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Interesting Decks & Techs at the LA Regional
▲ 58 r/pkmntcg

Interesting Decks & Techs at the LA Regional

Decks

Feels like there are no exciting deck having success? Well, there are some still, listed below. I'm only including top 64 of LA regional as my personal measurement of success, and what's 'interesting' is also subjective. If you think I should include something else, feel free to comment.

  1. Hale Obernolte's 5th place Lopunny Dudunsparce: Unlike other variants of this deck you've seen before, this one doesn't run Mega Froslass at all, instead opting for more consistency with Pokegear. It also runs TWM Abra to cycle Lopunny from the active without having to commit to drawing with Dudunsparce, and going under Rocket's Watchtower. The Enriching Energy ace spec complements this excellently. The Spiky Energy might confuse you, but it's just the best colourless energy left in the format. It might help math against Raging Bolt and Zoroark sometimes but Hale himself admitted it never came up.
  2. Xavier Phelan's 6th place Lucario Hariyama: Lucario's strongest soldier. This build opts for Secret Box to help consistency, Carmine to make sure you're never having a dead first turn, and Tarragon for recovery. It even features 1 Mega Signal to search off Petrel / Box to search Mega Luke without having to discard. This build is blazing fast and can OHKO Dragapult with either Black Belt or Grav. Mountain + PPP.
  3. Patrick Raty's 9th place Rocket's Mewtwo Spidops: Features Team Rocket's Kangaskhan ex for an early attacker that kills Cornerstone. This builds aims to fix the most glaring issue with the archetype in consistency by running Secret Box, 4 Lillies, and 0 Archer. The 4 Giovanni allows it to pick and choose its KOs, and has great synergy with Kanga. The tool selection is interesting as well. 2 Handheld Fan counters Festival Lead, and Lucky Helmet act as an anti-Unfair Stamp tech since the deck doesn't have onboard draw. It even runs a Rocket's Wobuffet, helpful in matchups where the opponent cannot OHKO your Mewtwo, and also combos with the 4 Giovannis.
  4. David Andrew's 13th place Raging Bolt Tera Box: This version was a lot more popular pre-rotation, and hasn't been seen much since Sada has gone. Like most Bolt decks it boasts good matchups into all Pult variants without having to commit a useless 2 prizer a.k.a Meowth to the bench and slotting Chien-Pao. The Terapagos gives it a leg up against sloppier Bolt opponents.
  5. Brandon Salazar’s 37th Hydrapple Meganium: The first truly successful tournament for Hydrapple in the TCG, and this is the highest placing list. In hindsight, Brandon comments on how he’d like to run more Celebis and no Briar. The list is otherwise fairly similar to what we’ve seen out of Japan’s City Leagues.
  6. Sammy Allens' 44th place Raging Bolt Okidogi: Yes you read that right. This deck features the LunaRock engine and Okidogi as single prize attackers in a Raging Bolt shell. The shared synergy in Fighting Energy and Prism Energy allows Crispin to bridge the gap between the two archetypes and Okidogi handles Crustle for the Bolt, as well as presenting a KO on fighting weaks like Mega Kanga, Mega Lop, and most importantly Dudunsparce ex, the latter meant to abuse more basic ex heavy versions of Raging Bolt. It even runs Prime Catcher.

Techs

Sometimes just a card or 2 gives the deck enough options without rehauling the entire gameplan. I will not be including things already known since Prague like Pecharunt in Raging Bolt. Here are some highlights (not including those mentioned above):

  1. TWM Dedenne in Alakazam: allows you to recycle Enhanced Hammer for the Mist / Rocky Energy matchups or Sacred Ash in the odd really long game. Or anything, really, if the situation arises.
  2. Hand Held Fan: anti-Festival Lead tech, especially good in single-prizer decks.
  3. SSP Paldeon Tauros: anti-Crustle tech in Dragapult or slop box.
  4. Neo-Upper Energy & Hilda in Dragapult: allows you to Candy + Hilda / Meowth and Phantom Dive on turn 2 more reliably.
  5. Maractus in Dragapult: retreat locker and fixes some math especially against smaller exs.
  6. Relicanth in Cynthia’s Garchomp: allows Roserade to become a single prize attacker using Spike Sting and various Cheery onto Glory.
  7. Totodile in Starmie Froslass: dedicated retreat locker for decks with water energy. This thing will not be evolving.
  8. Koraidon ex in Raging Bolt: Passimiam alternative without having to commit so many basics onto the board, also forces a 7-prize map after your Mega Kang dies.
  9. Secret Box in Starmie Froslass: Ran by the 2nd highest placing deck of the archetype, the increased consistency especially in finding early Risky Ruins can come in clutch.
  10. Crushing Hammer in Dragapult: As much as I’d like to write ‘no comment’ here, I can’t. This tech is helpful in breaking Mist / Rocky energy on the bench so you can phantom dive into it, or just strips basic energy off the board in various matchups where your opponent doesn’t play a lot of acceleration like in the mirror. The Garchomp matchup is the most obvious, since they often don’t play Neo-Upper. Your initial reaction might be that Blaziken helps against this, but ironically doesn't. If you see this card flipped against you, well-
u/Arabella_Fabiene — 10 hours ago
▲ 151 r/pkmntcg

The Worst Performing Decks of LA Regional

Dragapult is BDIF and insanely successful, but what about the archetypes that weren't? I'm not going to bother with decks that only had 1 or 2 reps, and limit this to those with at least 5+ players. Here's a listing of all the sub 14% conversion decks, sorted by conversion rate.

  1. Ceruledge (0% conversion / 11 players): this shouldn't be surprising to anyone who's followed this once popular deck. The lack of Professor's Research really hurts and this deck is just too linear without the power. Maybe it'll get better after Prism Tower releases but Japanese results makes this doubtful.
  2. Ethan's Typhlosion (0% conversion / 14 players): this deck was eaten alive. Candy in Pult and the increase in Dusknoirs in general meant doom for this stage 2 one-prizer. The future does look bleak.
  3. Flareon (0% conversion / 15 players): there were some influencers hyping this deck up after rotation but it has done hot nothing. 0 success literally anywhere except City Leagues. I don't know if this deck has any batters left after this, nor what it's even good at at this point.
  4. Archaludon (0% conversion / 6 players): all 4 variants of Zoroark, Dunsparce, Metang, and Cinderace saw play here. Unfortunately this deck is just currently hopelessly underpowered. Maybe Prism Tower will help the Dunsparce variant but to what end?
  5. Toxtricity with Mega Sharpedo / Mega Absol (0% conversion / 5 players): these decks are just underpowered imo. Takes too long to set up and has basically 0 good matchups since there are very few Psychic decks to farm.
  6. Yanmega (0% conversion / 5 players): one of my personal favourites, but unfortunately only good at cheesing wins off of grass-weaks and there weren't a lot of those in this regional compared to Prague.
  7. Starmie Dusknoir (3.45% conversion / 58 players): probably the biggest loser of this regional. Top 4 in Prague and cannot even squeeze out 5% here. The deck still bricks like crazy despite all the techs and the Psyduck usage didn't help.
  8. Mega Lucario (5.8% conversion / 68 players): Lucario's century of humiliation saved by Xavier Phelan making top cut with his Secret Box build. The rest dropped like flies despite the lack of respect aside from the Clefairy other decks play for Dragapult. This deck looks very grim going forward, unless Xavier's build turns out to be the truth long term.
  9. Mega Venusaur / Mega Meganium (6.25% conversion / 16 players): this deck sucks and is just worse Hydrapple ex (who has 25% conversion) in every way that matters. Not surprising.
  10. Rocket's Honchkrow (7.7% conversion / 39 players): very disappointing result for the Honch after a fairly successful Prague. Another 1-prizer deck that gets eaten alive by all the Dragapult Dusknoirs, or just Dragapult in general. Also not a lot of Crustle at this tournament for Honch to farm.
  11. Steven's Metagross (8.33% conversion / 12 players): underpowered deck that has some good matchups (Mega Froslass, Alakazam, Festival Lead) but otherwise extremely middling with not much of a selling point.
  12. Lillie's Clefairy Box (10% conversion / 10 players): this is the slop box that plays Lillie's Pearl. Good Dragapult matchup but gets farmed by most other things due to Clef's low base HP. Worse than other slop box variants in most ways.
  13. Tera Box (11.1% conversion / 9 players): the Noctowl line isn't enough to make up for this deck's low power ceiling compared to slop box and raging bolt.
  14. Slowking (12.5% conversion / 16 players): a middling deck with an ok Dragapult matchup. It's very linear and predictable as well. Playing 10 million garnets also doesn't help with consistency.
  15. Grimmsnarl Froslass (13% conversion / 23 players): this deck is just underpowered now, and gets farmed by all the grasses, bolt, Garchomp, and Zoro.
  16. Crustle (13.33% conversion / 15 players): significantly worse than its Prague performance. We do see Crustle techs in decks now but there are barely anyone playing this deck in the first place.
  17. Okidogi Barbaracle (13.8% conversion / 29): good single prizer with an underrated matchup spread which unfortunately gets farmed by the BDIF.

Other fun facts:

  • Dragapult Blaziken is the Dragapult build with by far the lowest conversion rate at 18% while every other Dragapult variants is 25%+.
  • Hydrapple ex has the highest conversion rate of non-Pult variants, albeit with a lower sample size. After that are variants of slop box.
  • Starmie Froslass ended up much better than Starmie Dusknoir, boasting a 20% conversion rate.
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u/Arabella_Fabiene — 1 day ago