Welcome back to Cut or Tap! My name is Drew Allen. A quick introduction for anyone that doesn’t know me: I’m a long time player of the game from Canada with multiple World
Championship invites, who’s been in and out of the competitive scene for a little over a decade. Recently, I went undefeated in the first phase of Las Vegas Regionals, ending Phase 1 as first seed at 8-0. I played Gholdengo Rocks to the event and am going to talk about my run, and some of the matchup strategies I utilized.
Before the Event
A couple weeks prior to this event, I had narrowed my deck decision between Gholdengo and Gardevoir. Both are powerhouse decks that have great lines of play into a lot of the major meta decks. Overall, they both also have a similar matchup spread with 50/50’s or better against most of the field with only one or two poor matchups. However, the one factor that pushed Gholdengo over the edge for me was time. I found that in timed matches, Gardevoir could struggle to close out games due to its higher complexity, leading to more time thinking, as well the higher amount of in-turn actions it needs to take. Especially if my opponents were not scooping appropriately, I was concerned this would overall would lead to two things: 1) More ties, which is awful in this tournament format, and 2) A higher tax on my tournament endurance due to almost every round going to time.
The first of these two is obviously bad if you want to go on a deep run, because after your first tie, your following ties are essentially losses if you’re aiming to make Top 8. The second is actually something not a lot of players think about, but I believe finishing all my games and having time to get food, or use the bathroom without waiting in a long line, had a significant positive effect on my overall mentality and stress throughout the event, helping me to focus better while playing.
The List
There are a couple major differences from Christian Fontenot’s Top 4 list in Gdansk and this one that I’d like to go over.
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