Hey Underground members, I’m Dan Middleton, otherwise known as PokemanDan on YouTube, bringing you an article that Adam has kindly given me the chance to present to you.
Some of you may remember an article I wrote around 2 or 3 months ago detailing the ins and outs of Nationals over here in the UK and Europe. For my debut on the Underground, I’ve decided to step it up and take on the challenge of giving you the ultimate guide to Nationals across the pond in the US.
With the actual event only being a few days away and some of you are even preparing to travel around about now, this article is designed to give you some last minute hints and tips about building and playing against everything you should expect to see at Nationals.
Important Note: The majority of this article was written before the results of Canadian Nationals, therefore I’m going to have a section on the end with some reflection of what might change in the week gap between this and US Nats. This should cover briefly what changes could occur as well as how some of these decks actually performed under competitive pressure.
Dealing with Uncertainty
Since my previous article, we’ve had a shift in rules, complete change in format and a whole new set of decks to get used to which is why this year’s Nationals could be more challenging than ever. The official announcement of HGSS-On was only made on the 15th of June, a fair few days short of a month ago, meaning that you’ve only had this amount of time to prepare for the biggest tournament of the year.
Technically, most of you have had an extra month or so of testing before this since Pokemon pretty much sealed their decision in the later days of April with their initial thoughts about the competitive environment.
Considering this, we’ve still only had a maximum of 2 and a half months to study decks, techs and strategies of the new format which really isn’t a lot of time. This means that Nationals is full of speculation and guesswork so far since we don’t really know what could turn up. So how do we deal with this uncertainty?
Practice is the key to doing well and having a good grasp of how to deal with each match up will show when it comes to the weekend. Even though you’ve only had a small amount of time to get to grips with how everything works, you should be able to get a good idea about how decks are built and work in this new format. Seeing certain cards should help you associate with your opponent’s strategy fast enough to work out your response, even if the deck they’re playing doesn’t follow a religious ‘archetype’.
The biggest thing about this year is that there’s a lot of unpredictability involved. Since the format is still fairly fresh, there are sure to be some crazy deck ideas out there that work, which we haven’t heard about yet. A minority of people will have good decks that haven’t been seen in the public eye yet and could cause some trouble on the day.
The only advice I can give you to combat this is just keep a cool head, make sure you have an understanding of the current card pool well enough to plan out a course of action. These decks are going to be tricky since you haven’t playtested specifically against them, but using knowledge you’ve gained about deck building and playing in your previous testing will still apply.
Other than that, expect everything. There is a lot of creativity out there at the moment and I can confidently say that you will play around 5 or 6 different decks just during swiss so make sure your testing caters for the diverse playing field.
If you haven’t had a lot of testing time, don’t worry because this article has you covered with the most popular decks and cards and how to build or play against them. Sit back, relax and prepare for some last minute revision on all you need to know about the format before the big day.
MagneBoar
This deck has been talked about over and over again in the Underground and lists have been compiled and analysed inside out to get the most out of this deck. Now considered the number one deck to beat, Magnezone/Emboar combines the best of attacking strength and draw power even though there’s two stage twos to deal with.
You can more than guarantee that you will face at least one of these in your swiss rounds so make sure you have this matchup down to a tee and that your deck can stand up to it.
If you’re struggling with this matchup then keep going at it and test, test, test. It’s one that shouldn’t take you by surprise so here’s a rough skeleton of what you should expect in most MagneBoar lists:
