What’s up Cut or Tap, Jeremy Jallen here! I’m back today to talk about what I felt was the best play for the Arizona Regional Championships, and how Expanded looks as the format moves towards Pennsylvania Regionals next month. I for one think that the Expanded format is great for this game, as we saw there are numerous decks that can win at any given moment. That diversity creates healthy competition.
Table of Contents:
- Deciding on Greninja
- How Greninja Changes After Winning
- New Decks Moving Forward
- What I Would Play in Pennsylvania’s Regional
1. Deciding on Greninja
For a while leading up to Regionals, I was tinkering around with a Seismitoad EX/Yanmega deck that got me some points at League Challenges. It was centered around energy denial through Team Flare Grunt and Enhanced Hammer, along with more disruption with the likes of Quaking Punch, Head Ringer, and Hypnotoxic Laser. It used Yanmega as a late game sweeper and was actually a pretty fun deck for the format. I called it Swamp Things (because Toads and Dragonflies)! I found out pretty quickly that it had some really hard matchups but seemed to crush on Yveltal and the decks that focused on Double Colorless Energy. I basically put it on the backburner for later.
Seismitoad/Yanmega
| Pokémon – 15 | Trainers – 38 | Energy – 7 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Seismitoad EX | 4 | Professor Sycamore | 4 | Ultra Ball | 4 | Double Colorless | ||
| 2 | Shaymin EX ROS | 3 | Judge | 4 | VS Seeker | 3 | Water | ||
| 1 | Jirachi EX | 1 | N | 4 | Hypnotoxic Laser | ||||
| 4 | Yanma STS | 1 | Team Flare Grunt | 2 | Enhanced Hammer | ||||
| 4 | Yanmega STS | 1 | Xerosic | 2 | Head Ringer | ||||
| 1 | Dedenne FFI | 1 | Lysandre | 2 | Muscle Band | ||||
| 1 | Ghetsis | 1 | Escape Rope | ||||||
| 1 | Delinquent | 1 | Tool Scrapper | ||||||
| 1 | Super Rod | ||||||||
| 1 | Computer Search | ||||||||
| 2 | Virbank City Gym | ||||||||
| 1 | Parallel City | ||||||||
Yanmega hits great numbers with Muscle Band, Hypnotoxic Laser, and Virbank City Gym, or even after a banded Quaking Punch. With Seismitoad EX/Crobat always being a strong contender, this deck may somehow find its way into San Jose’s Regional tournament.
Two weeks before Arizona, Travis Nunlist comes to my house talking up this Greninja deck aimed to fight against Archeops. We tested a gauntlet of matchups and found that it was beating most of the decks handily, even the “bad” match ups like Vespiquen. The flow of the deck seemed slow at first but I was reminded of the games that it had during the State Championships last year, where if the deck set up, it was almost invincible.
As for the list:
You must have a Stage 2 Membership to see the rest of this post. If you don't have a Stage 2 account, you can Sign Up for one here.
Round 3 against you was so not in your favor. I wish we could have had a better game Jeremy. Maybe you’ll get me back in the future :).