So he ended up going, at the last minute... and so the only deck I could make in time was a Zacian V Turbo deck (the only one I had even close to the right cards for). Even missing the Ether and Trainer's Mails (both key cards), and replacing all of the Shaymins with Dedennes, he did alright (3-3) - not bad really - and then got some CP in the cup the next day too. I love the cups - take away the "top" Juniors and you have a cup that a midlevel junior can perform well at, without so much pressure but still having plenty of games against kids (as opposed to the "guaranteed top 2 junior cup" that is so common, where there's just two of them, they play one game, then the rest of the day is against Masters). Not bad given he picked up the deck for the first time Saturday morning! Now if I could only convince him that Dedenne is a poor choice for a starter...
Thanks for the advice We won't play again until Fort Wayne most likely (which is Standard), though may hit a few likely-expanded Cups in the next month or so. Will get the cards we're missing and make some adjustments (and he's suggested a few good ones based on other decks he saw, which I think is amazing!) and see how things go!
Nice, glad to see I could help. My son opted to play TinaChomp and went 3-1-2. Went 3-0 out of the gate and had 3 win and ins against 3 players in the top 10 of the US. Drew first against Snorlax and lost twice against Zacian. Worst for that tournament is that 47 juniors registered, 1 shy of kicker to get top 16 cp points, so only top 8 got points. My son locked in his ticket much earlier just on cups. Like you said, those are much easier in juniors. We thought we would see a lot of Ultra Necrozma and Dark Box. My son didn't hit or see a single one...just a bad meta call at the end of the day.