Hello, Cut or Tap readers! A rather quick turnaround since my last article, and for good reason! For the first time since the Seniors age division all the way back in 2018, I’m a Regional Champion! That being said, there’s a pretty big difference between the 100-odd players back then and the 2,305 players at this one. I’m excited to be writing today to recap my Milwaukee run and winning list, as well as providing some direction for upcoming tournaments in the Mega Evolutions format.
Why Charizard Pidgeot Dusknoir for Milwaukee?
As people are already well aware, I’ve been a pretty big fan of Charizard ex for the past year. If you haven’t already checked out my previous article, my article on Lillie’s Determination as a card provides some pretty large context as to why I believed Charizard to be much stronger. The TLDR for Lillie’s is that Charizard is a combo deck, which needs to draw cards to hit combos. Lillie’s Determination is a huge enabler of this, where the previous iteration just had no combo potential unless you ran Secret Box.
The next reason stems from the weakness of your worst matchup, Dragapult Dusknoir, into the current field. Milwaukee was perhaps the worst tournament to play Dragapult Dusknoir since Prismatic Evolutions was released due to the release of Psyduck, as well as an overwhelming number of tough matchups for the deck (Gholdengo, Gardevoir Jellicent, Absol Kang, etc).
Additionally, going into Milwaukee, I was dangerously undertested in the new format outside of Charizard. Playing a different deck (even if better positioned) would have been a complete disservice to me, due to my piloting ability on the deck being much higher than anything else. This is a very important fact that I believe people constantly overlook when making a deck decision. It is much more important to be comfortable on your deck of choice than to play the very theoretical “best deck.”
Lastly, the time factor. I played Gardevoir Jellicent to Pittsburgh and got into tie troubles. I found Charizard Pidgeot Dusknoir very capable of fitting three games in a variety of matchups due to my familiarity with the archetype, allowing my play to be faster as well as the game taking fewer total turns, making my ability to win a game in the turn of time more achievable. The deck also has the chance to run over the opponents pretty quickly off of poor starts due to the oppressive nature of Dusknoir.
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