Welcome back Subs, to another special article from yours truly about my Groudon deck that I’ve continued to pilot throughout this season. I’m happy to say that I’ve amassed 1/3 of my invite with Groudon, and after my 36-point bubble at Orlando, I have achieved my invite to the 2024 World Championship in Honolulu, Hawaii.
I want to start with some shout-outs since this season has practically come to an end for myself. The first is to one of my students and testing partner Bodhi Robinson, who worked on this particular variant of Groudon, and has continued to help and push me into not giving up on the deck. He’s also had an incredible season in his own right, so watch out for him at Worlds! Next to Luke, another student of mine, who also clenched his invite with Groudon, losing his win-and-in to Pidgeot Control, one of the only auto-losses the deck has. Last but not least, I want to thank God, for which I can do anything through Him and with Him. I wouldn’t be anywhere without His guidance so I feel it appropriate to give Him thanks.
In this article, I’m going to go over the meta that EUIC developed, and where that landed my deck choices for Orlando. I’ll go over my rounds that eventually ended with me in contention for Top 8. Then I’ll go over some matchup details and possible tech inclusions going forward with the variant. To start, I did compete in EUIC 2024, where I placed in the Top 512 with Charizard, going 5-3-1. I didn’t play any Control techs, including no switching cards. I decided to simply tech for the mirror and Chien-Pao, which I expected to be much larger in comparison. Unfortunately I was paired to two Stall/Control, which ultimately ended my tournament run.
Meta Information
The first ground-breaking question that everyone wanted answered going into EUIC was: “Can Charizard be countered, or is it too powerful?” Tord Reklev, now five-time international Champion, gave an astounding answer by simply taking the whole tournament down with his own variant sporting a new engine. We’ll go into more detail about this engine shortly.
Isaiah Bradner placed second with his Bannete/Giratina variant, using this tech Bannette line to deal with the horrible matchup against Chien-Pao decks. This solidified Giratina as a real threat in this format, but I’d like to point out that the Bannette seems underwhelming and in fact didn’t carry over to Orlando Regional finishes either.
William from Brazil placed in Top 4 with his Charizard variant that opted to use double TM:Devo as his mirror strategy, as well as helping into Baxcalibur.
The final deck I’ll mention was Alessandro’s Pidgeot Control variant that he has been piloting all year long to great success. This finish demonstrated that Control is very viable and a threat, which plays a part in why it did so horribly in Orlando.
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Love this deck! I played it to a local cup and did well with it