Hey guys, Phinnegan again. As you may or may not know, the only thing that I was testing for Phoenix Regionals was Yveltal. I felt like it had proven itself as the best deck and had an answer to even the hardest matchups. I felt like there was no top choice that could manage even a 70/30 against it because of how well rounded the deck is. And more than anything, I knew that if there was someone that could put together a good Dark list, it would be me.
After placing 10th out of 459 masters, I feel the same. There is one card in my list that I think I might have changed, and one other card that could have been better (mayyyyybe). Other than that, I love my list. The deck was built to get Maxie’s turn after turn, and that’s exactly what it did. Against Jeremiah Williams I was able to pull off Maxie’s on my first, second, and third turns. Most lists don’t even have enough Fighting Pokemon in the deck to make this possible. However, I want to cover the tournament before I get into the details about my list.
I also want to thank everyone that helped me prepare for the tournament. Thank you to Daniel Altavilla for being the primary person I consulted about my list. Thank you Israel Sosa for the great best-of-five match, that made me re-think my list. Thank you to Michael Perez, Chris Rodriguez, and Connor Pedersen for being my main testing partners. And finally, thank you to my teams: Otterchops, Team 4N4L, and the A1 group. If I missed anyone, I apologize; my memory is god-awful. Anyway, let’s get into the important stuff.
Tournament Report
Let me first just say that I ran hot during day 1. I won’t try to sugar coat that at all. I had two completely free wins, so I will not pretend that I made Day 2 completely off of my ability or my list.
Round 1 – Yveltal Mirror
I have a prevailing habit of being extremely nervous in my first round; this tournament was no different. For some reason I just need one round to get all of my fear and mistakes out of the way. There have been well over ten tournaments where I lost my first round (because of this), and then proceeded to make Top Cut.
I lost round one because I played poorly. I honestly could have won the first game, and then dragged Game 2 out long enough to take the win. Instead, I played horribly and was 2-0’d. 0-1-0
Round 2 – Bye
Out of all the players to bomb Round 1, I was lucky enough to get the Bye. Thank you RNGesus. 1-1-0
Round 3 – Vileplume/Vespiquen
I lost the coin flip and quickly lost to Vileplume’s item lock. This happens frequently. I wasn’t surprised.
Game 2 was a little more interesting. I went first, but did not pull off Maxie’s. Instead I tried to build my board state by powering up attackers with Dark Patch and my attachment. I made sure not to forget to use all of my VS Seeker, which actually was huge considering he played Red Card to shuffle my hand back into my deck. I feel that in this matchup, if the Yveltal player can take a couple knock outs with the same attacker, they usually win. That’s exactly what I did. I took three prizes in one turn with my BKT Yveltal and then my opponent scooped.
In Game 3, we actually have a significant amount of time left. I’m not a fan of ties, so I play quickly even though it’s a rough matchup. My opponent gets the turn one Vileplume and Red Card, however he is only able to get two Pokemon discarded. I was fortunate enough to find a Sycamore off of my five-card hand. I attach to Sableye because it was my only Pokemon in play, and then Sycamore. I find myself with a great hand that consists of three energy and a BKT Yveltal. For the rest of the game, my opponent dead-draws (because of his Vileplume), while I slowly take six prizes. Turns out doing 40 damage with Vespiquen every turn isn’t that strong. 2-1-0
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