Intro
Now that the 2010-2011 Pokemon Tournament Season is in the books, it’s time to think about the future: how the past results of Worlds will influence it, how the most recent set will shape the metagame, and how some exciting new cards in the coming months will revolutionize HeartGold/SoulSilver-on.
Tying into each of those points, I will discuss the following: my Last Chance Qualifier experience; my insight gained from Worlds; my (very) thorough analysis of Emerging Powers; and some considerations for Noble Victories’ “N” and “Victini.”
This season, early preparation will be more important than ever before, especially due to the announcement of November Regionals. For that reason, it is every bit vital to analyze this set card-for-card, or else finding the perfect deck might not come as easily as it should.
We have a lot to cover, so let us skip formalities and head straight into the report.
Worlds Reflections
Worlds has come and gone, and although I did not make it into the main event, I was able to gain solid insight into the state of the game. First, I’ll discuss my Last Chance Qualifier experience, however short it may have been; then, I’ll get straight into my perceptions of the main event, and what we have in store for the future.
The Last Chance Qualifier
As you may remember from my last article, I was torn between Donphan/Zoroark/Dragons and Yanmega/Magnezone/Kingdra/Jirachi. By a narrow margin, I ultimately settled on the latter: despite the consistency and reliability of Donphan, I felt like it didn’t have nearly the ability to make come-from-behind wins that Primetime with Twins could.
Aside from that, I wasn’t totally convinced in Donphan’s Typhlosion matchup, or in the “surprise factor” of my Donphan list to really impact a first game the way that Jirachi can.
For reference, here is the list I used:
| Pokemon – 214 Magnemite TM
3 Magnezone [Prime] TM 4 Yanma TM |
Trainers – 284 Copycat
2 Judge 2 Twins |
Energy – 115 Lightning
4 Psychic 1 Rainbow 1 Water |
Most of the tweaks in this list are either straightforward, or have been otherwise explained elsewhere. At this point in the game, if you’ve been reading all of the Underground articles, then only two nuances should leap out as “weird”:
"Sea" ya...
As for the Kingdra line, I concluded that the bigger count would make late-game Jirachi wins that much more effective, and that the majority of my stage one matchups featuring Donphan would vastly improve.
However, running most Vileplume variants in a 45 minute best-of-three tournament is suicidal, and since the Seadra had been relatively useless testing, I decided to cut it for space (for those who noticed, I dropped Pokegear 3.0 for the same reason).
2. I went down on Reversal specifically to include a higher Switch count. Despite the fact that my loss was ultimately caused by being unable to find a Pokemon Reversal in sudden death, I actually felt comfortable with this decision, as well as the extreme versatility of two Switch.
As one final note before we get into the report, let’s take a look at the Donphan list I would have used (which also happens to be close to what I used to beat Drew Holton in my HeyTrainer VS TopCut team challenge match).
