Hello everyone! Today I’m going to be talking about last minute playtesting skills and how the Canadian Nationals will impact the United States metagame!
Last Minute Playtesting
1. Use the deck that you will be playing at Nationals. Start playing that deck against other decks and see how it fares. Play around with other decks too to see how they run and how to counter them. You can’t beat something until you know it.
2. Be serious when testing. Don’t go totally hardcore, but be nice and if someone asks to take something back you should usually let them. At Nationals you’ll be in a very different mood and it’ll be hard to make mistakes unless you’re not paying attention.
3. Play against as many decks as you can and never cancel another deck out. Anything can come from behind.
4. You can play on Redshark, Apprentice, Skype, or PlayTCG. All work great and are great testing tools!
Deck Help
Try to make any final tweaks to perfect you’re deck! Try any cards that you think might have an impact on your deck. Last year in my Jumpluff build, I tried all kinds of things. I tried AMU, Manectric, and a lot of other things. You don’t know for sure it won’t work until you try it.
Helpful Hints
If you’re struggling to decide between a few cards to put in your deck, make multiple-card proxies. They could have different cards that could be situational, and use whichever one works better in the situation. Then you choose which one to put in your deck according to whatever works the best.
What we’ve learned from the Canadian Nationals (All in masters results):
Standings After Day 1 (Top 16) (Masters):
7-0 Reed M (Yanmega / Kingdra)
6-1 Julian W (Yanmega / Magnezone)
6-1 Charles D (Yanmega / Donphan / Weavile)
6-1 Alaric McKenzie-B (Ambipom / Weavile)
6-1 Simon L (Emboar / Magnezone)
6-1 Sebastian C (Yanmega / Magnezone)
6-1 Edward K (Emboar / Reshiram / Zekrom)
5-2 Andrew V (Yanmega / Magnezone)
5-2 Juan Carlos L (Yanmega / Vileplume / Muk / Mew / Jumpluff)
5-2 Sebastien P (Yanmega / Zekrom)
5-2 Matthew K (Yanmega / Vileplume / Muk/ Mew / Jumpluff)
5-2 Curtis L (Yanmega / Vileplume / Muk/ Mew / Jumpluff)
5-2 Colman F (Cinccino / Donphan)
5-2 Matthew B (Gengar)
5-2 Zach L (Emboar / Magnezone)
5-2 Sean La R (Blastoise / Feraligatr)
5-2 Sebastian S (Cinccino / Kingdra)
Looking at these standings, there’s a lot of things to be discussed.
Secret Decks
There are a lot of secret decks floating around. You’ll need a perfect list to get them going, so I wouldn’t suggest trying to make them.
Yanmega/Magnezone
There’s also a lot of new decks we haven’t talked about much. Yanmega/Magnezone or MegaJudge hasn’t been played much ever except at the Georgia Marathon. Since Yanmega/Magnezone was played so much, I bet a lot of people will try it at the U.S. Nationals.
Now unless you’ve been testing the deck, I wouldn’t suggest you make a last minute change. Now if you want to test against it with a nice list, here’s a great article by Zack Ayello, the Yanmega Guy himself.
The Absence of DonChamp
Why wasn’t DonChamp played? Well supposedly a lot of people lied they were running DonChamp so people played counters to it. I really don’t see why there wasn’t even one in the Top 16, but that’s life.
I thought MagneBoar was going to be played a ton?
There was two that made the cut which is better than no DonChamps making cut, but I don’t really understand this either. Maybe people were just running Yanmega/Magnezone for fast attacks and consistency. MagneBoar can be inconsistent at times and slow. MegaJudge however is very fast and snipes early to disrupt, and Magnezone and help with draw and clean to board off at the end of the game with big attacks.
Why so many disruptive decks?
Pretty much every deck in this format can be disrupted easily and you can by doing this ruin their setup. The Ambipom/Weavile deck was pretty simple, use Ambipom to attack by shuffling multiple cards from their hand at once at once and using Weavile to discard cards and ruin their hand.
I’m assuming they played multiple Judge counts to give them a hand of four and then destroy the new hand and sometimes even drop their hand to zero leaving them with nothing to work with.
What is Yanmega/Kingdra?
It’s a very fast spread and snipe deck. You can just setup the Yanmega start sniping around and use Kingdra’s Spray Splash to add to the attack and KO basics before they can evolve. This can be a very disruptive tactic along with playing Judge to ruin their hand and let Yanmega attack for free.
How did LostGar top cut?
LostGar is very good in this format because it can snipe babies, and get rid of need Pokemon from your opponents hand. I don’t think it will go far in top cut, because of the time limit, but it’s a good x-2 drop deck for U.S. Nats.
BastGatr instead of BlastZel?
I don’t really know how this happened. BlastGatr unlike MagneBoar has no draw to keep it consistent, and it’s two Stage Twos we’re talking about… I don’t really understand this because the deck was very inconsistent even last format, but I guess if the deck can setup, it can roll out the damage and hit hard.
Top Two
Masters
1st Edward – ZPS/Yanmega
2nd Reed – Kingdra/Yanmega/Jirachi
What to think of the top two?
Speed decks seem to be where it’s at. ZPS/Yanmega winning seems very surprising, but you can never cancel another deck out completely. Second was a new deck: Kingdra/Yanmega/Jirachi. Kingdra and Yanmega are speedy cards that can get cheap and quick KOs. The Jirachi tech was well thought out and a nice inclusion to get even more quick knockouts.
Conclusion
Will Canadian Nats impact U.S. Nats? Of course. Many people will bust out Magnezone/Yanmega just because it did good. I don’t like the theory behind this, but some people will do anything to win. It’s just the way it is. I think MegaJudge will have some impact on the United States metagame because of the disruption and consistency.
I hope everyone enjoys this article and does awesome at their Nationals!
