Hello there fellow 'Beachers, long time no see! I've just recently come back to the game and participated in a few local tournaments after having an almost three year long break from the competitive PokemonTCG. The reasons for me being away for so long are my studies. At the moment I am an undergraduate student in mathematics and physics, and since I'm most likely graduating in physics after the recent finals I decided to slowly get back into it by getting some of the most useful and meta-defining cards so that I will be able to competitively play again next season. Unfortunatly the pace of getting back into the game is really slow and it is quite expensive to buy everything that's necessary for what it is (Greetings to Shaymin EX). This eventually limited me to a very small number of different decks that I would be able to play at tournaments this season. Since I've always been a huge fan of Lock-Decks I decided to go for some Seismitoad EX variants throughout the last three months. However ever after the first leaks of the new FCOSerperior I was fascinated by the concept of this card. While being extremly annoying for my oppenent's due to Servines Ability "Serpentine strangle" (which paralyses the defending Pokemon on the condition of winning a coin flip), I was more interested in the fact that Serperior has a huge type advantage against some of the most popular decks currently being played, despite being super fast and energy efficient with all the cards available in standard format. My very first idea was some funny Mew/Miltank/Serperior deck. Sounds crazy? Well, let's get into that a little bit later.
First of all I want to explain why I did such an unconventional deck-choice for such an important tournament. Since I wasn't able to attend a lot of tournaments during the last three months, the national championship was just beneficial for me if I was able to get into top 4. Otherwise I would not have been able to achieve a qualification for this year's World Championship. In case of making it into top 4 my plan was to save enough money for the flight, although it was not sure I would be able to do so in time. In conclusion, whether or not I would accomplish an invite it would be a quite risky game with the probability of not being able to attend at Worlds being much higher then the probability to be able to do so. As a result I decided not to go for a standard Meta Deck, but to think about something that is most suited as Anti-Meta for the Austrian National Championships. Reviewing the results of the first European nationals with FCO as a legal set it was clear that Night-March, MegaMan, Vespiquen, Darkrai/Giratina, Metal, Trevenant, Greninja and TurboToad could make huge appearances at our nationals. Knowing that alot of players don't have enough Shaymins to play Night-March I expected it to have little to none appearance. Of course this thought includes Vespiquen as well. Moreover I thought there wouldn't be alot of Trevenant, since Greninja and Seismitoad are quite popular plays in Austria. A tournament in which a lot of decks play a high count of Rough Seas is definitely not very good for anyone playing Trevenant. However for the reason of most players being quite afraid of facing Trevenant I expected to see a lot of TurboToad. Moreover this is supportet by the fact that Glaceon EX being introduced to the format with Fates Collide was one of the best things that could happen to TurboToad, because now it has a very good answer to decks like Vespiquen and MegaMan. All that being said I was convinced that the kernel of the Meta was going to be Greninja and Turbotoad. Keeping this in mind one immediately concludes that a grass deck might not be the worst play in a Greinja/Toad-Meta. The only problem here is the lack of grass decks in our current format. To be exact, there are only three valid options: Vespiquen, M Sceptile EX and Serperior. While Vespiquen is a quite popular Meta deck that I wanted to avoid playing (for reasons that I'll explain soon) and Sceptile is a very inconsistent play, the only real option left was Serperior. Fortunatly I was fascinated by this card from the very first sight.
So why play Serperior, if in theory Vespiquen is a much better choice? The answer is simply the surprise effect. For some reason Serperior saw very little to none play during the first weeks of European National Championships. Of course that would result into nobody expecting this deck to be played and further ado nobody would seriously play test with it.
I've already mentioned that my first idea was a Mew/Miltank/Serperior deck. Aside from playing less Mew and Miltank than initially planned I went with that exact idea for this year's National Championship and just added some Seismitoad EX. The very first idea behind this deck was to be able to have good M Alakazam EX, Carbink/Zygarde/Lucario/Regirock and Night-March Match-Ups. However after I realized that M Alakazam EX was not as good as the hypers expected it to be and Carbink/Zygarde/Lucario/Regirock was no where near going to be a meta-defining new deck I slimmed down the Mew/Miltank line to 1/1 after playing an excessive 3/3 line. To have a back-up plan against Night-March I added a Seismitoad EX instead of playing 2 Miltank, because Seismitoad EX+Mew proved to be a brilliant combination in playtesting. Not only was it an awesome play in the Night March Match-Up, but also after I got lucky enough to win the coin flip with Serpentine Strangle. Besides this idea of a Serperior version I also tested the two most trivial approaches to this deck: With Ariados as well as Vileplume. However, I quickly decided not to play even one of them in my Serperior list, because they both made it a little bit more inconsistent despite not really being useful in making the Match-ups this deck was made for even better. But let's discuss the cards after getting into the list:
Pokemon - 18
4 Serperior
4 Servine
4 Snivy
3 Shaymin EX
1 Seismitoad EX
1 Miltank
1 Mew
Trainer -34
4 Professor Sycamore
4 Ultra Ball
4 VS Seeker
4 Forest Of Giant Plants
2 N
2 Lysandre
2 Level Ball
2 Trainer's Mail
2 Super Scoop Up
2 Muscle Band
1 AZ
1 Xerosic
1 Hex Maniac
1 Sacred Ash
1 Super Rod
1 Fighting Fury Belt
Energy - 8
5 Grass
3 Double Colourless
I will now briefly discuss the most important choices:
4-4-4 Serperior/4 Forest Of Giant Plants:
This deck's focus is mainly on Serperior. In the best case situation you almost always to have a Serperior in play. Therefor it is useful to max out all lines that are necessary to play it down in one single turn.
3 Shaymin EX:
I am not shure how many of you will agree with this unusually high number of Shaymins. Of course this deck can also be run with two. However playing three Shaymins gives me a higher probability of getting one early game as well as almost always leaves one in the deck late game. Having one in the deck late game is especially brilliant with Mew's attack Encounter which allows you to search for any one Pokemon you can find. Moreover Shaymin EX is one brilliant card versus Trevenant, which isn't the best Match-Up for Serperior. That's also one of the reasons for the DCE's in this list.
1 Seismitoad EX/1 Miltank/1 Mew:
As already mentioned the Seismitoad EX+Mew combination is mainly to counter Night-March. However the Miltank+Mew combination is nice against everything that's weak to psychic type Pokemon (obviously) aside from being able to attack with high damage without promoting a Serperior. At first the idea behind this was to be able to counter a fully charged Lucario EX and Alakazam EX as well as to be able to do something against random M Mewtwo EX decks. Moreover Mew sometimes not needing an Energy to attack versus Night-March and Trevenant decks also proved to be quite efficient in play-testing. However in the end Mew was also very useful for its free retreat and set-up supporting attack Encounter, which I used multiple times during Nationals.
2 Trainer's Mail/2 Super Scoop Up:
Usually a deck either goes for 4 of SSU or Trainer's Mail, but it's probably unusual to play a 2/2 split as I do. The main reason for playing a 2/2 line is because both of them are necessary, but not to an excessive extend. While Trainer's Mail helps a lot with fishing some Forests Of Giant Plants, Super Scoop Up is a huge help with maintaining a fast set up with your Shaymins. However more than 2 of each of them was a huge problem when playing against item-lock-decks of all kinds. I am rather a fan of late-game consistency than exploding turn1/2 every game. Therefore I decided to play less Items of the "Speed Engine" and focus on more mid- to late-game consistency.
1 AZ/1 Xerosic/1 Hex Maniac:
One could say this triple is almost staple for every deck in the current standard format. I suggest to anyone playing Serperior not to cut out any of those. Since all of them are quite versatile cards that can help a lot when adapting to certain situations your Serperior deck really benefits from them.
3 Double Colourless:
This is where it gets interesting. I already mentioned that I one reason to play them are the 3 Shaymins. Not only can you attack with Shaymin having to attach only one energy when playing DCE, it is also possible to retreat any Pokemon in play with only discarding one Energy. In my tests this has proven to be way more efficient and effective than playing some copies of escape rope or switch. Moreover it gives you an out against Trevenant, which (without the DCEs) would be a quite horrible Match-Up. However combining some early game Serperiors with a swarm of late game Shaymins really does the trick against Trevenant.
Now let's get to the report:
Round 1 VS (sry I forgot your name) with Sky Guardian FCO Starter Deck
Some players bought him and a girl a starter deck before the tournament so they could compete in order to achieve a number of 32 players in Masters division.
There isn't much to say about this game other than he was able to take a prize in game 2 due to my very slow start.
1-0-0
After the first round I had enough time to look at each and everyone's deck. I was surprised when I found out that my prediction about a lot Greninja and TurboToad was true and really hyped for the next few rounds.
Round 2 VS Rainer K. with Zygarde EX/Lucario EX/ Regirock EX
For some reason this game was a featured match (by the team of Amigo-Spiele), so you can probably view it on YouTube in the near future (I'll add a link to the video once it's uploaded).
In the first game I started of very strong with a turn two Serperior and OHKO on his active Zygarde EX leaving him no option but to play with Lucario EX only. However, since Lucario was not doing enough damage to knock out my Serperior he needed to bench some Regirock EX. Without using Mew and Miltank as a measurement against Lucario I used Lysandre to one hit his RegirockEXs for the win. For some strange reason he let me go first in the second game. Despite him being able to OHKO one of my Pokemon including a Shaymin EX almost every turn the prize race was favorable for me due to him just playing Pokemon EX and me being able to OHKO almost every single one of them (Xerosic took care of Focus Sash).
2-0-0
Round 3 VS Dominik W. with Seismitoad EX/Greninja
In the first game I started of very strong with a turn 1 Serperior facing his Seismitoad EX. Even if he put some pressure on me by using Quaking Punch to item-lock me while setting up his Greninjas, the weakness was just too much for him. I took at least one prize every turn and the game was quickly in my favour. Game two unfortunatly found a sudden end after him overlooking my Hex Maniac and drawing cards off an Shaymin EX he put on his bench. As he was already facing two fully powered up Serperiors he decided to scoop the it, before he could probably get a prize penalty from the judge.
3-0-0
Round 4 VS Tom Z. with Wailord
Yet another featured match, this time by PokemonTCG Austria.
I didn't expect that one! However fortunatlySerperior can hit Wailord with a whopping 280 damage due to its weakness to grass. Although Tom played Aegislash EX and Lucario EX I was able to take all prizes rather quickly in both games. To be honest this was probably the fastest Bo3 game I ever played against a Wailord deck.
4-0-0
Round 5 VS Luca S. with MegaRay/Jolteon
We tied. Now both of us where ensured to be in Top8.
4-0-1
Being my first Nationals after a long break I was seriously hyped for Top 8 after taking the first seat in swiss rounds!
Top 8 VS Günther K. with Vespiquen/Zoroark
Unfortunatly in the first game 3 of my Servines where prized. While I got happy to get one Servine off of my first prize I struggled soon afterwards and was not able to take the lead in the prize race after my second Serperior, because I didn't get any of the other Servines out of the prizes and after two Serperiors it was game for him.
The second game was even worse. I started off with a death draw leaving me draw passing for three turns. At the time I got something going he was down to one prize and I wasn't able to do anything but scoop the game.
In the end Günther won the National Championship. (Congratulations on doing so Günther!)
4-1-1
So that was my little report. Thank you for reading it. Sorry I didn't go too much in depth with the Austrian meta game and sorry the report isn't probably written in a good style (I didn't even proofread it), I mainly wrote it to tell the world that Serperior has a chance succeeding in some specific Meta-games.
Cheers,
Filipp
First of all I want to explain why I did such an unconventional deck-choice for such an important tournament. Since I wasn't able to attend a lot of tournaments during the last three months, the national championship was just beneficial for me if I was able to get into top 4. Otherwise I would not have been able to achieve a qualification for this year's World Championship. In case of making it into top 4 my plan was to save enough money for the flight, although it was not sure I would be able to do so in time. In conclusion, whether or not I would accomplish an invite it would be a quite risky game with the probability of not being able to attend at Worlds being much higher then the probability to be able to do so. As a result I decided not to go for a standard Meta Deck, but to think about something that is most suited as Anti-Meta for the Austrian National Championships. Reviewing the results of the first European nationals with FCO as a legal set it was clear that Night-March, MegaMan, Vespiquen, Darkrai/Giratina, Metal, Trevenant, Greninja and TurboToad could make huge appearances at our nationals. Knowing that alot of players don't have enough Shaymins to play Night-March I expected it to have little to none appearance. Of course this thought includes Vespiquen as well. Moreover I thought there wouldn't be alot of Trevenant, since Greninja and Seismitoad are quite popular plays in Austria. A tournament in which a lot of decks play a high count of Rough Seas is definitely not very good for anyone playing Trevenant. However for the reason of most players being quite afraid of facing Trevenant I expected to see a lot of TurboToad. Moreover this is supportet by the fact that Glaceon EX being introduced to the format with Fates Collide was one of the best things that could happen to TurboToad, because now it has a very good answer to decks like Vespiquen and MegaMan. All that being said I was convinced that the kernel of the Meta was going to be Greninja and Turbotoad. Keeping this in mind one immediately concludes that a grass deck might not be the worst play in a Greinja/Toad-Meta. The only problem here is the lack of grass decks in our current format. To be exact, there are only three valid options: Vespiquen, M Sceptile EX and Serperior. While Vespiquen is a quite popular Meta deck that I wanted to avoid playing (for reasons that I'll explain soon) and Sceptile is a very inconsistent play, the only real option left was Serperior. Fortunatly I was fascinated by this card from the very first sight.
So why play Serperior, if in theory Vespiquen is a much better choice? The answer is simply the surprise effect. For some reason Serperior saw very little to none play during the first weeks of European National Championships. Of course that would result into nobody expecting this deck to be played and further ado nobody would seriously play test with it.
I've already mentioned that my first idea was a Mew/Miltank/Serperior deck. Aside from playing less Mew and Miltank than initially planned I went with that exact idea for this year's National Championship and just added some Seismitoad EX. The very first idea behind this deck was to be able to have good M Alakazam EX, Carbink/Zygarde/Lucario/Regirock and Night-March Match-Ups. However after I realized that M Alakazam EX was not as good as the hypers expected it to be and Carbink/Zygarde/Lucario/Regirock was no where near going to be a meta-defining new deck I slimmed down the Mew/Miltank line to 1/1 after playing an excessive 3/3 line. To have a back-up plan against Night-March I added a Seismitoad EX instead of playing 2 Miltank, because Seismitoad EX+Mew proved to be a brilliant combination in playtesting. Not only was it an awesome play in the Night March Match-Up, but also after I got lucky enough to win the coin flip with Serpentine Strangle. Besides this idea of a Serperior version I also tested the two most trivial approaches to this deck: With Ariados as well as Vileplume. However, I quickly decided not to play even one of them in my Serperior list, because they both made it a little bit more inconsistent despite not really being useful in making the Match-ups this deck was made for even better. But let's discuss the cards after getting into the list:
Pokemon - 18
4 Serperior
4 Servine
4 Snivy
3 Shaymin EX
1 Seismitoad EX
1 Miltank
1 Mew
Trainer -34
4 Professor Sycamore
4 Ultra Ball
4 VS Seeker
4 Forest Of Giant Plants
2 N
2 Lysandre
2 Level Ball
2 Trainer's Mail
2 Super Scoop Up
2 Muscle Band
1 AZ
1 Xerosic
1 Hex Maniac
1 Sacred Ash
1 Super Rod
1 Fighting Fury Belt
Energy - 8
5 Grass
3 Double Colourless
I will now briefly discuss the most important choices:
4-4-4 Serperior/4 Forest Of Giant Plants:
This deck's focus is mainly on Serperior. In the best case situation you almost always to have a Serperior in play. Therefor it is useful to max out all lines that are necessary to play it down in one single turn.
3 Shaymin EX:
I am not shure how many of you will agree with this unusually high number of Shaymins. Of course this deck can also be run with two. However playing three Shaymins gives me a higher probability of getting one early game as well as almost always leaves one in the deck late game. Having one in the deck late game is especially brilliant with Mew's attack Encounter which allows you to search for any one Pokemon you can find. Moreover Shaymin EX is one brilliant card versus Trevenant, which isn't the best Match-Up for Serperior. That's also one of the reasons for the DCE's in this list.
1 Seismitoad EX/1 Miltank/1 Mew:
As already mentioned the Seismitoad EX+Mew combination is mainly to counter Night-March. However the Miltank+Mew combination is nice against everything that's weak to psychic type Pokemon (obviously) aside from being able to attack with high damage without promoting a Serperior. At first the idea behind this was to be able to counter a fully charged Lucario EX and Alakazam EX as well as to be able to do something against random M Mewtwo EX decks. Moreover Mew sometimes not needing an Energy to attack versus Night-March and Trevenant decks also proved to be quite efficient in play-testing. However in the end Mew was also very useful for its free retreat and set-up supporting attack Encounter, which I used multiple times during Nationals.
2 Trainer's Mail/2 Super Scoop Up:
Usually a deck either goes for 4 of SSU or Trainer's Mail, but it's probably unusual to play a 2/2 split as I do. The main reason for playing a 2/2 line is because both of them are necessary, but not to an excessive extend. While Trainer's Mail helps a lot with fishing some Forests Of Giant Plants, Super Scoop Up is a huge help with maintaining a fast set up with your Shaymins. However more than 2 of each of them was a huge problem when playing against item-lock-decks of all kinds. I am rather a fan of late-game consistency than exploding turn1/2 every game. Therefore I decided to play less Items of the "Speed Engine" and focus on more mid- to late-game consistency.
1 AZ/1 Xerosic/1 Hex Maniac:
One could say this triple is almost staple for every deck in the current standard format. I suggest to anyone playing Serperior not to cut out any of those. Since all of them are quite versatile cards that can help a lot when adapting to certain situations your Serperior deck really benefits from them.
3 Double Colourless:
This is where it gets interesting. I already mentioned that I one reason to play them are the 3 Shaymins. Not only can you attack with Shaymin having to attach only one energy when playing DCE, it is also possible to retreat any Pokemon in play with only discarding one Energy. In my tests this has proven to be way more efficient and effective than playing some copies of escape rope or switch. Moreover it gives you an out against Trevenant, which (without the DCEs) would be a quite horrible Match-Up. However combining some early game Serperiors with a swarm of late game Shaymins really does the trick against Trevenant.
Now let's get to the report:
Round 1 VS (sry I forgot your name) with Sky Guardian FCO Starter Deck
Some players bought him and a girl a starter deck before the tournament so they could compete in order to achieve a number of 32 players in Masters division.
There isn't much to say about this game other than he was able to take a prize in game 2 due to my very slow start.
1-0-0
After the first round I had enough time to look at each and everyone's deck. I was surprised when I found out that my prediction about a lot Greninja and TurboToad was true and really hyped for the next few rounds.
Round 2 VS Rainer K. with Zygarde EX/Lucario EX/ Regirock EX
For some reason this game was a featured match (by the team of Amigo-Spiele), so you can probably view it on YouTube in the near future (I'll add a link to the video once it's uploaded).
In the first game I started of very strong with a turn two Serperior and OHKO on his active Zygarde EX leaving him no option but to play with Lucario EX only. However, since Lucario was not doing enough damage to knock out my Serperior he needed to bench some Regirock EX. Without using Mew and Miltank as a measurement against Lucario I used Lysandre to one hit his RegirockEXs for the win. For some strange reason he let me go first in the second game. Despite him being able to OHKO one of my Pokemon including a Shaymin EX almost every turn the prize race was favorable for me due to him just playing Pokemon EX and me being able to OHKO almost every single one of them (Xerosic took care of Focus Sash).
2-0-0
Round 3 VS Dominik W. with Seismitoad EX/Greninja
In the first game I started of very strong with a turn 1 Serperior facing his Seismitoad EX. Even if he put some pressure on me by using Quaking Punch to item-lock me while setting up his Greninjas, the weakness was just too much for him. I took at least one prize every turn and the game was quickly in my favour. Game two unfortunatly found a sudden end after him overlooking my Hex Maniac and drawing cards off an Shaymin EX he put on his bench. As he was already facing two fully powered up Serperiors he decided to scoop the it, before he could probably get a prize penalty from the judge.
3-0-0
Round 4 VS Tom Z. with Wailord
Yet another featured match, this time by PokemonTCG Austria.
I didn't expect that one! However fortunatlySerperior can hit Wailord with a whopping 280 damage due to its weakness to grass. Although Tom played Aegislash EX and Lucario EX I was able to take all prizes rather quickly in both games. To be honest this was probably the fastest Bo3 game I ever played against a Wailord deck.
4-0-0
Round 5 VS Luca S. with MegaRay/Jolteon
We tied. Now both of us where ensured to be in Top8.
4-0-1
Being my first Nationals after a long break I was seriously hyped for Top 8 after taking the first seat in swiss rounds!
Top 8 VS Günther K. with Vespiquen/Zoroark
Unfortunatly in the first game 3 of my Servines where prized. While I got happy to get one Servine off of my first prize I struggled soon afterwards and was not able to take the lead in the prize race after my second Serperior, because I didn't get any of the other Servines out of the prizes and after two Serperiors it was game for him.
The second game was even worse. I started off with a death draw leaving me draw passing for three turns. At the time I got something going he was down to one prize and I wasn't able to do anything but scoop the game.
In the end Günther won the National Championship. (Congratulations on doing so Günther!)
4-1-1
So that was my little report. Thank you for reading it. Sorry I didn't go too much in depth with the Austrian meta game and sorry the report isn't probably written in a good style (I didn't even proofread it), I mainly wrote it to tell the world that Serperior has a chance succeeding in some specific Meta-games.
Cheers,
Filipp
