Bom Dia, Subs! Back from my world tour and finally ready to talk about my experience forcing myself to play the best deck in format. At first glance, the past sentence sounds detrimental to my mental health as a rogue deck builder, but you would be right. Luckily, with an immense amount of testing, I found some techs that matched my creativity in the lines I could create. In this piece, I will talk about both Las Vegas and LAIC, why I chose the builds I did, and the changes going forward for Phantasmal Flames.
Before going into the list for Las Vegas, I want to clear up what happened on stream during Round 7 of LAIC. A Bravery Charm flipped off my deck while I was drawing cards for Lillie, and the game was forcibly stopped. While this happened, I lost my train of thought, and drew eight cards, but didn’t look at them yet. I waited for several minutes for the eventual warning I would receive for the Bravery Charm, but I picked up my hand and had seen my eight cards. I argued that I should be able to reshuffle, draw six to not only absolve the Bravery Charm flipping but also the eight cards. Head Judge had declined this fix, which I was informed afterwards would have been a fine solution. Thank you to Josh for being a great opponent who “highly suggested” I appeal this ruling which was clearly wrong. No one will know the conclusion of that game, but I was heavily favored at the moment and had plenty of time for Game 3.
Las Vegas Regionals was full of interesting meta points, starting with the eventual win of Tord’s claim-to-fame Mega Box. Understanding the popularity and power level of Gholdengo ex/Rocks, Tord used his Cornerstone/Clutch to destroy the whopping 20% that Gholdengo took up within the meta. As per usual, the American top groups continued their love of Gardevoir ex paired with Jellicent ex, taking advantage of the mirror match and the Gholdengo matchup. I won’t go to deep into this as I’m generally a fan of Henry’s lists, but I just cannot get behind two copies of Ralts. Dragapult ex, which clearly they chose to disrespect, becomes so tough without a very specific line once you’re board-wiped – which with only two Ralts, will surely happen more often than not. The list otherwise makes a ton of sense for constant item lock, tempo swings, and favoring the mirror instead of other close matchups.
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