Feraligatr
Obviously the most powerful and popular deck in Standard, it proved it's
dominance here tonight! Variances included Smeargle, Suicune, and a
Quilfish as well!
4 Professor Elm
4 Misty's Wrath
4 Double Gust
3 Secret Mission
3 Trash Exchange
3 Focus Band
1 Time Capsule
1 The Rocket's Training Gym
1 Narrow Gym
----------------------
Crobat
A popular and powerful counter to Feraligatr, it made a showing. It's
amazing attack, along with other control elements in Chaos Gym and
Rocket's Sneak Attack allows it to win, primarily against Feraligatr. The
Crobats lost to the another Crobat, the Slowking/Suicune (more on that
later), Feraligatr (Silvestro's 11-12-winning one), and an Amphy deck. A
good top tier archetype for Modified.
4 Professor Elm
4 Misty's Wrath
4 Double Gust
3 Focus Band
3 Chaos Gym
3 Nightly Garbage Run
3 Rocket's Sneak Attack
2 Resistance Gym
Other Decks
This bracket had many very good single rogue decks making it in. I'll
start with "Gerardo's Magcargo" deck that took me by surprise
when I saw the deck list. The strategy that appears to me is Entei + an
energy drop gets you 2-4 Fires on a Slugma first turn, evolve into
Magcargo and you can basically kill anything from then on, with Double
Gust allowing you to prevent things from building. The deck lost to Eric
Brooks' Feraligatr deck in the 13-14 Final, I mean, the Brooks's decklist
for Fera is amazing!
Aaron Gerardo (Finalist)
22 Fire Energy
4 Slugma
4 Magcargo
3 Entei
2 Cleffa
2 Elekid
4 Misty's Wrath
4 Professor Elm
4 Double Gust
4 Time Capsule
4 Focus Band
4 Good Manners
On the way there, Gerardo beat in the
semifinal another rogue surprise, Johnathan Payne's Ampharos deck. Using
Amphy to build up baddies like other Amphy's or Rocket's Zapdos, and
launching an offensive brought Payne to the semifinal of 13-14! Watch out
for this guy on Sunday!
Johnathan Payne (Semifinalist): L Amphy
13 Lightning Energy
3 Metal
4 Mareep (NG)
3 Flaafy (NR)
3 Ampharos (NR)
3 Rocket's Zapdos
3 Cleffa
1 Magby
1 Pichu
4 Professor Elm
3 Misty's Wrath
3 Gold Berry
3 Balloon Berry
3 Focus Band
3 Double Gust
2 Nightly Garbage Run
2 Chaos Gym
2 Healing Fields
1 Warp Point
In the 11-12 division as well, a very
innovative deck made the semifinals in a Slowking/Suicune deck from
Michael Perucca. It sucessfully beat a Crobat deck. If Slowkings could
come out early, and given a bad draw for the opponent, Suicune could
simply control the game by not allowing Eeeeks, Sputters, Taunts, and
Double Gust makes this deck meaner. Its loss? Feraligatr.
4 Professor Elm
4 Misty's Wrath
4 Focus Band
3 Chaos Gym
3 Double Gust
3 Balloon Berry
2 Master Ball
2 Time Capsule
1 Sprout Tower
Over in 13-14, a Erika's Victreebel control
deck made top 8 in the #2 seed from Nicholas Morton. Running very few
trainers, this deck is all about control and beating Feraligatr. Its
pitfall tonight? Feraligatr.
4 Professor Elm
4 Double Gust
4 Nightly Garbage Run
3 Chaos Gym
3 Focus Band
And we get to the last deck in 11-12, a
very strange Steelix/Fires deck squeaked into the #8 seed. The deck has
many singles and low multiples, and I could see it getting overwhelmed by
Tim Brooks' Feraligatr deck him and his brothers worked so well on this
fall. I can't figure out what makes this deck work, maybe you can:
3 Mary
3 Gold Berry
2 Blaine
1 Erika
1 Cinnabar City Gym
1 Professor Elm
1 Pokemon Breeder Fields
1 Focus Band
TecH!
Of course, we see the emergence of
innovative new tech! Primarily, the increased use of Pichu and
Smeargle and the emergence of Jigglypuff from Southern Islands!
Apparently it's being put in instead of Brocks Mankey either for the
Sing (which sucks, but 0wnz when it works) or it 10 extra HP.
The environment looks pretty good. We've got some dominant decks, but
we've also got other decks that can make a showing and proves that the top
tier decks aren't invincible. Catch ya later!
"If there's a door, we go
in. If there's something we can break, we break it. And in the
end we blow the place to smithereens!" - Selphie Tilmett, Final
Fantasy 8