Hello everyone! I am facing a pretty interesting challenge on my hands right now. I have just landed Monday night, having flown back from San Diego. My article is currently due Tuesday. I am unsure if, by the end of this article, that it will be up on Tuesday, and due to the timing of Worlds, Adam has given me some leeway with when I can get this posted, but I will be doing my best to get it done in a timely fashion.
Not only so you, as readers, can get access to it quicker, but so that I can make sure my memory of events and games remains crisp and accurate. The weekend was extremely long, and tiring (but most importantly fun!) so I apologize if I get any tiny details mixed up, and I will gladly correct them after the article goes up if anything gets brought up.
I do not think it will be an issue, but I have a lot to write about, and since this article is primarily a tournament report, some things may be a little off but it shouldn’t be too bad.
Magneboar Wins!
Go me!
Let me first lead off that I will take a brief moment to feel vindicated. First and foremost, Masters was won by Magneboar. After some degree of backlash for my support of what some claimed was an “inferior deck”, having it go on to win Worlds in the hardest age group is, at the very least, a testament to the fact that I was not merely “incorrect” or ” giving out false information ” the past few months, as some members continue to have claimed.
I am sure they will not be swayed in their conviction, but I feel that having TWO Magneboar lists make the Top 8 of Worlds (David Cohen, who took first, and an Italian player who lost in top 8 to Ross’s Vileplume deck) is as good of defense of the validity of my information as anything else.
It goes to show the cyclical state of the format that I had addressed previously. Just because a deck isn’t ideal at any given point in time does not mean that it is not powerful and a potential tier 1 deck. A deck’s viability is (generally) dependent on what other decks are being played.
At US Nationals, Magneboar was the primary target: players came in with decks gunning for it. To make it worse, most players who used Magneboar simply had lists prepared for mirror and decks which had been a bit behind curve. Magneboar is “Deck A”, and the other decks in the format are “Deck B”.
Deck A is facing a huge handicap when it is being teched against by all of the Deck Bs at the tournament, and in turn does not run any cards to try and “fight back”. Had Magneboar lists been tweaked to try and fight back against the tactics used to exploit it, things could have been very different. The issue is, at Nationals, it was very difficult to really get a read as to what would be the most played deck, and it is also difficult to figure out in the very short period of time we had to tweak decks, how to properly “counter-tech”.
Now, we look at the Worlds metagame. Judging by the LCQ, and the open play area, a vast majority of decks could be summed up as Megazone, Typhlosion, and Stage 1 decks. Arguably 80% of the decks being played fell under those categories. This left a fairly defined format, and one in which Magneboar was suddenly a pretty strong choice again.
The deck was an overwhelming favorite against the Typhlosion decks, had a varying matchup against Megazone (60-40 vs Pachi without Kingdra, 40-60 vs builds with Jirachi and 2 Kingdras, with other lists falling closer to 50-50) and a 60-40 matchup against the Stage 1 decks.
Zekrom had also done well in the LCQ, and the deck’s Zekrom matchup was very strong. With the adaption of Twins in the list and a tweaked list, Magneboar was again well positioned in the format. With the swarms of Typhlosion seeing play, you were likely to face a load of 70-30 or better matchups all day long.
The Flippy Format
One other thing I feel like I need to address is the nature of this “flippy” format. Now, Pokemon Reversal flips are annoying (and you’ll see how they impacted my games on the course of the weekend, but I flipped roughly 30% on Reversals over the course of the whole time I was in San Diego), but the biggest factor of this format is clearly the opening flip.
The format has become inherently aggressive. Every deck wants to be the fast deck, take prizes, and ideally, through the use of Reversals, slow down an opponents set up. All of the Yanmega decks were at a huge advantage going first, but could fall behind when stuck on the draw. This became more and more relevent as the “speed” decks faced off against each other.
The fact that both decks hinged heavily on being aggressive meant that whoever went second was at a ridiculous disadvantage. I could use this as a means by which to insult the awful decision to change the opening first turn rules, but I feel thats redundant and done to death. I think that there are two trains of thought for how to approach the format.
The first seems to be the prevailing one: Build a deck trying to exploit the advantage that speed decks have. Yanmega Magnezone, Stage 1s, Zekrom, and to a degree Typhlosion are all built to exploit the huge edge going first gives. The way players have build decks emphasizes the importance of the opening flip. Often times, if these decks do go first with a strong hand, they merely steamroll the opposition.
