I thought I would offer my 2 (or 3) cents on the matters at hand.
1: I would like to reply to the above post, made by The Fallen One: Plox, while not played by many (and by many, I mean "no one") will be played by me. As a Plox player I can assure you that it is a Tier 1-2 deck, although many people overlook it because they have not recognized its true potential. What they are overlooking is the extreme disruption it is capable of doing, along with its pure power with Gallade. This combined with the correct energy accelerator (such as Magnezone \o/) can help recreate this once beast of a deck. When LA came out, it slipped into the shadows, its royal power merely hibernating until the right person realized that the deck was viable. States is going to be the tournament for some of us to prove that the deck is worth it.
GG, however, is a different story. I believe that Plox and GG are extremely different decks. One focuses on shear Psychic Locking (Plox) and can wait a few turns to setup. The other one relies on a very quick Gallade to sweep through your opponent (GG). Now, in this day and age, you have to realize that fast isn't always good. Sometimes it's okay to wait a little bit to charge up a Pokemon (if you play the correct Plox list, it only takes 1-2 turns. It does for me anyway) and that's fine. Most decks, including even Kingdra I dare-say, take longer to charge-up nowadays anyway.
The key to the current format is energy acceleration. I have said this many times over and I am not afraid to reinforce my argument. Your energy acceleration is in some form, and whether you know it or not, that is most likely one of the key staples of your deck. It might be Bronzong, it might be Weavile, it might be Delcatty or Blissey or whatever. The important thing is that it's in there. 98+% of the current decks out there have energy acceleration in one form or another. So, yeah. That's my first point lol.
Point 2: Rampardos. I'm actually going to dedicate a fair amount of space for this one raging guy. I do not, nor have I ever, liked donk decks. I think they're an unfair way to win and personally I think that they take a little amount of skill to play (however, they do take a fair amount of skill to build). With Rampardos... I feel differently for some reason. I think it's a bit harder to execute Rampardos' certain strategy than it is for other donk decks such as Mario, but the end result is the same. If you're playing against a donk deck and you are not using a donk deck, there is a very high % chance that you will get donked. Now, if you are donked, that does not necessarily mean endgame (unless that was your only Pokemon in play). It just means that it will be that much harder for you to setup, but it doesn't mean a total game loss. It just means that they have slowed you down and you may or may not be able to speed back up. It happens. There have been, and always will be donk decks; there's no getting around that. You just have to learn to live with them, despite whatever amount of skill you think they take to play.
Point 3: The Metagame in General. People are so afraid of the metagame. They want to find room for techs in their decks and such. I have news for you guys -
Techs will make your deck more inconsistent and the end result will be you wishing you hadn't played them. I'm not saying that it has ALWAYS been like this (such as back at the 2008 worlds when techs were almost necessary), and I'm not saying that EVERY deck shouldn't play techs (like Kingdra with Dialga G Lv.X). What I AM saying though is that techs will most likely slow down your deck, and chances are, you won't even see the deck you're teching against at your State Championships, or you won't even get it out during the game, or (worst case scenario), you get it out and because you spent to much time trying to do so, they one-shot it! Techs just aren't worth it in my opinion. Not anymore, nope.
Getting back to my previous point, the metagame is too hazy for us to understand what it will be at States. This is in my opinion, but the majority of decks will be Giratina variants, Kingdra, Palkia/G Pokemon, Rampardos, (some) Torterra, (some) Delcatty variants, (some) Regigigas, (very few) GG/Plox, (very few) Rogues, and probably other decks that I forgot to list maybe like AMU or Dusknoir etc. But, seriously, don't try to tech against decks unless you have already been to a previous State Championships this season and you have seen the metagame. I.E you have been to [blank] State Championships and lost there. If you assume the metagame will be the same at [blank]'s State Championships, then try to fit a tech in there for the deck that caused you the most trouble. It might or might not help, but if you can fit it in and there are vast numbers of the deck you are teching against, then it will most likely help.
There are other points I wanted to mention, but I'll stop here
