October 2013

Preparing for Regionals, and a Look at Genesect/Drifblim/Virizion

Mike Lesky October 8, 2013 3 Comments

Hellooooo readers of OneHitKO, I am back once again with a new article full of great content for your reading pleasure!   This time around I would like to touch a little bit on what you can do to get ready for Fall Regionals, and then we will take a look at one of the New Upcoming decks for the Regional format.

The best way to prepare for a large event like Regionals is to playtest, playtest, and playtest some more.  I cannot stress how important it is to play game after game with a deck to know all of its strengths, weaknesses, and options.  I often found last season I did not do enough play testing for an event, so I would usually just fall back on Darkrai which I had piloted to top 32 at the World Championships in 2012.  Also, you need to find the perfect deck list not only for the tournament, but for you.  And nothing can help you out more with this than play testing to see what works and what doesn’t.  Deck choice can also make a huge impact at a large event like Regionals.  Predicting the metagame for your Regionals is a huge deal if you want to do well.  In a format that often comes down to coin flips and drawing well, getting as many good match ups as you can against the top decks is probably one of the most important things you can do.

Once you know what decks your opponents will mostly be playing, and what deck you want to play, you can start testing different techs and builds accordingly.  If you expect a lot of Garbodor, play more tool scrapper.  If you expect a lot of Plasma, run enhanced hammer and Drifblim.  Simple things like this can tilt matchups in your favor to make games a little less luck based.

Not only is being prepared for playing important, but travel plans, hotel plans, budgeting, and getting enough sleep is a huge part of doing well at these events.   And honestly, going to these events is all about having a good time, so try to make it as enjoyable as possible for yourself.

But enough about that, there is honestly nothing better at getting you ready for a tournament than playing as many games as you can and using the deck you are most comfortable with.  With that in mind, I would like to give you guys another deck option to use for the upcoming Fall Regionals that was made popular by Henry Prior.  Here is my list for the deck, Genesect/Drifblim/Virizion.

4-2/1 Drifblim (2 Shadow Steal, 1 Derail)

3 Genesect Ex

2 Virizion Ex

1 Lugia Ex

13

4 Juniper

4 N

4 Skyla

1 Colress

2 Tropical beach

4 Catcher

3 Ultra ball

3 Colress machine

4 Float stone

2 Enhanced hammer

1 G-booster

1 Tool scrapper

1 Super rod

1 Shadow triad

34

4 Plasma

9 Grass

13

I haven’t done as much testing with this deck as I would have liked, but  the list is very solid.  I tried to mimic Henry Prior’s list as much as possible, while still making some changes I felt necessary.  One Shadow Triad seems to be enough so that it doesn’t get in the way, but you still have a way to get G-booster back.  Being able to do 200 damage consecutively against decks like Darkrai is huge, and with the increase in Tool Scrapper in the format you are required to have a way to get it back.  Tropical beach gives you something to do on turn 1, and 4 Skyla will allow you to go fetch one.  4 Skyla also gives you a reliable way to get G-booster when you need it.

The matchups for this deck are quite even across the board, except for Plasma which this deck absolutely destroys.   This deck was almost designed to beat Plasma, especially with a heavier Drifblim line.  If you aren’t expecting much Plasma at your Regional, I recommend cutting the line down to 3-3 or even 2-2, or possibly even taking it out altogether.

Your other matchups that you would be concerned with are Blastoise and Darkrai.  Blastoise is about even, to slightly in your favor.  You do run 10 useless cards for the matchup, but you also have type advantage against over half of their deck and speed on your side.  Darkrai on the other hand is probably slightly unfavorable.  Garbador shutting of Virizion, Genesect, and Lugia’s abilities really hurts and allows them to utilize Hypnotoxic Laser.

This deck is definitely a contender for winning Regionals, and you should be prepared for it.  One thing you can do to give yourself a good matchup with this deck is to run one or two copies of Victini Ex.  This card can single handedly win you the game against this deck.

Once again thanks for reading my article this week, and make sure to comment below and give us feedback!  Until Next time!

-Mike Lesky

New X and Y Rule Changes, And a Possible Contender for Regionals

Mike Lesky October 4, 2013 6 Comments

Hello OneHitKO!  This article is a little later than intended, but I did get around to it and did not forget!  Some very big changes are in the works and have been announced by Pokemon International recently, and we certainly need to talk about them as they affect us come November 8^th.

First off, the player going first can no longer attack on their first turn.  This absolutely takes away all advantages big basic decks had in the past over evolution decks by going first.  If the big basic player goes first and cannot put pressure on the field, this is huge for anything on your field that needs to evolve.  Also, now when a player playing an evolution deck goes first, they get a turn to get their basics out that need a turn to evolve and also abuse Tropical Beach.

Now I know that this could cause some problems as not many people have access to Tropical Beach, mainly because the card is easily reaching prices over $150 right now and will continue to rise in price.  However, most players who take this game seriously will find the resources to gain access to these cards, whether it is borrowing them, trading for them, or even buying them.

Overall I think this is a step in the right direction for the game, along with the changes to Pokemon Catcher which now make the card’s effect a coin flip.  This will now make players think twice about automatically throwing four of these into a deck.  It will also give bench sitters a chance to be good again.  And now that Eels are gone, I think this is also great for the game.

Also, there is a new supporter coming out called Professor Sycamore, which basically has the same text as Juniper.  The only significance here is that you cannot play both of these in a deck because they have the same card effect.  In fact, you can’t even play a split of the two cards such as 2-2 of each or 3-1.  Although irrelevant to most, this would be a good thing to know for new players joining the game when X and Y are released.

But now for the main reason I wanted to write this article, a new deck has just been made public by a Japanese player/writer named Ito Shintaro.  Ito was the winner of one of the Spring Battle Carnival tournaments that took place last spring.  These tournaments are basically World Championship qualifiers for Japan.  The most interesting thing about this tournament was the deck he played.  This deck has had some discussion in the past, but recently he posted his deck list for the deck online for everyone to see.

7 Pokemon:

4 Suicune PLB

3 Terrakion NVI

39 TSS:

4 Professor Juniper                                                                                                                                                  

4 N

4 Skyla

2 Bianca

2 Tropical Beach

4 Pokemon Catcher

4 Switch

4 Silver Mirror

4 Evolite

2 Ultra Ball

2 Energy Search

1 Super rod

1 Tool Scrapper

1 Dowsing Machine

14 Energies:

5 Water Energy

5 Fighting Energy

4 Double Colorless Energy

It is hard to say for sure, but this deck could have a huge impact on our Fall Regional metagame now that it is posted with a few weeks left for play testing and refining.  I personally will be considering this deck heading into Indiana Regionals come October 26^th.  The deck honestly has quite a few interesting matchups that when picked right, could dominate a large tournament like this.

Thanks again to everyone who keeps reading these articles, please leave some feedback for us in the comments so we know what you the readers want us to write about next week.  I hope to have my next article out on time next week, by Tuesday.  Until Next time!

– Mike Lesky