Welcome back to The Pelipper Post, I would like to start of by saying Happy New Year to you all! Since I have last posted on my blog it was around December, which means we have had to change over the calendar and start a fresh chapter in our lives. Although the slow 2018 for myself and my content I am hoping with my university life slowly coming to an end that I should be able to bring more articles and more content to my Youtube, Twitch and Twitter. I have had a rocky 2018 with my own personal issues over the last year but with my friends, family and many others within the Pokémon community I have been able to keep myself sane for another year and hoping that 2019 holds better for me. I wish to everyone a prosperous and healthy year as we go forward through another fresh 12 months of Competitive Pokémon!
Tier Zero Games
Before getting onto my report of the League Cup on Saturday and where I see the current build of the deck going in future tournaments in the build up to Team Up, I would like to mention my team and sponsors that have been supporting us over the last few months, Tier Zero Games. The team currently as of writing this article has had some very successful results over the last month with Regional finishes, League Cup wins and Challenge results. We have just started to grow and develop as teammates as the work we are doing have helped increase our own performances, there is a lot more to come from us in the future year. Tier Zero Games themselves are a games company which sells TCG singles and products which branch between Yu-Gi-Oh, DragonBall and much much more. We are planning on creating team articles, deck profiles and blogging events as much as we can, although the blog page is still in development with the sponsor. Buzzwole/Garbodor/Shrine List
The League Cup which we visited Saturday was at SkywardFire Games in Lowestoft, had 33 players which were mixed with Juniors, Seniors and Masters. I decided that BuzzGarbShrine was probably the best play for this event as the majority of the East of England usually play some form of Zoroark deck and in general with Zoroark taking the win at Harrogate Regionals I was expecting to see a lot of ZoroRoc, ZoroWeavile and many other ability reliant decks such as Gardevoir, Malamar and Decidueye. With Buzzwole being a strong counter to Zoroark and with the fairy Alolan Ninetales getting item cards I thought that this could be a good play going forward. I did not expect to see too much White Kyurem, Granbull or Emploeon, which I would say are some of the tougher match ups as you can’t really one shot much of the board early or late game with 50 damage being the normal output for a baby Buzzwole. The list I took was as follows:
Pokemon - 19 Trainers - 32 Energy - 9
4 Buzzwole FLI 4 Lillie 4 Unit Energy FDY
2 Trubbish GRI 4 Guzma 4 Rainbow Energy
2 Garbodor GRI 3 Cynthia 1 Beast Energy Prism
2 Sneasel ULP 2 Professor Kukui
2 Weavile ULP 4 Ultra Ball
2 Slugma LOT 4 Nest Ball
2 Maagcargo CES 3 Choice Band
1 Diancie Prism FLI 2 Rescue Stretcher
1 Oranguru SUM 1 Pal Pad
1 Ditto Prism LOT 1 Field Blower
1 Switch
3 Shrine of Punishment
I decided on the Pal Pad quite late on in the week due to the likelihood of you discarding supporters early on to be able to get set up so it meant I was able to recycle them back in for the chance to draw them more likely if Magcargo - Oranguru engine got shut down. The field blower is very good to be able to deny your opponent advantages with tools such as Wishful Baton or Exp. Share which help make some decks really lethal. It can also help in the stadium trade as it makes your opponent discard a stadium as well meaning if they replace the one that just got blower away your shrine will be able to come out positive and more likely stick. The other selection dilemma was with rescue stretcher as I was thinking of playing just the one in the list but with having so many lines of Pokémon two help to be able to continuously find the correct attacker you need for a match up. Too many times i recycled Trubbish, Garbodor, Guru into deck or when it came down to it I was able to put another Sneasel onto my bench so that i could guarantee the Weavile coming into play next turn.Match-Ups and Results
My Matchups of the day went like this:
R1 - LWW vs Harley Challis - Metal Magnezone/Box
R2 - LL vs Josh Parks - Passimian
R3 - WW vs Andy King - ZoroTalesWeavile
R4 - LL vs Ross Warren - ZoroRocWeavile
R5 - WW vs Ethan Schroder - VikaRay with Scoop Ups
T8 - WW vs Josh Parks - Passimian
T4 - LWW vs Thomas Naylor - UltraSquids
Final - WW vs Brad Bartlett - Passimian
Round one was an incredibly interesting game as it was not something I had prepared for in my thought out meta for the tournament. It was an incredibly good deck which ran Stevens Resolve, Lady and the Devolve Dialga from LOT. It was probably the worst match up I had on the table for the day which I came up against. With Harley being able to simply play a Magnezone and 2 Dialga in the first game it was not going anywhere fast for me as he streamed knockouts onto Buzzwoles without playing any extra abilities or items. Game 2 and 3 unfortunately for him he did brick quite badly as well starting two prize attackers in both games. This meant with shrine sticking and the general prize trade was incredibly unflavoured for him in those games. Metal frying pan was awkward to play against as it reduced 30 damage but I was able to get my field blower out within plenty of time usually to knockout Dialga’s when the attachment of pans were an issue. Beast energy and Diancie made it so if I was able to get a big Buzzwole out I would be able to do 130 without flipping a coin for knockout using Swing Around.
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| Beast Energy helps to knockout Tapu Koko's early on and makes 130 easier to hit! |
Round two was a streamed game in which i played the lovley Josh Parks who was playing Passimian. By turn one I had the majority of my bench filled and when he put his first Passimian onto the bench I knew I was in trouble. Having played Passimian for the majority of Q1, I knew how to play around the deck but the turn one was the killer as he was able to stream attackers continuously to spread enough to skip sledgehammer turn and knock out Oranguru and Magcargo. The spread tactic against Buzzwole works really well with Passimian and the only way to really take advantage of the deck is to find Beast energy early to take out Tapu Koko as quickly as you can otherwise they will be able to spread as much as they want. Josh played it really well so kudos to him for that and quite funnily said to him I will see him in Top Cut, which I did in my Top 8 match! A shout out for him as Josh has just started his own YouTube to talk about his journey, so go check out Math Based Gaming.
Round three was against one of our own Andy King from Marquee Models and both of us were quite unhappy with this being our round three match up as we did not want to play each other in an ideal world but sadly thats what happens at tournaments. I was able to take the win as Andy didn’t have the greatest game one because his deck let him down and then game two was better but he failed to find an energy when he wanted it. The matchup is generally favourable for myself having a buzzwole deck which usually can run riot on Zoroark without much hassle. They do have to keep up their prize trades and find a way to constantly reply otherwise they get 1 or two shot by Buzzwole or Weavile. The next day though Andy was able to get himself his first T8 finish with the same deck and it was truly deserved for all the hard work and time he has put into the game I think that you will be seeing his name a lot more now in top cut for future tournaments to come!
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| Weavile is really strong against ability reliant decks doing 50x each ability played by my opponent! |
Round four was against SkywardFire’s own Ross Warren, I enjoy playing Ross because no matter how many times we play it is always incredibly fun and interesting the way the game turns out. Sadly though this was my time to start bricking especially the first game with him taking advantage of my bad start. Second game was a bit closer but he had answers for everything, especially a cheeky switch, multiswitch combo which completely demolished my board state and he ran out the winner. I was happy to take my brick at this point during the day although it would have been nice to not have the possibility of bubbling or losing out of Top Cut. Where it is a favourable match up unless you are able to make up prizes quickly due to Weavile or Buzzwole if you brick then it can go down hill, especially with Lycanroc being an issue as you do not hit weakness against it. Ross played really well not just in our match making sure I could not comeback into the game but he managed to get T8 in the Cup and then the next day as well. At this stage of the tournament I knew I had to win to have a chance of cutting.
Round five was against Ethan Schroder who was playing an interesting Rayquaza build which played super scoop ups which meant that any damaged Ray’s or Zeraoras could be removed from play. The match up was fairly straight forward with much of it being Weavile putting in work to knockout Rayquaza and Tapu Lele’s with my sledgehammer turn usually meant i took out the benched Zeraora. It was something that was quite an easier matchup that I had during the tournament. The deck event found room to run Lysandre labs with the scoop ups, which did cause an issue when choice band was turned off in game two.
At this stage of the tournament it came down to if the results went my way, if my resistance was good enough and to see how it went. I was able to sneak into Top Cut at 8th seed to which I was extremely happy with reaching a points position for the first time in a while, not only this but teammate Timur Yusuf also got into points position. The rest of the Top Cut was in the following order:
Top-Cut after Swiss Rounds
1. Josh Parks - Passimian
2. Brad Bartlett - Passimian
3. Seb Symonds - Psychic/Malamar
4. Timur - Yusuf - Blacephalon
5. Thomas Naylor - UltraMalamar
6. Ross Warren - ZoroRocWeavile
7. Scot Symonds - BuzzGarbShrine
8. Charlie Merryweather - BuzzGarbShrine
From the results of the Top Cut you can see that the majority of the decks were single prized attackers so it meant that there was not as many 2 prize attackers in the field, although both Thomas Naylor and Tim Yusuf were able to dip and dive round some of these awkward matchups for themselves. It was quite interesting to see how the only Zoroark deck will do in the Top cut as I was expecting a lot of Zoroark and only one got into cut. I do not think this was because it was not played this weekend but I think down to the diversity of different deck people decided to take with decks like Rhyperior Mill, Rayquaza, Magnezone Box, Lost March and Buzzwole GX which can have their inconsistencies but risk sometimes outweighs the reward with these high rolling decks.
Top 8 Result
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| Diancies attack helps combat spread decks |
Starting with the Top 8 match against Josh, he started incredibly slow in this game showing some of the inconsistencies which with Passimian can happen and in a match were it is important to start well, he did not start at all well. With the fast pace set from myself being able to get early set up damage on the board before he was able to get anything on the field. He did make a magical swap play eventually which I personally preferred him to knock out the Diancie so I did not have any immediate attackers as it was getting slowly powered up to start taking knockouts on Kokos which in the match up against spread is extremely good as it heals 30 damage each turn so it requires your opponent to commit to knocking it out rather than spreading damage. I manage to finally pull the switch to take the game after Josh did extremely well to bring it back to 1-1 on prizes and i was able to knock out the last Pokémon. The second game Josh once again did not have the best game as he had to start attacking with Passimian early to get the pressure onto me due to time running out. This meant he was activating Sledgehammer turn and meant I was able to trade 2 for 1 towards the end of the game. Josh was such an amazing lad to play as I have met him previously at Harrogate Regionals and was a great opponent in both swiss and top cut.
1 Passimian < 8 BuzzGarbShrine
2 Passimian > 7 BuzzGarbShrine
3 PsychicMalamar > 6 ZoroRocWeavile
4 Blacephalon < 5 UltraMalamar
Top 4 Result
The Top 4 game was quite straight forward as I faced Thomas Naylor who was playing UltraSquids with Giratina so I was fully expecting to lose this game. Game one he started well and completely ran me off the field within 5 turns which ended up with me conceding and turning round to game three as I’m sure you can guess it was just a lot of Giratina knock outs. Game 2 was better from myself as he started one of his 2 prize attackers leading to him not be able to trade back favourably as i was able to stream Garbodor and Weavile until I took enough prizes to win the game. Game three was very awkward as I started well although starting trubbish and having to use Garbodor for the opening turns hurt, especially when he started his incredibly spicy Kartana Gx tech! He then continued to pass for multiple turns as he struggled to get going. Which he was unable to turn it around as I managed to pull ahead due to the 2 prize attackers he did bench to keep himself in the game. It was a real shame he did not have a great game 3 but then thats Pokémon.
8 BuzzGarbShrine > 5 UltraMalamar
2 Passimian > 3 Psychic Malamar
Final Result
Final game was against Brad Bartlett who was playing Passimian. For someone who loves Passimian every time I played it today it made me wince but I knew the game plan to win. Brad played it a lot more Passimian based game rather than Josh’s spread tactic. Brad had terrible issues getting energy in the first game which did not give him an easy route to come back at all. I took the lead quite early with an early and aggressive Buzzwole in Game 1 and it enabled me to run away with the game. Game two was much the same apart from I did not get ideally set up and had to bounce around with a weavile and Buzzwole to knockout a Latios which was threatening my Buzzwole. I was able to keep rolling from well timed guzma’s and was able to pull ahead in the game cutting off his draw support in Oranguru and Magcargo. I was able to take my last prize with the Garbodor and feel the huge relief of winning a competition for a while.
2 Passimian < 8 BuzzGarbShrine
If you would like to watch VODs of the games they are available on the SkywardFire Games Twitch Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/skywardfiregames. They put on an excellent
event and it was amazing to be part of with the stream and general organisation of the event.
Looking Ahead
Changes that I would make to the deck would be to add maybe a Judge into the list as it would stop quite a few decks including Unnown HAND, Zoroark and other set up decks having so many cards in their hand at one stage. It felt bad not being able to stop a deck having cards in there hand. This would have helped against Ross as he was able to keep hold of combination cards like multi switch and switch to be able to get access to what he wanted when he wanted. I felt like counter energy would be good for its overall usefulness to be able to retreat Oranguru or Diancie which at times got Guzma’d up into the active position. I think I would prefer an extra switch or a Tate & Liza instead. Finally one consideration I did make before the tournament was Weavile with the attack Rule of Evil, this is due to the really bad Malamar matchup and being able to clear up the board quite easily with two attacks doing 60 to all Pokémon with abilities, which is food for thought heading into the weekend coming up.
The list I will be testing going forward in the next few weeks:
Pokemon - 20 Trainers - 31 Energy - 9
4 Buzzwole FLI 4 Lillie 4 Unit Energy FDY
2 Trubbish GRI 3 Guzma 4 Rainbow Energy
2 Garbodor GRI 2 Cynthia 1 Beast Energy Prism
2 Sneasel ULP 2 Professor Kukui
2 Weavile ULP 4 Ultra Ball
2 Slugma LOT 4 Nest Ball
2 Maagcargo CES 3 Choice Band
1 Diancie Prism FLI 2 Rescue Stretcher
1 Oranguru SUM 1 Pal Pad
1 Ditto Prism LOT 1 Field Blower
1 Weavile BUS 1 Switch
2 Shrine of Punishment
1 Judge
1 Tate & Liza
With Weavile being such a crucial card in this deck it makes sense to even increase the line to 3-3 although it will decrease the dynamic of the deck. I would like to see some creative inclusions going forward like the BUS Weavile which can be a surprise in the deck to take it a step further than it currently is. I have seen a few putting in cards like Granbull, Nihilego and Celesteela which are to be included for specific metas. I feel that consistency is key though for this deck to do well hence the inclusion of Pal Pad and Rescue stretcher. I look forward to hearing what future lists will play going forward as there is a chance to add creativity.
Thank you very much for reading my Cup report, I have tried to make it as detailed as possible to give everyone an insight to how the matches happened and what I would change about the deck going forward. The meta going into the closing few weeks of the Quarter are planning to be absolutely packed with chopping and changing what we are expecting to be good and bad. With Team Up around the corner we could be saying goodbye to some of our favourite decks but gaining a new breath of life with Tag Team Gx’s being introduced to the game. It will be interesting if they have as much impact as when the first GX’s originally took the stage. I still have nightmares about Decidueye/Vileplume. I look forward to writing some new articles in the next week or so about my favourite decks coming out of Team Up.
Make sure to follow my media outlets to keep up to date with my tournaments and what future streams, articles and videos I will be bringing over the next few weeks. I will also be making a video profile of the deck for Tier Zero Games explaining more detailed about card choices. I did play at Cataclysm Games League Cup Sunday playing ZoroControl but less said about that the better, that was an interesting learning curve. But the team did have success with Tim making a Top4 finish with Lost March.
See you next time,
Charlie
139/350 CP
Twitter: @ThePelipperPost
Twitch: Twitch.tv/ThePelipperPost
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