Hi, CoT Readers! For those of you who don’t know me, allow me to introduce myself. I’m Jon Eng, and I’ve been playing the Pokemon Trading Card Game for the past 14 years, starting all the way back in the Junior Division. In that time, I’ve been fortunate enough to become known as one of the most consistent players in the game; I was known as a top-level Senior in my time there, and I’ve finished within the Top 6 in North America for the past three seasons in Masters. You might recognize me from winning the Portland Regional Championships last season too. Anyways, I’m stoked to be writing for the site, and I’m hoping I can provide a little insight for you all as we start to close out the season.
In this piece, I will be going over one of my top choices to bring to Milwaukee Regional Championships – Dragapult ex! Now you may be thinking, “Well Jon, there are plenty of ways to utilize Dragapult ex in the current format,” and you wouldn’t be wrong. To tell it straight, I haven’t fully decided whether or not I want there to be a Dusknoir line in my deck for the event. Recently, I have been leaning towards a list with no Dusknoir however, and that is what I will be writing about today.
I think a great place to start would be to give the advantages and disadvantages of each version of the deck, because they are both really strong, but their coverage varies in a few ways. I’ll get into the differences in their matchups in a bit, but the first big difference between the decks is their power levels, all stemming from our friend the ghost – Dusknoir. Dusknoir allows you to make more explosive plays; anything from taking out incoming threats, setting up very interesting checkmate situations, or even putting together a 6-prize turn in some matchups. The Dusknoir version of the deck no doubt is stronger. The non-Dusknoir version provides benefits on the other side of the coin – consistency and control.
Now, I don’t think the Dusknoir version is particularly inconsistent, and the nature of Dragapult ex just gives you a good bit of control. I placed Top 32 at the Atlanta Regional Championships last month, playing the same list Andrew Hedrick got 2nd place at the event with, coined “The Drixty”, which many of you know contained Dusknoir. Throughout the event I felt unstoppable, my only loss in the event being to Grant Shen who was also playing the Drixty. My event fell apart due to too many ties, two of which were against non-Dusknoir Dragapult ex decks – This is where my interest in the variant began.
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Great read!