What’s up everyone? I’m new here to Cut or Tap, so allow me to introduce myself. My name is Chris Collins; I have multiple State wins (back when they were a thing) under my belt, as well as consistent placings at big tournaments throughout the year. If you’ve attended any West Coast Regionals, you probably know who I am or at least my face. I’m currently a High School Senior in Utah. But enough about me – today I wanted to talk about Arizona Regionals and how I did.

I finished 18th at the tournament (equivalent to a Top 32) with Toad/Bats/Jolteon. This was actually my first time ever playing the deck at a big tournament, so this deep run makes me feel good about my potential with the deck. In years past, I just saw the deck as underwhelming and was surprised to see it do consistently well through its lifetime.  Leading up to this tournament, however,  I had put a lot of my time into other Seismitoad variants going into Worlds and various League Challenges in my area, ranging from Waterbox to Toad/Tina. I understood the play style of the card through and through at this point, and all I had left really was to find the optimal variant for the tournament.

To be fair, I had other options in the back of pocket such as the Vileplume Toolbox deck, Night March, Yveltal/Maxie’s, and even a creative Donphan list. But I decided on Toad because I felt like I could play the card at optimal levels. When we are looking at variants of Seismitoad that are viable for tournament play, we are pretty much restricted to Toad/Tina and Toad/Bats as they just stand out over the rest in artillery. So, to determine which I liked better in tournament play, I decided to just hit up some League Challenges and play both variants to see which one I liked better. Even though I placed higher overall with Toad/Tina at these tournaments, I really did not like how it played and Toad/Bats was the clear winner in my mind. I decided against Toad/Tina because I felt my Yveltal matchup was much better with Toad/Bats, and Toad/Tina had too many flips for my liking. So, now that I knew what I was most likely going to play, it was time for me to make the list. Before I dive into my card choices and matchups, here’s the list I played for the event:

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