Hey everybody, and welcome to my first article in over a month! A lot has happened in the meantime, including the completion of our Autumn Regional Championships and the final release of Noble Victories! At Adam’s request (based on your commentary), and my own digression, I’m going to put much more of an emphasis on that second point.
While today’s article is mainly geared toward developing an eye for the top decks available from our new set, it’s still important to understand what won Regionals and its importance on deck decision in the aftermath. Let’s take a quick look!
PS — While I’d normally go through a tournament report and explain in-depth games, I actually bombed Regionals at 2-4 drop! I played a variant of Magnezone/Yanmega/Zoroark very similar to Chris Fulop’s build two articles ago, and it played great in testing.
When it came to the actual tournament, I only got to play out one real game vs. Reshiphlosion round 1, where I lost pretty quickly to a turn 2 Ninetales/Typhlosion/Reshiram/Catcher/Blue Flare taking a huge advantage. In my 2 wins I beat 2 structure decks. In my 3 additional losses I got donked by Zekrom, started with 6 basics and one Rare Candy to lose to another Zekrom in 6 turns of draw-passing, and I also lost to Gothitelle in 3 turns. It was quite the amazing day.
While I hate people that chalk up their day to something as simple as “bad hands,” I don’t know what else to say for all of my losses except the first. I ran 13 Supporters in total, a pretty high count, but probably played 2-4 total in my last 3 losses. While I think the idea of fitting Zoroark into ZoneMega is a strong option to give you more game vs. Reshiram and Zekrom, I just can’t say much that Fulop hasn’t said already.
My practice games vs. both decks went great except for when Zekrom played heavy Defender (Eviolite will become a problem), and I can’t say too much more than that.
It’s pretty souring to lose the first big tournament of the year so badly, but there isn’t much else to do put keep my head up and play hard through the rest of the season. After I dropped and hung out with friends I had a MUCH better time, and I remembered that the experience and people you meet playing the game are more important than the sake of winning the game itself. Lame fortune-cookie advice, but not a tip you should ignore!
And let’s get back to something of importance:
Regionals Results
(via TheTopCut)
Winning Decks:
2 Yanmega/Magnezone
1 Reshiphlosion (w/Kingdra)
1 Zekrom/Tornadus
1 Typhlosion/Magnezone/Reshiram
1 “Ross” (Vileplume/Reuniclus/Donphan/Zekrom/SEL)
1 Donphan/Yanmega
Top 4:
Typhlosion/Reshiram: 7
Yanmega/Magnezone: 7
TZPS: 5
Donphan/Yanmega: 2
Vileplume/Reuniclus/Donphan/Zekrom/Suicune & Entei LEGEND: 2
Donphan/Zoroark/Zekrom (1 w/ Tornadus): 2
Donphan/Machamp/Vileplume: 1
Emboar/Magnezone: 1
Typhlosion/Magnezone: 1
Unfortunately, as far as a metagame analysis goes, there isn’t too much to say that hasn’t been said already (we did after all play in the same format that we’ve already gone through for Battle Roads). Instead of rehashing many points that I’ve already hit over and over again about our current format (rock-paper-scissors mentality, same decks since Worlds, etc.), I’ve decided to bring up a few key points that I took from each tournament. Here goes:
Trainer Lock Decks Struggle in Big Tournaments
While this is something we kind of already knew, Trainer Lock hasn’t really been considered a dominant factor of the HGSS-On metagame until the recent Battle Roads results. While the two main (and essentially the only viable) trainer lock/damage lock decks (Gothitelle + Reuniclus and Vileplume + Reuniclus + Attackers) saw a pretty great showing at Battle Roads by its completion, in the end only 2 Ross variants and one Machamp/Vileplume found their way into the 28 top 4 decks. Even more surprising is that not a single Gothitelle was able to scratch its way into the top 4, despite it earning the 4th most wins in Masters during Battle Roads.
While there are definitely some outlying factors in the deck’s poor performance, such as many players feeling they need access to Tropical Beach to play them ideally, I personally think that the builds are ill-suited for a long tournament. Gothitelle and Ross are by far the slowest decks in the format, giving them a much weaker game in time for Swiss.
Neither deck runs very stellar draw compared to Magnezone, Ninetales, or a heavy draw Supporter count, which can lead to games where your deck will fizzle out vs. even your strong matchups like Zekrom and Reshiram. The decks also have a less-than-positive matchup vs. MegaZone.
Wrap all that together, and you need to be able to escape an 8-round day without grabbing more than 2 losses, which can be pretty hard to accomplish!
Combine that with your time problem becoming much more of an obstacle in a best 2/3 in 60 minutes for multiple top cut, and most of the Trainer Lock decks were phased out by the end of the tournament. While I’m sure that Trainer Lock decks will return to a more dominant spot in our metagame with smaller City Championships, it’s still worth noting their inevitable weakness in big events before we see three weekends of State Championships afterwards.
Stronger Donphan Presence than Expected
While most decks with Donphan in them were seemingly written off by most top players coming in for Regionals, it had a stronger than expected finish with one win and 4 top 4 finishes (split evenly between Stage 1s and Donphan/Dragons variants). Both of these decks struggle with Trainer Lock and have been known to suffer a little against Reshiphlosion from time to time, so why did they see some Regionals success?
Simply put, Donphan-based decks have a decent game against two other very popular decks, Zekrom and MegaZone. Fighting is a strong type against Lightning-based attackers, and attackers like Yanmega, Zekrom, and the Dragons have decent damage output for little energy.
While I still personally prefer two other metagame decks to Donphan based ones (Zekrom — slightly faster, Reshiphlosion — slightly slower but more power), it still doesn’t make Stage 1s or Donphan/Dragons a poor choice for the upcoming City Championships.
Honestly, aside from that I don’t have many beacons of advice to gather from Regionals. All decks that performed well were the same standard decks we’ve already known from tournaments so far. The one interesting deviation — the slightly different Magnezone/Typhlosion/Reshiram deck — isn’t an innovation that breaks the format or changes the way games are approached. I simply swapped out my 3-1-3 Emboar line from Magneboar for a Typhlosion line, added a 3rd Reshiram and removed the Twins to get a fairly decent grasp of how the deck works.
