Hey there, Cut or Tap readers! I just got home from this year’s North American International Championships and am beyond pumped about how the tournament went! My friend and teammate Andrew Hedrick took the whole thing down with Turbo Lost Zone Box, while I, unfortunately, bubbled out of the Top 16 after losing the win-and-in to the Top 8.
I chose to play Chien-Pao ex, as I think the deck was in an incredibly good position given my predictions for the metagame and how the tournament would play out. I expected Lugia and Raging Bolt ex to be the most popular decks while Gardevoir ex would be absolutely dominating the top tables by the end of the tournament. I also expected Dragapult ex, one of the deck’s toughest matchups, to be exceedingly rare. Each of these predictions played out as expected, making Chien-Pao ex/Baxcalibur an incredible metagame call for the tournament. Additionally, it was the deck I had by far the most experience with, and – as I try to advise my students – the deck you can play best is typically the best one to play.
I won’t speak much about the deck list as there isn’t much to say about it. I tried to keep the deck as consistent as possible, and thus only changed 1.5 cards from the list I used to finish 5th in Indianapolis a few weeks back. The only changes I made were that I cut Cyllene (a bad card) for a second copy of Earthen Vessel (a good card), and I made one of my Bidoofs 70 HP to better play around Dragapult ex and Munkidori in Gardevoir ex decks.
With that said, let’s dive into my tournament run.
Spoiler Alert: I beat both Tord Reklev and Ross Cawthon 2-0.
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