Hey guys, Bubble Boy back again with another tournament report. US Intercontinentals was this past weekend with a somewhat diverse meta and tons of interesting information to talk about. I ended the event with yet another bubble, but this time it wasn’t as painful because it was only for Top 16 rather than Top 8. I took notes about my matches throughout all of Day 1 of the event so that I could give you guys a strong, accurate tournament report. I remember Day 2 pretty well and learned a lot that I am excited to share with you all. I’ll start with some list talk, and then move to my tournament report.
The morning of the event, I was set on Zoroark because I was expecting many to face tons of mirror and Garbodor decks. I felt like my Umbreon list was the optimal play. Though, something in my gut told me it was not safe. After finishing my deck list and preparing to turn it in with the last-minute changes, I decided I couldn’t do it. I rapidly wrote out a Garbodor/Espeon list knowing that it would be the deck I legitimately felt most comfortable with. In hindsight, I am completely happy with my decision. Zoroark was a great deck, but I had never used it at a big event which made me uncomfortable with that choice.
This is the list I wrote out, with around five minutes remaining before the judges collected deck lists.
| Pokémon – 19 | Trainers – 30 | Energy – 11 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Garbodor GRI | 4 | Professor Sycamore | 4 | Ultra Ball | 7 | Psychic | ||
| 4 | Trubbish BKP | 3 | N | 3 | Choice Band | 4 | Double Colorless | ||
| 2 | Espeon GX | 2 | Lysandre | 2 | Field Blower | ||||
| 3 | Eevee SUM | 1 | Hex Maniac | 1 | Rescue Stretcher | ||||
| 1 | Flareon AOR | 1 | Brigette | 1 | Super Rod | ||||
| 1 | Drampa GX | 1 | Professor Kukui | 2 | Float Stone | ||||
| 1 | Oranguru | 1 | Olympia | ||||||
| 1 | Shaymin EX ROS | 3 | Vs Seeker | ||||||
| 2 | Tapu Lele GX | ||||||||
| 1 | Parallel City | ||||||||
You may have seen this list on the site prior, because I did post this list on the day of the event. This is something I almost always do before an event because I want our Stage 2 members to have my list. I normally post my list the night before the event, but in this case I had written the list out as the event was starting, and thus didn’t have the list on the site until after my first round.
The list that I had put together prior to the event was the one I posted in my article here. The list I used for the event is somewhat different, but only by two or three cards. I ended up dropping the eighth Psychic for a Parallel, dropping second Rescue Stretcher for a Professor Kukui, and cutting my third Float Stone for a Flareon. These changes were good and bad, but overall I think I would have rather played the list from the article instead of the one above. Seven Psychic really hurt me, especially in my mirrors against Tord and Kian during Day 2. Kukui ended up being a dead card a lot of the time, and I used Flareon for one attack throughout the whole tournament. With that being said, I couldn’t have known I would face 0 Metagross and one Decidueye.
Seeing some lists after the event forced me to consider some changes that I previously was not in favor of. This is what my list looks like now.
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