Looking Forward from London — Emerging Decks from the EUIC

Hey PokeBeach readers, how exciting was London Internationals? If you weren’t at the event itself, I am sure you were watching from home! We watched Pokemon history in the making as Tord Reklev become the first ever two-time International Champion and we also witnessed a few surprise decks place very well.

In this article, I want to go over my tournament experience and showcase some of the better concepts from London to use for Memphis Regionals! Let’s see how my tournament went here.

Tournament Report

I stayed true to my article and played Golisopod-GX for the event! Golisopod-GX has always been a deck that I have tinkered with which allowed me to choose a deck I was comfortable with. I did end up returning to a similar list that I played at Hartford, which included Gumshoos-GX, due to the projected amount of Gardevoir-GX at the tournament. Here is the list I played:

Golisopod-GX / Gumshoos-GX

This is similar to the list that I posted during my last article, and there were minimal changes overall. I ended up cutting two Latios for a line of Gumshoos-GX to try and counter the metagame. I also ended up cutting a Special Charge for another Grass Energy because without relying so heavily on Latios, I didn’t need Double Colorless Energy as much. The deck worked well, but Gumshoos-GX was not as strong as I had hoped for it to be. Going forward, I would cut it for another Octillery and Remoraid to make the deck more consistent.

My EUIC Performance

• Round 1 versus Zoroark-GX / Zoroark BREAK — WW (1-0-0)
• Round 2 versus Golisopod-GX / Garbodor — LWL (1-1-0)
• Round 3 versus Greninja BREAK — WW (2-1-0)
• Round 4 versus Drampa-GX / Garbodor — WW (3-1-0)
• Round 5 versus Gardevoir-GX / Sylveon-GX — LL (3-2-0)
• Round 6 versus Zoroark-GX / Lycanroc-GX — WLW (4-2-0)
• Round 7 versus Drampa-GX / Garbodor — WW (5-2-0)
• Round 8 versus Greninja BREAK — WW (6-2-0)
• Round 9 versus Silvally-GX / Zoroark-GX — LWL (6-3-0)

Similarly to Daytona Regionals, I lost my win-and-in and placed 81st. I made some minor misplays and sleep deprivation was likely the whole cause. My goal as a competitive player moving forward is to treat tournaments more seriously, and that can mean making some sacrifices. If I ended up sleeping at all the night before London, I believe that my level of play would have been higher and perhaps I would have won my last game. At the end of the day, it is beneficial to take a critical glance in hindsight to see exactly how you can grow as a player. However, all was not lost from London, as there were plenty of interesting decks that came from it…

New Concepts

In this tournament, we saw many renowned players make some drastic decisions when it came to deck choice and we also saw some interesting cards come out of the binders for the first time. The talk around London all weekend was Celesteela-GX, Silvally-GX, Raichu, Decidueye-GX, Zoroark-GX and Puzzle of Time. You would be lying to me if you said you predicted these choices going into London! Let’s check out some of the decks that these cards featured in:

Tord Reklev’s Golisopod-GX / Zoroark-GX

Tord Recklev took a much different approach going into London than myself and decided to pull out Puzzle of Time from the binder. The strategy of this deck is to use Zoroark-GX’s Trade to discard pivotal cards to gain back with Puzzle of Time or simply draw into them naturally with Trade. The deck focuses more on Zoroark-GX than Golisopod-GX, but that can change quickly if your opponent plays directly into Golisopod-GX. We use Mr. Mime to prevent upcoming format powerhouses in the form of Buzzwole-GX or Latios from gaining too large of a lead. Furthermore, Mewtwo is used to counter Pokemon such as Espeon-GX and Gardevoir-GX.

If you have glanced at the Supporter card section, I’m sure you’re a bit confused. Reklev has “invented” a new draw engine that plays less Supporters and runs a combination of Zoroark-GX and Puzzle of Time. This concept may sound boring, but it is actually a drastic take on what we have been playing for the past few months with the loss of VS Seeker.

I think the format may move forward to include Zoroark-GX-based engines, similar to Reklev’s, until we either get some stronger support or until this draw engine gets “hated” out of the format. That being said, I can also see Buzzwole-GX gaining some popularity as Zoroark-GX becomes more of a mainstay, which can also lead to the return of Garbodor. Nevertheless, with this deck using Zoroark-GX to its fullest, I am sure we will see some more creative decks pop up as we head into Memphis Regionals.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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