Recaps, Regionals, and Nationals oh my!
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| Expanded is nearly back again |
So here's my recap on the format so far, and a look forward on things to come.
I'm going to end up name dropping a lot here - so don't be terribly surprised if you see your name here. It's not a bad thing, I promise.
The whole "recap of the season" idea came to me when Owen Robinson posted his Championship Point rundown on Facebook - just the playmats and League Challenge promos corresponding to his successes, along with the iconic cards from decks used.
Starting at square one I suppose - prior to this season, I had never had any championship points whatsoever. I was a much more casual player, and also judged occasionally.
This all changed back in September at the first League Challenge I won... with Tool Drop. I know, I know. League Challenges aren't huge achievements by any means, but it was my first taste of success, and I was hooked. With Giratina having just been printed though, I knew Tool Drop probably wasn't getting me anywhere in the long run, so I had to find something new to play. 4th round of the same LC that I had won, that deck hit me directly in the face- it was the Worlds '15 winner's deck, Blastoise/Keldeo, at the time piloted by Kevin Baxter.
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| +1 Dimension Valley |
Blastoise/Keldeo seemed like my speed, and I figured I could pick it up relatively easily. Following this, I started toying around with it. I quickly dropped Mewtwo-EX for a second Articuno, due to the high amount of Night March in my area, and eventually picked up a Kyogre-EX DEX to help with combating Vespiquen as well. This was a good choice, as I've only lost to Vespiquen variants twice in the entirety of my B/K use, once with 2 Archie's, Blastoise, and Kyogre prized; the other to extremely good use of Wobb by Connor Finton at Collinsville Regionals. I believe my record is something like 11-2 against Bees.
Anyway, moving onto specific tournament use; my first major tournament with Stoise was Ft Wayne Regionals. I started out very strongly, sweeping through several Vespiquen decks (Sorry Charles Randall), including donking my round 1 opponent, who seemingly dropped the entire tournament following the donk. Looking back, it probably wasn't a great choice, as I ran into Toad variants literally the rest of the day, Luckily, those 2 Articuno pulled their weight, and I was able to stay in the game with repeated Chilling Sighs while setting up. My end record was 5-3-1; top 64. Not the greatest, not the worst, and certainly not enough to deter me from the deck just yet.
With very minimal changes going into Cities, I continued the Blastoise train into December. I hadn't yet found my way in Standard, so I predominately avoided Standard Cities tournaments and went to Expanded Cities out in St Louis and the Missouri area.
One thing I did change was Float Stone for Assault Vest. It probably helped in more games than in hurt, but the main time it did hurt was in Finals of STL Cities against Josh Marking - aka Squeaky. I got excessively overzealous with energy and stadiums, and ended up dumping my extra stadiums and using my excess energy wastefully. Squeaky noticed and took advantage of this, by dropping a well timed Silent Lab to shut off Rush In and using Lysandre to drag up my Blastoise. I ended up decking out from here, having exhausted any options available. Semi Finals of this same Cities ended in about 25 minutes, with me getting revenge on the Bees player who had demolished me a previous round when I prized all my Archie's. In game 2, after having won game 1, I used Kyogre-EX Dual Splash going second to take out his only two Pokemon.
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| MVP in so many games. |
At the Cities prior to the crushing defeat to Squeaky in Finals, at Yeti Gaming, I actually ended up going 'undefeated' in Swiss round play. Going into the last round, I got downpaired 4 points to a friend, and felt extremely comfortable simply scooping this game to get us both into cut. We started off in cut on the same side of the bracket, with me in first seed and Charles Randall in second or third, so my decision certainly paid off. I ended this streak by losing to another friend, Carington Huffman playing Sableye Garbodor, setting up very a riveting Sableye Garbodor mirror match in Finals.
My Cities runs with Blastoise ended with me having three 3rds and one 2nd, never winning, but coming quite closing and coming away satisfied.
I continued playing Stoise for a few more LCs, soft capping my LCs with Stoise with 4 total Jirachi cards - 2 EX, and 2 Stardust. This came in particularly clutch against a very Special Energy heavy Hippowdon/Garbodor, as I was able to 5 HKO his primary Hippowdon with a Muscle Banded Jirachi steadily running him out of energy, with the second Jirachi taking the last 10 damage and effectively getting rid of all his energy. I hit several Toad/Tina decks along the way as well, and Jirachi certainly pulled its weight every time in that matchup. I went through 3 LCs ending a 4-0-1 with this deck, pulling out 1st every time.
The Blastoise train was soon at its end - Collinsville Regionals was the final nail in the coffin for me using Stoise in larger tournaments. With Wobbuffet variants and M Rayquaza being in full attendance, along with the mandatory Toad Bats, I could no longer justify playing Blastoise after the tournament. I started off pretty strong, but that turned into a nose dive after pulling out a close game against Owen Robinson's Toad Bats. I think the only game I won after this was against a M Rayquaza player that scooped both games after I decimated his DCEs with my handy Jirachis. In a previous round against Zander Bennett's M Ray, I wasn't quite as lucky, but the look on his face when I dropped a second Jirachi after he went far out of his way to kill the first was certainly worth it.
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| Those pesky Ultra Balls |
Okay, okay, enough of Blastoise. Not that the next deck is too much better - Vespiquen was certainly a solid contender in Expanded, and Andrew Wamboldt made sure it was in Standard as well.
When Andrew first mentioned the deck concept during the Cities Marathon, I laughed and called the concept terrible. I would soon eat my words when he got 2nd the following day, and I had a deck I actually liked for Standard now. I practiced a ton with this deck leading into States, and it certainly paid off. I ended my runs with 2 undefeated Swiss runs at Missouri and Nebraska and 3rd place at both after top cut, and a Top 16 for 30 more points at Iowa States (where the deck ended up winning anyway). This deck is a powerhouse on so many levels. Its damage cap is only limited by how many Pokemon you can ditch, and to add insult to damage, it can item lock you while it hits hard. I don't have terribly much more to say about this deck that I haven't said in other articles already which can be found linked above, but I certainly never thought I'd have success in Standard prior to this deck.
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| -1 Gloom, +1 Jirachi |
The recap is over! But there's still more format analysis to be had. Regionals and Nationals are coming up, and my indecision about both of these are certainly at a peak as well.
Regionals Expanded format only gained two things from the previous Florida Regionals in my opinion - those are Revitalizer and Jolteon-EX. There are a few other niche cards in Generations that could have an impact, but I don't really see that happening just yet. So the powerhouses of the format either stay unchanged or get slightly better- Eels and M Manectric get a cool new toy, Virizion Genesect and Vespiquen get a cute recovery card that may or may not see play, and everything else is on about the same level.
This leaves Regionals power decks, with a few additions, to look something like this:
Yveltal Variants (Speed, Archeops)
Groudon/Wobb
Trevenant BREAK/Wobb
Sableye Garbodor
Vespiquen Flareon
M Rayquaza
M Manectric
Raikou/Jolteon/Eels
Toad Variants (Bats, Giratina)
with "surprise" plays looking like Night March, Blastoise, and Accelgor variants. The surprise plays, in my opinion, aren't very strong right now for various reasons. Night March has hard matchups against several of the top decks, primarily Sableye, Trevenant, an iffy matchup against Bees, and a slightly tough matchup against anything that plays a multitude of Fury Belts. It will still certainly see play due to hype from Standard carrying over. Accelgor just has a tough time against Virgen, Keldeo in any deck, Giratina EX in any form, and Archeops in particular. It still has potential, but has to hit good matchups to make it. Blastoise, alas, is just not in a good place right now. Too much Wobbuffet, too much Item/Ability lock, and Fury Belt throws math way off in many cases as well. Ghetsis also decimates Blastoise in particular - it's powerful against every deck in the format, but Blastoise not being able to get a T1 Archie's due to having no cards going into their turn is kind of a problem.
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| Expanded's King, basically |
The rest of the lineup I'm having extreme difficulty picking between. It certainly doesn't help that I have all the cards I need to build any of them- for week 1, at least. They're all strong choices, and only a few of them have major flaws. The decks I'll avoid due to said flaws will end up being Eels due to the weakness to Hex and ability lock, Toad Variants due to a general preparedness to deal with them and reliance on Special Energy, M Manectric and Trevenant for it's inability to hit high numbers in one turn (I know that's a really odd reason, but without hitting weakness it can't take out something putting heavy pressure on it that has high HP, and that's kind of a concern) and Groudon and Vespiquen for the overtly slow nature in a fast format. No matter how much they tried, Tyler Turner and Charles Randall couldn't get me on the Groudon hype train.
This leaves me with Yveltal, Sableye, M Ray. I have very limited time to make the decision, but it's proving to be a tough one. It certainly doesn't help that a few new options open up for Kansas City Regionals with Fates Collide being legal, but I'm trying not to think about that just yet.
Nationals is a whole other beast entirely. Night March will still most certainly have the strength carrying over from States (along with the target on its head), and that severely limits viable options going back into Fates Collide legal Standard format.
N's return makes for an interesting twist as well- Night March will have a slightly tougher time having precisely what it needs at every point of the game after it reaches the 3 prize hump if their opponent times their N well.
Looking at Andrew Wamboldt's States results, the decks that carry over well tend to be:
Vespiquen Vileplume
Night March
Toad Hammers
Trevenant BREAK
Yveltal
Greninja
and M Rayquaza/Jolteon
The main two variants we didn't see as much that will probably come up now are Fighting, Wailord, and Metal. Metal gained some nice new techs with FTC Bronzong, Bronzong BREAK, and Genesect-EX. All three of these are most certainly worth note, as Bronzong is a powerful counter to Trevenant, and the BREAK can manhandle Night March if they're not careful. Genesect is just a good card with an all around solid ability and attack.
Fighting gets two new Carbinks, Carbink BREAK, Zygarde-EX, and Regirock-EX. As if Fighting didn't have enough damage modifiers in Fighting Stadium and Strong Energy while having Focus Sash to prevent OHKOs, it gets a new Safeguard, energy acceleration in Carbink BREAK, another high HP (190HP!) attacker in Zygarde with Regirock to boost damage. Fighting is back with more options than ever.
What changes with Wailord, you say? The only thing it was missing in Standard from Expanded - a Safeguard Pokemon. It has Hugh in the form of Chip Off Durant, it often plays either Lugia-EX, Shaymin-EX, or Lucario-EX to take out opposing Bunnelby, Max Potion, Rough Seas, and now has Carbink to take the place of Suicune. Unfortunately Carbink can't utilize Rough Seas as Suicune could, but it still gives it the edge back it once had.
I really like all the perks Metal currently brings to the table, but testing stands to prove whether it will be enough or not. Aegislash isn't as strong in the format as one would expect, with Hex Maniac being quite popular in most decks that would normally have an issue with it, and I can certainly see Hex doing enough to Bronzong decks to stop it from getting too far in the game. That said, I have almost no reason just to default to Vespiquen, and that will always remain a contender in my choices for Standard right now as well.
Overall, Expanded definitely provides more choice and variety than Standard, which inevitably leads me to be more indecisive about it than Standard as well. For those who know me, know this is a VAST switch from a few months ago. I used to absolutely hate Standard and had absolutely no idea what to do. Now I only slightly despise it, and my extreme indecision has been flipped into Expanded, leaving me to muddle through the next week with not nearly as much testing as I'd like, and a difficult decision looming on the close horizon.
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| Nationals mat, Ala Brandon Smiley/Virbank City |
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