2 for 1: The Secrets Behind Sabledonk and The Plays for International Nats

This is my first Underground article for SixPrizes so I should probably introduce myself. So a little bit about me personally my name is Jay Hornung, I’m 21 years old and a Senior in Criminal Justice. I love being active, and I enjoy running, weightlifting, and my passion is Martial Arts.

I’ve been playing Pokémon competitively since Nintendo took over back in 2004, which was 8 years ago. I’ve attended all 7 Worlds (2004-2010), with an invite for all of them, and all were played in the Masters Division. As far as I know, that’s a record held by only Chris Fulop, John Kettler, Ross Cawthon, and myself.

I’m also one of only 3 players to Top 4 both a United States National Championship and a World Championship in the Masters Division (Chris Fulop, Gino Lombardi, and myself). I’ve attended 4 National Championships (07,08,09,10), 4 Regionals (05,08,09,10), 12 State Championships (04-11), 7 Gym Challenges (04-06), and I’ve also attended numerous City Championships and Battle Roads, but I stopped keeping track of my win counts on those a while back.

All of these accomplishments are in the Masters Division with the exception of a few tournaments in 2004 where I was 14 years old for a majority of the season, but moved up to Masters at the end including Worlds that year.

My Credentials

• 7 Worlds Invites
• 3rd Place Worlds 2009
• 2nd Place Nationals 2007
• Top 32 Nationals 2009
• 1st Place Regionals 2009
• 2nd Place Regionals 2008
• 2 Regionals Top 8’s
• 6 States Wins (04,07,08,08,09,11)
• 3 State Second Place (09,10,11)
• 3rd Place States 06
• 2 State Top 8′s (05,10)
• 2 1st Place Gym Challenge (04,06)
• 2 2nd Place Gym Challenge (05,06)
• 1 Top 4 Gym Challenge
• 2 Top 8 Gym Challenge
• Numerous Cities and Battle Road wins

I can’t even begin to tell you how vain I just felt typing that list. However, I feel that if you want to be taken seriously as a writer you must not only be a great writer and deck builder but also be able to back it up in a tournament setting.

After all would you want a doctor to operate on you that has only studied medicine or would you want one that has done the surgery before? Now that you know a little bit more about me we should probably get back to the article.

Several weeks ago Nintendo dropped a bomb when they announced that we may be rotating to an HGSS on format on July 1st. This would cause both the United States, National Championship and the World Championship to be played in this format. Nintendo rarely seems to make announcements like this unless it is an almost certainty.

I feel that the only way we won’t get this rotation is if they feel the format is fair and balanced. I’m determined to make sure it is not and hopefully help loyal Underground members bring home some Victory Medals in the process. Or perhaps even a National Championship for those of you who’s National is still going to be played in the MD-BW format.

The number one deck I hate sitting down across the table from is a Uxie Donk deck. Mainly because it took skill out of the game, it didn’t matter how good I was or how good my opponent was. I had 8 cards (7 in the opening hand and 1 draw) and a coin flip that would determine if I won or lost the match.

The deck is extremely fast and ridiculously consistent. It easily sweeps 3 Pokémon off the board and could possible do 4 or 5. There were always a few things that kept this deck in check.

It would win a large majority of its games where it went second however, not being able to play Trainers first turn means it usually had a rough time going first. It just wasn’t feasible to walk into a long tournament and expect the coin flip to go your way all day.

Secondly, it had an incredibly bad match up against anything that played Trainer Lock. Vilegar had a full 8 Basic Pokémon that would completely shut the deck down (4 Gastly, 4 Spiritomb) and random Spiritombs were a common occurrence.

As you know with the new rules from Black and White, the player going first is now allowed to play both Trainers and Supporters. This completely took away any downside to going first. Before the opponent was able to get a turn where he might be able to use Call Energy, Uxie, or Azelf to try and fetch out other basics, or Mesprit LA to stop you cold in your tracks.

However, now you can win before they even get to draw. This made Uxie Donk more broke than it was before, but why should we stop there; lets add 4 Sableye to the deck. Due to just 4 Sableye we will go first approximately 47% of the time, and even if we don’t start with Sableye we still have the regular coin flip which would have us going first 50% of the time.

Too much math!

Now with the new format we have to expect that a large percentage of our opponents will be playing 4 Sableye as well, which means you’re talking about some very serious and complex math. But the bottom line is playing 4 Sableye will dramatically increase our chances of going first regardless if our opponent is playing 4 Sableye or not.

One of the main things I stress when building decks is don’t reinvent the wheel. I’m the first person to say how important it is to think outside the box, but don’t mess with what we know works. There is a reason why players play 3-4 Pokémon Collector in almost every deck and cards like Rare Candy and Call Energy are staples in decks that can support them.

A Sableye based donk deck operates on the same basic strategy has a Uxie Donk deck. Sableye just brings new speed, options, consistency, and improved matchups to the deck. It’s more of a Uxie Donk 2.0 rather than a brand new deck. For this reason I think its important to understand what a Uxie Donk deck looks like and how it works before we start messing with the Sableye aspect. So here is a list that I was testing around States this year.

I found this list to be fast and consistent, and it almost never drew into dead hands. There are certain situations where it can have a great hand that becomes dead such as opening up against a Spiritomb, but that’s the risk you take when playing a deck using 43 Trainers.

This list overall is pretty standard, but I’ll explain some of the less staple cards. The number of Crobat G is always a bit of debate; I’ve seen lists with as few as 2 and others with the standard 3. I played 4 because it is such a good opener, and because I was forced to run an Unown Q I didn’t mind the extra basic either.