Analysis of tournament winning deck lists: Battle Roads

Hello everyone!


Today, I’m going to take a look at the winning deck lists of Finnish Battle Roads. Thankfully there were a lot of variety among the deck. Ok, saying “a lot” is exaggerating, but let’s just say that there was enough variety to make the tournament enjoyable. In this entry, I’ll take a look at the top4 decks of the Masters Division AND the winner list of Seniors. I wanted to take the Seniors winning deck to this entry, because I really enjoy the deck’s concept and I was positively surprised when I saw the decklist.

I know Boundaries Crossed is just right behind the corner and Eye on Japan will be coming on Monday, but I still wanted to take one more look at the present format, before we look to the future. We’ll be playing the BW-BC format for over 3 months and all the City Championships, so I’m pretty sure everyone will get everything out of the new format in time. Also, to understand the present, it’s important to understand the past – that’s why looking at for example BW-Dragons Exalted Hydreigon/Darkrai EX and comparing it to the upcoming Hydreigon lists, makes us understand the very roots of deck building.

Once again, thanks for the players that gave me the permission to use their lists! There will be 5 decklist analyses in total, so it’s quite a ride we’re going to have.


Background of the tournament

It’s counter-productive to just look at the tournament winning lists and see what cards they include. To understand the card choices, you must first understand the environment and the past of the metagame. Simply put, this tournament was played on Sunday. However, there was a Battle Road in Finland the very same weekend’s Saturday. As I showed in my tournament report, the top4 of that tournament was:

The most interesting thing about this top4 was that it included 2 Garbodor variants. These Garbodor variants did well, because the metagame wasn’t prepared with Tool Scrappers. However, cards like Tool Scrapper are easily teched to any deck and as you can see, every top4 list of the Sunday’s tournament included at least one Tool Scrapper in the deck. Small changes like that are very often make or break decisions in Pokémon TCG. And as I’ll discuss in this entry, small changes are more than important in a quick-paced metagame like our current one.



Masters 4^th Place – Ho-Oh EX/Stuff

Pokémon:

2x Ho-Oh EX
2x Mew EX
1x Zekrom EX
1x Sigilyph
1x Darkrai EX
1x Terrakion
1x Terrakion EX
1x Bouffalant
1x Mewtwo EX
1x Stunfisk
=12


Trainer:

4x Professor Juniper
3x N
2x Bianca
4x Random Receiver
4x Ultra Ball
4x Switch
3x Pokémon Catcher
4x Energy Switch
4x Super Scoop Up
2x Energy Search
1x Tool Scrapper
=35

Energy:

3x Fighting Energy
3x Lighting Energy
2x Darkness Energy
2x Psychic Energy
3x Double Colorless Energy
=13

Supporter Count: 13
Draw Count: 17

New age 6-corners taking an advantage of the opponent

So, as you can see, this was the same player, who I met in the Saturday’s Battle Road and who I faced in the Nationals finals this year. And it seems that he is very keen on versatile decks like this. When you look at the list, you’ll notice that it has a tech against almost everything. The only card I really miss in the deck is Tornadus EX, because it could open some donking options in the early game. I believe most Ho-Oh EX decks are very concentrated on Tornadus EX, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this list.

The list hits every single common weakness of the current metagame – except Dragon - and that’s what remarkable. I believe that this deck didn’t play Rayquaza (Dragon Vault), because the player hadn’t an access to the card yet. It would’ve given the deck so much more power especially against Hydreigon match-ups. And in the end, the deck lost to a Hydreigon deck in the top4.

The most innovative thing in this deck was the use of Mew EX. You may have wondered why on earth the player played 4 Random Receivers and only 9 Supporters. There are two reasons for this.

First of all, this deck NEEDS to hit Juniper and Ultra Ball at the same time in order to get the Ho-Oh EXs into discard pile in a quick enough manner. Maxing Junipers and Random Receivers while lowering the amount of other supporters is the best way to guarantee the combo to succeed.

Second, there is Mew EX. What I really enjoy about Mew EX, is how well it works when your opponent benches Sableye. I remember when I played against him on Saturday and he opened with Mew EX against my Sableye – I immediately understood how much it would affect him negatively if I didn’t had Sableye. However, decks that use Sableye, usually really need it, so Mew EX works as your own Sableye whenever you’re facing a deck like Hammertime or Hydreigon variant. Junk Hunting those Ultra Balls is so good that I think that the player of this could even consider playing 1 copy of Sableye, if he ever found space for it.


Masters 3^rd Place – Darkrai EX/Mewtwo EX/Tornadus EX/Sigilyph/Zoroark


Pokémon:

3x Darkrai EX
1x Mewtwo EX
1x Tornadus EX
1x Sigilyph
1x Sableye
1x Zorua(Ascension)
1x Zoroark(Foul Play)
=9


Trainer:

4x Professor Juniper
4x N
4x Bianca
2x Random Receiver
4x Ultra Ball
4x Dark Patch
4x Pokémon Catcher
3x Energy Switch
3x PlusPower
2x Dark Claw
2x Eviolite
1x Tool Scrapper
1x Super Scoop Up
=38

Energy:

8x Darkness Energy
2x Blend DRGP
3x Double Colorless Energy
=13

Supporter Count: 14
Draw Count: 18

Beauty & The metagame

And I dared to say that no 1-copies of cards could have played successfully in this format. I really enjoyed this deck, because it was not only aggressive, but also had so much depth in it. It’s rare that Speed decks can play a lot of techs while maintaining the consistency.

Most of these decks techs are pretty selx-explanatory, thus I won’t get in to them, but there is one tech, I really want to take a closer look at. You guessed it – Zoroark. When BW was released two years ago and I saw Zoroark, I knew that it would someday be a perfect 1-1 tech in decks. I just didn’t know when that time would be. And to be honest, I didn’t really believe in Zoroark even in the current format, before I saw it in the action. The very second turn of the game assured me of Zoroark’s playability. In T1, Zorua uses Ascension. In T2 you Catcher Darkrai EX from the bench to the active spot and hit Night Spear with Foul Play. It was crazy how much damage Zoroark would really do and how fast, whenever going first against Darkrai EX deck. And in situations where the Darkrai EX deck couldn’t draw into PlusPowers, it was always a prize change of 1 to 2. Sometimes even 1 to 3! You must not forget the first attack of Zoroark either, because it’s great whenever you have a dead hand – it lets you search for any one card. When I saw Zoroark using Nasty Plot my mind was blowed away.





Masters 2^nd Place – Hydreigon/Darkrai EX/Shaymin EX/Giratina EX

If you didn’t peek all the way to the 1^st Place before reading the article, I can now spoil you that the finals was a Hydreigon mirror match. Even though the Hydreigon decks are usually very similar looking, these two decks had surprisingly lot differences with the card choices. In the end, I believe that these cards chocies was one of the huge reasons, which lead to the victory of the 1^st place Hydreigon. It would be nonsense to analyze these lists one by one, so I’ll just compare the two lists and discuss the differences and how the affected especially the mirror match-up.

Pokémon:

2x Sableye
2x Deino(NVI)
1x Deino(DrE)
1x Zweilous(NVI)
3x Hydreigon
3x Darkrai EX
1x Giratina EX
1x Shaymin EX
=14

Trainer:

4x Professor Juniper
4x N
2x Cheren
3x Random Receiver
4x Ultra Ball
3x Rare Candy
4x Dark Patch
3x Max Potion
3x Pokémon Catcher
2x Eviolite
1x Super Rod
1x Tool Scrapper
=34

Energy:

8x Darkness Energy
4x Blend DRGP
=12

Supporter Count: 13
Draw Count: 17





Masters 1^st Place – Hydreigon/Darkrai EX/Shaymin EX/Mewtwo EX

Pokémon:

3x Sableye
2x Deino(NVI)
1x Deino(DrE)
1x Zweilous(DrE)
3x Hydreigon
3x Darkrai EX
1x Mewtwo EX
1x Shaymin EX
=15

Trainer:

4x Professor Juniper
3x N
3x Bianca
3x Random Receiver
3x Ultra Ball
2x Level Ball
4x Rare Candy
3x Dark Patch
2x Max Potion
4x Pokémon Catcher
1x Super Rod
1x Tool Scrapper
=33

Energy:

8x Darkness Energy
4x Blend DRGP
=12

Supporter Count: 13
Draw Count: 18

The loyalty to strategy  vs. The winner recipe

So what’s important in a Hydreigon mirror match? The control of the board. The control of the board is on a player, who gets the Hydreigon to the play first and is able to eliminate the opponent’s Deinos, Zweilous and Hydreigons. After you have eliminated all the Hydreigon lines of your opponent, your opponent has no way of OHKOing you and you will win the game with Sableye/Max Potion even if they are in a prize lead.

So what you need in order to get the board control? You need a consistent deck. The more consistent the deck you have, the more probably you’ll get a T2 Hydreigon. For getting Hydreigon as soon as possible, you’ll need maximized Rare Candies and lots of Balls that help you searching for the Deinos and Hydreigons. And to be honest, if you want to get the Hydreigon before your opponent, you better go first! Before going deeper, a small rant. The finals went 2-1 and the player who went first won every game. Not cool.

The 2^nd placing list wasn’t really built consistency in mind. It has 3 Rare Candies, 13 supporters and only 4 Ultra Balls – no Level Balls. On a top of it, the deck only plays 2 Sableyes, so you pretty much never open with it and in order to get a fast set-up, you need to get Sableye.

When looking at the 2^nd placing list, you’ll notice that it’s much more concentrated on the “main strategy” of Hydreigon decks than the 1^st placing list – keeping your attackers alive. The deck is almost built like a Klinklang EX deck would be with 3 Max Potions and 2 Eviolites. It’s also very clear that the players of the 2^nd placing deck was mirror orientated, because he played Giratina EX in the deck (which I by the way wouldn’t play even if the whole metagame was Hydreigons only). Giratina EXs risks compared to its benefits are in my opinion too much to take. If you open with Giratina EX it will probably kill your set-up and game completely unless you have a god hand.

The winning-Hydreigon was almost a mirror image of the 2^nd placing Hydreigon. It played 13 supporters (Bianca instead of Cheren), 5 Ball, 4 Candies and 3 Sableyes. You might not think that playing 5 Balls instead of 4 would make that much difference, but it really does. Also, all these small differences almost double the deck’s early game consistency. Not to mention that Bianca also guarantees the late game consistency way better than Cheren. As discussed so many times, Bianca is always the clear choice when you have Sableye and Ultra Balls in your deck.

The Pokémon techs of the winning list were also more conservative than those of the 2^nd placing. Shaymin EX instead of Giratina EX is much safer choice even though they both are pretty awful when you open with them. The reason why I prefer Shaymin EX in this deck even though I don’t really like the card itself, is that it’s the perfect counter against Terrakion – Darkrai EX’s worst nemesis.

Granted, the games were won by whoever went first, but with a list like the 1^st placing, it’s no surprise! It really doesn’t give any chances to another Hydreigon when going first, because it’s so consistent and focused on getting the Hydreigon up early on. This combined to 4 Catchers, and you have almost a perfect Hydreigon orientated for mirror matches.




Seniors 1^st Place


Pokémon:

3x Darkrai EX
3x Mewtwo EX
2x Bouffalant
2x Sableye
=10

Trainer:

4x Professor Juniper
4x N
3x Bianca
1x Cheren
2x Random Receiver
4x Pokémon Catcher
4x Ultra Ball
4x Dark Patch
4x Energy Switch
2x Eviolite
1x Max Potion
1x Potion
1x Dark Claw
1x Tool Scrapper
=36



Energy:

4x Double Colorless Energy
10x Basic Darkness Energy
=14

Supporter Count: 14
Draw Count: 18


Why this?

So last, but not least the Seniors winning decklist. The reason why I chose the list is to prove that Seniors out there really can build decks. They are very often dismissed everywhere and I sometimes are guilty for undermining Seniors as well in the IRL discussions. However, when I saw this list, I was so impressed that I walked to the player and said to him that the list was very impressing.

I must admit, I’m a bit biased with this list, because it’s very close to my personal deck building style. One more reason I was so impressed with this. First of all, the deck has 14 draw supporters. That’s the most optimum number for this format in my opinion. It’s a bit overboard, but it guarantees the consistency of the deck.

The other thing I was happy to see, was the use of Bouffalant, which is one of the most underused cards in my opinion. It also works perfectly with the 4 Energy Switches and 4 DCEs that this deck runs. Getting a free retreat with Darkrai EX is something that is very rare in decks that play Bouffalant. Bouffalant 2HKOS every single Pokémon-EX in this format even if they have an Eviolited attached to themselves. Even Darkrai EX can’t do it. Not to mention that it’s a non-EX Pokémon. Bouffalant is THE most underplayed card of the current format – hands down.

Last, the deck builder knew what he was doing with those Sableyes – the deck has 1 copies of cards like Max Potion, Dark Claw and Potion. Cards that will only work as a tech cards when you have an access to Sableye. Sableye gives you many possibilities and I believe that sometimes people underestimate the power of Sableye even in decks where it’s commonly used. Possibilities are unlimited with Sableye and it breaks boundaries of ordinary deck building.



Conclusion

So overall, all tournament was very interesting and I think all of these lists showcase just how little differences can make all the difference in this game. This was my last entry considering the current format and the next article will be the hugely awaited first Eye on Japan of this season!

Let me know your thoughts about this article, would you like to see more of these kinds entries with my analysis of tournament winning deck lists and deck lists that I find interesting. I think these kind of entries are cool, because all of these lists have really done well and I don’t have any personal bias to any of them, because they aren’t my own lists.

Feel free to comment on anything!

Thanks for reading.