Zekrom/Tornadus - the BDIF

Hi everyone and welcome back to The Deck Out!


Today I’ll be analyzing one of my clear favorite decks of this format – Zekrom/Tornadus. I’ve built the first version of my Zekrom/Tornadus as soon as HGSS-format was announced and I’ve been fixing it ever since. I knew that the time for it would come when the Catcher had been released I was correct – it belongs to the Tier 1 of this format and will belong there for a long time to come.

Battle Roads are already on their way and Zekrom is the most dominating deck of the Battle Roads at the moment. If we look at the statistics:

Masters Winning Decks:
9 x ZPS varients (7 x ZPST, 2 x ZPS)
7 x Reshiphlosion
5 x Primetime (2 x Y/M, 2 x Y/M/K)
3 x Reshiboar
3 x Stage 1's
2 x Magneboar
2 x Zekrom
2 x Gothitelle/Reuniclus/Dragons (1 x G/R/Resh/Z, 1 x G/R/Z)
1 x Reuniclus/Vileplume/Donphan/Zekrom and everything else

As we can see ZPS is very popular at the moment. What makes Zekrom so good in this format if it was in the last format only a failed hype deck? I’m here to find that out.


First, into the skeleton.


Pokémon:

3x Zekrom
4x Tornadus
2x Pachirisu
2x Shaymin
= 13

Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
2x Pokegear 3.0
2x Dual Ball
3x Professor Juniper
4x Cheren
4x Pokémon Catcher
4x Junk Arm
=23

Energy:

12x Lighting Energy
4x Double Colorless Energy
=16

=45


Finally I was able to make a skeleton that doesn’t have 50+ cards in it – I’m so proud of myself.



Strategy:

Here comes the fun part. Zekrom is very close to Luxchomp- with the exception that Zekrom is even faster. The main goal is to get either Tornadus or Zekrom attack T1 with Pachirisu + Shaymin Combo. Tornadus is easy to load if you have DCE in your opening hand and if you want to have Zekrom loaded T1 you must have a lot of Lighting Energies in your hand.

The deck relies fully on its speed. I’ve told you many times in this blog that Zekrom/Tornadus is able to get 2 prizes before the opponent’s is even able to evolve their Pokémon. The fact that Zekrom and Tornadus are both Basic Pokémons with great attack and HP is undeniable. Once you have set-upped your Zekrom/Tornadus, your main strategy is to KO anything that looks threatening. That’s why the deck NEEDS 4 copies of Catchers – no exceptions. Just like LuxChomp, you take prize every turn wherever you get it. In theory it would be better if you open with Tornadus because it helps you to set-up the game for the mid-game (you don’t want to play late game with this deck). Tornadus’ Hurricane moves energy from it to the benched Pokémon. It would be optimal that you get Tornadus attacking with DCE and Lighting because once Tornadus is KOed, you only lose 1 DCE. The other reason, why Tornadus is a great opener is because it hits enough – yeah 80 isn’t as much as 120 but it’s enough to OHKO everything that will become threatening (Magnemite, Cyndaquil, Yanma, Phanpy, Zorua, etc.). You can’t win a prize race against ReshiPlosion unless you already have crippled their set-up and have a 2-3 prize lead.


The keys to victory with Zekrom/Tornadus:
1) Speed
2) Catcher
3) Resource management



Let’s make the skeleton alive


There is 15 open rooms for cards in the skeleton list, so I will go through the options card by card and in the end of the analysis you’ll find 2 different full deck lists.


3rd Pokegear

I know, I know, I’m a Pokegear maniac. But there is no denying that Pokegear wouldn’t be exceptionally good in this deck. This deck wants the T1 Collector – more than any other deck. My list runs 3 Pokegears and 4 Collectors and it gets T1 Zekrom/Tornadus 9/10. I’m a huge fun of consistency and consistency combined with speed is a winning combo in this game. You can’t stop me writing about the importance of Pokegear and consistency no matter what you do, sorry.

3rd Pachirisu

This is an addition, I fully understand. Running 2-2 Pachi/Shaymin is always considered a risky choice because there will be games that both Pachis/Shaymins are prized and then you’re naturally pissed off. I don’t like running more support Pokémons in this deck just because they are awful starters. There is nothing you want to open less in this deck than Pachirisu or Shaymin. Runnig 2 of both minimizes your chance to open with them, which is great.


4th Zekrom

You can run 3-4 Zekrom and Tornadus - whichever you feel most comfortable with. I like running 4 Tornadus over Zekrom because in my opinion Tornadus here is THE main starter and Zekrom is just a starter. I’ve played games where I miss the 4^th Zekrom so you could also consider running 4-4 of both.

Manahpy

If you want a starter in your deck, Manaphy is your guy. Manaphy has free retreat so it’s a perfect starter for this deck and you don’t want to run a single Cleffa in this deck because you don’t want it to get KOed before you manage to say “Eeeeeeek!”. Since you have Shaymin, you’re neither disturbed by the energy cost of Deep Sea Swirl because you’re most likely to use Shaymin in the early game anyways.

Tyrogue

This is a great addition if you run PlusPowers as well. Tyrogue is a donking-machine and it also has a free retreat so it’s a good starter. The amount of Tyrogues has decreased in other decks so a lone Tyrogue start doesn’t always mean that you’ll get donked. Tyrogue is a nice addition and can get you the 1 prize T1 what you wouldn’t otherwise get because the not-so-good hand.

Sage’s Training

Some people don’t like Cheren in this deck- but I do. For those who don’t – Sage’s is a great option. You’re almost guaranteed to get whatever you need from Sage’s but it’s always risky to discard 3 cards in a deck like this. There is always something you don’t want to discard. Sage’s is a great addition if your Juniper and Cheren counts are already full but I don’t suggest you use Sage as your main draw engine.

Bianca

Bianca is an underrated card. And Zekrom is one of those decks, it works very well in. Zekrom is one of the decks that play with usually a very small hand size. That’s why the deck runs Juniper but there are certaing situations where you don’t want to use Juniper even though you only have 2 cards in your hand. The most usual example is when you have a Junk Arm and Juniper in your hand. It’s always heart-breaking to discard Junk Arms with this deck and it may cost you the game. Bianca is almost every time as good as Cheren in this deck and I encourage you to try it, if you are a fan of straight draw.


Super Scoop Up

Super Scoop Up was considered as a staple in the before-Catcher Zekrom but in my opinion it’s only a tech nowadays. You need SSU every game but there is no point running 3-4 of them in your deck. Tornadus has given this deck so much mid-game power that you don’t have to load a new Zekrom every turn with Pachi/Shay combo. It’s not to be forgotten that SSU is a flip card, which makes you no to want to play it. But the sad part is that you have to – at least 1 copy.


Defender

I faced the Canadian National Champion in the Worlds and he was playing 4 Defenders – I thought it was cool. But it was also overkill. Once again, thanks to Tornadus there is no reason running huge amounts of Defenders because you can let Zekrom die when you start attacking with it – you already have a bench full of attackers. Defender is in my opinion consider as a tech in Zekrom nowadays, when it in the past was a necessity for this deck (not many people realized it back then). This deck is so much faster and more stable than before that Defender is only a good addition for the deck. The match-up you need Defender the most is a mirror so if you think you’re going to face a lot of mirrors it’s a good thing to consider running 1-2 Defenders in your Zekrom.


PlusPower

PlusPower is obvious. If you have read my article on the Pokégym about the “Magical Numbers of Pokémon TCG” you know everything about number 130. If you haven’t, then read it immediately! Zekrom needs PlusPower to OHKO his arch-nemesis Reshiram and it also helps Zekrom killing other Zekroms. PlusPower is a must tech for this deck because there are various situations where you need the extra 10 damage. Just remember that PlusPower also adds the self-damage of Zekrom.

Seeker

Non-flip SSU - gotta love it. That’s what Seeker is here mainly for. In certain situations Seeker is a savior card – in certain situations it just ends up to the discard pile. Seeker is a supporter, which makes it hard to use in a deck like Zekrom, which needs to draw into certain cards every turn (Energy, Catcher etc.). Sometimes you don’t have time to use and you use Juniper instead. In those cases Seekers feels like a wasted space but the more you play games with Seeker in your deck, the more you grow to like the card. Seeker is has also the notorious donk-ability. If your opponent is careless, or has a slow start and you end up having Seeker in your hand, you can end the game. This requires that your opponent has only 1 Benched Pokémon and you’re able to KO the defending Pokémon.


Energy Retrieval

Energy Retrieval is only one tech card but it saves the game every time. This deck’s energy count is already high but it also requires high amount of energies to attack so it’s only natural to run many energies. Energy Retrieval works perfectly with cards like Junk Arm, Juniper and Sage’s. If you have Energy Retrieval in your deck, you can discard your basic energies carelessly because you can get them easily back with Energy Retrieval. Energy Retrieval gets back 2 energies so it’s also an obvious combo with Pachirisu.


Professor Oak’s New Theory

Professor Oak’s New Theory isn’t that good in Zekrom in the early game but in the midgame it’s very good. I don’t recommend running 4 PONTs in your deck but I do recommend 2-3. They give you consistency after the fast start and a safe to draw cards when you have things like both of your Shaymins in your hand. There is no way you can Juniper then. PONT is a great card in this deck that can give you versatility and consistency


Judge

I will get back to disturbing later but Judge isn’t really serving the purpose of a “draw” card here. If you want to run Judge, you must run Zekrom in the disturb-way, which I will soon show you an example of.

Crushing Hammer

Crushing Hammer belongs together with a list with Judge. Crushing Hammer is one of the best disturbing trainers in the format and it slows down some decks radically. Crushing Hammer is a flip card but as I mentioned in my Emergin Powers Review it’s the best we have.

Lost Remover

Lost Remover is the last of the disturbing teches. You will get a huge upper hand in a mirror if you get your opponent’s DCEs into the Lost Zone. Tornadus will become unable to attack for a turn if you use Lost Remover on them. Lost Remover is also great against one of the hardest match-ups of Zekrom – stage1 decks.


2-way Zekrom

As promised I will give you 2 full lists of Zekrom that both function a bit differently. First…


The distortion Zekrom

Pokémon:

3x Zekrom
4x Tornadus
2x Pachirisu
2x Shaymin
1x Manaphy
= 12

Trainer:

3x Pokémon Collector
2x Pokegear 3.0
4x Dual Ball
4x Professor Juniper
2x Sage’s Training
3x Pokémon Catcher
4x Junk Arm
1x Energy Retrieval
4x Judge
2x Crushing Hammer
2x Lost Remover
=31

Energy:

13x Lighting Energy
4x Double Colorless Energy
=17


What’s up with distortion Zekrom?

As you can see the list is radically fixed from the skeleton. This deck’s main goal is to disturb your opponent’s set-up and attacking as possible with a Zekrom deck. Once set-upped T1-2 your goal is to get Judge very time your opponent even shows slight signs of set-upping. Here the main attacker is Tornadus. 80 is enough as long as you don’t let them set-up. 3 Zekrom will be enough to take the last prizes. The deck has Sages and Junipers because it needs to draw something from the Judge every time – the need to minimize the chance of dead hands is a must. This version does have a good chance even though you aren’t attacking T2 – as long as your opponent isn’t either!



The outspeed Zekrom


Pokémon:

3x Zekrom
4x Tornadus
2x Pachirisu
2x Shaymin
1x Manaphy
= 12

Trainer:

3x Pokémon Collector
2x Pokegear 3.0
4x Dual Ball
4x Professor Juniper
3x Cheren
2x Sage’s Training
2x Professor Oak’s New Theory
4x Pokémon Catcher
4x Junk Arm
2x PlusPower
1x Super Scoop Up
1x Energy Retrieval
=32

Energy:

12x Lighting Energy
4x Double Colorless Energy
=16


As you can see from the name, this is more straightforward build of Zekrom. This is the most common build of Zekrom and the tournament winning decks are probably built like this. The goal of this build is simple – take 6 prizes in 6 turns. The all tech cards support this strategy. Seeker and SSU helps to get a new Zekrom loaded whenever needed. Energy Retrieval guarantees that you won’t run out of energy and Manaphy is there to raise your chances to open with a good Pokémon. This list is hurt a lot if it doesn’t open with Zekrom/Tornadus/Manaphy and therefore it would be worth considering if it’s prudent to run 4 Zekroms here as well.

This deck probably fits my hands better. Sometimes it just runs over your opponent before he even has a decent chance set-upping himself. This deck abuses the new BW opening rule the most in the whole format and that’s one reason why it must be considered as one of the top decks of this format.



Match-ups

So if Zekrom is so broken and fast, then it shouldn’t have bad match-ups right? It just steamrolls over everything. Well, as we have seen from the Battle Roads results it may very well steamroll through everything.


Favorable
Mew/Vileplume/Teches
Magnezone/Yanmega

Slightly Favorable


Even
Reshiplosion
Magneboar
Stage1 (from even to slightly favorable)
Reshiboar


Slighly Unfavorable
Gothitelle/Reuniclus
Ross’ deck

Unfavorable




If you look at the match-ups, it seems like Zekrom isn’t that good of a deck after all. It has few favorable and slightly unfavorable match-ups but the rest ends up in the even section. The most important question is why? Why do the match-ups look so dull even though I have just praised the deck for 2000 words – because this is Pokémon TCG.



Hardships of Zekrom

1) Opening with Shaymin/Pachirisu

It’s Zekrom’s worst nightmare to start with a Shaymin or Pachirisu. It’s almost impossible to get T1 Zekrom if you have a “bad” starter. Zekrom is very weak when it comes to opening with some Pokémon. If you’re old school enough, just think when Zap-Turn-Dos started with Zapdos ex. It’s a very similar scenario.

Zekrom is all about speed so it can’t afford set-upping 3 turns. That’s why I highly recommend running max Tornadus and maybe even max Zekrom. You might as well put in even more good starters like Babies or Manaphy. Starting with a good starter is a matter of life and death when it comes to Zekrom – there is no way you can add too many good starters in the deck – you can always Junk Arm them in the lategame


2) Trainer lock + Reuniclus

Zekrom’s max damage is 120. There is no way over it in the trainer lock unless your opponent is dumb enough to hit your Zekrom 10 or 20 away from being KOed. That’s the reason Gothitelle and Ross’ decks are very bad match-ups for Zekrom – when they’re set-upped that is. Zekrom and trainerlock decks are counterparts of each other – other tries to win with speed – the other set-ups with Twins. In theory Trainer lock decks are straight counters against Zekrom but that isn’t truth.

The truth is that Zekrom can outspeed any deck in the format and that includes trainer lock decks. The pressure that T1 Tornadus/Zekrom gives at your opponent’s deck is very big so unless they have a very decent opening hand they might not be able to recover from it. Trainer locks with Reuniclus are unfavorable for Zekrom but they aren’t autolosses.


3) Slow starts in general

Yeah, as I have said many times – Zekrom is all about speed. So if you have a hand with Tornadus and 6 energies you probably don’t have the game, unless you’ll get a god top deck. Any start without getting prize at least in the turn 2 is considered as a bad start for Zekrom. Zekrom can’t afford slow starts so you’d better make your Zekroms as consistent as possible for the early game.



The future of Zekrom/Tornadus

The future looks even brighter for Zekrom. Basic Pokémons will get even stronger in the future thanks to cards like Eviolite, Skyarrow Gym, Archeops etc. If you don’t what these cards to do, be sure to check their translations from the Pokebeach.

Zekrom has been tier1 deck in Japan for this whole time and still is, so I guess, it doesn’t disappear anywhere here in the West either. Zekrom/Tornadus is a great combination of speed, energy acceleration and heavy hitting Pokémons. These are and will be the keys to victory in the Pokémon TCG always. Zekrom has it all so why not to play it?




That’s it for Zekrom today. Hope you enjoyed the entry and don’t hesitate commenting. I’ll be following the changes Zekrom will be facing in the metagame during the whole season so we’ll see more of Zekrom in the future. Thanks for reading be sure to check The Deck Out daily – the waited “Eye on Japan” will be starting soon!

Battle Roads tournament report!

Hello all the The Deck Out followers!


I just came home after a very interesting weekend and I’m back with a special update – my tournament report! I played a Battle Road this Sunday and was very excited because it was my first tournament of the year. At the moment I don’t have that many chances to go to the tournaments so I didn’t want to play metagame. I was playing the deck I call Electroman (named after that song from Benny Bennanssi and T-Pain). Here is the decklist:


Pokemon:

3x Voltorb
2x Electrode Prime
4x Tornadus
2x Zekrom
1x Reshiram
1x Pachirisu
1x Shaymin
=14


Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
2x Pokegear 3.0
2x Professor Juniper
2x Professor Oak’s New Theory
2x Sage’s Training
2x Bianca
3x Pokémon Communication
3x Pokémon Catcher
4x Junk Arm
2x Research Records
1x Super Scoop Up
2x Twins
=29

Energy:

8x Lighting Energy
5x Fire Energy
4x Double Colorless Energy
=17


I once called this deck ZRE because It has Zekrom, Reshiram and Electrode but it also had Tornadus so I didn’t want to disgrace one of my favorite decks. And Electroman is a nice name so why not.

I’ve always loved cards like Electrode ex which versatility is unbelievable. Electrode Prime is considered as a horrible card but with Research Records, Junk Arms and Twins it’s pretty decent. This deck’s main strategy is to blow up 1 Electrode Prime and live with those energies and your turn energies for the rest of the game while killing things with Catcher and Digimons. It only problems are decks like Gothitelle and Ross’ decks but it has an answer against them as well because you can blow 2 Electrodes and keep the game tied. These 2 decks work with Twins but with Electrode Prime you have the board control and they can’t use Twins. I love this deck and I’ll make a big blog entry about this deck if anyone wants to learn more about this deck and its possibilities.

I ended up playing this deck because I borrowed a deck for 4 players so this was all I had left. And as I said earlier I don’t want to play meta and I love this deck so it seemed like an natural option.


Now for the tournament.



We had 43 players in Masters so it was pretty big tournament and it started a little late.

Interesting fact: I started 5 games with a lone Voltorb…


1. Round (Mewgar/Muk/Vileplume)

As soon as I realized what I was playing against and survived the lone Voltorb start, I knew it was an auto-win. I blowed-up my 2 Trodes T2 and 3 so he didn’t get Twins going and while he didn’t draw Vileplume because he couldn’t use Twins I just ran through him with Tornadus. It was a funny game because until the end of his last turn, he had more Pokémons in Lost Zone than I did XD (Muk and Gengar).

2. Round (Reshiram/Typhlosion)

I got a pretty decent opening hand and T2 Trode blowing up. I got 2 DCEs and 2 Basic energies from the Electrode with the help of Research Records. I could Catcher him every turn which crippled his set-up completely. He really didn’t even get a set-up in this game because I killed his Cyndaquils and Quilavas before they could evolve.

3. Round (Reshiram/Emboar)

Once again I start with a lone Voltorb but I get to go first. I used Collector and hit 30 to his Tepig. Next turn he just Collectored 2 Reshirams and a Tepig. I knew that I didn’t have anything that could OHKO fully HP Reshirams so I had to take a risk and attach 2nd energy to active Voltorb, evolve it into Electrode Prime and killed Tepig with Gigashock. The best thing about Gigashock is that it hit 10 to 2 benched Pokémons. It was just enough to get the Reshirams into the KO range of my Zekroms/Reshirams. It’s funny how a horrible attacker like Electrode Prime can really win you games. Well, the next turn I just blowed up the Electrode once again and started killing Tepigs with Zekrom. My bench was fully loaded with energies so I knew I had the game once I had the 3 prize lead + 10 damages on the 2 Reshirams.
3-0

I was happy because I was 3-0 and because my deck was worked very well so far. I had used every card of the deck and it really didn’t have weak spots. After the 3^rd round was the lunch break but for some reason I’m incapable of eating during tournaments so I just stalled around the place and talked to people while waiting for the lunch break to end.

4. Round (Zekrom/Pachirisu/Shaymin)

I start with a lone Voltorb and he goes first donking me with Outrage and 2 Pluspowers. PP.
3-1

I had lots of time to play around during this round so I watched my friends’ games and waited anxiously for the next game.

5. Round (Zoroark/Yanmega/Cinccino)

This match was probably the worst of the days matches. We both got a bad start but because Tornadus is obviously a better starter than Zorua, I just run through him with a lone Tornadus because he didn’t draw anything in the whole game. I don’t like playing these kind of games.
4-1

6. Round (Zekrom/Pachirisu/Shaymin/Tyrogue)

I start – surprise, surprise – with a lone Voltorb and he retreats Zekrom with DCE and donks my Voltorb with Tyrogue and Pluspower.
4-2


Yeah, I was frustrated because I didn’t have that many good games during the tournament and my both loses were donks. Fortunately I knew that my tiebreak was pretty high so I fugred I could have a good chance top cutting. And so I did. I ended up  7^th place and playing against my big brother – yeah right.

Top8 (Reshiram/Typhlosion)

1. Game

I had tested this match-up with my brother 2 months ago and knew it was pretty even. And so it was. I tried to lure him into retreating his Typhlosion Prime with 120 on it, with Afterburner and turn energy but I think he was one of the few that knew what  Electrode Prime did ( he had a second Typhlosion with 120 damage on it on the bench as well). If he had retreated the Typhlosion with Afterburner I could have Catchered the other Typhlosion and Gigashocked the both Typhlosions for 2 prizes. Instead of retreating he figured to start a brainless prize-trade which ended up 1 prize in his favor because he started the game.
0-1(4-3)

2. Game

I get to go first and used Pokegear. I whiffed the Collector which I needed for the T1 donk. Instead of donking I just attached an energy to the active Tornadus and passed. He didn’t get a fast set-up but because I missed my all DCEs (I had 3 DCEs in my 5 card deck in the end of the game), Energymite discarded Junk Arm, Catcher and a Shaymin and he draw his last Junk Arm AND Catcher from the PONT he won the game by one prize. If anything would have gone differently, I would have won the game but too bad I had bad luck and that’s it.
0-2(4-4)


After the game I was pretty frustrated about my bad luck so I figured it would be the best to go eat something good with friends and so I did. Good food – better mood.


My big brother ended up placing 2^nd, losing to a ReshiBoar in the finals. The Reshiboar player has won our both tournaments this season so it was nice seeing him win again. Well, I didn’t gain any Championship Points but it really doesn’t matter – I don’t have money to go to Hawaii. I know most people are interested in our metagame so here are the top8 decks.

1. Reshiboar
2. ReshiPlosion
3. Zekrom/Tornadus/Pachirisu
4. Zekrom/Tornadus/Pachirisu
5. Zekrom/Tornadus Pachirisu
6. Zekrom/Tornadus Pachirisu
7. Zekrom/Tornadus/Reshiram/Electrode Prime
8. Stage1


As you can see Zekrom was highly represented in our BRs but in the end Reshi variants were better. This was only a one tournament but I can easily say that the top2 decks in this format are ReshiPlosion/Reshiboar and Zekrom/Tornadus. And if look at the BR results from the U.S. we can see the same. I’ll get into the deeper analysis of the results of the Battle Roads next month but I hope you enjoyed my article and don’t hesitate to leave feedback!

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to come back this Friday when it’s time to analyze one of the tier1 decks – Zekrom/Tornadus!

The Almost Versatile Mew Prime

Today I’ll be discussing about my favorite card of this format – Mew Prime. Back in the days I was a big fan of Mew ex because it gave almost limitless possibilities for deck building. Mew Prime is far away from Mew EX’s glory and unfortunately it’s almost unplayable due it’s ridiculously HP and the fast format. Thankfully it might see more play in the future, when Eviolite and Archeops are released but I will get back to that in this update later on.

I’m bored of Mew/Yanmega/Muk variants and other Mew decks that are considered “metagame” and since this updates name is “The almost versatile Mew Prime”, I’ll try to dig deeper into Mew. I will be analyzing the wanted MewBox but there will also be a few crazy combos, metagame deck in different way and lots of thinking during the way so sit back and enjoy the almost versatile Mew Prime.


Mew Prime + Swanna (BW#37) + Tyranitar Prime
NOTE: IT DOES ACTUALLY WORK! LOOK AT THE COMMENT AREA!
This is one of the fun combos I have always wanted to try. It’s way too hard to pull of competitively but if you want to try it sometime, I will give the list later in this update. So first, you Lost Zone Swanna and Tyranitar into lost zone with Mew’s See Off attack. After that you attack Swanna’s Feather Dance with Mew Prime. After that, you simply attack with the Tyranitar’s Darkness Howl attack with the same Mew you hit the Feather Dance.
The funniest part comes now if you look at what the attacks do - because of Feather Dance, Darkness Howl does 60 damage to each Pokémon that isn’t Darkness Pokémon. In practice it means that if your opponent has full bench, probably all of their Pokémon are KOed with only 2 Darkness Howls which are powered with Feather Dance. That’s some heavy spread. And to be more akward combo, Mew KOs itself, with Darkness Howl and Feather Dance, it does 120 damage to itself(20+40x2 weakness=120). With Black Belt, things may got even more out of hand because then Mew Darkness Howl’s to your opponent’s active Pokémon 100 damage – whoa!
This one is almost impossible to pull out in a normal game but it sure is one of the most awkward combos that modified format has ever offered. However if you want to try this combo out here is a list for you.



Pokemon:

4x Mew Prime
2x Swanna(BW)
2x Tyranitar Prime
2x Jirachi(CL)
3x Oddish
2x Vileplume
1x Relicanth(CL)
1x Cleffa
1x Absol Prime
=18

Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
4x Communication
3x Twins
2x Rare Candy
1x Flower Shop Lady
4x Professor Juniper
2x Switch
2x Defender
2x Pokémon Catcher
3x Junk Arm
1x Pokegear 3.0
2x Black Belt
=30

Energy:

4x Rainbow
7x Psychic
1x Darkness Energy
=12


The strategy is easy - lost zone Swanna and Tyranitar T1 and T2 with Relicanth or Mew. If you happen to start with Absol, then do it T2 and T3. After that make sure you do the things in right order. As you can see the deck has Vileplume but it has also many Trainers. These all cards have a meaning in the deck. In the turn you’re going to do Feather Dance with Mew you things in this order

1) Check if your opponent has any Pokémon he can’t OHKO your Mew with and has a big retreat. If you find a suitable one, Catcher it. If you couldn’t Catcher anything then skip step one and go straight to the step 2.

2) Attach as many Defenders to Mew as you can (2 are easily searchable with Twins).

3) Evolve Plume and play the Black Belt if you didn’t play a supporter earlier this turn.

This way your opponent is trainer locked and there is greater possibility that your opponent can’t deal 80-100 damage to Mew or to Catcher to the bench to stop the effect of Feather Dance.

As I look at the deck, it seems very much playable at least for fun purposes. Give it a try if you want to see your opponent’s whatisithisIdonteven-face.




Mew Prime + Combee(UD#44)

This combo abuses Mew’s HP which is in a way funny because Mew has so few HP. So the combo is to See Off Combee, give Rainbow Energy to the benched Vespiquen and start hitting 80+poison with Enraged Assault. Enraged Assault needs only 1 Colorless so Rescue energy for Mew is super in this deck. Vespiquen’s body also defends you from your opponent’s snipers (Yanmega etc.) It’s fast, consistent, but yeah Mew has too few HP, so it will have huge problems in competitive gaming. Here’s a list if you want to give it a shot nevertheless.



Pokemon:

4x Mew Prime
4x Combee
3x Vespiquen
3x Oddish
1x Gloom
3x Vileplume
1x Sunkern
1x Sunflora(HS)
1x Cleffa
=21


Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
3x Pokémon Communication
4x Sage’s Training
3x Professor Oak’s New Theory
4x Rare Candy
3x Cheren
2x Black Belt
2x Energy Exchanger Unit
=25

Energy:

4x Rainbow Energy
3x Rescue Energy
7x Psychic Energy
=14


I don’t like this deck . There – I said it! Of course it needs Vileplume and Vespiquen protects Vileplume so Vileplume is totally safe. The problem is Mew’s low HP even though it has greater HP than Combee and the low damage output. 90 isn’t enough because you can’t use Catcher. And you can’t use Catcher because you need Vespiquen alive and Vileplume in play. This deck sounds fun in theory but doesn’t work in practice. Enough said.


Mew Prime + Octillery(UL#6) + Wobbuffet(HGSS Promo#04)

Once again, start by See Offing Octillery. After that you use Octillery’s Switch Cannon and bring Wobbuffet as your active Pokémon. Then retreat Wobbuffet(How? It will be explained in the list) and continue using Switch Cannon with Mew when your opponent’s is unable to retreat because of Wobbuffet. This is deadly slow way to play but I can see some potential for it even in tournament use. Here’s a list with short explanation.


Pokemon:

4x Mew Prime
2x Octillery(UL)
2x Wobbuffet
3x Doduo
2x Dodrio(UD)
3x Oddish
2x Gloom
2x Vileplume(UL)
1x Cleffa
=21

Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
4x Pokémon Communication
3x Rare Candy
1x Professor Elm’s Training Method
2x Twins
1x Pokegear 3.0
4x Sage’s Training
2x Seeker
2x Catcher
2x Junk Arm
1x Fisherman
2x Professor Oak’s New Theory
=27

Energy:

4x Rainbow Energy
1x Water Energy
7x Psychic Energy
=12


Well, I’m not surprised that once again this deck has Vileplume in it. And for obvious reason, this is a stalling deck that needs to prevent Switch. The strategy is simple: See Off Octillery, build Vileplume and start hitting with Octillery’s first attack. It snipes 30 to bench and lets you switch the Octillery (Mew in this situation). You bring Wobbuffet and your opponent’s Cleffa has surprisingly a retreat of 2. Reuniclus retreat of 5 etc.
You use Dodrio to help Wobbuffet retreat (usually done with turn energy) and Fisherman to get retreated energies back. You can also try fitting in Metagross(UL) but I don’t like playing stage2 Pokémon once again with Vileplume. The obvious Catcher/Seeker combo is here as well because you can use Seeker to bring up Plume, Catcher something annoying from your opponent’s bench and evolve Plume right back onto another Oddish/Gloom.

As I said earlier this may even work. Even though it wouldn’t be a tournament winning deck, it will give your opponent’ a lot of frustration and hard time. In Swiss rounds I see this kind of deck work quite decently.




Mew Prime + Lucario(CL#14) + Relicanth(CL#69)

This is a combo that is old but was never really played on tournaments. However, I love the synergy between all these 3 cards. When you See Off Relicanth, you add 20 damage to Lucario’s attack and again when you use Relicanth’s Prehistoric Wisdom to Lost Zone a Pokémon, you add 20 damage once more. In theory, this deck is perfect because it has built in starter in it but unfortunately this deck is too slow. You need 5 turns for a true set-up and by then your opponent has already overrun you. Thankfully this deck is very consistent while set-upping so I’ll give you a list of this one as well.



Pokemon:

4x Mew Prime
1x Riolu
2x Lucario(CL)
4x Relicanth(CL)
2x Absol Prime
1x Crobat Prime
1x Jumpluff
2x Zoroark(BW)
=17

Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
2x Pokégear
3x Pokémon Communication
2x Switch
1x Energy Exchange Unit
3x Pokémon Catcher
3x Professor Juniper
4x Cheren
2x PlusPower
3x Junk Arm
2x Black Belt
=27

Energy:

3x Rainbow
4x Double Colorless Energy
7x Psychic Energy
=14


Thank god no VilePlume this time. This deck has a few oddballs. I consider 14 energies a high amount. It’s because you NEED T1 See Off or Prehistoric Wisdom – no exceptions. I also put in Zoroark and Jumpluff because you need fast damage sometimes. Crobat is for an easy Baby KO or poisoning big retreat things like Donphan Prime. You can easily start See Offing them with Pokémon Communications. Energy Exchange Unit – you need the DCE. And last but no least Black Belt. This deck may be behind prizes because of the huge set-up time so Black Belt helps to get rid of Big guys pretty easily. Black Belt also works through the trainer lock so it’s great against Vileplume decks.
I would love to play with this deck if it was faster. It has great synergy like almost no deck in the current format and it’s different. I just need Palkia G back to the format…



Mew Prime + Gengar Prime

Mewgar is one of those decks that was hyped early on when HGSS-on format was rotated but it was quickly proved that it missed something. Its tactic is to See Off Gengar Prime T1 and start Hurl In The Darkness T2 and eventually win with Lost World. What did it miss then? There were 2 main issues. First, if you played Mew orientated version of Lostgar you needed usually total of 8 turns to win the game(T1 See Off, 6 turns Lost Zoning, 8^th Turn Lost World). It sounds fast but because of Mew’s low HP 6 prizes were taken way faster than See Offing, Lost zoning and declaring the victory. Secondly, if you played Gengar orientated version of Lostgar you were usually facing problems with consistency. Getting up 4 Stage2 Pokémons is very difficult without Claydol or Uxie.
I however love the build I had pre-Worlds with this deck. It was Mew Prime orientated version of Mewgar which was fast and could win even so early than T5. It has its problems of course because I didn’t play it for Worlds but it was one of the pleasantest decks to play with. Here’s my beloved deck list.

Pokemon:

4x Mew Prime
1x Gastly
3x Gengar Prime
2x Spiritomb(TR)
2x Shaymin(UL)
2x Jirachi(CL)
3x Smeargle(Portrait)
1x Mr. Mime(CL)
=18

Trainer:

2x Pokémon Collector
4x Dual Ball
2x Pokegear 3.0
3x Switch
3x Junk Arm
4x Seeker
2x Super Scoop Up
3x Sage’s Training
4x Twins
1x Rare Candy
2x Lost World
=30

Energy:

12x Psychic Energy
=12


As you can see, this deck works directly through Mew Prime. There is 1 Gengar Prime if you happen to get it to play. There is a Pokémons that support Mew as much as they can. Jirachi and Shaymin load the energies to Mew so if your opponent happens to have 2-3 Pokémons in their hand you can lost zone them all at once. It happens quite often. 2 are easy to lost zone because of Seeker and if they draw a Pokémon from their prizes.

This deck works also through Smeargle. Smeargle has 2 missions in this deck. First they act like a starter; it’s great to find ANY Supporter from your opponent’s hand. This deck can easily play Junipers too with Portrait because it works through Basic Pokémons. There are many Switches to keep Portraits going late game as well. Smeargle’s second function is to work as another Mr. Mime. With Portrait you can look into your opponent’s hand and see if there is Pokémons – this can be very useful. Portrait also guarantees almost every time a draw Supporter for you so you can use Seeker every turn possible and not to worry about drawing.

The strategy is to keep Portraiting, Seekering and Spooky Whirlpooling your opponent. Remember you can always SSU and Seeker Spiritomb many times during your turn to guarantee that your opponent has a Pokémon in their hand. I’ve won many games with this deck in turn 5 and hopefully this deck will once be playable – I would love to play this in the future if it ever becomes playable.



Mew as a counter

Mew isn’t usually considered as a tech but it works greatly as a tech. Many decks struggle with Gothitelle/Reuniclus decks because they aren’t able to OHKO Gothitelle. Gothitelle’s Psychic weakness is extremely rare and that’s why Mew has to be taken in the consideration when thinking of Gothitelle counter. Mew however isn’t an easy card to use a tech because you can’t just attack with it and OHKO your opponent, but you have to attack first with See Off to get Mew attacking something useful. Mew won’t likely survive after the See Off so you must play at least 2 copies of Mews in your deck if you want to run it as a tech.
The other thing which makes Mew hard to use is its energy cost. See Off needs Psychic energy. No deck runs Psychic energy so the only way to get Mew hitting is to play Rainbows which makes Mew unplayable for energy accelerating decks like Emboar/Feraligatr/Typhlosion variants. Mew however does work as a great tech in a deck like stage1 because it’s natural for them to play Rainbow energies. You can also build a stage1 deck around Mew Prime. Here is one example how to put Mew Prime into you stage1 deck.


Pokemon:

4x Mew Prime
2x Minccino
3x Cinccino
1x Jumpluff
2x Zorua
3x Zoroark
1x Tyrogye
1x Manaphy
=17

Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
4x Professor Juniper
2x Pokegear 3.0
4x Cheren
4x PlusPower
4x Junk Arm
3x Pokémon Catcher
3x Pokémon Communication
2x Professor Oak’s New Theory
1x Revive
=31

Energy:

4x Double Colorless Energy
2x Rainbow Energy
6x Psychic Energy
=12


Mew could work here great because it’s a certain T2 Zoroark/Cinccino/Jumpluff if you can See Off T1. In this deck the main hitter is Mew but of course you can use your secondary attackers as well. The Pokemon lines seem funny but after you think about it it’s just normal with Mew Prime. Also, there is 1 Revive which you can use various ways during the match, to get anything you need from the discard pile back to play.
I don’t usually play Tyrogue but in this kind of Stage1 deck I had to do the exception. 4 PlusPowers and Junk Arms are just begging of Tyrogue. The deck is also very Supporter heavy and that’s why I play Pokegear 3.0 as well because it’s simply awesome in stage2 decks with high supporter count. I have tested this deck a bit and its main problem is to OHKO everything. Catchers don’t always do the job always because you can’t draw every time everything you need. This deck is great against Gothitelle and slower decks but it struggles with decks that match its speed. I recommend trying this out if you like stage1 decks; it’s a bit different view into stage1 deck building.


MewBox

First I was sure that I wouldn’t include MewBox into this entry but because I got so many requests for MewBox analysis I thought – well why not.. Quite frankly MewBox is the only true metagame deck that includes Mew Prime as a main attacker. I will give you the skeleton of the deck and then explain how it works.

Pokemon:

4x Mew Prime
3x Oddish
1x Gloom
2x Vileplume
3x Yanma
3x Yanmega Prime
2x Cleffa
Xx Tech Pokémon
=18

Trainer:

3x Judge
4x Sage’s Training
3x Copycat
4x Rare Candy
2x Professor Elm’s Training Method
3x Twins
4x Pokémon Collector
3x Pokémon Communication
=26

Energy:

4x Rainbow Energy
5x Psychic Energy
Xx Tech Energy
=9


=53


Strategy:

MewBox reminds of good old times because it has no straight strategy. Every match-up is played differently and how you play the match-ups are up to your teches. Usually the strategy involves around very slow spreading damage and getting prizes from the easy places while making your opponent unable to do anything. The deck is a combination of spreading, special conditions, slowing down the game and disturbing.


I will list here the most popular teches for MewBox (I’m sure I will miss some) and explain briefly what their main purpose in the deck is. Before starting, these all teches are to use with Mew Prime so no 1-1 lines just 1-2 copies of each.

Muk(Sludge Drag)

Muk continue the tradition of Drag Offers. Changing your opponent’s active Pokemon is always great and with Trainer lock it becomes even more powerful. Sludge Drag makes the new active Pokémon Confused AND Poisoned just for 1 energy. It fits this deck perfectly because Mew already uses Psychic Energy for lost zoning. So against what is Sludge Drag used? Well anything with big retreat. The best examples would be Emboar and Magnezone. Special Conditions don’t affect Abilities but Sludge Drag also stops Magnezone’s Magnetic Draw because it’s a power. Muk is a staple tech in this deck because it works against every bug guy in this format and gives you time to snipe your opponent’s bench with Yanmega Prime.


Jirachi

Jirachi is also essential for the deck’s main strategy. You try to get trainer lock set-upped as fast as possible and if your opponent is able to Candy few Pokémon you can devolve them with Jirachi and they won’t be evolving them back with Rare Candies. In fact, it usually helps you to get KOs with Jirachi if they have Candied because Basics have less HP than stage1s. Jirachi works perfectly with decks main strategy and its trainer engine (Sages) – Jirachi is a must card for every spread deck.
 

Jumpluff

Jumpluff is the first non-Psychic Pokémon but it’s also considered as a staple tech in this deck. Why? Since it can hit 120 for 1 energy. Jumpluff is the heavy hitter this deck need once in a while. It’s almost impossible to KO things like Tornadus, Zekrom or Reshiram if you don’t have Jumpluff in your deck. Jumpluff’s Leaf Guard can occasionally save your Mew from being KOed. Jumpluff is almost as versatile in this deck as Mew Prime itself.


Gengar Prime

Gengar Prime isn’t a staple but I like it’s versatility in this deck. When you think of Gengar Prime, you usually think about Lost Zoning and Lost World. The thing is that this deck can play Gengar Prime even though it doesn’t run Lost World. What’s Gengar Prime then for? It’s capable of many things. First, lost zoning with Hurl In The Darkness is great disturbing against your opponent. What would be better than to lost zone a stage1 version of his stage2 evolution line, while he/she is under trainer lock? Your opponent can’t evolve through Candy so it may be that you can just take the easy prizes with Yanmega from Basics.

The second attack of Gengar Prime also serves the strategy of this deck perfectly. It’s one more spreading attack. If you combine Sludge Drag and Cursed Drop with Mew Prime, you will do some severe damage to your opponent’s field. Cursed Drop is one of the best spread attacks there are, so it’s perfect.

If you want to go crazy with Gengar Prime you can add 2^nd and 1 Lost World and take the Lost Zoning option into account when thinking of how to win games. One good example would be against things like Emboar which you could first drag into the active position and then start Lost Zoning with the help of your Judges.


Cinccino

Cinccino is a better/worse Jumpluff, it’s up to your opponent. If your opponent plays smart, Jumpluffs base damage may be only 80-90 but because the decks in this metagame run usually many Basics on the Bench, there isn’t need usually need for Cinccino in this deck. Cinccino hits the guaranteed 100 every turn but it requires 2 energies. Well, you can consider running DCE if you want to play with Cinccino.

Leavanny

It’s the only we have – lol. Leavanny could be used for the set-up in the emergency situations. At least you’re guaranteed to get Vileplume up with this. Using Leavanny’s first attack with Mew would be super-slow but it may be worth trying if your MewBox suffers from lack of the set-up.

Leafeon(CL)

This is an obvious combo with Sludge Drag. After Sludge Drag, you get Leafeon hitting 100. That’s usually enough considering damage suffered from Poison. In comparison to Jumpluff, Leafeon is better because it doesn’t require Grass Energy. But it does nothing if your opponent isn’t affected by Special Conditions. Leafeon is worth considering but not necessary.


Zoroark

Zoroark is a god in this metagame. As long as Pokémons keep hitting more than they have HP/ the same amount they have HP, Zoroark will be among the best teches. Zoroark OHKOs Reshiram in ReshiPlosion, Magnezone Prime, Zekrom, Cinccino etc. Almost half of the metagame. Zoroark’s only con in this deck is that it requires DCE. This deck doesn’t necessarily want to run DCE so if you start running DCEs, I suggest you put other Pokémons there too that can use it.

Pokémon Catcher

Yeahh… Well you can use Catcher before you evolve your Vileplume. This can help in various situations (e.g. when your Muk is prized, discarded etc.) and I encourage you to try it. It can do ugly things with the next tech in the list.

Spinarak(HGSS)

Probably the most horrifying reminder of that we don’t have Warp Energy in our format. If your opponent plays Cleffa to the active position and you can set-up Plume – hit Spider Web against the Cleffa and shake your opponent’s hand – you have just won the game. Just Spider Web until time and turns run out and then take the first and only prize of the game.
Reminder: This doesn’t work against decks that can kill their own Pokémon (Reshiplosion)!

Aipom

Aipom is related to Spinarak. It can manipulate your opponent’s active Pokémon by making it energyless. This can buy you time or make you win the game. The point is to move the energies from your opponent’s active Pokémon to anything worthless (for example to a Baby Pokémon). This way your opponent can’t hit and may run out of energies eventually. Once they run out of energies, the field is ready for Yanmegas to start sniping around. Aipom and Spinarak are the cards in this deck that require the most skill to use correctly. You can’t give easy prizes with your deck to your opponent, so if you decide to run Aipom or Spinarak be certain that you have the skill required.



Naturally I can’t explain too in-depth how the deck works because I should go every match-up one by one and analyze different scenarios. In general, MewBox is a deck that requires skill to play but it also requires even more skill to play against. You can make the game easy for your opponent if he is playing MewBox and you just lay every Pokémon on your bench like a brain-dead whenever you have access to them. MewBox is no deck for beginners and I’m pretty sure that there are only a handful of players in the whole World that can pilot it 100% correctly all the time. 





The future of Mew Prime

Well, as I said in the beginning of this blog, the next set gives promises about Mew being playable. We have Archeops that stops evolving completely and Eviolite which is auto Defender (tool) for Basics. Mew can use this both well and in fact it can run both in its deck at the same time. Eviolite will give Mew the desired extra 20HP so it’s out of Donphan’s and Yanmega’s OHKO range. However, so will get all the basic Pokémons and trust me, the future is Basic Pokémon decks’ future. The future seems bright for Mew as well as for other upcoming Basic decks but that’s a whole another story.



That’s it for today. Hopefully you enjoyed this blog update because it was my first time doing this kind of update. I hope you comment on something about this so I know are this kind of entries welcome in the future!

// Be back to The Deck Out this week for my Battle Road report and more!!

Championships points: Good or bad?

Hi everyone and welcome back to The Deck Out!

Today, I won’t be analyzing decks or cards - I have something special for you . The Autumn Battle Roads have just begun and just a week ago PCI released the list of changes for the 2011-2012 season. In this entry, I will concentrate on the biggest change which concerns every competitive Pokémon TCG player: change of the ranking system.

ELO – my story

Before this season, we used to have the ELO-ranking system. ELO was designed for chess – a game in which your performance isn't affected by luck.

It's year 2006 and TCG players all around the World are excited. The World Championships are going to be held in Hawaii next year! The same year PCI started to use ELO to reward for high prizes – people could win travel awards to Hawaii. 

The season 2006-2007 remains in my memory as the saddest year of Pokémon TCG. I ended up going 48-2 the whole season and still didn’t manage to get the travel award to Worlds - I was 5^th and only the top4 received the travel awards. It wouldn’t have mattered but the reason I didn’t get the invite was because the system wasn’t ready. Battle Roads had the same K-value (I’ll get back to them later) as City Championships and they were held after Nationals. This automatically meant that in Europe the National Champions could give their points to their fellow players and let them automatically get huge amounts of points merely in Battle Roads. People took advantage of that, and a player who was never even in the top10 in the EuroAfrica rankings got huge amounts of points from Battle Roads and proceeded to get 2-3 points more than me. The worst part for me was that I knew that justice didn't take place and this player probably wasn’t the best player to represent Europe in Worlds.  In the end,  this player ended up going 1-6 in the 2007 Worlds, only winning against a bye…

I felt betrayed and completely lost faith in the system for a while. Thankfully, PCI changed the K-values immediately and didn’t approve of  Battle Roads to be held after Nationals for the next season. Well, it was good for the players and the game but I still felt like I’d been let down. I worked hard for the whole season and were afraid of every opening hand I was to get – losing was not an option that year because Finnish Masters’ player base was so small. 

I’m pretty sure I played my best games of Pokemon TCG ever that year and didn’t get rewarded for it because the system was incomplete. Ironically enough, in the same year, Tom Roos (a fellow Finnish player, from my league) won World Championships in Masters division in Hawaii. Well, I went something like 14-2 that season against Tom, so I couldn’t help thinking what would my placement have been in those Worlds…

But enough of my story already. In the years to come PCI developed the ELO system so it could fit Pokémon TCG better. In the end, the K values were as follows:

Battle Roads: K-value 4

City Championships: K-value 16

State/Province/Territory/Regional Championships: K-value 32

National Championships: K-value 32

World Championships: K-value 0

For those who don’t know how the ELO-system works – it’s simple. When you win a game you gain points, when you lose a game, you lose points. The bigger the K-value of the tournament, the more you gain/lose points. 

The reason why the ELO system wasn’t the best system for Pokémon was the way the points’ share was determined. If 2 players have an equal amount of points before the match (let’s say in the City Championships) and the other one wins, the winner gains 8 points and the loser loses 8 points. In the ELO system, when you win against a player that has more points than you, you will get more than 50% of the K-value’s points (so if the K value of the tournament is 16, the amount of points awarded would be over 8). So if the same scenario takes place among players with 1500 points and 1760 points, and the 1500 point player ends up winning by let’s say T1 Take Out – he gains 13 points and the loser loses 13 points.

The universally acknowledged problem with the ELO was the luck which plays a role in Pokémon TCG. ELO system is designed for chess so it automatically presumes that a better ranked player will win against a lower ranked player. But as we all know, there are some games in which you are unable to do anything. You might get a horrible opening hand, you may get donked T1 etc. If you have played chess, you surely know that there is no game where you can’t move your pawns in your first turn. The ELO system wasn’t designed for a game where, sometimes, it doesn’t matter who is the better player, but who got lucky. 

PCI did their best tuning the ELO and K-values to the right direction because in the first year, if I remember correctly, Battle Roads were worth 32 and Nationals 48. As we can easily count from that, it’s more valuable to go 7-0 2 times in the Battle Roads than to win Nats with X-0 – there is something greatly wrong about that. However, Battle Roads’ K-value was only 4 last year which is basically nothing.

Now PCI has introduced the new system to the scene. The points one gains are now called Championship points and the system differs greatly from the former system. Let’s see what the differences are, and are the changes good, bad or both.


Introducing the Championship Points

First, how do the Championship Points work? I won’t get to the small details but the main idea is that if you top cut in the tournament, you gain points. In the bigger tournaments like Regionals and Nats, you gain points for a good placement (you don’t even have to top cut). The better your placement, the more you gain points. And the bigger the tournament, the more players gain points from the tournament. For example in Battle Roads, where there are only 15 players in an age group, the first-place player gains 2 points and the 2^nd gains 1. But if the tournament has 32 players, the players who end up in the 3^rd and 4^th places gain 1 point as well. In the end of the season if some players have the same amount of points, the ELO ranking system decides who is higher in the final rankings – which means that the ELO won’t disappear completely.

In general, I think the new system is better than the ELO and it fits Pokémon better. But you are here for a deeper analysis of the system, so I’ll get into the pros and cons of the system.  

Pros and Cons of Championship Points


Positive things first!

PCI (Pokémon Company International) IS listening

The ELO had good amounts of critique and PCI changed the system. This means that PCI is really listening to what players think about the game and they want to make this game better. This season, the new system will surely have flaws but this is for sure a step forward. The new system immediately received critique about many things, but I think people should only consider this a positive change – no one can say this is a worse system compared to the former one. Not at least after they have read this whole entry and thought the whole system through.

PCI is a unique company because it listens to players and that’s something most TCG companies don’t do. PCI only tries to make this game better and the changes may seem slow to you but in fact their changes are pretty quick considering that it’s a company just like any other – Nokia, Apple or Microsoft. 






Encouragement

First, this system encourages playing in the tournaments. In the ELO, when you reached a certain amount of points, there was no point in continuing playing in the tournaments. You already had enough points and if you went to a tournament it could have possibly ruined your rating. What’s the point in playing if you only have something to lose? This was the main critique the ELO system received and it’s something that the Championship Points have changed significantly.

With the ELO you sometimes saw good players dropping from tournaments after a X-0 Swiss. There must be something wrong with the ranking system if a player who has won all his/her matches has an incentive to drop from the tournament before top cuts. And this happened quite often. I’ve seen this in Finland and also in US players' tournament reports. The tournament, in which almost no top-ranking player ever plays to the very end, is U.S. Nationals. What I've read from the tournament reports, people usually drop when they lose their first game just to guarantee their ranking invite. What kind of National Championships are they if the very best players of the nation don’t even have the will to try to win the tournament? With Championship Points, there is no need to drop: you won’t be punished for losing to a T1 donk. 

Some players have even entered the tournaments from 0-2 or 0-1 and play 2-3 games and drop from the tournament just because they can get easy wins and guaranteed points that way. It’s a sign of a very unhealthy ranking system. From now on, there most probably won't be so many players who will enter the tournament only after the first few rounds. 

What I consider the best change is the rewarding part. People are no more punished for failure and they will always be rewarded for success. It fits the Spirit of the Game of Pokémon TCG. This game should be all about having fun, not being afraid of losing – Pokémon TCG should’ve always been about the carrots, there is no need for the stick. 

The system also encourages all players to play – not only the players who go X-0.  I’ve always thought that the worst part in the top cut was going, let’s say 4-2 and then losing your top match. You might have lost points in the tournament because of this, even though you managed to get to the top cut. It would’ve been better if you didn’t get to the top cut because you wouldn’t have lost your points in the last match. What’s the point in that? I think there is no point – it was just one of the many flaws of the ELO.

The last thing about the encouragement is a bit controversial because it has its pros and cons. The new system encourages playing in as many tournaments as possible. It’s a good thing because it will probably make the tournaments bigger. But it’s not a good thing for players like me who have a huge distance between me and the nearest tournament. Encouragement for playing is always a good thing but it’s unfair for players who want to attend to many tournaments but can’t because of the distance. This is one of the problems that was also there with the ELO but it’s probably bigger in this system because the ELO didn’t encourage you to get as many points as possible - it just set the goal line (how many points you need) and once people managed to get to the goal, they just stopped playing. In ELO, it was enough that you played 3-4 tournaments a year and “robbed” the points from other players. If you had 1600 points before Regionals and managed to go 11-0 in Regionals, you suddenly gained easily over 170 points.  As I said, encouragement for playing in many tournaments is always a good thing but it also hurts the far-away players.



Decks

At first, it might sound strange that the ranking system affects the decks people play but I think it will. If a player wants to gain as many points as possible,  he/she wants to win the tournament. With the ELO it was enough that you X-0'd the Swiss and then dropped. And what decks win in the Swiss rounds but not necessarily as much in the top rounds? You guessed it – donk decks. I don’t know if this was an intended move from PCI but I think it will decrease the amount of donk decks dramatically. It automatically takes the game to a better direction; players must build decks that have a chance of winning the tournament, not only individual matches. 

I also hope that this change encourages players to play more rogue decks. The incentive to play rogue decks is bigger because there is no punishment for losing. You can do fairly badly with your Rogue deck without losing any points. Playing rogue is usually considered gambling, Secret Decks can work or they can fail. With the new system, you will be more likely to gamble than before. I hope this will bring some more versatility to our meta once people realize this.

Conceding

In my opinion, conceding has always been the necessary downside to the Pokémon TCG. It has affected many players and it has aroused a lot of discussion among players. It has also led to a few bans, which is always unfortunate. The new system won’t stop this behavior but I think it will decrease it dramatically. There is no point in conceding to a “better” player because they won’t lose any points because of you AND they won’t gain points if they win you in a 1-2 position. This is one of the greatest changes the new system will bring along.

Worlds 

You get Championship Points from attending to Worlds, which I find simply amazing! We still don't know exactly what PCI is going to do about the points given at Worlds, but I love this change regardless. 

The other good thing about the next Worlds is that they will be held in Hawaii. If this system were to fail for some reason, the price that the non-U.S. players have to pay isn’t as big as mine was in 2007. Most people in Europe can’t afford the trip to Hawaii simply because it’s so expensive (I belong to that category) and that’s why it’s a good destination for Worlds next year. The competition won’t be as harsh as last year, and that's a great thing in case the new system doesn’t work. It’s unfortunate that the same thing cannot be said for the U.S. - but hey, you guys have a possibility to go to Worlds, which most European players don’t have.

Criticism


Point Payout of the Championship Points

If we want to criticize the Point Payout of the Championship Points system we must compare it to the ELO system's K-values. Let’s see. 

Battle Roads: 

ELO:
K-value 4

Championship Points: (Best finish limit 8 = 16 points)
Winner: 2 points


City Championships:

ELO:
 K-value 16 = 4 Battle Roads

Championship Points: (Best Finish limit 5 = 30 points)
Winner: 6 points = 3 Battle Road wins


State/Province/Territory/Regional Championships:

ELO:
K-value 32 = 8 Battle Roads/ 2 City Championships

Championship Points: (Best Finish limit 4 = 40 points)
Winner: 10 points
= 5 Battle Road wins
= 1 and 2/3 City Championship wins

National Championships:

ELO:
K-value 32 = 8 Battle Roads/ 2 City Championships

Championship Points: (Best finish limit 1 = 14 points)
Winner: 14 points
= 7 Battle Road wins
= 2 and 1/3 City Championship wins
= 1 and 2/5 State/Regional wins



World Championships: K-value 0

ELO:
K-value 0


Championship Points: (Best finish limit 1 = 25 points)
Winner: 25 points



Best Finish Limit (Straight from Pokémon.com)

Each event series also has a Best Finish Limit, where a player's Best X Finishes are counted into that limit. For example, the Best Finish Limit for Battle Roads is 8. If a player participates in 6 Battle Road Autumn events and 5 Battle Road Spring events, only that player's best 8 finishes from the 11 Battle Roads they attended will count towards their final Championship Points total. 

Now that you are familiar with the system and the Point Layout, let’s look at the key numbers of the Championship Points system. 

Here are the key numbers of the season.


Max Points possible after season (before Worlds): 100

The importance of winning 8 Battle Roads: 16% percent of the possible maximum amount

The importance of winning 1 City Championships: 6% percent of the possible maximum amount

The importance of winning 1 State/Regional Championships: 10% percent of the possible maximum amount

The importance of getting to the places 4-8 in the National Championships: 8% percent of the possible maximum amount

Main critique for the Points Layout

The biggest problem is that the best finish limit is as large as it is in the two smallest tournaments of the year – Battle Roads and City Championships. In my opinion this problem is most evident in the U.S., because in smaller countries like Finland, pretty much the same players visit every BR (about 70% of the players) and the competition is as fierce as in any tournament, whereas in the U.S. some BR's may be easy to win merely because of the small attendance and many players don't have the chance to visit various different BR's. Finland's P!P isn’t very big but it’s very active. This system fits perfectly in an active Pokémon TCG community where no one gets to go to more tournaments than the others. This is probably the case in many other European countries, Asia Pacific area etc. In U.S. the system will get some hate but I’m sure that things aren’t as bad there as it might first seem like. Some U.S. cities have things like the Georgia marathon, which makes it possible to attend many Cities in a weekend but I still think that if you’re able to top cut in even half of those, you deserve all the points you can gain from those. On the other hand, the ranking system will always be unfair towards inactive players. 

There is also the counter argument: Is it really that much more valuable to win 1 tournament than to play consistently for 10 smaller tournaments? In my opinion, the answer isn’t clear – I appreciate both – people doing well in big tournaments and people playing consistently all the time. It is also a good thing that Battle Roads are no longer unnecessary, unimportant and uninteresting tournaments.



Predictions

I have always loved to analyze and calculate things. That’s why I’ll make my own guesses for the future season regarding 2 things: The point amount of 1^st placing player in each age group and the point amount necessary to get the invite to Worlds (assuming that the invite amounts are the same as last year). It will be difficult but I’ll try my best. I can’t analyze South America or Asia Pacific because I don’t have enough information about those areas – sorry guys. Here are my guesses – in the end of the season, let's see how well I managed to analyze the system and the players!

North America:

Masters’ first placing player: 70
Masters’ 40^th placing player: 60

Seniors’ first placing player: 72
Seniors’ 40^th placing player: 58

Juniors’ first placing player: 80
Juniors’ 40^th placing player: 59

EuroAfrica:

Masters’ first placing player: 67
Masters’ 50^th placing player: 50

Seniors’ first placing player: 70
Seniors’ 50^th placing player: 50

Juniors’ first placing player: 83
Juniors’ 50^th placing player: 45

As you can see, I predict that the difference between the top players and the 40^th /50^th placing players won’t be big in the most competitive age groups and that’s because the best players will probably gain almost the same amount of points from the Battle Roads and City Championships. In the end, it will be the Regionals’, States’ and Nationals’ placements, which decide your ultimate placement. This also means that the ELO won’t be disappearing anywhere; ties are going to be broken A LOT and the ELO will be used in tie-breaking! 

I hope my predictions won’t be too off so these can help you out. But we’ll see. Now there are Battle Roads for everyone to prepare for!




Future

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All in all, I would say the new system is good for the game. Players were fed up with the ELO, PCI listened to them and changed the system. As stated previously, the new system isn’t perfect but it’s a big step forward. PCI will test it this year and I’m pretty sure it will satisfy most of the players this season.

I think that the biggest problem with this system is the players who can’t go to tournaments because of the distance barrier. This could be fixed if PCI started organizing official tournaments online so everyone could play from their home computer. It won’t probably happen in the near future but it’s something that would heavily equalize the players – no matter where they live.



Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed the read and it either helped you understand the new system or gave you some new thoughts about the new system. This was my first time writing an article about Pokémon TCG in general so please leave comments and let me know what you thought about it so I know if these are worth writing or if you are more interested in decklists etc. Thanks for reading!




// Be back to The Deck Out next Tuesday, when I’ll analyze not only the highly anticipated MewBox deck but the whole Mew Prime and what it’s capable of!