tournament.

Upon returning home from an okay performance at this Cities, I immediately whipped out the card binder and looked for a single card. Since I noticed that my VileGar match up really wasn’t that strong any more and that random decks were taking me by surprise, I was only looking for one card. Dialga G Lv.X. This card was the heart of my changes for the next tournament as my previous one had highlighted my current build’s weaknesses.

With the ability to shut off Spiritomb and Vileplume’s Poke Body in the VileGar match up as well as being able to shut down rogue decks which rely on Poke Bodies to function, it was the perfect addition to cover my deck’s downfalls.

The cut for this though was a tough choice to make. It was either Blaziken or Luxray and I went ahead and dropped the Blaziken. I had grown fond of Blaziken as it gave me a wider type advantage over a few decks and was a fast and hard attacker.

The only thing that sealed my decision was its fragility after it had attacked. Most of the time after attacking with the powerful “Jet Shoot”, a “Dragon Rush” or Toxicroak G Promo was filling the opposing active spot ready for the return KO.

I was also finding Call Energy to be less and less effective the longer I used it. Even when I was testing with it maxed out at four, I still didn’t find that it “wowed” me enough for me to use. Instead, I tried out Warp Energy and found that it worked like a dream.

Being able to get an easy second ‘Rush’ with Garchomp C Lv.X aswell as being able to switch Pokemon around multiple times per turn meant that I could carry out very complex turns, making use of as many Pokemon at a single time as I could. It also helped in retreating heavy cost Pokemon such as Bronzong G, when I don’t have a Poke Turn handy.

I also added in Roserade GL as I had a couple of spaces left in my new list. This card was so great for me while I played it. It was perfect for “Bright Looking” up a Pokemon such as Azelf or Smeargle in the mirror match and locking it in place. Then a few turns later and a flash bite to tip the KO in your favour, you can Dragon Rush for two prizes in one turn. Seeing as most of the mirror match decks didn’t run anything like Warp Point and Warp Energy, it was perfect for buying time and getting a nice lead on prizes early on.

I decided to keep Smeargle UD in along with the Unown Q so that I could get the advantage in trainer lock as well as using “Portrait” to duplicate Cyrus in the mirror. This usually grabbed me a huge lead when used correctly and Roserade GL wasn’t a highly played card at the time, so I wasn’t too worried about it getting stuck active, even more so because I ran Warp Energy now.

Overall, I was happy with all the testing I had done prior to the tournament and had also got my hands on a new Uxie Lv.X to try out aswell. A lot of my testing against Machamp was going well, with me being able to win 50% of the time. Not running Drifblim UD anymore meant that I had no Stage 1 to counter “Take Out”, but multiple Uxie Lv.Xs with Premier Ball seemed to work wonders if you got it out quick enough.

I also tried including a Metal Energy which could fuel all but one of Dialga G Lv.Xs attacks. I found this very helpful as it made the card not only a tech against many decks, but a useful attacker aswell. Being able to use the powerful trainer lock of Deafen as well as Second Strike made for another heavy hitter in my deck.

Along with the Metal Energy, I also added in a Psychic even though I wasn’t running PromoCroak. This gave me the option to use both Azelf’s and Crobat G’s attacks meaning that almost all of my Pokemon were now attackers as well as techs.

I took my new improved list to my last City Championships of the season. I don’t have the exact list right now, but it is pretty much the same as the final list I will show you, apart from a few cards. I managed to go 2-2, unfortunately running into 2 Machamps in the process. The games I played I felt that I played the deck as well as I could possibly have done. The deck, with improved changes, now felt more natural for me to play.

The two decks I beat were VileGar and Scizor Prime. This is where Dialga G Lv.X managed to show me how well it could pull off what it needed to. Playing against Scizor Prime, I used Dialga’s Deafen and Second Strike a lot to attack, block trainers and shut down Scizor’s Poke Body. This helped me to get a very healthy lead which was hard to come back from when I eventually warped Dialga G Lv.X to the bench and let it sit there while I Dragon Rushed for the rest of my prizes.

This was a game where the Psychic Energy I had put in helped me a ton. While I was setting up, ready for Dialga G Lv.X I managed to add crucial damage with Crobat G’s “Toxic Fang” attack. Having an extra 2 damage counters placed on Scizor Prime between each turn meant that the KOs were easier to grab, even when it had a couple of Special Metals attached.

The deck had definitely impressed me more than any other at this point. The versatility of it along with the speed and fun I had playing the deck meant that I was learning and growing as a player. I don’t know why, but I loved it. I could answer most things and I was able to pull off wins from games that looked bad for me. From the experience I had gained from building bad decks, I had created a deck that I felt perfectly comfortable with and felt pretty accomplished to be honest.

State Championships

Okay, now it was getting serious and all the testing needed to show now. I felt that my deck was at the best it could be and that I had the experience with it and the game to pull of some good results.

I went to three out of the four States in the UK to try and get some extra points for my rating as well as trying my best to go far with this list I had tweaked right from the beginning. I took the exact same list to two of the States I went to with a few cards changing from the one I played at the first one, Manchester.

This was a long travel for us to get to and when we arrived, there were a lot of great players there. I guess the 32K rating brings everyone out to every event in this country! I was paired against a great player, Freddy K, in my first round of this tournament and we had a very close game, which could have been even closer if I had made a better play right at the end, but that’s just Pokemon.

This put me at a first round loss, but I won the next round so it was okay, until I got paired against Karl Blake. He had just come straight from a Top 16 finish at the European Challenge Cup so I was definitely worried. We had a very close game and time just didn’t go in my favour, so I ended up losing right at the end. By then my luck was shot so I ended up going 2-3, my confidence knocked slightly.

Changes definitely needed to be made so I worked for a long time after that tournament to perfect the list to my playing style. So without even more typing (congrats if you’ve read this far by the way) here is my final list which I use up until this day.

The Final Product:

After my disappointing performance at the first States, I looked back at all my matches and highlighted where I lost because of deck, not my luck. The mirror appeared to be the biggest issue because I didn’t include Dragonite FB. This was a card I managed to fit in straight away.

If you skim over the list, it seems pretty vanilla, but you may have looked over the lack of Smeargle UD which I used heavily the whole season along with its counterpart, Unown Q. Yep, it isn’t a mistype, I took out Unown Q from my list. I expect you’re thinking along the lines of “Why?! It gives all your 1 retreat cost Pokemon free retreat! It’s a staple!” But let me explain my choice. I felt that with the absence of Smeargle, I would only be using it to retreat things like Uxie and Azelf, which could be dealt with fairly easily with Warp Energy.

If Uxie happened to get stuck active, I could search out the level X and then warp it to the bench. Since taking it out of this list, I haven’t and probably won’t miss it. Sure, it could help me retreat Roserade from time to time, but then I can’t attach Energy Gain to it and I find it a waste of the Q. I guess it’s just the way I prefer to play it.

I also decided to make the Metal Energy line a bit heavier and bump it up to 2. This meant that I would be able to use Dialga G Lv.X’s “Remove Lost” attack if I ever found the need. I felt that 2 Lightning Energy was a safe amount and might aswell broaden my Pokemon line up’s attack pool. This was at the cost of a Psychic Energy, but I found that I would use Dialga to attack more than I needed to with Crobat G or Azelf.

Twins from Triumphant is one of my favourite cards to play in this deck. If you know that you will be behind on prizes on your next turn, this should be the Supporter you grab with Cyrus Conspiracy the turn before. This card can search out any card you like, that includes Double Colourless Energy.

When I find myself needing Twins, I always find myself grabbing DCE, simply because it’s such a key card in the mirror. Getting VS Seeker with this card or using this when VS Seeker is in your hand means that you can use it to grab a further two cards from your deck to get back into a game you’ve fallen behind in.

Twins also benefited from the next change that I made, VS Seeker. Having 2 Aaron’s is nice, but the more I played it, the less I felt I needed to use two. So I went for the next best thing by putting in VS Seeker so I could use it to get a second Aaron’s if needed, but it was more versatile by being able to grab any Supporter you need.

Using a fifth Cyrus in any game is sure to give you the upper hand as your opponent may not see it coming. You can search that crucial extra TGI you need and grab a final Supporter to finish off or come back into a game.

Junk Arm was a card I was very dubious about. The fact that you could recover any TGI or VS Seeker etc was incredible, but I just didn’t like the 2 card cost. That feeling immediately went when I managed to find room for it. The discard isn’t a huge deal when you know what match up you’re playing against and what cards you won’t need in the duration of the game.

Being able to pluck an extra TGI from the discard means that you effectively get one extra copy of one to complete a possibly crucial, winning move. A very versatile card which has served me well when needing to stretch my resources.

Premier Ball was added when I was testing against Machamp. Being able to search out Uxie Lv.X from the discard pile after being taken out by Machamp was vital to being able to return the KO as quickly as possible. It was a card I got almost every time with Twins when I was playing that match up and it helped to keep up with the prize exchange while they take a prize per turn.

Both Dragonite and Ambipom were cards I included in the final list because I found that having both in there just helped with the mirror so much more. Being able to return KOs in the ‘Colourless War’ was a very key part of the deck. With LuxChomp becoming even more popular with every tournament in the UK, it had to be heavily teched against so I made sure it was.

The final thing I want to mention are my level X lines. I decided that 2-2 of both Garchomp C and Luxray GL were the way to go. I loved being able to set up consecutive Dragon Rushes with Warp Energy and both the level Xs in play. Having 2 Luxray Lv.X was also a great play for having stronger VileGar and Gyarados matchups. Being able to have 2 copies of each level X and a potential third with the use of Premier Ball meant that I was able to search out and recover level Xs at a very quick rate.

The rest of the deck should be self-explanatory for a standard LuxChomp build with things like Lucario GL, Bronzong G and Crobat G all being key cards to support all of your level Xs. The SP mechanic within the current metagame is a very strong one. It has its own engine which makes the deck very quick and with an answer to pretty much anything in the format, I don’t see why you shouldn’t try it out.

I also find this deck very challenging and, more importantly, fun to play. When I win with this deck, I feel I’ve earnt it, especially in really tough games where every single move you make is crucial.

This list got me my best result of the season, Top 8 at the toughest States in the UK. I was really pleased with the way I played that day and it managed to pay off by being able to make cut in one of the hardest tournaments I’ve played in this year.

So that’s my season so far along with all the lists I’ve actually written down and remembered. If you’re wondering why this article is sooooo long, it’s because I really wanted to go into detail about how I altered my list, finding out the weaknesses by actually playing against the rest of the UK.

Right now, I’m sitting at 26th place in the UK which I’m really pleased with even though it doesn’t sound amazing to say. With the amount I feel I have grown as a player in the time I have been playing I think that it is a decent achievement so far. I feel accomplished to have built a list that suits my playstyle down to the last card and that I tweaked and edited myself.

I’ve learnt that deck building can take time and when you pick up a deck, you probably won’t do well with it straight away. Make sure you tweak it to your own style and think about why you lose certain matchups and then cater for them in your changes. When you get the hang of realising where you went wrong, you’ll have a great list that you love to play.

Just before I go, I just want to thank everyone that I have met through the game so far. I’ve made some good friends and everyone I have played against or just met by trading has made the game as fun as it can be. Hopefully will see you all at Nats this year!

You may be pleased to know that this is the last paragraph of the article. Thanks for reading all the way to the end and I hope you learnt a bit and liked the lists I’ve shared with you today. If you have any questions please ask me.

Thanks again, Dan.

A Season of Building LuxChomp – The English Way is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

My name is Perry Going and this is my first full season in the TCG game. I started back in December 2010 and had a horrible first season. I ended up getting like a 1565 rating for the season. However, over the summer I decided to step it up and play meta-decks instead of trying to come up with rogue decks that wouldn’t work.

I first picked up Gengar C and lost to VileGar at my first Fall Battle Roads. Then I decided to try out the ever popular LuxChomp and got trashed again by VileGar at my second BR. Finally for my last BR, I chose to play VileGar because like they say: If you can’t beat them, join them.

At that third BR, I ended up making my first Top Cut ever and getting second place, only losing to my auto-loss, Umbreon UD. In conclusion, the second place win got my hopes up and I strove to make the most consistent version of VileGar ever.

I played with some techs to get around Umbreon and I thought I found the perfect one, Espeon UD. Yet, when I took VileGar to my first City Championship of the season, I got an even record and I decided to trash it for good. That was the end of VileGar for me.

At the next CC, I decided to play Steelix because I had been playing around with it and was doing well in testing, so I thought I might as well give it a try. After losing to two decks with Blaziken FB techs, I trashed the idea of Steelix being used in another tournament.

After having only one good tournament so far in the season, I was getting down on myself. I was just a tad bit over a 1600 rating and though I was going to have a terrible season after I had high hopes.

For my third CC, I went back to LuxChomp, but decided instead of ERL I would put in Blaziken FB. It helps my VileGar matchups and is obviously a strong hitter. This time I did well with LuxChomp and was able to make the Top 8 cut, but lost in Top 4 to the winner of the tournament.

I was back in the game and I noticed my rating shot up after that tournament. After making a few tweaks with the deck, I was just shy of making another Top Cut getting 6th because of a donk.

However, that donk drove me to make the best change to my deck I could possibly do. I increased my Call count from 3 to 4 and put in a 3rd Pokemon Collector. I wanted to make sure I would never get donked again. With the new improvements to my deck, I decided to play it at Anderson, SC CC.

And to many people’s surprise, I went on an amazing undefeated streak to win the whole tournament. I felt great. I won my first tournament ever and I felt like I was on top of the world.

With two more CCs coming up, I was desperate to make the list the most consistent I could. With a few more tweaks, I was able to make another top cut. I made it to Top 4 and was able to seal another huge amount of points to add to my rising rating.

With one more CC left in the season, I felt I couldn’t go down, which was a mistake. I got cocky and didn’t make any changes to my list. I ended up going 4-2 and only broke even with my rating. I whiffed majorly on top-cutting and ended the series on a sad note.

With the release of Call of Legends, I figured with the increase of Gengar play that Blaziken FB was no longer needed. He was a nice hitter, but added inconsistency to the deck. I dropped Blaziken and added Weavile G into the mix.

This tech not only gave me an edge on the Gengar matchup, but added a huge leap of consistency to my deck because it served as a 5th Call. I, also, dropped the 3rd Collector because I felt Collector was a dead card in the late game.

Thirdly, I added a Twins to my list to help in the Gyarados and LuxChomp Mirror match-ups, so I could search out Expert Belt and Double Colorless Energies. Lastly, I teched in a single Seeker into my list because I did not want to be Mewtwo-walled like I was in one of my CC games.

With my newly improved and consistency-focused deck, I went to North Carolina States with high hopes. The tournament started terribly for me. I won my first game, however lost to my friend Collin, who stole a full 20 points from me that match.

It was his first major tourney of the season, so his rating was terribly low. The loss bummed me a little and I decided to play the rest of the tourney out. I ended up making Top Cut, but lost in Top 16 to Gdos which I thought I was teched out for.

I realized I had to change my game plan in that matchup. After play-testing a little bit more with this particular matchup, I was able to come up with a better game plan and felt more comfortable when playing against it.

I wanted revenge this time. At South Carolina States, I was able to tackle many decks that seemed to be losses to LuxChomp. This was the order of the decks I played in Swiss: Straight Magnezone, VileGar with Machamp Tech, LuxChomp, Gyarados with Weavile, Gyarados with Reversal, and Gyarados with Weavile.

My only loss was to Collin yet again with a very close mirror game. I end up easily making Top cut this time and play MagneRock for the first time ever. I don’t know how to play this matchup, so I go into it blind. However, everything, and I mean everything, goes in my favor. I was always able to snipe the Magneton and able to take out the Regirocks.

After a gruesome 10 minutes, I win both games to make it into Top 4. Top 4 was against Collin. For the third time during the States series, I play him and he’s going into it with 2 wins over me. I wish I could remember every detail about these 3 games, but I know from a fact these games were perfect examples of what LuxChomp mirror-matches should be played like.

It was prize exchange after prize exchange. We both drew into our DCEs and had our Dragonite FBs ready. These 3 games were some of the best games I have ever played.  He wins game 1, I win game 2, and game 3 goes to time and I am able to take it for the last win. At this point, I am ecstatic. I end up playing MagneRock in Top 2.

Will Beers, the guy I played was one of the most chilled people I have ever met. He was very kind and was easy to get along with. After 2 games just going my favor, I was the winner of South Carolina States. I thought my CC win was awesome. I never would have pictured a States win.

The 8-1 record brought my rating to an amazing 1797.44. I was now 3rd in the State of North Carolina, and on the verge of getting a World Championship invite.

I was so excited at this point because I never would have thought I had a chance to get into Worlds in my first full season. Not only did I have to do well at Regionals to get the points I needed for the invite, I had something to prove. Most people thought my States win was all luck and that I had very good matchups. I needed to do well to prove them wrong.

With Regionals a long ways away, I had time to test other decks. I didn’t touch LuxChomp the whole time between States and Regionals. Instead, I was testing with Gyarados, VileGar, Steelix, and LoxChomp. I was trying to figure out if LuxChomp was the play.

Well after a long bit of testing, I was on the verge of playing Gyarados at States. However, I decided to play LuxChomp once again and was able to get out day of testing out with it before Regionals.

I didn’t change my list at all, because I felt you shouldn’t fix something that was broke.

After a nice chilled out ride with my friends to VA, I registered and was nervous from the moment I sat down to wait for the tourney to start. My goal of the day was to go 7-0 in Swiss and drop.

I was playing for points and not a win. Before the tourney had begun, Michael Reynolds, who was 2nd in the State of NC, was telling people if they needed cards to borrow that I had them all. So I ended up loaning about 15 cards total and felt I had good karma on my side. Everyone was set and registered, which meant time for the tournament to begin.

*Note that I wrote down the names of everyone, but may not be able to recall the whole game, for I only kept track of the prizes.*

Round 1: Daniel M. with MewChamp (or that’s what I think it was)

I was kind of ironic that I play this guy first, because I loaned him able 8 cards to be able to play his deck. The only reason I think it was MewChamp was that I loaned him a Machamp SF and Mew Primes. The game only lasted 2 turns because I was able to Seeker up his benched Pokemon and knock-out his active for game.

1-0

Round 2: Adam G. with Gyarados/Mesprit

This guy was a pretty interesting person to talk to and play with. I appreciate players that are very interactive, kind and who are overall good sports. He opened well and was able to “Psychic-Bind” me for 3 turns. I was able to spray one of them so I could set up, got my Luxrays out and basically won from there.

2-0

Round 3: Shane with Uxie Donk

This player was kind of new to Pokemon. However, he plays Yu-gi-oh and knows how to play TCGs. Even though he was playing a deck, which in my book takes no playing skill, I was able to get along with him and play a very mellow match.

He starts of going first and basically lays down a basic and passes. My hand however is terrible. I start with Brongzong G and have 2 Power Sprays, a Cyrus Conspiracy, Luxray GL Lv.X, a Lightning energy, and an Aaron’s Collection.

Hoping to top deck a Call energy, I get a Junk Arm instead. This was good enough for me. I Cyrused for an energy, an SP Radar, and a Pokemon Collector. I was able to use the Junk Arm to use the Radar twice to pull out 2 more basics.

When all was said and done, I was left with 2 Power Sprays and a Collector. I passed and was able to Spray two Uxies, which prevented him from donking. With my Collector I was able to set up and run the table from there.

3-0

Round 4: Ryan S. with LuxChomp

I have never seen this LuxChomp player before, so I change my game plan a little bit. I never left a Garchomp Lv.X without an energy because I did not know if he had Ambipom G in his list.

We had a short “Garchomp Battle” and prize exchange, and when I took my last prize he told me his Dragonite and Ambipom were both prized. The game probably would have played out differently, but still good game.

4-0

Round 5: Lamar Battle with Steelix/Jirachi

Man, this game in summary was hard. Even though he did not draw well, I still had trouble making sure he did not draw well. His build was very interesting because he was running Jirachi RR to help him set-up. So, my immediate game plan was not to give him a chance to use Jirachi’s Power.

After almost running through my whole deck, I was able to take all six prizes by only taking out 1 Jirachi that had an Expert Belt. Good game. I never thought I would be able to beat Steelix with LuxChomp, but I did it.

5-0

Round 6: Jon Skinner with DialgaChomp

Even though he is my best friend and I knew his list, I knew that this was going to be a hard game. It wasn’t a hard game though because there wasn’t a game. He starts perfectly and I find that my 2 basic Garchomps are prized, so I immediately scooped.

5-1

Round 7: David Cleary with Straight Gengar w/ Luxray GL

David is easily one of my favorite people to play because he is such a nice guy. He sits down and states that he doesn’t want to play me because he didn’t think he would win. I told him you never know and of course I didn’t think I would be donked. FAIL.

I start for the first time since I changed my list to 4 Call, a Unown Q and no Call energy. He gets Uxie and attaches for the win. Good game and I will get my revenge!

5-2

So with Swiss being over, I place 11th and make the Top Cut. I was ecstatic because this is definitely better than my 2-5 record I had last year. Then, ironically, I see I’m playing David Cleary once again. I seek out my revenge this time.

Top 16: David Cleary with Gengar

Game 1: We both start out well. He is able to get 2 Gengar out quickly and I see that both my Darkness Energy and my Weavile G are prized, so I just take out the Haunters and Crobat Gs. I am able to take 5 prizes to his 4 before I am able to set up my Weavile and get the last knock-out with “Team-Attack”. Since he has 2 prizes left and Weavile wasn’t belted, flipping for “Fainting Spell” didn’t matter.

Game 2: Again we both start well, but my set-up just out-sped his and I took 6 prizes in a short period of time. And in about 15 minutes, I was in the Top 8.

Top 8: Nate Blevins with VileGar w/ Mewtwo Tech

Game 1: I start a Crobat G to his Spiritomb/Gastly start and I have nothing going for me in my hand. However, I go first and top deck a Luxray and attach a DCE to it and “Bite” for 30 on his Tomb. He doesn’t have much either and just “Darkness Graces” into a Haunter TR.

I then proceed to top deck a Cyrus and I have a Luxray GL Lv.X in my hand. So, I attach a Lightning, Cyrus for a second energy, and then “Trash Bolt” his Haunter. He plays a Collector and (I guess) sees that his Mewtwo is prized and just scoops.

Game 2: He starts with Spiritomb and I start with a lone Garchomp C. He chooses to go first and calls for Mewtwo and Oddish. I use my Collector to grab Luxray, Uxie, and a Bronzong. This puzzles him and he asks, “Why not get Dialga out?” and I answer, honestly, “I don’t run Dialga.”

He gives a very puzzled look as to why I was still calm and collective about a Mewtwo wall. I attach and end my turn. He retreats Spiritomb and Bebe’s for the Lv.X. He doesn’t have an energy to attach, so he passes. I just attach and return and pass. I was waiting to draw the Seeker.

Even though I had the Cyrus and I could just search for it, I wanted the surprise factor, so I just waited. We exchange turns for a while with none of us drawing a prize until I draw the Seeker. I proceed to snipe the Oddish that was on his bench and I take the first prize.

He still doesn’t have enough energy on Mewtwo to attack, so he passes. I then promote Luxray attach Lightning and Energy Gain, “Bright Look” his Spiritomb, play Seeker and “Flash Impact” for the win. He was a little upset that I won like that and I understand completely if that blind-sided him. But, that’s what I had to do to beat Mewtwo.

The game ended in about 10 minutes and I was in Top 4. Later on that night, I actually got to speak with Nate and found out that he’s a really chill dude. I give props to you, Nate, for making Top 8 with VileGar.

Top 4: Steven Scrobe with Gyarados w/ Mesprit

Game 1: I greatly apologize to Steven, but he starts Magikarp to my Luxray with DCE.

Game 2: This was an interesting game. We both get set-up fairly quickly and I have my double Luxrays with Lucario GL out. I knockout the first Gyarados that had a Rescue and he retaliates with a hit of 90. I “Galactic Switch” to my other Luxray, Poke Turn the active one, bring up the other Luxray, level it up, and attach the Expert Belt for automatic KO with “Flash Impact.”

This Gyarados also had a Rescue attached to it. He lays it back down and attaches another Rescue Energy to his Gyarados. He isn’t able to knock-out the active Luxray, so he “Regi Moves” and takes out my Garchomp. I lay down another basic for his Gyarados to “eat” and I take out the Gyarados once again.

Once again, he lays out the Gyarados and “Regi-Moves” my active to knock another basic on my bench, but doesn’t have the Rescue Energy to attach. I repeat my last turn again to knock-out the Gyarados. He, then, double Pokemon Rescues the Gyarados back to “Regi Move” once again to get the revenge KO.

I promote Luxray to take another prize. This time, he Junk Arms the Pokemon Rescue to get another Gyarados out. I take that one out for prize 5. At this point, we are both amazed by how many Gyarados have been put out this game and I tell him if he gets another Gyarados out that I’ll applaud him.

He takes a minute to figure it out and he Seekers a Pokemon up, lays down Combee and Luxury Balls for his last Gyarados. He does it and I, like I promised, I applauded him. I get last prize by killing my 6th Gyarados that game. Congrats to you, Steven, and I am glad I played you in Top 4.

Top 2: Kevin Nance with Gyarados w/ Mesprit and Reversals

I’m just going to start off by saying, wow. I never thought I would make it to Top 2 at Regionals. I was on such an excitement high that I needed a quick break. Kevin Nance is the brother of legendary Steelix player, Erik Nance, and is one of the best players in North Carolina.

I had played him once before at South Carolina States, but he had terrible prizes and the game panned out too much into my favor. However, this time our games went differently.

Game 1: He starts off strong with a swift set-up and a heavy power-lock. I was power-locked for about 6 turns before I was able to do anything. Yet, at this point, he had knocked out both my Luxrays using Pokemon Reversals. I try to play it out and I get about 3 prizes.

Game 2: So much happened in this game, that I don’t remember it all. I do remember, he started off with 3 turns of power-lock before I could “Dragon Rush” his Mesprit. At this point, he had knocked out both of my Luxrays again by using Reversals. I used Aaron’s Collection to get them both back, but he was able to bring up on and knock it out, too.

However, I was able to get one leveled up and Belted. Then, I am able to even the game to 2 prizes each. He has the Gyarados in hand from the Rescue Energy, but doesn’t lay it down because I figured he had no way to get it back after I knocked it out with Luxray. So he Collectors for 2 Crobat Gs and lays one down to “Flash Bite” my Luxray.

He passes to me thinking I was going to knock something out with the belted Luxray and he could “Flash Bite” it again and belt his Gyarados to knock out my Luxray. Instead, I promote the Garchomp I laid down earlier just in case I needed to “Healing Breath” and sniped one of his bats.

He knocks out the Garchomp with Gyarados and I knock it out with Luxray. Thus, concluding game 2 in overtime. So, we go to Sudden Death.

Sudden Death: He starts Smeargle to my Luxray/Brongzong start. He goes first and “Portraits” the Bebe’s Search that I have in hand and he gets out Mesprit to “Psychic Bind” me. I attach a lightning to my Luxray and Bebe’s out the Luxray GL Lv.X.

With nothing else to do, I pass to him. He takes a long turn and isn’t able to get out the Gyarados, so he “Let Looses” my hand so I can’t have the Luxray Gl Lv. X. The four cards I get are 2 Poke Turns, a DCE and a Twins. He doesn’t get anything useful in his hand so he is forced to promote a Sableye with a Belt attached and impersonates for a Seeker, I think.

I top deck another DCE and attach the first one to the Luxray. I don’t even put down the Brongzong because at this point it’s useless. However, I don’t have the knock out on the Sableye, so all I do it bite and hopes he brings up something with 70 HP or less.

He takes another long turn and still whiffs on the Gyarados and his only hope is to hit a Seeker so he can Seeker up the now benched Sableye and attach the belt to the active Smeargle. However, he doesn’t hit the Seeker and I am able to “Trash Bolt” for the win. Good game, Kevin.

Final Record: 9-2

Here’s my deck list:

So far in my first full season, I was able to win a Cities, a States, and a Regionals, make many Top Cuts, and get to my current Rating of 1842.34. Hopefully, I can make that invite and prove to everyone that I was able to do something that I could have only dreamed of until now.

Whatever happens, I’m very thankful for all the people I have met, all the games I have played, and for the encouragement I have received from all my friends. I, thank you, Pokemon, for all the memories.

PGMCSSKATER’s Season Report and Quinton, Virginia First Place Regionals Report is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

PROLOGUE: THE RISE OF AYDAN AIRES

So, how to put this simply… I’m 18, started playing Fall 2010, and my name is Aydan. I love this game sooo much. I’ve met so many fun and cool people and it has helped me become more active in the Pokemon community.

Honestly, I’m a jock at my high school playing 3 varsity sports, and as you know, it’s hard to be an accepted high school student if you play Pokemon. I love the game so much, though, that I don’t really mind what others think of me.

ALRIGHT! So, for my first Regionals, I decided to play Gyarados (Mesprit Lock). I really love Power Locking people while setting up my Gyarados and it has helped me so much. I’ve played the deck for a good 5 months so I knew my deck very well. (AND YES, YOU GREEDY DECK COPIERS! THE LIST IS AT THE BOTTOM! Just kidding about calling you greedy.)

Something you should know about my deck is THAT I PLAY ALL 4 DIFFERENT MAGIKARPS IN THE FORMAT. I like to be different :D

The Regionals was at Indiana and after placing 17th at Ohio States, I was begging for a top-cut. Today, there were 146 Players with a Top Cut of 32 in the Master’s division.

Friday night, we arrived at the hotel (Thanks to a sweet family from our league) and to be strictly honest, WE HAD NO IDEA WHERE WE WERE GOING TO STAY. It was me and my friend, Nick (playing DialgaChomp), and we were stupid enough not to make any plans. We just thought…

“Let’s go to Regionals!”
“Shouldn’t we have a room?”
“Nah, let’s wing it!”

Stupidest move ever. We play tested and met a lot of Poke-Players in the lobby. We even used the Lobby computer to print off papers that read:

“2 Poke-players in need of a floor to sleep on :D”

A nice woman named Michelle and her 2 sons that were playing in the junior divisions offered us their hotel floor after I helped one of the boys with their Gyarados build. (It was a very unique build that focused on Crobat Drops, Poke Turns, And PlusPowers. So more attack, less recovery.)

And with that, we went to sleep that night with high hopes for the next day…

CHAPTER 1: DON’T JUDGE A PLAYER BY THEIR STARTING POKEMON

(Gyarados Lock vs. Magnegatr)

We woke up, walked to McDonald’s for food, then headed to the convention center to take in the Pokemon atmosphere. A lot of my friends from the many leagues I visit were there and I sat around with their families as I waited to turn in my deck list. I spent the rest of the time texting excuses to my tennis teammates as to why I wouldn’t be at practice that day.

We turned in our deck lists and waited a little longer. I used the bathroom a good few hundred times before the roster and first round pairings were released. Then, FINALLY, they were put onto the table for everyone to see. I was paired with a 31 year old man. I can’t remember his name but I only remembered his age, haha.

When we sat down, we shook hands (something I believe is crucial to do numerous times with your opponent), and talked. He said he started playing 3 weeks beforehand, but played a little bit in the past years. I felt comfortable knowing that newer players aren’t USUALLY as good as veterans… Not that I’m calling myself a veteran!

We flipped our cards over when the match began. It was my Sableye to his Totodile. WHEW! I get to play a Feraligatr theme deck of some sort! Oh boy, was I sooooo wrong. I set up fairly quickly in the first few turns. Got my Magi’s in the discard, had Gyarados on my bench with an Expert Belt, I had a whole lot of Super Scoop Ups and Seekers in my hand, and plenty of switching options, like Warp Point.

Then he pulled out Magnemite.

“Great,” I laughed to him. “Magnegatr.”

I knew it was going to be a painful match. Using my Broken Time-Space, he fully evolved his Feraligatr and Magnezone Prime. He resumed to get a revenge K-O on my Belted Gyarados. I know what you’re thinking. Why did you stupidly attach an E-Belt?

Well, for starters, I thought this was a theme deck. Secondly, I was making space for an Uxie Drop. I’m stupid! I know…

Then, I realized how much of a genius I am! (not really). Both Magnezone and the Gatr have Poke-Powers. Isn’t my deck built to stop them?

I Power locked him for a good 6 turns or so. His high HP Pokemon gave me trouble and his Magnezones were still getting energy on them.

The match came down to 1 Prize each. Thanks to my Power locking, I was able to win the match. I shook the man’s hand and told him he would play very good at this tournament. And with that, we signed the slip, and I told him bye. It was a good game… And by far one of the scariest!!! Thank you for playing me!

Things Learned:

• Don’t judge your opponent by how long they’ve played.
• Don’t judge your opponent by what they start with.
• Don’t attach an E-Belt “Just ’cause.”
• MagneGatr cripples to Powerlock.

:D

1-0

CHAPTER 2: THE REVERSE DONK!

(Gyarados Lock vs. Uxie Donk)

Pokemoms. You gotta love ‘em. Especially when you’re only 18 and league buddys with most of their children. After your match, they’re always there to support you. Win? They congratulate you and give you food. Lose? They say how sorry they are and give you some encouragement. Gotta love it. So, I want to thank all the Pokemom’s out there who helped me! (It’s Justin :D)

I sat at our table and waited for everyone that I knew. Luckily, most of the people who were around us won. I felt pretty good about going into the next round. We waited a bit for the pairings to go up so I ate some of my snacks that I packed. Girl scout Cookies FTW!

Pairings were up and I actually went down quite a few tables. I was playing this older teenager-looking dude and we shook hands. He wasn’t that much of a talker but I didn’t think about it. I was just having fun being at this event.

We started and it was my Uxie and Magikarp to his Uxie. I went first, top-decked a Sableye, used Warp Energy to bring up the Sableye, then Impersonated for a Collector to get a Regice, and 2 Magikarps. Normally, I would get a Mesprit or something else, but I had an extra Collector in hand.

He went, attached energy to Uxie, attacked for 20, then passed. I saw the win pretty clearly right now. I Collectored for a Crobat, Unown Q, and a random Sableye as Pokemon Communication usage. I dropped the Unown Q and Crobat to Flash Bite the Uxie. I attached Q to Sableye for free retreat.

Then I used Communication to get out Gyarados. I Regi-Moved the 2 Magi’s away, evolved the Magi on the bench, retreated to Gyarados and hit for 60.

I felt really bad because this guy looked sad.

“Uxie Donk has been donked.” He said.

I apologized many times. I don’t like to donk but being realistic, if I get the chance, I will donk. I normally never donk with Gyarados but hey, I guess everything has the ability, right? Thank you.

Things Learned:

• Donks happen at Regionals, too.
• Donk Decks have chances of being donked, too.

:D

2-0

CHAPTER 3: TO BATTLE AGAINST A FRIEND! AT REGIONALS? NO WAY!

(Gyarados Lock vs. Blaziken FB – Garchomp C – Luxray GL)

Well, they announced that lunch break was right after the 2nd round and since I donked, it meant I had extra time. I decide to walk around the convention center and I… Am… So… Glad… I… Did.

I had probably 75 minutes until 3rd round pairings would be up. So I took the long walk towards the other side of the center, also known as Grand Wayne Center. There, a Hilton Hotel laid rest and it was very fancy. Indoor plants, fancy couches and seats, etc.

But what really caught my eye were all the girls dressed up as if they were heading to prom! Woot! They sat around the Hilton lobby and I grabbed myself a seat and started texting people (I must admit, to look slightly cool). In the end, they left. :(

What was I thinking? That I was going to get some random girls number 130 miles away from home? Gosh, teenagers these days are stupid, right? I headed back to the Pokemon site and talked to my friends who had finished their matches.

My friend Nick was 1-1 now and we were planning on going to Taco Bell, but the Pokemoms gave us a packed lunch. Go Pokemoms! (Again)

After much time, the 3rd round pairings were up. I wasn’t too happy. I had to play against my friend C (Abbreviated because I don’t think he’d be too happy with me mentioning his name and strategy :D). He’s a great person and gave me my first competitive loss at Battle Roads last Fall. He plays a special variant of Luxchomp that I will explain below.

He’s a very risky player and a very, very dangerous one. He came 2nd at a recent States. One of the main reasons I admire the way he plays is the fact that his decks are always special and have their own twist in all of them. You might notice what I mean later on.

C and I sat down and I told myself that I was going to lose. What, Aydan, are you a wimp? Why, yes. This is a stupid strategy, but when I play someone that I feel I’ll lose to, I tell myself I’m going to lose. DO NOT DO THIS. It’s just a bad habit of mine so I feel better about the loss. :)

I had a nice start and was able to keep the Power Lock towards the beginning of the game. I believe I started with a Sableye and Impersonated for a Collector and snatched my Regice, Uxie, and Magikarp.

Then what does C do? He pulls out his own Sableye, then Impersonates for a Judge! In a Luxchomp variant? Let me tell you, it hurts Gyarados and other Luxchomp decks pretty bad.

This slowed me down but I was able to keep some mild-high power locking going. I got Gyarados out swinging for 90 but C had his Luxray’s buffed up with energy. Because C knew how much I liked power locking with Mesprit, he would be sure to Flash Bite my Gyarados whenever he wasn’t locked. Again, he’s a great player and it really hurt my strategy!

The game was close and we went into time. He was up by 2 prizes on my last turn and I knew I couldn’t defeat him, but I continued to play anyways. I never really scoop at these events since I like playing them out! Thanks, C!
It was a good match but he smartly used his Luxray and even sniped with Garchomp C X. Congratz C.

Things I learned:

• Unique techs in Luxchomp are good! Don’t follow the Status Quo!
• C and I had a 3.7% chance of playing each other.
• Luxchomp is going to hurt later on if I play against another one.
• Why bother checking out girls from other states?

:D

2-1

CHAPTER 4: A MIRROR MATCH?! NOPE, IT’S A ROGUE DECK!

(Gyarados Lock vs. Feraligatr/Delibird/Flygon/Gyarados CoL)

Well, I just had my first loss of the day. Oh well. It was bound to come sooner or later. I relaxed at a table and snacked on some cookies.

Let me tell you something. I really love the competition aspect but sometimes people tend to forget why they started playing. I met someone who threatened her young child that if they didn’t come first place, they wouldn’t go to Nationals. That’s a bit too much pressure, wouldn’t you say?

So, what I’m saying is, never forgot why you’re reading this. Never forget why you build decks. Never forget why you started playing in the first place.

It’s because Pokemon is fun.

—

Pairings went up pretty quickly since I went into overtime last round. I was paired against a guy (Beard Guy) with his own playmat and I remember thinking, “Uh-oh. Playmat means he’s good.”

We talked about how he owned a Pokemon league up in the Northern Ohio region. He was a very nice guy and I was interested in hearing how his day went. He said he was winning pretty smoothly, but there was another rogue deck running around the high numbers.

“Watch out. There’s a Cranidos player around here and his deck is pretty good.”
“Cranidos?” I knew he meant Rampardos right away.
“Yup, it beat me. It’s undefeated at the moment.”

Little did I know this was a bit of foreshadowing…

I flip over a Sableye to his Chatot. I quickly get out my Regice, Mesprit, and Uxie. After “Set Up” On my second turn, I was able to get the resources to get a Gyarados out swinging for 60.

However, I decided to get out my Uxie Lv.X before anything. BIG MISTAKE. Beard Guy starts setting up a Magikarp and a Trapinch and then Mimics me for the first couple of turns to get better hands.

Honestly, when you play a rogue deck, don’t you feel a sense of relief? I mean, rogue decks aren’t USUALLY as strong as metagame decks. I felt this relief, but I was in for a big surprise. I leveled up my Uxie and then… I was stuck in the active spot.

For 3 turns, I couldn’t find any Super Scoop Ups, Switches, Warp Points, Warp Energy, or Unown Q! I was stuck up there while he built a Flygon, Feraligatr, and Gyarados CoL. This was a problem because his Pokemon had massive amounts of HP.

When I finally brought Gyarados up, it took 2 hits on all of his Pokemon to knock them out. That “Rainbow Float” Poke-Body didn’t help much either since it gave his Pokemon free retreat due to the water energy on them.

In the end, it was just me slowly chipping away at his high HP Pokemon when they could only do so much damage. I had great recovery options so I was able to bring Gyarados out whenever it died. I think I won with 2 prizes left? Anyways, awesome match against a rogue deck!

I told him right away that I appreciated playing a different deck and he showed me how to respect rogue decks more. Thank you, Beard Guy!

Things I learned:

• Do what your deck tells you to. Don’t waste a turn Leveling Up a Uxie when you can send up your main attacker and do some damage.
• Respect the rogue decks!
• Take heed of your opponent’s warnings!

:D

3-1

CHAPTER 5: THE REAL-QUICK REAL MIRROR MATCH!

Here’s some random thinking. People say that this game is based on luck. Then why is it that the really good players end up taking top cut? Usually, an experienced player that the population knows will do good at a tournament. What I believe is this:

• A good player will normally play well in any tournament.
• Luck does play a factor, but a person’s skill exceeds one’s luck.
• Chris Fulop and Drew Holton (2 guys that are usually in my tournys) always do well and are expected to do well. These are examples of the points just mentioned.

So everyone, don’t believe this game is all luck. It takes Luck and Skill. I’m still learning aspects of this game that I didn’t know exist. And it’s fun learning new cards and new combos. I’ll always be learning. There’s a famous quote by a philosopher I learned in English class yesterday.

“I know, that I know nothing.”

Pretty deep, right?

I check the pairings and notice that I play this kid that’s been sitting around our table’s perimeter. He shares my real name (Justin).

“Justin?”
“What’s up?”
“My name’s Justin?
“Ah, what’s up, Justin?
“Not much, Justin!”

This guy was around my age and fun to talk to. We talked about each other’s day and I’m glad we got paired against one another. After this, we started talking after rounds. I look forward to seeing him again! See, people always make friends at these events!

We both flip Magikarp. His: the “Sea Splash” Standard one. Mine: A Magikarp with “Splash” for 10 damage. If I go first, I’ll lose. If I go second, I’ll win. I had the ability to search out Crobat and “Flash Bite” twice and “Splash” for knockout. Instead, he goes second and “Flash Bites” me 3 times for the win. :(

However, because he was nice to me and all, I didn’t mind losing by getting donk. So, remember, always make good talk before your match. It can help your opponent feel better knowing that they lost to someone nice and formidable. Thanks for Playing!

What I learned:

• There are always cool people in the world of Pokemon.
• Magikarp start usually ends in a quick match.
• Always make friends. :)

:D

3-2

CHAPTER 6: REMEMBER THAT FORESHADOWING FROM CHAPTER 4? WELL, IT’S HERE!!!

(Gyarados Lock vs. Rampardos)

Justin from last round helped me figure out some card values to sell my BlazeChomp Deck to some boy from my league. I wasn’t feeling bad about getting donked, either. However, I noticed something.

If I want to make Top 32, I need to win every game now so I can get a 6-2 Record. Rumors were spreading that some 5-3′s were going to make it but I didn’t want to take that chance!

When we were seated for the next round, my opponent (Smooth Guy) told me how much he disliked donks. We had a nice conversation how we both disliked donks but would take the win if that was the only way to do so.

When we flipped, I realized why. He only had a Skull Fossil. I had a Uxie.

This is when I realized what deck I would be playing. I got excited because I knew Gyarados had resistance on Rampardos. I went first and only attached an energy. I “Psychic Restored” the Skull fossil for 20.

On his turn, he benched something else, then passed. I somehow got a Crobat out and was able to “Flash Bite”. Then I played Seeker, then used Uxie’s attack again for the game.

My opponent laughed and said he didn’t mind getting donked. It was ironic after all that talk before hand about donking. However, Smooth Guy was a very nice player and I applaud him for bringing a rogue deck to Regionals.

Thank you!

Things I learned:

• Rampardos and fossil decks in general could use more hype.
• Donking feels better when you talk to your opponent about donks to begin with.

:D

4-2

CHAPTER 7: MACHAMP MAKES HIS APPEARANCE!

(Gyarados Lock vs. Machamp/Luxray)

I can’t believe 3 of my matches have been donk related. Even more luckily, I’ve won two of those matches. Speaking of donks, have you guys seen what Sabledonk can do? It’s scary. D:

The next few months will be donk heavy if Sabledonk is legal. Everyone will be sad if this happens.

I chill with the Pokemoms before round 7 starts. Nick is sitting with me with a great score, exactly the same as mine. Earlier in the day, he said he played a man that started with 7 Pokemon in his opening hand. Talk about bad luck. Then Nick, who plays Chatot G, locked his draw power with Chatot’s Poke-Power.

Next round, I had to play this man.

He was older, about in his 50s, and was playing while his daughter was in the Junior Division. She told up that she made top-cut before our match. The man told me about his battle with Nick earlier in the day and I felt pretty bad for him.

“I hope this is a good match,” He told me. “It’s my last for the day.”

This pumped me up! Of course I’m going to give you a great match, Old Man! When we set up, he had one Pokemon out and I was afraid I was going to donk him. When we flipped, however, it was Machamp GL. AKA 100 HP Basic. There was not going to be donking anytime soon. Oh, and I started with a Sableye, Magikarp, and Regice.

The beginning of the match was fairly standard. I got my Magi’s in the discard rather quick and had him power locked for the first 3 turns. He still managed to set up a Luxray GL and Machamp Prime. As he was trying to load up his Pokemon with Energy, I swung through 3 of his Pokemon for 3 quick prizes. Hurray! However, for one of the Pokemon, I had to attach an Expert Belt to my Gyarados.

The man played Lucario and was able to knock out my weakened Gyarados with his Luxray GL X. From here, we exchanged prizes until it was 1 prize each. After Luxray was gone, I didn’t have any other problem, however, it was a close match. I ended up winning. The man told me that he was happy to play me and would’ve given me the win even if I had lost. That made me feel better. Thank you for playing me!

Things I learned:

• Don’t judge older men.
• Machamp can successfully tech in a Luxray to Up their Gyarados match ups.

:D

5-2

CHAPTER 8: FAMOUS MATCHUP?! LOST ZONE THEM ‘KARPS!

(Gyarados Lock vs. LostVilegar)

The final match of Swiss Rounds can be the most nerve-wracking and crucial. It can decide whether you make Top Cut, or not. I was in this situaution. Team Pokemom was telling me that I could do it and that I had to believe I can. I believed I could win, too. When pairings went up, I heard a friend say that the guy I played was using Vilegar.

I felt pretty relaxed then. I’ve never lost to a Vilegar in my entire competitive career. I know how to play Vilegar with my Gyarados deck. When we sit down, my opponent looked very tired and said he hadn’t slept in 20 hours.

Poor guy. We’ll call him Sleepy.

Sleepy starts with an Oddish and I have a Magikarp and Regice. Sleepy goes first and attaches Call Energy and gets out 2 Spiritombs, knowing that Regi Move could end the lock early. I was able to get out Sableye and Impersonated for a Collector to get Uxie, and 2 Magi’s.

I discovered that both my Azelf and a Magi were prized so that meant a maximum damage output of 60. Kinda sucks. But, with the 60 damage, I take out 2 Spiritombs. I still didn’t draw into the Azelf or Magi.

He gets a Lostgar out and starts Lost Zoning some Pokemon. I slowly chip away at his Lostgar (Which has 130 HP!). I “Flash Bite” him once so it only took 2 hits to knock it out. Then guess what? He had a Rescue Energy on it and he just brought it back out!

I kept killing his 1 Lostgar, that revived every 3 hits, ever so slightly until I had one prize left.

By then, he had 6 Pokemon in the Lost Zone. And you know what? One of them was a Magikarp. How did that happen? I picked it from the Prizes right before he used his Gengar Prime to send it away. Although he had 6 Pokemon in the Lost Zone, he couldn’t draw into Lost World.

I ended up defeating his final Gengar SF and won the game! Thank you for playing me and I hope you got some sleep!

Things I learned:

• Lostgar is very unique.
• Gyarados can still hold its own during a bad matchup..
• Lostgar can be used as a tech in Vilegar. It still did the job on me.

:DDDD

6-2

Yes! Top Cut!

CHAPTER 9: YOU’RE ON FIRE? WELL, I MAKE IT RAIN!

Top 32: (Gyarados Lock vs. BlazeChomp)

The judges took my deck when they calculated I would be in top cut. Every 6-2 would make it. About ten 5-3′s made it, too. When ranks were placed out, I noticed something very funny. I was ranked 17th! The very same at Ohio States!

Except this time, I was in top cut! Woot! When the judges gave me back my deck, I had to resleeve them in these black Dragon Shield sleeves. Very nice, but very slippery.

There was a very interesting group at Regionals, I noticed. Team Warp Point. I remember in the Fall, 2 of its members arrived at a Battle Road. I didn’t know how big the group was, though. There were at least 15 members here. And let me tell you. They. Were. Legit.

Good game!

Matching designer shirts, a singing performance, and a vast amount of great players, everyone seemed to know Team Warp Point. Even the Pokemoms were inspired to create Team Pokemom shirts. These guys were good, too. I believe 3 or 4 of them made top cut. Little did I know I was going to face one.

My opponent was a young adult who was very, very kind. His name was Nick Galli. He wore the Team Warp Point shirt well and I was happy I finally got to play one of them.

We talked to each other about how this was both of our first Regionals. He said it was his first top cut. I told him I had made top cut once with Donphan and I was very grateful to have made it again. He was a really nice guy to talk to and I’m glad I played him.

The match began.

It took me only a few turns to realize what deck he was playing. BlazeChomp with Honchcrow Tech. I wasn’t to worried about Honchcrow’s Poke-Power which involved pulling cards out of the discard and onto the bench. I normally have my bench filled.

I steamrolled through his Garchomps and Blazikens with a healthy Gyarados. I had him Power-Locked for at least 5 turns of the match. All and all, the match was in my favor.

I won the game fairly quickly but this guy was a great player. I had to make sure to do the same thing in Game 2.
In this game, he set up more quickly. I basically did the same thing as Game 1 and ended up winning, again, using the same strategy.

There was some misplays in this game. Big misplays that could cause both of us penalties. My opponent was generous enough to tell the judges that he didn’t want me to get any penalties when we both messed up on a Power Locked turn.

I forgot to call him out whenever he used a Power. I hate it when i get those opponents that tattle to the judges when one little thing goes wrong. This guy was the opposite!

In the end, I won Game 2. We shook hands and he told me to go all the way. I hope I’ll see this man soon enough. Thank you for playing me and congratulations on making top cut!

Things I learned:

• Don’t fret on little mistakes. Don’t complain to the judge for little things.
• Be a cool player like Nick Galli. :)
• BlazeChomp players should beware of Gyarados builds.

:D

Made it to Top 16!

CHAPTER 10: THE TOUGHEST BATTLE!

(Gyarados Lock vs. Luxchomp)

When I made it this far, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t expect to make top cut. I didn’t expect to win a top cut match. I’m very grateful.

The night was getting late and I was pumped for my next match. Remember C? He’s my friend and Round 3 opponent. He was in the bathroom with me before top 16 and I knew right away who I was playing. Drew Holton. This guy was good. He was the only person to go 8-0 in swiss.

I remembered playing him at Ohio States, but he donked me. C gave me a good amount of warnings about him. He believed I could win and I did, too.

Only time can tell.

Drew and I sit down and begin out match right away. I start without a Sableye and go second. I’m about to use a Communication to search out an Uxie but then I realize something.

I FORGOT TO PUT MY PRIZE CARDS!

I look at the judge next to us and said:

“I think I messed up. I forgot my prizes.”

The judge smacked his head on the table and called the head judge. The head judge told me that my opponent could take a prize card as a penalty. Drew responded by saying he wouldn’t do that. My respect for this guy sky rocketed and honestly, I think I would’ve done the same thing.

Drew was a veteran player and wanted to win the “true” way. Thank you, Drew. Although I don’t know if his decision was right, I accepted it.

I ripped through half om my deck on my first turn hitting 4 heads on Super Scoop Up and constantly laid down Uxie. I had him Power locked, too. However, he played through the lock by buffing out his Luxray. Something to note is that he was building up his Garchomp C, too. I figured he was planning on sniping once a Luxray fell. And I was right.

Even though I had an amazing start, all Drew needed was a Twins. He used it to get energy and a much-needed Expert Belt. Luxray + Expert Belt = DEADLY TOWARDS GYARADOS!

He started tanking with that Luxray, healing with Garchomp, and ripping through my Gyarados lines. He defeated me, simply like that.

Then, I realized something. I had a godsend start and I still couldn’t defeat him. It’s a hard fact for someone to accept. If he plays his best, then I won’t be able to win. I couldn’t imagine a better start than I had just gotten! I went into Game 2 figuring I’ve lost.

… but then:

We both started with mediocre starts in Game 2. I had a Magikarp active against his Unown Q and benched Lucario. I became instantly happy when I chose to go second and noticed Seeker in my hands! Could I get the donk? (I was playing my donking Magikarp with “Flail Around”. It can do 0-30 damage.)

On Drew’s first turn, he retreaded the Unown and stuck Lucario up. Now, all I needed was a Regice to pull up the Unown. I had a Crobat in hand and was well prepared to “Flash Bite” the Unown twice. I looked at my hand. I had no other way to get out a Pokemon to use Pokemon Communication to grab the Regice.

I failed the donk.

The second game continued but with my poor start, it didn’t take long for him to build up a Luxray and start destroying my Gyarados. I think he used his Garchomp to snipe a few times in this game, too. All in all, the match ended up worse than the first. But, I played a good game. That’s all that really matters. Thank you for playing me!

:D Finished Top 16 at Indiana Regionals!

EPILOGUE: THE END OF THE RISE

Well, I lost at top 16. I’m so happy that I made it there, though! I just want to send out my list of thanks!

• Pokemoms. Thank you for your support and food!
• Stacia and Darrin, thank you for the ride!
• Zach H, my playtesting buddy, thanks for everything.
• C, thank you and good luck!
• Michelle and her children, Thank you very much!
• The judges were great.
• Nick, for coming with me.

Well, that’s the end of the story. You still want the deck list? Well, I promised it so here it is:

I hope you enjoyed my article and I look forward to writing my next one! Thank you! So, see ya.

~Aydan Aires

The Epic Tale Of Regionals! – Gyarados LOCK is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.

The man, the myth, the legend

Hi everybody! My name’s Matt Ludwigson. I’ve been playing Pokémon for over a year now and this is my first tournament report / deck analysis article.

Even though I haven’t been playing this game long, I have played Magic: the Gathering competitively for over 5 years. I apply a lot of what I know about the strategy of that game to this one and I think it helps me be a better Pokémon player.

What inspired me to write this article was my 5-2 performance at Regionals, where I narrowly missed out of Top Cut, and I thought it would be interesting for people to learn what I played and how I came up with my build of MewPerior.

I understand that Pokémon decks are usually kept secretive but I feel getting ideas and lists out there helps the Pokémon community evolve each deck and helps to sustain a healthy metagame. Well, let’s just dive right into this.

When I initially heard about Mew Prime I instantly knew I wanted to play it. With my background in M:tG I was really excited for a combo based, straight forward, heavy hitting Pokémon deck.

My roommate and I tried looking for a list online to get a baseline to start playing the deck to see how it operated. Much to our dismay we were unable to procure a list so we decided to throw one together from scratch. Reading forums really gave us a good place to start, seeing as we kind of already know what the deck was weak to… Dialga G Lv.X and Mewtwo Lv.X! Here is what we started with:

Ding!

The ideal game plan is pretty simple: Get a Mew active and Rhyperior Lv.X in the Lost Zone on the first turn, then use Mew’s Poke-Body “Lost Link” to attack with Rhyperior Lv.X’s “Hard Crush” for massive damage due to the high energy count to collect six prizes over the next six turns.

The deck wasn’t consistent enough for me so I made a few minor modifications.

-1 Absol Prime
-1 Dark Energy
-1 Psychic Energy

+1 Luxury Ball
+1 Rhyperior Lv.X
+1 Combee (SF)

As I battled with the newly tuned deck I realized that cutting energies was not a good thing. I really liked what the Combee and Luxury Ball added to the deck though.

After playing another 15 or so games with the deck and drawing many opening hands, I realized the deck needed to be rebuilt from scratch and looked at from a different angle. Here’s the list I ultimately played at Regionals to a 5-2 record:

This new list was all about not clogging the deck up with things it didn’t need. It is much more streamlined this way without all the chaff of the extra Pokémon and the clunkiness of the random supporters/trainers.

With Drifblim gone running Bebe’s Search isn’t necessary anymore and there are so many Psychic Energies that having one in your opening hand is almost a given, so the Energy Exchangers were out.

I designed this list to be as consistent and resilient as possible, however leaving it with a glaring weakness to a Dialga G Lv.X or Mewtwo Lv.X. I intentionally chose to not tech against them so as to not mess with the consistency.

The Cards to Play

Here is a breakdown of all the cards I played or considered playing:

Mew: This is your primary attacker. His attack “See Off” is one of two ways of getting your Rhyperior Lv.Xs in the Lost Zone, which allows you to attack with Hard Crush due to Mew’s Poke-Body. His low HP of 60 is by far his biggest weakness. When playing you have to pretty much assume he will be knocked out every turn after attacking.

You play around this by trying to get as many of these onto your bench as possible, as well as using Rescue Energies, Combee and recovery Supporters to keep the flow of Mews going. It doesn’t matter if your opponent takes up to five prizes knocking these guys out as long as you take six prizes first.

Rhyperior Lv.X: This card is played entirely for its attack Hard Crush. Having this in the Lost Zone allows Mew to attack for typically 100-200 damage. Two were run initially but then upped to 3 to increase the odds of having one in your deck and keep them from getting prized or stuck in your hand.

Sableye: This is your secondary starter. Ideally you want to start with Mew every time but running this increases your chances of not starting with one of your awful tech cards. In addition it is excellent for set-up, consistency and recovery.

Using Impersonate will slow down your ideal game plan of being able to attack with Mew right away but it is guaranteed set-up for the upcoming turns. Also when you are running low on Mews you can “Impersonate” for a Palmer’s Contribution to shuffle them back into your deck to keep the stream of Hard Crushes going. There’s also the chance for random donks.

Absol Prime: This guy is your worst-case-scenario emergency attacker. Initially it started out as just a way to Lost Zone Rhyperiors that got stuck in your hand, but it ended up being an excellent back up attacker. You can usually build one of these up on the bench while attacking with Mew.

A single Special Dark Energy allows him to OHKO most SP Pokémon. He can also OHKO Gengar SF without worrying about Fainting Spell taking out your precious Mews.

Combee: Combee acts like a fifth Mew. You really have infinite bench space because all you really need is a few Mews on it and you’re good. He allows you to get back a Mew that may have been discarded from Hard Crush without worrying about Power Spray.

Judge: This is the only card in the deck that interacts directly with your opponent. Once your Mews are up and running your hand doesn’t mean anything, so being able to shuffle in your opponent’s hand can be devastating for them. It is also a way to get more energies back into your deck to increase Hard Crush’s damage output that would otherwise just sit in your hand.

Palmer’s Contribution: Palmer’s adds so much depth to the games. Its main purpose is to grab five energies and shuffle them back in your deck, thus increasing the percentage that you would hit energies off Hard Crush. It can also retrieve dead Mews to keep the Mew train going.

Dual Ball: Dual Ball acts just like a Collector. I started with two and then cut one to play a Luxury Ball instead. Luxury Ball is a guaranteed Pokémon where you would still need to win coin flips to get the same effect from Dual Ball. After playing in Regionals I wish I would’ve played two of these instead of the 1-1 split. The card is really good for consistency, granted you can flip some heads.

Special Dark Energy: Having the ability to donk with Sableye is nice to have, as well as being able to attack with Absol for 80, a key number against SP decks.

Rescue Energy: Mew has 60 HP and dies all the time. Having more ways to get him back from the dead is a welcome gift.

Call Energy: This card is very situational. You never want to be in a position where you have to use it. If you are starting with Absol and going first, it can save your life, but every other time it really doesn’t do much. If you are starting with Sableye and don’t have another Pokémon on your bench you use this if you feel you’re going to get donked. If you were to run more techs, then more Call Energies become necessary.

Ew, Stantler

Drifblim: His attack “Take Away” is an out to anything that normally couldn’t be knocked out by Mew, such as Dialga G Lv.X or Mewtwo Lv.X, and “Balloon Tackle” is a very energy efficient back up attack.

Houndoom G: His second attack “Dark Slash” allows you to KO Dialga G Lv.X due to his 2x weakness to fire without having to run any Fire Energies.

Stantler: Sableye is by far the best for this deck. Having the option to grab Collectors or to Judge was key in quite a few games. I briefly considered playing Stantler for his Call for Family attack. Unlike Pokémon Collector which puts Mew in my hand, Stantler could help with not getting donked on the first turn. Not to mention Stantler is an all-around cool dude.

Bebe’s Search: The main reason for this card is to tutor up Drifblim because there is no other way to get him. Or to be cute it could grab a Rhyperior to remove with Absol or put a Rhyperior back into your deck.

Energy Exchanger: This card allows you to “exchange” an energy in your hand for an energy in your deck and is used primarily to grab turn one Psychic Energies or mid to last game Rescue Energies.

The Cards Not to Play

This is list of cards I would NOT recommend playing for this particular version and why:

Azelf: If you plan on running one or two Rhyperior Lv.X this card might be necessary but you should NEVER be running only one. Two could be the right call but even then why run Azelf when you could be running another Rhyperior? With such thick lines and a lack of techs, this card isn’t necessary.

Seriously??

Delcatty PL: The idea behind this card is to put two energies from your discard pile on top of your deck to do more consistent damage with Hard Crush. This isn’t necessary in this list because of the high energy count. Running Delcatty would require more slots dedicated to setting it up than can just as easily be replaced with more energy for the same overall effect.

Also, running techs like this become unreliable once you’re already attacking because Hard Crush could potentially discard some or all of the line, making it worthless. The argument that Delcatty could be used as a way to attack through Dialga or Mewtwo is pretty weak.

I mean, you really think this guy is going to stick around long enough to take a few prizes when your opponent has one of those guys? And nobody wants to start with a lone Skitty.

Regice: Since I first started researching this deck I’ve seen a few lists running Regice. I don’t think this card is necessary at all. He is really bad to start with or have active at any point in the game, he also doesn’t add anything to the deck.

Running so many energies Mew should be able to OHKO any Pokémon, so the need to switch out there active doesn’t net you anything.

Snowpoint Temple: Mew only has 60 HP so he gets killed by just about anything. Pixies wearing an Expert Belt can even OHKO him. When playing against this deck with SP I even knocked out a Mew with an Unown Q!

I understand playing a few Snowpoint Temples so Mew could survive longer, but really how much better is 80 over 60 HP? Snowpoint Temple would prevent many of the random KO’s your opponent would get, but there main attacker is still going to be able to OHKO Mew.

Evolving Techs: I’m not against running techs in general, just any tech that involves evolution. With any of those the deck would have to be drastically changed. You would now have to run some number of Bebe’s Search to get the stage 1 Pokémon, and that means cutting other cards in the deck for it.

The only techs I would endorse would be basics. I’m even thinking about cutting an Absol for a Houndoom G in my future builds of this deck. The reality of the deck is, you need to be as consistent as possible and playing a bunch of Pokémon/Supports/Trainers/Stadiums that don’t actually do anything for the deck is counterintuitive to want you want to be doing.

Gyarados Version: I do not condone this version of Mew. I think this list is very inconsistent. It requires far too much set up. If you haven’t caught on yet, I’m all about consistency. In addition to not being as consistent it plays some pretty bad cards, like Regice. I feel that my version of Mew has a very good matchup against any SP deck that isn’t running Dialga G.

This deck seems like it would lose to any version of SP. All they have to do is “Bright Look” a guy with a high retreat cost (like REGICE!) and then snipe you to death with Garchomp X. The better looking lists I’ve seen that played both Gyarados and Mew seem like an unnecessary hybrid that should just be a straight up Gyarados list.

Playing MewPerior

The game plan is simple: Collect six prizes before your opponent does. You’re doing this by setting up an attacking Mew faster than your opponent can get up and running. Now due to Mew’s low HP he will be getting KOed pretty often, giving your opponent a prize. Most games will come down to trading prizes back and forth, with the winner being whoever can take the prize lead. That’s why it’s essential to get Mew active so early to get the prize lead.

This is especially true against SP. They normally wouldn’t have any trouble KOing six 60 HP Pokémon, but they do have trouble if you’re firing back for 100+ damage every turn and taking out their resources. SP cannot keep up against that kind of damage output and will quickly fall behind.

Most Gengar lists aren’t a problem for you either. Vileplume hardly has any effect against you. “Shadow Room” can’t OHKO anyone in your deck and it’s very possible to keep all your Trainers and Supporters out of your hand to prevent Mew from being KOed by “Poltergeist”, meaning Gengar has to 2HKO your Mews.

The biggest issue can be “Fainting Spell” which can keep Gengar even in the prize race. Gengar Prime may seem troublesome since you are feeding right into its win condition, but with your low Pokémon count and high damage output, you usually end up knocking out all of their Gengars and collecting six prizes before they can get anywhere near Lost Zoning the six guys they need to win.

Most other matchups play out very similarly. You set up a Mew and attack with it. Doesn’t matter if you’re attacking a Gyarados, a Machamp, a Magnezone or a Scizor, they all crumble to a Hard Crush (just remember to not attach any special energies to Mew when facing Scizor).

From my experience several opponents would try hiding behind their high HP guys, not expecting you to have enough damage to take down their threats. This plays out very well for you since it allows you to take out there biggest threat in one attack.

Here is a general rundown of how the first couple of turns should ideally go.

Turn 1: Start with Mew. Attach a Psychic Energy to him and put Rhyperior X in the lost zone. If you happen to be going second, before you attack, play a Pokémon Collector and grab 3 more Mews. If there are less than three, grab however many are left and Combee. If you don’t have a Pokémon Collector, which will happen sometimes, Dual Ball and Judge are your next best plays. The whole goal is to find more Mews or Combee.

Turn 2: If you went first, play your first Supporter and follow the guidelines above. With Rhyperior X in the lost zone it’s time to start Hard Crushing. But before you do that, you want to see if there is anything that you can do. More than likely your hand is going to be garbage and full of useless energies. Generally you won’t be doing anything, so start Crushing.

Turn 3+: By this time a Mew is probably dead. Play Combee if you have it. Say you hit four or five basic energies off of your first Hard Crush and you don’t have Combee. Play Palmer’s Contribution putting back four and a Mew or five energies. Every turn after this is going to play out basically the same. If at any point you have a Contribution in your hand and five energies to bring back, do so. If you have a bunch of energies sitting in your hand then use Judge. Against SP you can use Judges to start messing with them, even if it isn’t a great time for you. Hopefully you’re not behind on prizes, and you should be able to grab six prizes pretty easily.

Other scenarios and tips:

Gotta catch 'em all

- If you have to start with something other than Mew, you need to get some Mews as fast as possible. Sableye makes it easy; you Impersonate a Collector and grab three. If you start with Absol it’s going to be a bit more difficult.

Hopefully you have a Call Energy or a Dual Ball or Collector. The game plan is to get Rhyperior X in the Lost Zone. If you are lucky enough to start with Absol then hopefully you’re also lucky enough to have Rhyperior in your hand too.

- Regardless of who you start with you ALWAYS want to attach an energy on your active Pokémon. Everything in the deck retreats for 1 or less, so if you start with Sableye or Absol you want to have the energy on him to retreat on turn two so that you can attach an energy to Mew for his attack See Off.

- Anytime you can get a KO without attacking with Mew, do it. Donking with Sableye and attacking with Absol are the only two ways this will occur. The idea behind this is you are saving damage by keeping more energies in your deck, as well as keeping Mew safe from counter-attacks. Obviously if it’s your last prize it doesn’t matter who does the KOing though.

- If you’ve taken more prizes and you’re uncertain if you can take the last few, don’t be afraid to spend a turn re-setting up your Mews. Using Palmer’s to shuffle in a few Mews and then Impersonating a Collector to get them back can be a great play. You never want to do this if you are tied or they’ve taken more prizes than you.

- You should always be aware of how many energies could still be in your deck. It won’t be necessary for you to start counting energies right away, but after a few Hard Crushes you should start to look at your discard pile and count the number of energies. Add those to the ones in your hand and always assume that every prize is an energy. The reason to do this is to figure out the ratio of energies still in your deck and if you have enough damage to push through their last few Pokémon. If you don’t think you have enough energies left, you need to start thinking of other ways to get prizes. For me, that’s attacking with Absol.

- If your opponent can take the first prize and has the ability to kill a Mew every turn it is almost impossible for you to win unless they screw up. I wouldn’t be too worried about this though. Many players haven’t played very many games against the deck and don’t realize that you can easily deal 150 damage a turn.

Eventually they will goof up thinking you can’t kill their Magnezone and you destroy it. The key here is to be aware of what they could do to win and use your Judges to disrupt them more than help you.

- Dialga G is going to be a very tough match up and is almost an auto loss except for the fact that you have Absol. If they stumble and can’t get Dialga X out early then you can take them down pretty easily. But if they happen to get one active then you’re in a bit of trouble.

Your Special Dark Energies cancel out their Special Metal Energies but you still need to attack twice with Absol to KO Dialga G Lv.X. That doesn’t sound very hard but there are only a few Pokémon in the deck so having a Pokémon to put in the Lost Zone can be hard. The order that you want to pitch Pokémon is this; Rhyperior X, Sableye, Techs including Absol, Combee and then Mew. If they get Dialga X on the bench… you lose. There isn’t any way to interact with that. There aren’t enough Pokémon in the deck to kill all their Pokémon with Absol to get to Dialga X, so might as well scoop them up. Same goes for Mewtwo Lv.X.

Tournament Report

Round 1 vs. DialgaChomp

This game was really dumb. He started with a Dialga G and I started with an Absol. Both of our hands were garbage and nothing important happened for the first few turns. I got my Absol ready to battle while he kept Deafening me… which doesn’t do anything, but he didn’t know that.

His first big play was to Time Walk for a Dialga G Lv.X and leveled up. The turn after he did that I drew my first Collector and I had a big decision on my hands; what mix of guys am I going to get. I decided to get one Mew and two Sableyes. It was going to take me at least two hits with Absol to KO Dialga so I needed to play this smart.

It got to the point where I was one attack away from KOing Dialga when he peeled a Cyrus’s off the top. He searched for a Poké Turn and scooped up his Dialga, moved Azelf to active, re-played his Dialga G and shipped the turn.

That was almost the worst thing that could’ve happened to me. His Dialga was now damage free and I didn’t think I had the resources to KO it. I got an easy KO on his Azelf but sadly that was the only prize I took. He made his Dialga active, leveled it up and retreated it.

That was game and I scooped them up. MewPerior has no reach. I couldn’t KO enough guys to get to Dialga and if I did somehow manage to do that I wouldn’t have had enough Pokémon in the deck to KO it. So I extended my hand and said, “Good Game.”

Result: Loss
Record: 0-1

Round 2 vs. Leafeon

This match was pretty uneventful. I had my standard start with a Mew and just started taking out Eevees every turn. She played a few Professor Oak’s New Theorys for the first few turns yet couldn’t find anything that could save her. I was really worried that she was going to drop Umbreon (UD) and ruin my day, but she wasn’t running it. I 6-0ed her in prizes.

Result: Win
Record: 1-1

Round 3 vs. Gyarados

I had an awesome hand but sadly she had the nuts; Magikarp, Regice and Pokémon Collector. As I talked about above, you never want them to take the first prize… well she did. It was pretty bad for me that she only had to get two Magikarps in her discard pile to KO my Mew.

After she took the first prize, we just kept KOing each other’s Pokémon until she had no prizes left and I sadly still had one. It’s really hard to come from behind. You really need your opponent to mess up or have nothing in their hand.

Result: Loss
Record: 1-2

Round 4 vs. Magnezone/Regirock

My opponent had no idea what I had in store for him, literally. I was pretty pumped to play against this deck. It doesn’t have a very quick set up so I felt like I had all the time in the world to do what I needed to do. I had my standard start and it crushed him.

He really didn’t know that I could easily do 150 damage a turn. He kept leaving his Magnezones active thinking they could take a few hits… well they couldn’t. I think he took one prize and I then I swept him under the rug.

Result: Win
Record: 2-2

Round 5 vs. Gyarados

This time around I was more mentally prepared for what I needed to do to win. She had a fairly slow start which was really good for me. I had a solid hand that allowed me to get the first KO.

Eventually she ran her hand down to one card in an attempt to get her Gyarados set-up and smashing again. Once I took care of it, she was all out of gas and I eventually won because she had no more soldiers left for battle.

Result: Win
Record: 3-2

Round 6 vs. LostGar

During this match I was really happy that I ran Sableye. He started with two Gastlys and I was able to get a turn 1 KO with Sableye. The main reasons I did this were, first, to get ahead on prizes and, second, because I had a Collector in my hand. I didn’t know that he was LostGar to begin with but once I found that out it was really easy to play around it.

He made a big mistake not reading Hard Crush; he thought that I needed energy to use the attack. That’s when I eventually got him. I took six easy prizes and the game was over. Plus I only had 3 Pokémon in my Lost Zone, two of which I put there.

Result: Win
Record: 4-2

Round 7 vs. Sablock

This was by far the most intricate match I had all day. He had a start that made it look like he was playing BlazeChomp so I was really confused when he started playing Judges. Regardless, this was another game where I started with Absol, but luckily I had a Call Energy.

My draws were really clunky and he was having a hard time getting going too. I started taking prize after prize until there were only two left. He started to make a comeback. Blaziken FB was fairly good for him, he continuously Luring Flamed my Sableye so I had to keep retreating it.

It was really annoying for me, but I understood he was trying to survive. I did some cute tricks with Mew using Lost Zoned Sableye’s Impersonate to reset my Mew train.

Result: Win
Record: 5-2

I missed out on Top Cuts by coming in 22nd but it was still a pretty fun day. I met a bunch of great people (Seeker) and had a good time with my friends. During the tournament the staff’s printer busted so the last few rounds were pretty interesting. I plan to keep playing and tweaking this deck. On the off chance there isn’t a mid-season rotation I plan to battle with this deck during Battle Roads. The list that I will be testing next looks like this:

Overall I feel this deck is a solid choice against the current metagame. It has a very strong game against LuxChomp, VileGar, LostGar and most other decks, but with weaknesses to some very specific threats (Dialga G, Mewtwo, and Umbreon.) I would highly recommend this deck to anyone that is either looking for something different, something straightforward or something fun. Happy Hard Crushing!

MewPerior Goes 5-2 at Wisconsin Regionals is an article featured on SixPrizes - Pokemon TCG Tips and Strategy.