This is a collaboration between Zach and Jay Lesage for double the reading pleasure! We were asked to do a special article as brothers and we loved the idea upon hearing it! We both have been playing for over a decade with multiple successes across the span of our Pokemon careers.

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The first part of our article will be handled by Zach, discussing his thoughts on the metagame within current League Cup tournaments, and his go-to deck list in Standard tournaments currently.
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Table of Contents (Zach)
i. Up In The Air
ii. It’s Blit! My League Cup Results
iii. Hopefully a Peachy Ending

Up In The Air

“Flight attendants, please prepare for take-off” are the words I am hearing right now from a seemingly (hopefully) confident pilot as I prepare myself for my travels to Atlanta, Georgia for Regionals. I am excited for Regionals, curious about the format going into this major tournament after the sudden metagame shift from Dallas, and somewhat nervous about having a safe flight with very little turbulence.

My mind is racing back and forth on what deck should I play for Georgia. I would consider myself a strong Yveltal-EX deck player and I probably feel most comfortable with that deck in any Standard or Expanded tournament in general. I also feel like the metagame may not accept Yvetal-EX back as the king right now; I think the current hype of Turbo Darkrai-EX decks going into this event will definitely change some players’ deck choices going into this tournament.

I am relieved to find that the very nice stewardess has offered me some complimentary miniature pretzels and a Diet Coke; this is exactly what I needed to stop thinking about Pokemon for five minutes and keep my mind from over-stressing. As I finish eating all of the pretzels and finish the last sip of my drink, I think back to my thoughts earlier on the metagame.

Turbo Darkrai-EX decks will be played and I continue to justify my thoughts on Yveltal-EX as my solidified choice for the event. I think Yveltal-EX is good because some of the Turbo Darkrai-EX decks will be countered by some low-key Zygarde-EX based decks and that can leave me as an experienced Yveltal-EX player in a fairly safe field of 50-50 match-ups. I think all of you who are reading this should check out the list that I dominated my local League Cups, to see the general type of list I wanted to play at Georgia Regionals:

It’s Blit! My League Cup Results

I wanted to share my very cool Yveltal-EX deck list that I used at three different League Cups for some decent finishes last weekend. The metagame field was pretty open on the first day in Oshawa so I decided to take Jay’s London International Championship Finalist list with a few minor tweaks to the deck and play it for the event:

I wanted to have an open deck versus an otherwise unknown field. With the new Pokemon season structure, Canada as a whole only has one major event so we are often stuck wondering where the metagame is going to shift, and we are often left with the results of major events and/or smaller tournaments such as League Challenges to decide which decks we want to play. I feel like Yveltal-EX is usually the most “vanilla” or “50-50” deck that can often do well in events where you are otherwise left unsure.

Oshawa, ON (12/06/2016)

6 Rounds of Swiss, Best of 1, Top 8 Cut

Round 1 vs. Raticate/Ariados (W)
Round 2 vs. Zygarde(W)
Round 3 vs. Mega Gardevoir (W)
Round 4 vs. Volcanion (W)
Round 5 vs. Intentional Draw (T)
Round 6 vs. Intentional Draw (T)

Swiss Record (4-0-2)
Final Placement: 5th – Top 8 vs. Volcanion (LL)

I had some really bad dead draws in these games and it ultimately made me decide upon my deck list for my League Cup the following day. I really like Yveltal-EX as a Pokemon and I focused my efforts into making the deck more consistent and dead-drawing less. Here is the list that I played for the Montreal League Cup:

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