U.S. Nationals Top 16 Report with Toad Bats

Hello, PokeBeach readers! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Kolton Day, a second year Master from Springfield, MO. I’ve been playing this game since 2007 and haven’t looked back since! I’m going to be a Junior in High School this upcoming year, and am still unsure of where I will go after High School, but am hopeful that Pokemon will still be in that path. Currently, I’m at 519 Championship Points heading into Worlds, getting CP from two League Challenge second places, four League Challenge top 4s, two Cities second places, two Cities wins, one States second place, one Regionals top 64, two Regionals top 32s, and one Nationals top 16.

In this article, I’m going to talk about what deck I played, why I played some of the cards, how my rounds went at Nationals, and how Toad / Bats can change to fit the meta at Worlds, as well as what changes I made to my list.

Pre-Nationals

After a top 32 Wisconsin Regional finish, I thought Seismitoad-EX / Aromatisse with Sky Field was a great play for Nationals. On the car ride back home from the event, my new found favorite deck lost a key component in the banning of Lysandre's Trump Card. This shocking news gave me a month to find a new deck I liked for Nationals. With all of the commotion about what would be good, I thought that the Crobat line would be very useful for getting damage on the board that would most likely stick, as my opponents couldn’t Super Scoop Up the damage repeatedly with the use of Trump Card. The first deck that my friend, Kyle Haverland and I tried out was Landorus-EX / Crobat. It seemed to work fine, the damage output was fairly high. Hawlucha with the Fighting support and the Bat damage can KO almost any EX in the game, besides Megas. Testing the deck out at a League Challenge, I found that the deck worked well, but lost to Item Locks very fast. Mainly, in the form of Seismitoad-EX. I thought that Toad would have died since Lysandre’s Trump Card got banned. In a way, it did. The deck could no longer use unlimited Crushing Hammers and Super Scoop Ups. At the time, the only way to crank out enough damage was to use Golbat and Crobat to speed up the damage process, along with Hypnotoxic Laser and Virbank City Gym.

Cash Tournament

While scrolling though Facebook one day, I discovered that Yeti Gaming was hosting a Cash Tournament a month before Nationals to help test out the now Lysandre's Trump Card-less format. Luckily, Kyle Haverland was awake, and I convinced him to take the trip the next morning up to Crestwood, Missouri to hopefully win some cash. After a late start, we were on our way, except we didn’t actually have a deck built. So, I quickly made one up on the drive up there for a rough draft of a Seismitoad-EX / Crobat list that we would both play in the tournament. Here is what the first draft looked like:

The Tournament

We got there about an hour before it started, so we mostly just talked to friends while waiting for it to start. I believe we had 14 masters meaning five rounds, top 4. I played against a PokeDad playing Primal Kyogre-EX round one, and he didn’t draw well either game due to Item Lock every turn. Round two, I played against another Pokedad playing Landorus-EX / Crobat, and once again, my opponent didn’t draw well under Item Lock. Round three, I played against my friend, Carrington, playing Seismitoad-EX / Aegislash-EX / Dragalge. Game one, he opened terribly, and was forced to Turn 1 play a Super Scoop Up to pick up his lone Skrelp. Game two, I was able to keep off his Double Colorless Energy using my Xerosic multiple times thanks to VS Seeker, and he just couldn’t keep up with my Poison and Bat damage, letting me start out 3-0. Kyle and I were the only 3-0s at this point, and we played against each other with the 60-card mirror on stream. Let me say, it was a really boring match to watch. All three games, one of us dead drew, letting the other set up. Unfortunately, I was the one who ended up losing 2-1, so I had to win my last round to be guaranteed top 4. In the fifth and final round, I was paired against Jac, playing a Donphan deck. I was able to take a KO every turn of the game starting on turn two of both games, letting me seal the series 2-0 in my favor pretty fast. Top 2 came up, and Kyle was the number one seed, and I was the number two. Oddly enough, Kyle and I both played against Primal Kyogre-EX decks, and we both beat our opponents to move onto the finals, where we split the pot, each giving us $150. I felt confident about Toad / Bats, and felt like it would be a strong play for Nationals.

Nationals Report

Testing

After a month of of testing, I was certain Seismitoad-EX / Crobat was the best deck in format, only losing to very few things, such as Primal Groudon-EX and M Manectric-EX-based decks, which were both possible to beat due to how strong Seismitoad-EX’s Quaking Punch is.

I’m going to show you the list that I played for U.S. Nationals,  go over all the games I played at Nats, and go over the changes I made to the list. Make sure you have a Premium Subscription so you don’t miss out on all the great content! With a Subscription you will have access to all of our high quality articles plus direct access to all of our writers in the Subscriber’s Secret Hideout.  We look forward to helping you with your lists and giving you advice there!

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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