A Busy Person’s Guide to the Pokemon TCG
Hello again! Welcome back. I’ve just returned from the Fort Wayne Pokemon TCG Regional Championships where I was able to finish second in a field of 635 with [card name=”Yveltal-EX” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY150″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Garbodor” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”57″ c=”name”][/card]! For those of you that have been following my Pokemon career thus far, you might be surprised that I was able to place so well with a Yveltal deck, and for good reason. Fort Wayne marked the second time I ever piloted a deck featuring Yveltal-EX in the nearly three years it has been legal. Additionally, it was only my third time ever piloting a deck featuring Garbodor in the four years that Garbotoxin has been legal. As I alluded to in my last article, I have been working very hard this past month to get myself up to speed with the Standard format. I had been making an exceptional effort to get my hands on all of the top decks so that I could give myself the best opportunity possible to succeed at Fort Wayne. I am a living testament to the fact that hard work really pays off! Fort Wayne was an incredible accomplishment for me, not only because it was nearly twice the size of the Regional Championship I won in 2015, but because my life is busier and more stressful now than it has ever been! I am a teacher, I am attending graduate school full time, I am a writer, I am a boyfriend, I am an athlete, I am a coach, and I happen to be vying for a World Invitation in the Pokemon Trading Card Game. On top of all that, I just picked up a sponsorship with Alter Reality Gaming! My life is crazy! I’m sure most of you can relate on some level. The Pokemon community is filled with students, parents, scientists, entertainers, business owners, you name it! We are all busy people. But Pokemon isn’t about who has the most time to dedicate to the game. What matters most is how you spend your time with the game. In this article I will discuss the life of a competitor, focusing specifically on stress management, testing techniques, and deck selection. At the end of the article I will give a brief synopsis of my Fort Wayne experience and talk about what I would play for London if I was attending.
A Busy Person’s Guide to the Pokemon TCG
As Pokemon players, we deprive ourselves of good testing all the time. All of us are busy. All of us have lives outside of Pokemon. None of us can live off of this hobby alone and consequently, our quality and volume of testing gives way to other priorities on a regular basis. This is the nature of our game.
The Pokemon TCG reminds me a lot of Division III athletics. Some of you may know that I am an NCAA Division III indoor track and field champion. If not, now you do! Prior to joining the Pokemon community, I spent a decade of my life balancing school, social activities, jobs, homework, and competitive running. For years I spent hours a day running and working out. Despite the countless hours and sacrifices I put forth to become a successful runner, I never made any money off of my athletic ability. Pokemon is similar in that very few of us will make life changing amounts of money off of Pokemon. If that’s the case, then why play? Many of us have careers to worry about, kids to raise, families to take care of, bills to pay, books to read, and essays to write. How can we justify a card game when life is happening all around us? How can I justify playing Pokemon Cards when I have papers to grade, papers to write, a bathroom to clean, and laundry to do?
What’s the Point?
I wrote an article about motivation in the Pokemon Trading Card Game a year ago, here. If there’s anyone struggling with motivation, that article remains a favorite of mine to check back up on from time to time. That article is uplifting, challenging and directly reflective of the place I was in my life when I wrote it. I was fresh off a ninth place Worlds finish and had nothing but time on my hands. Back then it was easy to justify playing the game. Now, I am stressed beyond belief. Money is tight, I got bills to pay and I rarely have a moment to relax. I look at my life and I think of all the things I could get done if I didn’t have Pokemon to worry about.
In order for busy people like you and me to invest time, money and effort into this game despite all the things we have going on in our lives, Pokemon must be, like, really important. Right? Some competitive players look at their lives and decide, “Well, Pokemon was fun but I just can’t justify prioritizing it like I used to.” Some players quit when they go away to college. Some quit when they get a job. Some quit when they find a girlfriend or a boyfriend (I’m looking at you Justin Boughter).
And then some players, like myself, continue to put ourselves out there despite having way too much stuff to do. Some busy people stay in the game for friendships. Others do it for a love of the franchise. While these are both things that I love about the Pokemon TCG, they aren’t what keeps me up and testing late at night. I’m driven to pursue my goals in Pokemon because of my personal conviction that competition is essential to a life well lived.
The Benefit of Competition
Competition is not just for Olympic athletes. Somewhere along the line in my ten years of competitive running I learned this. My teammates used to hate me. We’d be a mile into a ten mile run and I would start having an existential crises, asking aloud, “What’s the point of running!?” or, “Why do we do this to ourselves?” There was never a tangible answer that satisfied me. “Glory?” There is no glory in Division III athletics. “Personal pride?” Is it worth running 60 miles a week on top of my other responsibilities just for a fuzzy feeling of pride in my heart? I’d prefer the feeling of a nap!
But now that I’ve made it through college and a decade long running career, I can point to that experience with confidence and know that it made me a better person. Though I had trouble seeing the benefits of running while I was in the trenches of competition, I now see that consistently pushing myself to my mental and physical limits over an extended period of time has given me the skills to accomplish whatever I set my mind to. Running has made me a more capable person in all areas of life. Pokemon has the ability to do the same.
Competition is enriching. It teaches teamwork, determination, goal setting, sportsmanship, and perseverance. Though it doesn’t always feel that way, competition is good for us. It makes us better people. It teaches us things about ourselves and each other that we might not learn anywhere else. Most importantly, competition teaches us how to fail with grace and accept positive criticism. This, in my opinion, is the key to success. We don’t always win, and that’s okay. Competition teaches us how to learn from our mistakes and persevere through failures in hopes of doing better in the future. With this kind of refined attitude and spirit, we can make it through all of life’s challenges, no matter how arduous.
I have been competing in some way shape or form since I can remember. When I was just a child, my dad used to race me to the car in the parking lot. As soon as I could kick a soccer ball, I started playing on a team and pursued that sport until my teenage years. In ninth grade I shattered my collar bone and had to have reconstructive surgery to fix it. From there, I was coerced into running cross country instead of playing soccer and began running full time. I went on to run in college and as soon as my collegiate running career ended, I picked up the Pokemon TCG and have been playing since. These competitive experiences have kept my drive, desire and lust for life high despite the challenges that I have faced in my life. I have never been complacent. I have never been lazy. I have always worked tirelessly towards my goals and I know that at the end of the day I will be happier for it. Competition has shaped me into the person I am today, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The 10,000 Hour Rule
It takes an obsessive amount of hard work, determination and practice to get good at anything, Pokemon included. In his book, Outliers, Malcom Gladwell argues that it requires 10,000 hours of practicing something the correct way to achieve world-class expertise in any skill. That’s approximately 20 hours a week across a 10 year period. Let’s face it, most of us do not have that kind of time to sink into the Pokemon Trading Card Game. To give you some perspective, three time World Champion, Jason Klaczynski, is probably one of the few players in Pokemon that could even claim such a feat, and he has been playing since the game’s inception.
Something worth noting about Gladwell’s statement is that he claims practice is only valuable if it is done the right way. Grafted into a Pokemon TCG context, I could say that testing is only valuable if it is done the right way, which is true. You can spend a lot of hours at league or on Pokemon Trading Card Game online without growing as a player or learning anything about the metagame whatsoever! Practice has to be intentional. Later in my article, I will discuss the ways in which I pin pointed my testing to make the most of the little time I had leading up to Fort Wayne.
Avoiding Distractions
As a competitor with no free time, avoiding distractions is essential to accomplishing what I set out to do on a daily basis. If I regularly wasted time, there’s no way I would ever get close to my 10,000 hours of practice! Many will disagree with me, but I think millennials have it tough. We have been raised in a digital environment that is constantly tugging for our attention every second of the day. Its insane. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that most of us waste an insane amount of time on our phones. When you think about it, it’s actually kind of sickening. These little screens are the last thing we look at before we go to bed and the first thing we look at when we wake up in the morning. This kind of dates me, but I’m actually old enough to remember what life was like before screens invaded every ounce of our existence. I didn’t get my first cell phone until I was 17! Now don’t get me wrong, phones, Facebook and text messaging all play a huge role in successful Pokemon networking, however, if we aren’t careful, we can waste the precious free time we have in a day just scrolling pointlessly through posts. When formed into a habit and multiplied over a lifetime, that’s a ton of wasted time. Way over 10,000 hours! In an effort to get their time back, some people delete their Facebook all together. I won’t ever do that. Facebook is too valuable of a tool for me to get rid of. What I have done is I have turned off the notification settings for all of my social media applications. It has been a huge relief. There are no more red numbers on my iPhone that I feel like I need to clear. My phone does not vibrate or show me a banner unless someone texts me or calls me directly. I’ve been doing this for months and honestly I feel like my quality of life has improved drastically. Instead of my phone beckoning me to look at it constantly throughout the day, I chose specific and convenient times to check up on things, only when it is appropriate. If you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed out, I suggest you give this a try. Connection is a beautiful thing, but fielding constant notifications can feel like a second, third, or fourth job. Think of all the things you could do if you quit checking your phone so often! Spend an hour a day on your phone? That’s an hour a day that you could be testing.
[premium]
Taking Care of Yourself
This is a big one. With such an insane schedule, my biggest complaint is that I have no time to take care of myself. I have focused all my energy into producing articles, completing assignments, testing, writing essays, attending class and working that I literally do not have time to work out, clean, do laundry, cook myself meals, sleep or relax. My house is a mess. I feel like a mess. Even though my grades are good and my tournament results are outstanding, I know that I cannot keep this up forever. Something has to give. Fortunately, there is light at the end of the tunnel. This is finals week for me, and by the time this article goes to publish, I will be done with my finals. Thank goodness! Sometimes in the course of life, it’s necessary to deny ourselves basic comforts in order to be insanely productive for a period of time. Cutting corners like this will allow you to gain a boost in productivity for a while, but will eventually catch up with you. In order to sustain productivity, you have to take time to take care of yourself. Even during my most stressful weeks this semester, I still made time to work out for thirty minutes every other day or so. Though I prefer to work out daily, this little bit kept me going and feeling positive even when responsibilities were welling up. The simple fact is that you will be more productive when you are taking care of yourself. You will be capable of carrying a heavier workload if you are well rested and eating right. The endorphins gained from working out are huge stress relievers. Though many of us are busy, stress is mostly a mental obstacle. By taking time to take care of our bodies and minds, conquering stress becomes a much more manageable task.
Testing Efficiently
As busy people, how do we make the most of our testing time? This is the million dollar question. At the beginning of this season, I was attempting to accomplish most of my testing through PTCGO. At first, this seemed like the go-to way to test for a busy person. I could play whenever I wanted and wherever I wanted. After my experience at Philadelphia Regionals, however, I realized that I wasn’t getting the proper practice that I needed through PTCGO. When trying to play on PTCGO, I could easily spend an hour trying to find an opponent with a decent list. Not only that, I could spend all night trying to find someone playing the one deck I was actually interested in testing against. If my account didn’t have the cards I needed for a specific list, I would spend even more time on the trading system trying to barter my digital cards away for the ones I needed. I was able to get in games with friends of mine on PTCGO on occasion, but our schedules rarely aligned, so this was not something I could do regularly. At the end of the day, PTCGO proved to be too much of a time suck. Though I was spending hours practicing on PTCGO, they weren’t meaningful hours.
Testing Alone
To remedy this, I built every Standard deck in real life. I started acquiring more copies of staple cards, and was able to have 10 decks sleeved up simultaneously leading up to Fort Wayne, which was excellent! But now I needed someone to test with. Strapped for time and unable to coordinate times to test with friends, I started doing the majority of my testing by myself. That’s right. I would sit at my kitchen table and play both sides of a match I was interested in testing. For weeks leading up to Fort Wayne, any time I had a fifteen minutes to spare, I would sit down and play out a matchup that I had been thinking about throughout the day. When writing papers for graduate class, I would sometimes give myself little mental breaks to play a game of Pokemon out by myself. If I had been mulling a tech over in my mind while at work, I would sit down at the table and give it a try when I got home that night. This strategy allowed me to be extremely pointed and direct with my testing. I played exactly the matchups I wanted to test, when I wanted to test them. When testing with myself, I never had to worry about coordinating time to play with anyone else. I never had to spend time traveling to league and I never had to spend time testing matchups that someone else wanted to test. I was in complete control. I was too busy to do things any other way.
Testing by myself also provided the opportunity to gain experience with two decks in the amount of time it would typically take to learn one. Instead of waiting intently during my opponent’s turns, or, let’s be honest, checking Facebook or text messages, testing alone has been actively engaging for the entire time I spent doing it. Testing alone challenged me to consider how all 120 cards between two decks interact simultaneously. In my head I’ve likened the experience to taking apart a car or machine. If you want to see how the thing works, pop open the hood and take a look for yourself! Testing alone alows you to dig deep into specific matchups, seeing how each card or piece interacts with another. You can slow your play down, take each action step by step, and if you misplay, simply rewind what you did and try again from a different angle. This process of playing alone allows you to experiment with different routes to see which ones work the best! This analytical and intentional process is how I was able to learn to play [card name=”Yveltal-EX” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY150″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Garbodor” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”57″ c=”name”][/card] to perfection in a matter of weeks.
Though playing alone has allowed me to test with greater focus and intent during the past few weeks, the method does have its downfalls. In order to successfully test alone, you have to be able to play nearly flawlessly. You have to be experienced enough to make optimal plays from each side of the field in order to get value from testing alone. If you are testing by yourself and you aren’t a very experienced player, you are only practicing against an inexperienced player! One of the greatest benefits to testing with a friend is having the opportunity to ask their opinion on certain plays. I definitely missed this while testing alone. To overcome this downfall, I made sure to report all of my testing results to my friends online. This way, I could keep myself honest and make sure that my results were being replicated elsewhere. In this way, I was still able to reap the benefits of working with others while testing entirely on my own schedule.
Collaborative Testing
I understand that testing alone is not a strategy that is going to work for everyone. This strategy is more beneficial to someone that has been in the game for a while but lives with time constraints, such as myself. That being said, testing alone is a strategy that all players can utilize in moderation so long as it is paired with a sufficient amount of group testing. It is essential that newer players spend time with other players, sharing ideas, asking for opinions and working together on deck lists. This collaborating of ideas allows players to think outside of their own perspective and grow as quickly as possible. I would advise that anyone looking to improve at the game spend as much time as possible listening to, reading about and testing with players that they consider to be better than themselves. As we grow as players though, and turn into adults, naturally, our schedules become busier and finding time to test becomes more difficult. If you have friends that don’t live near you, utilizing PTCGO is a viable testing option if both of you have a substantial collection. While playing with friends online, however, I suggest using Skype or a phone call in order to conversate while you test. Sometimes that immediate feedback that comes with real life testing can be lost when players don’t communicate while playing online. At the very least, have your phone out and text about your matches as you complete them. This way, you can make sure that your testing is as intentional and reflective as possible.
Personally, I have all but eliminated PTCGO from my testing regiments this season. I have previously praised the platform as a great way to gain experience, but recently, have found better ways to make the most of the precious time that I do have available to play Pokemon. A great way to test collaboratively is to hold a testing party. Call your friends, set aside a night that you have free, put all your priorities on hold and dedicate a handful of hours to tackling as many matchups as you can. You might not have time to test often leading up to a tournament, but you can probably find one night to set aside to completely dedicate to the game. Sometimes, one night in a room full of players with like-minded goals is all it takes to make amazing things happen.
Collaborating Before Fort Wayne
For me, I decided that this night would happen the day before Fort Wayne. My schedule was packed, I had no time to meet up with friends in the month leading up to Fort Wayne, but I was available the entire day before the tournament. To make sure that we could make the most of my free day, my friends and I drove up to Fort Wayne early. We woke up around 8:00 A.M. and arrived at 1:00 P.M. The way I looked at it, arriving at 1:00 P.M. gave us 12 hours to figure out an optimal play for the following day, while still allowing a sufficient amount of sleep for competition day. I had put time into testing most matchups on my own up until this point, but the 12 hours I spent in the hotel room with my friends JW Kriewall, Justin Boughter, Natalie Shampay, Athavan Balendran, and Kirsten Sprague is what made the difference in my overall performance at Fort Wayne.
In my previous article, I proposed that [card name=”Parallel City” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”145″ c=”name”][/card] and [card name=”Garbodor” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”57″ c=”name”][/card] were the best combination in Standard format. Going into Fort Wayne, I fully intended to play [card name=”M Scizor-EX” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”77″ c=”name”][/card], utilizing Parallel and Garb to shut down the opponent’s strategies and Scizor to hit popular Fairy archetypes for Weakness. I really thought that [card name=”Volcanion-EX” set=”Steam Siege” no=”26″ c=”name”][/card] was a horrible deck and was sure that no one would play it. However, after spending some time with my friends at the venue, they were able to convince me that Scizor wasn’t the powerhouse I thought it was. My Scizor deck was losing consistently to [card name=”M Rayquaza-EX” set=”Roaring Skies” no=”76″ c=”name”][/card]! Admittedly, I hadn’t spent much time with that matchup heading into Fort Wayne, and assumed it was a wash in Scizor’s favor. When I realized that Scizor could get run off the table because of how slow and clunky it was, I reconsidered my stance and opened myself up to what my friends had to say. With plenty of time to spare, we threw in the towel on Scizor and started looking elsewhere. We considered Mega Rayquaza for a while, but ultimately settled on [card name=”Yveltal-EX” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY150″ c=”name”][/card] / Garbodor. In my solo testing, I had used Yveltal / Garb as my litmus test to decide if a deck was worth considering or not. In my opinion, if a deck couldn’t consistently beat Yvetlal / Garbodor, it wasn’t worth playing! At the end of the day, Yveltal / Garbodor ended up being the only deck that had even matchups across the board. It was the only deck in Standard that defied the rock, paper, scissors metagame. Even though the deck didn’t have any outstanding matchups, it could stand confidently against anything in the field if piloted well, and that was something we could feel good about.
[cardimg name=”Parallel City” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”145″ align=”right” c=”custom”]Confirmed best card in format.[/cardimg]
You’ll also notice that in my previous article, my Yveltal / Garbodor list played no copies of [card name=”Enhanced Hammer” set=”Phantom Forces” no=”94″ c=”name”][/card]! While I was absolutely correct in asserting that Parallel / Garbodor was the most potent combination in Standard, my solo testing strategy had left me blind to the benefits of Enhanced Hammer. After seeing my list, Justin Boughter told me to get the [card name=”Mew” set=”Fates Collide” no=”29″ c=”name”][/card] and [card name=”Umbreon-EX” set=”Fates Collide” no=”55″ c=”name”][/card] out of my deck in exchange for a pair of Hammers. When I asked why, he assured me that I wouldn’t win a single mirror without them. Justin has piloted Dark decks for years, so I trusted his opinion and called it a night, tapping out right before 1:00 in the morning.
The morning of the tournament, I desperately wanted to fit a third [card name=”Parallel City” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”145″ c=”name”][/card] into my deck. I had already cut Azul’s [card name=”Reverse Valley” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”110″ c=”name”][/card] for a third [card name=”Trainers’ Mail” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”100″ c=”name”][/card], but knew from my testing with Scizor that three Parallel City could help tip close matchups like the mirror, [card name=”M Gardevoir-EX” set=”Steam Siege” no=”79″ c=”name”][/card], Rainbow Road, Mega Ray and [card name=”Greninja” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”40″ c=”name”][/card] in Yveltal’s favor. I had not spent as much time with the list as I had wanted to make the decision on my own, so I visited my trusted friend, Kevin Baxter, minutes before the player meeting. Kevin took a look at my list and assured me that [card name=”Super Rod” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”149″ c=”name”][/card] was not needed in the deck. With Kevin’s advice, I swapped the Rod for the third Parallel City and submitted my list.
My purpose in telling this story is to illustrate the importance of collaboration in the Pokemon TCG. Though I was able to keep my skill sharp by testing on my own leading up to Fort Wayne, it was ultimately collaboration that got my list to a place that could reach the final table of a 635 player tournament. Collaboration is essential, especially to someone with a busy schedule. You need to have friends and sources that you can trust in the Pokemon TCG to bounce your ideas off of. With teamwork, you can easily turn a few hours of testing into an entire month of testing. Everyone has different ideas and experiences with cards. Kevin had experienced that Super Rod was a worthless inclusion in Yvetlal / Garbodor, and he was absolutely correct. I didn’t miss that card once in 17 rounds of Pokemon! My personal experiences with testing informed me that Parallel City was an amazing card, so good that three copies could be warranted. Justin’s experiences had led him to believe that Enhanced Hammer was non negotiable. By using my sources to the best of my ability, I was able to piece together a fantastic list that went the distance at Fort Wayne.
Conclusion
I wanted to offer you guys something different with this article, which is why I have strayed away from the tournament report route. I felt like I may be able to offer more if I explained the process that went into my exceptional tournament run, rather than simply recounting my matchups. That being said, I did take notes on each of my matchups from Fort Wayne, and will be leaving you with a brief summary of what I learned. If you are interested in seeing the list I played, you can find that on Pokemon.com here. Below is a list of my rounds followed by a synopsis of my run.
Day One
Round 1: Johnathan Steffen with [card name=”Volcanion-EX” set=”Steam Siege” no=”26″ c=”name”][/card] WLL 0-1
Round 2: Robbie Trittschuh with [card name=”Gyarados” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY60″ c=”name”][/card] WW 1-1
Round 3: Alexander Sanderson with [card name=”Yveltal-EX” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY150″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Garbodor” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”57″ c=”name”][/card] WW 2-1
Round 4: Patrick Van Story with [card name=”M Gardevoir-EX” set=”Steam Siege” no=”79″ c=”name”][/card] WLW 3-1
Round 5: Justin Bokhari with [card name=”Greninja” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”40″ c=”name”][/card] LWW 4-1
Round 6: Gumby Arce with [card name=”M Gardevoir-EX” set=”Steam Siege” no=”79″ c=”name”][/card] WW 5-1
Round 7: Nick Robinson with [card name=”M Gardevoir-EX” set=”Steam Siege” no=”79″ c=”name”][/card] LL 5-2
Round 8: Alex Hill with [card name=”Greninja” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”40″ c=”name”][/card] WLW 6-2
Round 9: Matt Kozmor with [card name=”Vileplume” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”3″ c=”name”][/card] / Walls WW 7-2
Day Two
Round 10: Jeramiah Williams with [card name=”Vileplume” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”3″ c=”name”][/card] / Walls LL 7-3
Round 11: Noah Sawyer with [card name=”Yveltal-EX” set=”XY” no=”79″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Bisharp” set=”Steam Siege” no=”64″ c=”name”][/card] WW 8-3
Round 12: Darin O’Meara with [card name=”Vespiquen” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”10″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Zoroark” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”91″ c=”name”][/card] WW 9-3
Round 13: Jacob Mechaber with Rainbow Road WLT 9-3-1
Round 14: Jared Woitalla with Yveltal / [card name=”Garbodor” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”57″ c=”name”][/card] WW 10-3-1
Top 8
Top 8: Clinton Kirkwood with [card name=”Volcanion” set=”Steam Siege” no=”25″ c=”name”][/card] WW 11-3-1
Top 4: Chris Derocher with [card name=”Greninja” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”40″ c=”name”][/card] WW 12-3-1
Finals: Jimmy Pendarvis with [card name=”Yveltal-EX” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY150″ c=”name”][/card] / [card name=”Garbodor” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”57″ c=”name”][/card] LL 12-4-1
After looking through my matchups, a couple key things stand out. First of all, I went 2-1 versus [card name=”M Gardevoir-EX” set=”Steam Siege” no=”79″ c=”name”][/card], a matchup that most would have considered bad for [card name=”Yveltal-EX” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY150″ c=”name”][/card] on paper. In reality, that matchup is closer to 50 / 50. Fright Night [card name=”Yveltal” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”94″ c=”name”][/card] can slow Gardevoir down while Yvetlal sets up. By the time they get Gardevoir up and attacking, you have a couple of big Yveltal-EX ready to go. At that point, it is a 2HKO trade. The game plan is to build a giant Yveltal-EX, play [card name=”N” set=”Noble Victories” no=”92″ c=”name”][/card] while Knocking Out a Gardevoir and hope they don’t respond. It works more than you’d think.
[cardimg name=”Yveltal-EX” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY150″ align=”right” c=”custom”]The most beautiful version of this card![/cardimg]
Next we have [card name=”Greninja” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”40″ c=”name”][/card]. I was able to go 3-0 versus the deck at Fort Wayne, but the games were closer than I expected them to be. This matchup requires a lot of patience and finesse. You want to avoid hitting into [card name=”Bursting Balloon” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”97″ c=”name”][/card] as often as possible. Sometimes you may even opt to Sky Return into a Balloon instead of hitting into it with a Yveltal-EX. Both sides of [card name=”Parallel City” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”145″ c=”name”][/card] were amazing in this matchup. Nerfing Greninja’s damage by 20 is huge, as is limiting their Bench to three! Healing also came into play here. In two of my series, I was able to use [card name=”Olympia” set=”Generations” no=”66″ c=”name”][/card] effectively to change the course of the game. As you can see, I played against Chris Derocher with Greninja in my Top 4 match. Interestingly, Chris was 2-0 versus Yveltal / Garbodor decks before losing to me. This seems to point to the fact that this matchup is skill intensive. If played right, it should be no problem for Yveltal / Garbodor. If you want to see our match on video to see the way the game plays out, you can see it on YouTube, here.
And last, we have the mirror. The mirror match was unbelievably important at Fort Wayne. Though I had no experience with the mirror heading into the tournament, my friend Justin Boughter was able to catch me up to speed the night before. He told me to be the first one to put damage on the opponent’s [card name=”Yveltal-EX” set=”XY Black Star Promos” no=”XY150″ c=”name”][/card], and he was right. This strategy along with conservative play and strategic use of [card name=”Enhanced Hammer” set=”Phantom Forces” no=”94″ c=”name”][/card] was enough to allow me to best three mirror matches before finally losing to Jimmy Pendarvis in the finals.
I had an absolute blast playing Yveltal / Garbodor at Fort Wayne. The deck is fun, simple and powerful. It has a high skill ceiling, and I really felt like I was learning more and more each round that I played with it. I could really feel myself growing as a player as I figured out ways to best each matchup. Yveltal is just stupid good right now. When [card name=”Garbodor” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”57″ c=”name”][/card] is activated, nothing can remove Yveltal’s [card name=”Fighting Fury Belt” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”99″ c=”name”][/card]. In essence, that means that Yveltal is consistently packing as much HP as a Mega Pokemon-EX, and it doesn’t even need to evolve! My Yveltal were constantly hanging on by a thread all weekend. 210 HP is just so much to deal with.
Yveltal / Garbodor is far and wide the best deck in format. I knew that [card name=”Garbodor” set=”BREAKpoint” no=”57″ c=”name”][/card] and [card name=”Parallel City” set=”BREAKthrough” no=”145″ c=”name”][/card] were the strongest combination in Standard, but it took me a while to come to terms with the fact that Yveltal was the best partner for them. It’s true though. If you are heading to London, you better either be good with Yvetlal / Garbodor, or know how to beat it on a regular basis. Yveltal / Garbodor is about to be all over the first International Championships! If I were to change my list at all for London, I would try to fit in a [card name=”Team Flare Grunt” set=”XY” no=”129″ c=”name”][/card]. Flare Grunt would act as a soft counter to [card name=”Jolteon-EX” set=”Generations” no=”28″ c=”name”][/card], allowing you another option to remove Jolteon-EX’s Energy to keep it from using Flash Ray. Flare Grunt is also really good in the Yveltal mirror. If an opponent uses Y Cyclone and leaves a Belted Yveltal-EX in the Active with one Energy on it, Team Flare Grunt gives you the opportunity to strand that Yveltal in the Active by knocking their only Energy off! In order to fit the Flare Grunt, I could see potentially cutting the third [card name=”Trainers’ Mail” set=”Ancient Origins” no=”100″ c=”name”][/card] I played or potentially the third Parallel City. I’m reluctant to cut Parallel because of its potency in this format, but hey, Jimmy Pendarvis won a Regional with only two copies of Parallel, so I have to consider it as an option.
And that’s it! That’s all I have for today. I’m out! It’s 2:30 A.M., I got work in the morning and a final to do tomorrow. So much for the whole taking care of myself bit! Hah! It’s been real guys. As always, thank you so much for reading. I am so humbled by the fact that you all take the time to read what I have to say. Thanks to everyone who has followed my career so far and everyone who has continued to believe in me through the bad times and the good. You all are the best! If you have any questions for me, feel free to hit me up. If you enjoyed the read, or hated it, let me know in the comments section! I have no idea if this stuff is helpful unless you guys let me know how I’m doing!
Much love,
-Andrew Mahone
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