Regionals, Regionals, Regionals. I would imagine that is what is on everyone’s mind at the moment. It is what is on my mind, and I am not even competing in them. As I mentioned last article, I will, on the other hand, be judging at Great Lakes Regionals in Fort Wayne Indiana. Having seen the full staff we have at the event, I’m confident that between that, and the large amount of top-notch players who will be attending, that this will be a great event.
I’m still not sure how I feel about the changes towards Regionals, primarily the issue with the further reduction of prize support for the event. I guess we get a second copy of the event this year, but I’m not sure how much that matters since the largest appeal to me as a player was the hefty scholarship money tacked onto the event.
Back in 2005 and 2006, these events were huge in that they not only paid large scholarship sums down to the top 4 placers, but they also gave out World Championship invitations. Now, we have far less reward for a victory, and attendance and quality of competition has since sky rocketed. I understand this isn’t necessarily PUI’s fault, as word has it that the budget for Organized Play has remained 100% stagnant since 2004, which is a true crime if it is true.
The cost of running so many more events, especially on an international scale, has forced Nintendo to provide less prize support, less worlds invites, and less paid trips each year. It is one of the reasons I have felt less and less motivated to continue playing every year. I know a lot of other players have become equally frustrated, but I don’t see things changing any time in the future either.
Now, on the bright side, I am a pretty big fan of this format. The fact I haven’t zero’d in on a “best deck” in the format yet says something. If you’ve ever listened to me on the topic of what to play, I pretty quickly narrow the choices down to one, maybe two or three, decks rather quickly into a format’s existence. I can’t really say that right now. There are a lot of viable decks, with a lot of different pros and cons to them.
Most decks have a slew of 50-50ish matchups, and then a few really good ones, and some really bad ones. Which I guess is either very healthy, or unhealthy, as it means no deck has much of a stranglehold on the format, but at the same time, it also makes it so that you are very much at the mercy of your pairings. Having a good grip on your local metagame will be crucial to your Regionals performance, I feel.
One of the cards I think is an absolute bombshell right now is Zoroark. You have players using Reshiram in both conjunction with Typhlosion, and Emboar. Especially against Emboar builds, the card is an all-star. Now, another popular deck is obviously ZPS, which Zoroark is well known for being strong against. Magnezone, both in Magneboar and in Yanmega Magnezone, are both semi exploitable by Zoroark, assuming you have some extra energy in play.
Clearly you don’t tech Zoroark as your anti-Magnezone card of choice, but it does offer a little bit of overlap in that it allows decks to get OHKOs there, which a lot of popular decks at the moment wind up struggling to do. The challenge, of course, is finding the best deck to squeeze Zoroark into.
My first idea was to take my old World’s Yanmega Magnezone list, and plug him into there with a bit of re-working. For reference, the two lists:
