One Week Til Worlds: Analyzing BKT-CST Tournaments

🖉 Tate Whitesell | @twhitesell42

We are now well into exploring the penultimate format of the 2017-18 season: BREAKthrough-Celestial Storm. With the 2018 World Championships just days away in sunny Nashville, Tennessee, players are hard at work trying to define the format and find that "broken" deck.

We've now had three major tournaments or groups of tournaments in this format: the 2018 ARG Invitational; a Team Win and In PTCGO tournament; and the August 18-19 weekend of League Cups. In this article, I'm going to break down the results of each of those.

Disclaimer: I'm not going to attempt to make concrete predictions about the Worlds metagame. That is best left to players with more experience and skill than myself. Rather, this article (and the links herein) is a resource that compiles results and statistics from recent tournaments, so that you can do your own research and come to a conclusion on what's "the play" for Worlds. 

ARG Invitational
Winning deck: Zoroark-GX Control
Top 16 deck breakdown:

• 5 Zoroark-GX/Garbodor
• 3 Rayquaza-GX
• 2 Buzzwole/Lycanroc-GX
• 2 Zoroark-GX Control
• 1 Buzzwole FLI/Garbodor/Shrine of Memories
• 1 Gardevoir-GX
• 1 Naganadel-GX/Stakataka-GX
• 1 Zoroark-GX/Counters/Magcargo

Coming off its win at the 2018 NAIC, Zoroark-GX/Garbodor continued to see success at the Invitational. All of the ARG lists cut the Kartana-GX that NAIC champion Stéphane Ivanoff used, and three of the five included an Oranguru UPR.

Speaking of Oranguru, Zoroark-GX Control, the Zoroark-GX/Oranguru/disruption deck used by Tord Reklev to reach the NAIC finals, took an early position as the "deck to beat" in this format, with the ARG finals featuring a Zoroark-GX Control mirror match. New lists for this archetype are including Magcargo CST, and some include multiple Crushing Hammer and/or a second Oranguru. However, as we will see in the rest of this article, the deck did not stay atop the format for long.

We saw three Rayquaza-GX decks in Top 16, each constructed slightly differently - mainly regarding the Tool cards used. One played Wishful Baton; one played Fighting Fury Belt; and one played a split of Wishful Baton and Choice Band. None of the Rayquaza-GX decks advanced to Top 8.

ARG also introduced us to the Buzzwole FLI/Garbodor/Shrine of Punishment/Rainbow Energy archtype. The deck plays no EX or GX Pokémon and relies on building up damage with Buzzwole and Shrine, forcing the opponent to devote resources to taking six Prizes while "on the clock" due to Shrine damage, and cleaning up with Trashalanche. As we will see, this deck took off somewhat at last weekend's Cups and could play a key role in the format during Worlds.

Both Buzzwole/Lycanroc-GX decks in Top 16 advanced to Top 4, where both lost to Zoroark-GX Control.


Team Win and In
Total attendance: 232 players

Team Win and In asked me to crunch the numbers on the metagame of their latest tournament. Here's the link to the complete metagame analysis, but below I'll show the most-played archetypes:

While many players took note of Zoroark-GX Control's Invitational performance and brought the deck to the Win and In tournament, we now see that a new deck has arisen to counter it: Buzzwole/Lycanroc-GX. Zoroark-GX/Garbodor is also considered by at least some players to have a favorable Control matchup. The meta evolved rapidly in the span of a single week to the point where Control was no longer the "top deck."

Malamar decks were nonexistent in ARG's Top 16 but saw a fair amount of play in this event.

Rayquaza-GX decks were highly played, with the straight "turbo" version being the most common, followed by the version including Garbodor BPT.

Zoroark-GX/Lycanroc-GX is another deck that can go head-to-head with the Control variant, especially with new lists playing few or zero Strong Energy to avoid being disrupted by Enhanced Hammer.

As of the time of this event, Gardevoir-GX and Greninja BREAK also appear to remain as lower-tier but still viable contenders for Worlds.


August 18-19 League Cups
Cups in sample: Ten, 9 with a Top 8 cut and 1 with a Top 4 cut, from five countries. This is on the small end for our Cup samples, but enough CP were tallied that the results are statistically significant.

Click here to view the complete rankings from this Cup sample.

This meta looks similar to the one from the Win & In tournament, with one change: Zoroark-GX Control is even further down the list -- in fact, outside the top 10 CP-earning archetypes.

Buzzwole/Lycanroc-GX and Zoroark-GX/Garbodor are the two best decks in this sample and it isn't particularly close. However, we see the rise of a couple of new or resurgent archetypes in the aforementioned Buzzwole FLI/Garbodor/Shrine as well as Zoroark-GX/Gardevoir-GX. North America Top 16 players Azul Garcia Griego and Rahul Reddy both brought the latter deck to Cups.


I hope that the information provided in this post and all the resources I linked to are helpful to anyone still choosing a deck for Worlds or the Nashville Open. Please contact me on Twitter @twhitesell42, @PokeStats_TCG, or on Facebook if you have questions about the data I've collected or just want to hear more of my thoughts on the metagame.  

Checking In On The US/Canada Top 16 Entering 2017-18 Quarter 2

We're in an exciting time in the Pokemon TCG. The last year has seen huge growth in the game: "pro teams" with sponsored players; competitive articles and databases (love you, Limitless); and tournament streams and just general interest in competitive play. I started playing about two years ago and in that time I've probably seen attendance at my local events double. Of course, I'd like to think yours truly has played some role in expanding journalistic and statistical coverage of the game on social media. It's been very rewarding.

As we close out the first quarter of the 2017-18 season, with no major tournaments from October 15 to November 17 (and only a few League Cups), the format is approaching a massive influx of new cards. Both Shining Legends and Crimson Invasion have been released within a few weeks of each other, leading to almost 250 new cards being legal for upcoming Cups and, more importantly, the European Intercontinental Championships in London. Last week I posted about some SHL predictions from PokeStats's expert panel and linked to some useful articles, so go check that out if you haven't already.

Tonight I'm going to provide some coverage in a form I haven't done much of thus far: analyzing the top 16 players in the US and Canada as Q1 comes to a close. I'll look at the decks each player has used and how they've performed at the tournaments they've attended as they chase their goal (I assume) of a Day 2 Worlds Invite. 

1. Sam Chen
CP: 520

Team: free agent

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 2nd at Fort Wayne with Turbo Turtonator-GX
• 4th at Hartford with Gardevoir-GX
• 5-2-2 at Daytona with Shock Lock
• 5th at Vancouver with Drampa-GX/Garbodor

Notes: Chen is on pace for 2080 CP this season, which would be equivalent to more than four Worlds invites. (He finished first in the US/Canada rankings in 2016-17 with 1590 CP.) Chen's major tournament wins this season have been with four different decks, a testament to his ability to pick up practically any deck and do well with it. For example, he had never played a game using Turbo Turtonator-GX until Round 1 of Fort Wayne!

2. Ryan Sabelhaus

CP: 470

Team: CCGCastle

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 11th at Fort Wayne with Turbo Turtonator-GX
• 5th at Hartford with Volcanion
• 1st at Daytona with Garbodor Toolbox

Notes: Thanks, Tord! Tord Reklev's defeat of Sabelhaus at last season's NAIC put Sabelhaus just out of reach of the coveted 16th Day 2 invite spot to close the season, leaving it to Alex Hill instead. After that disappointment, Sabelhaus has not let up, making Day 2 at three Regionals and Top 8 at two of those this season, along with presumably a 1st and a 2nd at Cups (200 + 100 + 80 + 50 + 40 = 470). He's been known as one of the country's best players for some time and this year he's going to get another chance to maintain that recognition.

3. Michael (Xiao Xiao) Long

CP: 420
Team: free agent

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 20th at Fort Wayne with Archie's Blastoise
• 2nd at Hartford with Greninja BREAK
• 7th at Vancouver with Greninja BREAK

Notes: A first-year Master, Long is fresh off a second-place finish at Worlds and is looking to prove himself in the highest age division. He's been more than adequate at doing so, becoming known as perhaps the best Greninja player in the world (alongside fellow first-year Master Jon Eng) in the process. Accusations of cheating dogged Long throughout last season; this year he's out to secure a Day 2 invite and prove that his success comes purely from skill.

4. Azul Garcia Griego
CP: 410

Team: CCGCastle

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 47th at Fort Wayne with Garbodor Toolbox
• 41st at Hartford with Volcanion
• 3rd at Daytona with Garbodor Toolbox
• 14th at Vancouver with Drampa-GX/Garbodor

Notes: Last season, the ultra-consistent Griego was known for playing Dark decks, either Yveltal-EX or Turbo Darkrai. This season his go-to deck seems to be Garbodor. He was one of the original progenitors of the Garbodor Toolbox deck that took multiple Top 32 spots in Fort Wayne before making up half of the Daytona Top 8 and winning that event under Ryan Sabelhaus (Griego took 3rd with the same list). Vancouver saw him choose Garbodor again (this time in Standard) for his second Day 2 of the season. Griego was the only US/Canada player to win two Regionals in 2016-17 and it would not be a surprise to see him take another one this season. 

5. Michael Pramawat

CP: 400
Team: ARG

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 1st at Fort Wayne with Night March
• 48th at Hartford with Volcanion
• 57th at Daytona with Garbodor Toolbox

Notes: So far this season, Pramawat, undoubtedly one of the greatest Pokemon TCG players of all time, has ridden on the success of his incredible 6th Regional win to kick off the season. For the following two Regionals, he played the decks that ultimately ended up winning both events (Volcanion for Hartford, Garbodor for Daytona) but was unable to Day 2 either one. (48th at the second-largest Regional of all time is still nothing to shake a stick at, of course.) He's also put up a pair of Cup wins to keep him in the running, including a recent one with a fresh take on Gardevoir-GX that might influence Gardy lists in the weeks and months to come. It was the exact opposite of a shock to me when I saw Eric Gansman posting Cup results in HeyFonte involving Pramawat and stating, "if Pram wins, he gets his invite." He won, of course, because he's Michael Pramawat, and he's going back to Worlds again. 

6. Igor Costa
CP: 392

Team: CCGCastle

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 16th at Fort Wayne with Sableye/Garbodor
• 1st at Hartford with Volcanion

Notes: Second only to Sam Chen in last season's final CP rankings, Costa has been one of the world's top players dating back to his 2012 Worlds win. So far this season he hasn't Day 2'd as many Regionals as some players on this list, but he's made up for that by going all the way to first place in Hartford, the second-largest Regional of all time, defeating Michael Long in the finals despite Long's Water-vs-Fire type advantage. Expect to see him stay inside the Top 10, and likely Top 5, in US/Canada all season long. He's only 8 CP shy of his invite, the highest player on this list to not yet have his invite locked up. 

7. Ryan Allred
CP: 380

Team: Pro Play Games

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 52nd at Fort Wayne with Turbo Darkrai
• 18th at Hartford with Volcanion
• 28th at Daytona with Turbo Darkrai
• 17th at Vancouver with Volcanion

Notes: "Ryan Allred" was not a name on many players' radar entering this season, but three Regional Day 2s (plus a 52nd at the largest one of all time) later, he's shown he's definitely a player to watch. His playstyle looks to favor hard-hitting aggro decks: Volcanion in Standard; Turbo Dark in Expanded. We'll see if he continues with this trend moving forward. Oh, and how's this for a statistic: despite being the #7-ranked player in the country, Allred isn't even the highest-ranked player named Ryan in South Carolina. Sabelhaus has him beat there!

8. Xander Pero

CP: 360
Team: SixPrizes

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 19th at Daytona with Garbodor Toolbox
• 4th at Vancouver with Drampa-GX/Garbodor

Notes: Perhaps the strongest member of a stacked SixPrizes team, Pero just took third place at the 2017 World Championships and has put together a pair of strong Regional finishes after a lackluster start to this season. In 2016-17 he almost exclusively piloted M Gardevoir-EX STS; this year his deck of choice seems to be Garbodor variants. 

9. Chris Siakala
CP: 330

Team: free agent

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 3rd at Fort Wayne with Turbo Darkrai
• 42nd at Hartford with Greninja BREAK
• 40th at Daytona with Turbo Darkrai

Notes: Siakala has favored hard-hitting decks (particularly Turbo Dark) over the last couple of seasons, although he did make the switch to Greninja for Hartford (perhaps not coincidentally, that was his lowest finish of this season). He hasn't made Day 2 since Fort Wayne, but there he took third overall at the largest Regional in history, so he's got nothing to complain about. 

10. Jon Eng

CP: 320
Team: ARG

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 60th at Fort Wayne with Espeon-GX/Garbodor
• 14th at Hartford with Greninja BREAK
• 8th at Daytona with Garbodor Toolbox

Notes: Another first-year Master, Eng has been partially responsible for Greninja's renewed hype in Standard this season (his partner-in-crime Michael Long is also to blame). He became the youngest player to be signed to a pro team a few weeks ago when ARG brought him on board to join the likes of Michael Pramawat, Connor Finton, Jose Marrero, and others, and his success appears to be just getting started. 

11. Peter Kica

CP: 302
Team: free agent

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 6th at Hartford with Golisopod-GX/Garbodor

Notes: A Top 8 in Hartford gave Kica 100 CP; he won 2 Cups for 100 more; and a further 102 came from finishes outside Day 2 of Regionals. He doesn't have the resume of some of the other players on this list (at least so far), but he's been known to create some crafty decks and he is undoubtedly the greatest Night March player of all time. Give him more opportunities to March all over the Expanded format and I'd expect him to stay inside the Top 16. 

12. Bob Zhang

CP: 300
Team: free agent

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 64th at Fort Wayne with Trevenant BREAK
• 2nd at Daytona with Trevenant BREAK

Notes: One of the country's most accomplished Trevenant players, Zhang stuck with the deck when most considered it dead - and it paid off, as players at Daytona weren't prepared for Forest's Curse and Silent Fear, and Zhang was able to reach 2nd place. It's entirely possible we haven't seen the last of Trevenant from him this season. 

13. Aaron Tarbell

CP: 295
Team: NLG
2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 35th at Fort Wayne with Golisopod-GX/Zoroark
• 16th at Daytona with Golisopod-GX/Zoroark
• 24th at Vancouver with Golisopod-GX/Zoroark

Notes: Clearly, Tarbell's got a pet deck, combining the power of Golisopod-GX with the switching ability of Zoroark BRT. He's played the deck in both Standard and Expanded, and no exact list is currently available, suggesting he's keeping the deck under wraps to get even more mileage out of it. 

14. Grant Manley

CP: 292
Team: ARG

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 28th at Fort Wayne with Zygarde-EX/Lycanroc-GX GRI/Landorus-EX/Carbink BREAK
• 62nd at Hartford with VikaBulu
• 7th at Daytona with Seismitoad-EX/Seviper

Notes: Manley has always been known as a player who defies the normal meta decks and concocts some crazy rogue, and then somehow succeeds against all expectations. He took Quad Wobbuffet to the finals of a Regional. He played M Scizor-EX at Worlds last year. He brought back the Carbink BREAK Expanded toolbox deck he created in 2016 (made famous by Sam Chen and Russell Laparre). He actually played VikaBulu at a major event. And most recently, he put Poison Barb in a competitive deck and then went and made Top 8 with it. Any time Manley shows up to a tournament and drops his binder on the floor, whatever cards fall out are bound to make it to a high finish, and if he continues his rogue success he'll be sitting pretty in the top 16 all season. 

T-15. Rahul Reddy

CP: 280
Team: CCGCastle

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 25th at Daytona with Garbodor Toolbox

Notes: Reddy came close to finishing in the top 16 last season; this season he's been among the most vocal players chasing that Day 2 invite. Garbodor Toolbox got him 25th at Daytona and a pair of Cup wins netted him another good chunk of CP, but perhaps his most significant contribution to the season so far was creating the "Turbo Turtles" deck that took Fort Wayne Regionals by storm. 

T-15. Brad Curcio

CP: 280
Team: Some1sPC

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 19th at Fort Wayne with Garbodor Toolbox
• 34th at Daytona with Garbodor Toolbox
• 13th at Vancouver with Drampa-GX/Garbodor

Notes: Another player who consistently makes Day 2 at large events, Curcio has stuck with Garbodor decks this season. He has yet to crack Top 8 at a major tournament, but you can be sure he'll hit at least one (and probably a few more) during the rest of the season.

The original version of this article had Gibson Archer-Tang at 16th place. He was shown at 16th on the official Pokemon.com rankings due to a mistake inputting one of Curcio's Cup finishes. Here's what was originally written:

Gibson Archer-Tang

CP: 277
Team: free agent

2017-18 Major Tournament Rep:

• 5th at Fort Wayne with Golisopod-GX/Garbodor

Notes: To his credit, Archer-Tang is a first-year Master who clearly has some skill at this game. But literal audio evidence exists of him admitting to cheating, and that's not acceptable. (Somehow he has not yet been banned or otherwise punished.) It's no wonder many of the players hovering around his 16th-place mark are hot-blooded at the thought of beating him in the CP race and knocking him out of a free trip to Day 2 of Worlds. 

Canada in the Rearview: How Our Experts' Predictions Held Up at Vancouver Regionals

This year, PokeStats has been creating Deck Power Rankings prior to every major event with the help of some of the game's top-rated players. 13 players helped out with our Vancouver rankings - a smaller group than usual, but expected given that not many of the top players actually attended Vancouver, which was a pretty small Regional. 

I decided to take a look back at those rankings and see just how accurate they were in predicting Vancouver's meta, so without further ado, let's get into it. 

Actual Day 2 Breakdown from Vancouver

Everyone's pretty much got the BRT-BSH format figured out, it seems. Gardevoir-GX is the clear BDIF:

Actually just fuck gardevoir. That deck is pure aids

— 👻 jvw 💀 (@jacobvanwagner) October 15, 2017

A short ways behind it is Drampa-GX/Garbodor (which a lot of players added Espeon-GX into in Vancouver), and following that are Golisopod-GX/Garbodor and Volcanion. Lower-tier decks that still saw success: Greninja BREAK and miscellaneous Golisopod-GX variants. There was one notable rogue in Top 32 in Vancouver: Alex Koch's Zoroark BREAK/Bisharp STS/Tapu Koko, which attempted to destroy Gardevoir-GX while having a decent matchup against most other decks (seems like it worked pretty well). Anyone interested in Koch's list can find it on Limitless here.

That being a rogue pet deck, our Power Rankings did not predict its 15th place finish, but the Expert Panel did pretty darn well with everything else. Let's compare the actual Day 2 Meta Shares of the 7 decks (yeah, only 7... diverse format) that reached Day 2 versus their rank in the predictions:

Koch's Zoroark/Bisharp and Aaron Tarbell's Golisopod-GX/Bisharp were both pet decks and there was no reason to expect them to appear on the pre-Regional rankings. The rest of that chart is about as accurate as you can be without being 100% correct: just switch a couple decks and you'd have the perfect picture. BRT-BSH is now an obsolete format, as this coming weekend's Cups feature the brand-new Shining Legends set. I doubt many players will remember BRT-BSH fondly, as the lack of diversity, oppressiveness of Gardevoir-GX, and the fact that the Vancouver meta was almost exactly predicted the week before, show that it is a pretty "closed" format.

I'll try to have some insight into BRT-SHL published here on PokeStats in the next few days for those of you competing in Cups this weekend, whether that insight is statistical or more subjective (I might pick the brains of my Power Panel while they're taking a break between this past Regional stretch and London Intercontinentals). We'll see if anything might be poised to tip Gardevoir off its lofty perch, and any other surprises Shining Legends might drum up. In the meantime, keep checking back for updates sitewide: new features such as Meta Progression Charts, and updates to event data from past seasons. Stay tuned, and thanks for reading and supporting PokeStats!

"Into the Wilderness": League Cup sample analysis for September 16-17, 2017; views on VikaBulu; and predictions for this weekend

Our second weekend of our new League Cup sampling and analysis process has been a success. Last weekend we analyzed 22 Cups to create an accurate picture of the metagame at the time; this weekend our sample size climbed to 27 Cups. In this article I'll discuss the top decks of the weekend, some "big movers," and some statistically-supported predictions for next weekend.

First, here's a tier list based on the September 16-17 results (which can be seen in full here):

S Tier

Gardevoir-GX

Tier 1

VikaBulu

Golisopod-GX/Garbodor

Volcanion

Tier 2

Ho-Oh-GX/Salazzle-GX

Drampa-GX/Garbodor

Metagross-GX

Alolan Ninetales-GX

Tier 3 and below

Rainbow Road

Golisopod-GX/Spread

Espeon-GX/Garbodor

Greninja BREAK

Xerneas BREAK

Solgaleo-GX/Rayquaza

DeciTales

other/rogues

Trends this weekend

Gardevoir-GX retains its top spot from the previous weekend, falling only slightly from about 20% of the meta to about 18%.

No contest: Gardy is the BDIF for two
weekends running.

More surprising is the sudden rise of VikaBulu. The deck shot from 7th place (7.61% of the meta) to 2nd (12.14) in just a week, and barely any top cuts in our sample fail to feature at least one Bulu player. Some big names playing the deck into Top 8 or higher include Zak Krekeler, Jac Carter, Tristan Macek, and of course John Roberts II, who is known as perhaps the biggest fan and best player of the deck (he has topped multiple Cups with it and both of his Top 32s at 2016-17 major events were with it; he has also developed an Expanded version with Virizion-EX and Scoop Up Cyclone). Later in this article I'll look at four VikaBulu lists and discuss what works about them and how they are adapted to local or expected metagames. 

Also unchanging from the previous weekend is Golisopod-GX/Garbodor in third place. 

Rounding out the top five we have the two big fire decks, Volcanion and Ho-Oh-GX/Salazzle-GX. Both are on the rise from the last weekend: Volcanion up two spots and Ho-Oh up five. The SixPrizes squad has been working on the Ho-Oh/Salazzle deck and Xander Pero took home a 1st place with it while the entire Schemanske family made Top 8 with it at another Cup. 

Some big droppers this week: Metagross-GX from 2nd to 7th, and Alolan Ninetales-GX from T-4th to 8th. With not just one but two fire decks seeing top-five success, it's unsurprising Metagross hasn't been doing well. Ninetales, for its part, just sometimes lacks consistency and doesn't have a terrific Gardevoir-GX matchup. 

Greninja BREAK took a huge drop from T-4th to 12th and also failed to make Day 2 at Bremen Regionals on the same weekend. 

Moving further down the list we see that Decidueye-GX is still not entirely gone, with a trifecta of Top 4 Cup finishes for DeciTales. 

Solgaleo-GX/Rayquaza has been seeing a bit of hype with Tyler Ninomura taking it to Top 8 and Athavan Balendran making multiple Top 8s over the past two weekends with the deck. 

Some wild and wacky decks that managed to make top cut include Kingdra, M Mewtwo/Turtonator, Salazzle-GX/Lurantis, and Turtonator-GX/spread attackers, among others. 

Lastly, the following decks had at least one top cut the weekend of September 9-10 but failed to repeat the feat in our sample for 16-17: Crabominable, Garbodor/spread attackers, Gardevoir-GX with Alolan Ninetales-GX, Pikachu-EX/Magnezone, Salazzle-GX/spread attackers, and Turbo Darkrai. 

As always, full top cut standings and a handful of decklists for our League Cup results reporting are available under the League Cup Results tab right here on PokeStats. For detailed statistics and rankings, click the Cup Statistics tab. 

Bulu Nation

This past weekend, we saw VikaBulu take two Top 32 spots at Bremen Regionals: 7th place under Patrik Bartosovic and 13th place under Stephane Elias Benabdeslam. Benabdeslam's list is not currently available, but we can take a look at Bartosovic's list and use it to analyze why VikaBulu is seeing so much success:

Patrik Bartosovic - 7th place Bremen

(via Limitless)

What's here:

• 2 Mew FAC
• 3rd Field Blower
• 2nd Heavy Ball
• 1 Max Potion
• 1 Nest Ball
• 2nd Energy Recycler

What's not: 

• Tapu Koko SM30/31
• Brock's Grit
• 5th Lightning Energy
• Oranguru

Analysis: I've seen Mew in VikaBulu once before (a Top 64 list from Liverpool Regionals) and found it interesting enough to tweet about. It's an excellent way to conserve an attacker and force a 7-Prize game. Bartosovic took that a step further and included two Mew, making the tiny little Psychic Pokemon effectively one of the deck's main attackers. If the opponent can't Guzma around it, it can set them back very quickly and I'm positive that's one of the main reasons Bartosovic took this list into Top 8. 

One bad Bulu.

Max Potion is not particularly common in Bulu lists but makes a lot of sense to me since Bulu typically discards its Energy after attacking; a copy of Max Potion essentially gives you a second Tapu Wilderness GX each game. 

Some consistency options like Nest Ball and a second Heavy Ball appear to take the place of a consistency draw card like Oranguru; a third Field Blower was a good meta call with Garbotoxin being very prominent in Liverpool (all of the Top 4 decks played Garbodor). 

This list has foregone Brock's Grit in favor of a second Energy Recycler, and I expect this to be the standard for VikaBulu going forward. Too often, Brock's Grit cannot be found when needed or, more commonly, would need to be used in tandem with another Supporter (like Sycamore) to have much success. Energy Recycler allows for combinations like Recycler > Strong Charge > Sycamore > attach to power up a Bulu out of nowhere, so Brock's Grit is just inherently a slower and less consistent card. The two Recycler also explains the lack of a 5th Lightning Energy which so many other lists play. 

There is no Tapu Koko-GX or Professor Kukui which would seem to make the Metagross-GX and Gardevoir-GX matchups more difficult, but Mew undoubtedly helps with those.

Four other VikaBulu lists are available via our League Cup Results page; take a look at those and compare them to Bartosovic's list to get a look at other ways to build Bulu, whether you want to play the deck at your next event or be prepared to play against it. 

What to watch

This Phoenix is primed for success
this weekend.

There's no reason to expect Gardevoir-GX to not be the BDIF for a third straight weekend, but it wouldn't be surprising to see it fall slightly as people pick up techs like Jirachi XY67 or Enhanced Hammer. As we saw last weekend, the success of Fire-types is pushing Metagross out of the top tier of decks, so Gardevoir is essentially losing its only hard-counter. 

Speaking of Fire, during the making of this post I saw Kian Amini's Tweet about taking 2nd at a Cup with Ho-Oh/Salazzle. That's yet another big name (in addition to Xander Pero and the Schemanskes) choosing to play this deck, and it should be high on your list of decks to look out for heading into this next round of Cups.

A couple rogues that are projected to see slight increases in play include Kingdra and Solgaleo-GX/Rayquaza.

I was somewhat late publishing this recap and the next weekend is already nearly upon us, so it won't be long before we see what this round of Cups has to offer. You can always visit the League Cup Results and Statistics pages right here on PokeStats to find metagame information and decklists. Stay tuned for further coverage, including Hartford Regionals coming up in just a few days...

"Back in Black": 2017 Yokohama Regionals results (Top 8 decklists and analysis)

First we got Stellar Guidance + X Ball;
now it's Diving Draw + Circle Circuit.

PokéStats is back with more results and analysis from Japan's tournament setting. The latest tournament in that land of XY-on was held in Yokohama this past weekend; the new Shining Legends set was legal for play.

The most-used card from the new set was, without a doubt, Zoroark-GX. The combination of Empoleon DEX's Diving Draw and Raichu XY's Circle Circuit found a home in an astonishing 15 of the Top 16 decks and all 8 of the Top 8 decks, whether as a 1-1 support line or as a 4-3 main-attacker line. The Shadow Fox was paired most frequently with either Night March or Lycanroc-GX GRI, although the winning list was a less conventional Toolbox deck featuring some other new and unusual cards.

Below I'll give the Top 8 lists and address a few points of each list that I believe are noteworthy. At the end of the article I'll look at how previous Japanese powerhouses translated to success in the rest of the world, and predict what effect Zoroark-GX might have on the meta outside Japan.

Top 8 breakdown:
4 Zoroark-GX/Lycanroc-GX GRI (2 with Flareon, 1 with Alolan Muk)
3 Night March/Zoroark-GX (1 with Milotic)
1 Zoroark-GX Toolbox

Translated article about first-place deck

Click through to see the lists and analysis: 

"Worlds to Fort Wayne" - League Cup sample results and analysis for August 20-27, 2017

Welcome back, PokéStats readers! This season, I'm taking a different approach to analyzing League Cup results. Last year, Cup results were incorporated into my Deck Power Rankings, which also used data from Regionals, Special Events, and Intercontinentals. However, many players over on Twitter recently expressed two points I'd been led to believe myself over the course of last season: 

1. Cups are simply not consistent enough to be used to predict the results of larger events; 
2. Using any sort of mathematical formula (as I had been doing) is simply not satisfactory to predict the metagames of these events. 

With that in mind, and after talking with the great Sam Chen (@samstoise), I've developed a new way of creating Deck Power Rankings, which should debut soon and will (I hope) serve as a drastic upgrade over last year's design - as well as possibly dramatically change the way players, at least less-well-established ones like myself, approach metagaming for Regionals and other high-level events.

But more on that later.  

For now, I've analyzed the results of a random sample of League Cups taken from the last two weekends (starting during the weekend of Worlds). The sample contains 13 Cups in total: 9 Standard and 4 Expanded. Yes, this does mean the sample size for Standard is larger and thus the analysis thereof is most likely more accurate; and yes, Expanded is the format for the next Regional. However, the Expanded sample (1016 CP in total, since each Cup had at least 24 Masters and thus the Top 8 at each earned CP) is large enough to give some sort of indication as to what the format looks like right now. 

I'll briefly cover the Standard results first, and then go into a bit more detail on Expanded since that's what most players' eyes are on right now with Fort Wayne Regionals just around the corner. 

Standard:

Following a World Championships in which it took two Top 8 spots and then went on to win, Gardevoir-GX looks to be the most dominant deck in Standard at the moment. However, it doesn't have nearly as much of a lead over its nearest competitor (Espeon-GX/Garbodor) as we've seen in the past - notably when Yveltal-EX, DeciPlume, or Drampa-GX/Garbodor had strangleholds over Standard at various points during the last season. Indeed, the distribution of decks above suggests that Standard is a pretty healthy format at the moment, with the sample including 15 different types of deck (64 decks in total).

If I were to create a tier list based on this pie chart, I'd go with the following:

S Tier: Gardevoir-GX, Espeon-GX/Garbodor

Tier 1: Golisopod-GX/Garbodor, Volcanion

Tier 2: Drampa-GX/Garbodor, M Rayquaza-EX, Metagross-GX, Greninja BREAK, Vespiquen

Tier 3 and lower: everything else

Is VikaBulu positioned to be a
Tier 1 deck in Standard?

Of course, this tier list is pretty irrelevant with rotation approaching in literally the next few days. I expect Metagross and VikaBulu* to rise in popularity in the new format, with Golisopod/Garb and Greninja seeing less play and M Ray and Vespiquen of course disappearing entirely on account of their main cards being rotated.

Next weekend's Cups, which will take place in the new BRT-BSH format, will undoubtedly be far more useful to analyze, so I'll hold off any further speculation until then.

*On a personal note, I played against VikaBulu twice at a League Challenge on August 27th and was impressed by how the deck set up blazingly fast and took clean KOs in both matches. I've tested it a considerable amount since then and truly believe it to be one of the strongest decks in the new format, with its only unfavorable matchup being Metagross in my experience. 





Expanded:

Note that I made a small error in the chart: Rainbow Road is supposed to read 4.92%, the same as the two decks surrounding it. 

And now for the more important of the two formats right now, at least for those of us playing in (or watching and analyzing) Fort Wayne Regionals next weekend: Expanded. A look at the results in the pie chart above tells us that, as expected, Trevenant BREAK is the deck to beat. The ban of Archeops and Forest of Giant Plants leaves Trevenant as essentially the most oppressive card in Expanded, and players have capitalized on its synergy with Necrozma-GX for a massive spread-damage assault.

With its new partner Necrozma-GX, Trevenant
is once again the king of Expanded.

However, Trev isn't invincible: a tech Giratina promo can cripple it when used correctly, and Turbo Darkrai-EX, the third-ranked deck above, hits for Weakness to keep it in check somewhat. For its part, M Rayquaza-EX, the second-ranked deck, can generally set up in a single turn if it either goes first or plays down a Hex Maniac, and then proceed to Emerald Break any opposing Trevenant without regard to Item lock.

Be that as it may, Trev still has a lead of over 8 percentage points over Ray in the chart, and it's probably not going anywhere, especially with that nasty Tapu Lele promo that caused a small fiasco at Worlds.

Other former Expanded powerhouses like Seismitoad-EX, Night March, Yveltal-EX, and Blastoise appear at various places in the chart, with Night March being the most successful at 6.30% of the sample meta. (It does have a new toy in Marshadow-GX/Focus Sash.) Yveltal-EX/Maxie's appears to have fallen out of favor with Archeops banned and Yveltal no longer being the attacker it once was; Blastoise might be poised for a future resurgence but evidently it didn't happen during the past two weeks. Seismitoad is an interesting conversation topic entering Fort Wayne, as it gets a few new tricks like Aqua Patch, Plumeria, Team Skull Grunt, and Seviper BSH to play with. (Mike Fouchet just went into detail on Toad variants, including that new Seviper, in yesterday's SixPrizes UG article, so I'll leave that coverage to him.)

Another group of decks to look at is Standard decks that have been adapted to Expanded: most notably Gardevoir-GX, Espeon-GX/Garbodor, and Drampa-GX/Garbodor. (John Roberts II also topped a Cup using his Expanded version of VikaBulu with Scoop Up Cyclone.) Garbodor decks in particular seem poised to make an impact on Expanded just as they've warped Standard around them in recent months. Stéphane Ivanoff of Lysandre Labs had some thoughts on these Standard-to-Expanded archetypes:

Garbodor feels very strong. It changed Standard and since Expanded decks play so much items, it may warp Expanded as well.

— Stéphane Ivanoff (@lubyllule) August 29, 2017

(Golisopod will also probably find a spot in the format, 120 damage is good vs Garb and Trev, and Grass type is good vs Toad and Groudon.)

— Stéphane Ivanoff (@lubyllule) August 29, 2017

Based on the pie chart, players attending Fort Wayne should probably expect to play against Trev, Darkrai, M Ray, Night March, and Garb variants, and should pick one of these decks OR a deck with good matchups against a majority of them.

With the recent ban announcement, Expanded is looking to be a much more interesting and enjoyable format, and I hope to see some creative decks and intense matches at Fort Wayne Regionals in a few days. As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I'm developing a new system for Deck Power Rankings that I hope to debut very soon, if not in time for Fort Wayne. Stay tuned as PokéStats kicks into gear for the new season!

"The Trash Man" - Two Views on Espeon-GX/Garbodor From the ARG Invitational

Alter Reality Games's latest Invitational event was held August 11-13, 2017 and brought in dozens of players from across the country who earned their invite from placing at ARG Circuit Series events this year. Some of the game's biggest names, like Azul Garcia Griego and Michael Pramawat, were in attendance; in the end, it was Jon Eng who took home the $2000 first-place prize with his Espeon-GX/Garbodor/Eeveelutions deck.

The day after the Invitational ended, Joe Bernard asked HeyFonte members whether their 2017 World Championship deck choice had been influenced by the results of the ARG event:

As you can see, most players did not find the event to be a strong indicator of the Worlds meta. Rich Rothenbach, a player who attended the Circuit Series held alongside the Invitational, believes he knows why:

"Alot [sic] of the decks were proven from months of testing to be good so people played it safe and picked those. We do not know the best 60 [cards] for the new decks, so they didn't dominate."

However, "safe" plays - which would probably be decks like Volcanion or Drampa-GX/Garbodor - actually failed to make much of a splash in the Top 16 cut. Several of the decks that topped were decks not expected to make an appearance - namely, Espeon-GX/Garbodor (which took 1st and 5th) and Gyarados (which took 4th, 8th, 11th, and 16th!). This leads me to my point: the "play" for Worlds may not simply be the deck that the beats most other decks, but the deck that is able to consistently set up and accomplish exactly what it wants to do game after game after game. Espeon-GX - particularly Eng's winning list - seems like a deck that does this, which is why it's the subject of this article.

A diverse moveset combined with a consistent
list can make Espeon-GX deadly.

In some ways, I think Rothenbach's point is spot-on: at the time of the Invitatational, PRC-BUS was still an undefined format, and its decks (Gardevoir-GX, Golisopod-GX, etc.) have yet to be refined, except perhaps by the players who have been vigorously preparing them for Worlds. We know that a deck like Drampa-GX/Garbodor can beat almost any other deck under the hand of a skilled player, while new decks like Golisopod haven't had a chance to prove themselves yet, even though they might well be great plays. While I concur with HeyFonte's consensus that the Invitational was not a great predictor of the Worlds meta, I do still think some useful information can be gleaned from its results - and these are directly related to how the new BUS cards and decks should be played successfully.

So, to attempt to unravel a tiny bit of the enigma that is this year's Worlds, I'm going to look at two of the Top 8 decks from the ARG event: a pair of Espeon-GX/Garbodor variants that took different approaches to deck construction and playstyle.

Click on through to keep reading:

Seattle Regionals statistical recap

Another weekend, another Regional. We actually did a mostly solid job predicting this one, in a largely undefined format: most of our predictions were spot-on or very close, but there were two jarring exceptions, proving that no model is ever perfect - but suggesting a couple of changes we can make to even better predict the next event. 

I, for one, welcome our new trash overlords.

PokeStats's Top 10 predicted decks for Seattle: 

1. Garbodor/Big Basics
2. Greninja BREAK
3. Garbodor/Espeon-GX
4. Gyarados
5. Alolan Ninetales-GX
6. Garbodor/Trevenant
7. DeciPlume
8. M Rayquaza/Metal
9. WaterBox
10. DeciPlume/Alolan Ninetales-GX

The actual Top 10 decks, in terms of Day 2 Meta Share:

1. Garbodor/Big Basics ✓
2. Garbodor/Espeon-GX +1
3. Vespiquen ✗
4. DeciPlume +3
5. WaterBox +4

...and a four-way tie for 6-9: Alolan Ninetales-GX (-1), DeciPlume/Alolan Ninetales-GX (+4), Garbodor/Trevenant (✓), and M Rayquaza/Metal (+2). There wasn't even a 10th archetype in Top 32. 

We were dead-on in our prediction of Garbodor/Big Basics as by far the biggest deck in Seattle. We also got Garbodor/Trevenant right at #6, and Garbodor/Espeon-GX was only a spot off (#2; predicted at #3). 

Other sound predictions: Alolan Ninetales-GX being a middle-of-the pack contender at #6 (predicted #5), and M Rayquaza/Metal also in there in the tie for #6 (predicted #8). 

We also predicted the resurgence of WaterBox, although it actually performed better than expected, as Israel Sosa piloted it all the way to a Top 8 finish. 

As for DeciPlume, our model was a bit harsher on it than reality, although the deck still did not perform as well as I think many players were expecting, judging by some comments on Twitter and Facebook. We were correct in predicting both the original variant and the new Alolan Ninetales variant to be part of Top 32, with the original exceeding the Ninetales variant in Meta Share. 

Of course, with every discussion of what we got right, I've got to talk about what we got wrong, too. Unfortunately, the model we used predicted two decks to be among the top 5 contenders in Seattle, but in reality, both of these decks failed to even make Top 32. Observers of the Power Rankings will note that these are both Water-type decks using one-Prize attackers: Greninja BREAK and Gyarados. We predicted them at the 2nd-most-successful and 4th-most-successful decks, respectively, which could not have been farther from the truth.

Greninja is a bit easier to explain. The deck is still considered inconsistent - most of what it gained from Guardians Rising (Choice Band, Field Blower) make the deck more powerful, not more consistent. Although Greninja was in fact the second-most-successful deck at League Cups the week prior to Seattle, it remains just that - a "League Cup deck," which has the potential to perform very well at small events but lacks the consistency to do well at large events, at least for now. We should have caught onto this and reprogrammed the model accordingly.

The hot tech of the weekend?

Gyarados, on the other hand, is an inherently powerful deck that has consistency but is extremely susceptible to techs designed to counter it. We saw Sammy Sosa appear on stream in the first round of the tournament, playing this deck, and it looked like he was in a good position for the rest of the day. What we didn't know, however, was the amount of people who would be teching Gyarados counter cards, primarily Spinda PRC and Azelf XY142. Gyarados was actually considered one of the top decks going into this Regional, and evidently it was feared enough that people made specific efforts to counter it. The deck simply can't deal with the sudden board wipe that Spinda or Azelf provides, even with new options like Rescue Stretcher. We'll be keeping an eye on League Cup results (and checking in with the experts) to see if Gyarados might stand a chance at Madison and Birmingham next weekend, or if it's mostly gone for good.

It's also worth noting that we missed out on predicting Vespiquen's lone Day 2 finish - kudos to Jeffrey Cheng for correctly predicting the low amount of DeciPlume and piloting the deck all the way to second place. We had the Queen Bee ranked T-17 entering Seattle. :(

So what should we be looking for at the next set of Regionals? Garbodor is still probably going to be big, but what really needs to be carefully considered is decks that have good Garbodor matchups. Vespiquen is a clear example, considering Jeffrey Cheng's second-place finish at Seattle; Israel Sosa also claimed that his WaterBox deck was 50-50 or slightly favorable against Garbodor. The Charizard Lounge's Andrew Wamboldt has recently posted about a couple of decks he feels have strong Garbodor matchups, namely Solgaleo-GX/Rayquaza and Umbreon-GX/Zoroark BREAK, so go read up on those if you're having trouble defeating the trash can man.

We'll look to have the Power Rankings updated by Wednesday to allow readers a few days to test our top predictions for Madison and Birmingham.

If you'd like to see more interesting stats and factoids regarding Seattle Regionals and our new garbage overlords, take a look around the site, and then be sure to follow us on Twitter @PokeStats_TCG. It seems like PokeStats is really starting to become a bigger part of the competitive community in terms of providing live coverage and statistical analysis, and I'm excited to see where this goes!

Champions League Chiba Top 8 decks

The latest Japanese "Regional" took place on the weekend of May 20-21. PokeStats previously reported on the Osaka Regionals back in April, and I'll be doing the same thing for May's Chiba Regionals: providing the event's top decks, then, in a day or two, coming back and analyzing those decks and providing lists for them. An insight into the Japanese metagame is always interesting, even though they play the BLW-on format: we get to see some innovative deck ideas that give us ideas for new ways to use cards, as well as ideas for dealing with these crazy Japanese lists should we run into them at Worlds or Internationals.

Champions League Chiba was a bit unique in that there were actually two tournaments, and each tournament was split into an A group and a B group. So, here are the Top 8's for all four groups!

Tournament 1, Group A

1. Volcanion/Turtonator-GX
2. Garbodor GRI/Eeveelutions
3. Seismitoad-EX/Decidueye-GX/Alolan Ninetales-GX
4. Volcanion/Turtonator-GX
5. Garbodor GRI/Big Basics
6. Volcanion/Turtonator-GX
7. M Rayquaza/Metal
8. Vespiquen/Zoroark/Eeveelutions

Tournament 1, Group B

1. Volcanion/Turtonator-GX
2. Turbo Dark
3. Vikavolt/Tapus 
4. Raichu/Lycanroc-GX GRI
5. Turbo Dark
6. Night March/Vespiquen
7. M Rayquaza/Metal
8. Vespiquen/Lycanroc-GX GRI

Tournament 2, Group A

1. Volcanion/Turtonator-GX
2. Greninja BREAK
3. DeciPlume/Alolan Ninetales-GX
4. Lycanroc-GX
5. Lycanroc-GX
6. Turbo Dark
7. Volcanion/Turtonator-GX
8. Seismitoad-EX/Decidueye-GX

Tournament 2, Group B

1. Garbodor GRI/Raichu
2. M Rayquaza/Metal
3. Volcanion/Turtonator-GX
4. Volcanion/Turtonator-GX
5. Alolan Ninetales-GX/Garbodor BPT
6. Raichu/Lycanroc-GX GRI
7. Lycanroc-GX
8. Vikavolt/Tapus

UPDATE 5/29/16: Here is the meta share graph for the above results. 

A Statistical Brazil Report + Improving the Power Rankings Model

Brazil Intercontinentals occurred this past weekend, and I made my predictions shortly before then, testing out a new model that better incorporated Regional-vs.-League Cup data into one formula. Here were my model's predictions for the top 10 decks for Brazil:

1. DeciPlume
2. Turbo Darkrai-EX
3. Volcanion
4. M Mewtwo
5. Quad Lapras
6. Darkrai-EX/Dragons
7. Yveltal-EX
8. M Rayquaza/Espeon-GX
9. Gyarados
10. Tauros-GX Disruption variants

And here were the actual Top 10: 

1. DeciPlume
2. M Rayquaza/Fire 
3. Volcanion
4. Rainbow DeciPlume
5. Turbo Darkrai-EX
6. M Gardevoir STS
7. M Mewtwo 
8. Gyarados
9. Vespiquen/Raichu
10. Yveltal-EX

So a couple of my predictions - DeciPlume and Volcanion - were dead on. I'm quite pleased with how the model predicted DeciPlume to finish first in CP - all the data from Utah and from April's League Cups, combined with my formulas, indicated it would finish first, although many top players wrote the deck off somewhat. My prediction for Gyarados was quite close, and although I missed the mark a bit with Turbo Dark and Yveltal, those weren't too bad either. 

It wasn't all perfect, though, so like any good statistician, I need to analyze what went wrong and figure out how to improve my model. I'll discuss each major mistake in detail as follows: 

1. Lapras: Should've Used the Harsher Model?
2. Rainbow DeciPlume: Kettler Was Right!
3. Dark Dragons and M Gardevoir: The Importance of the Right Meta Call
4. Fire Ray: Ask the Experts

1. Quad Lapras

Five of the top players in the world - Alex Hill, Michael Pramawat, Sam Chen, Jimmy Pendarvis, and Joe Bernard - elected to play Quad Lapras at Brazil, a choice which unfortunately proved fatal for each of their tournament runs. I had studied Lapras quite a lot prior to Brazil, since it showed a lot of popularity in League Cups but was largely unproven at Regionals. Interestingly, I developed a model that was very harsh on Lapras, placing it outside of the Top 10 in the Power Rankings, but I eschewed this model in favor of another which I felt was more accurate for the rest of the meta. This discarded model actually proved to be a bit more accurate than the one I actually used: it kept DeciPlume and Volcanion at the top but was kinder to M Gardevoir and M Rayquaza, decks which in actuality performed pretty well at the event, as well as harsher to Lapras, Tauros, and Dark Dragons. 

A failed endeavor? Or does Lapras still
have what it takes?

So now what's the consensus on Lapras? I asked Jimmy Pendarvis on Twitter (@Ginge_TCG) his thoughts on the deck with regard to his tournament run. He said he doesn't regret playing the deck - in fact, it "felt amazing" against his competition, but he "was unlucky on [coin] flips," going "0/7 on Crushing Hammer against Rainbow Road."

I then talked with Alex Hill (@kazambolt) about his performance. He, too, still praised Lapras. I asked him about the deck's matchups - this was what likely led me astray when I published my Power Rankings - specifically about Volcanion and DeciPlume, matchups about which the competitive community largely seems to disagree. I'd thought (somewhat naively) that both were unfavorable for Lapras: DeciPlume because of Weakness, and Volcanion because of its aggressive nature compared to Lapras's slow style. However, Hill cleared up my perspective, noting that DeciPlume is "60/40 or 65/35 in Lapras [sic] favor," via the use of Rough Seas, Energy-denial Supporters, and Wobbuffet. Volcanion is "one of the few times you plan on going aggro," charging up two Lapras to blow through Volcanions. (The matchup is only favorable if the Lapras player runs Max Elixir, however.)

Where am I after conducting these interviews? Honestly, Lapras is still kind of an enigma. TLDR: One of the models I nearly used was very accurate in predicting Lapras's performance in Brazil - BUT, this model was based on my apparently faulty assumption that the deck generally loses to Volcanion and DeciPlume. I'm going to pay careful attention to this deck when I construct my Roanoke predictions, and I'll being doing several simulations with different models to make the most accurate estimate I can.


2. Rainbow DeciPlume
Shoutout to the almighty John Kettler for predicting this one, because I (and most of the top players) got it completely wrong. I actually had this deck ranked very highly (#4, I think) entering the third weekend of April League Cups - but after a no-show performance there, it dropped something crazy like 20 spots. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, it got first place in Brazil.

As far as I know, only Kettler predicted something like this: on PokeBeach, he wrote that the play for Brazil was DeciPlume with two Jolteon-EX (the winner played a Jolteon-EX and a Regice AOR). I really couldn't tell you why the Rainbow version was so successful at the event. That's a question for the pros. What I do know is that I need to carefully consider every variant of a deck and analyze their matchups against the predicted metagame. I ran into a very similar problem with M Rayquaza, which I'll talk about a bit later...


3. Dark Dragons and M Gardevoir STS

A Renegade warrior...

I faced a similar scenario with these two decks. I predicted Dark/Dragons to perform pretty well in Brazil, while I had Gardevoir outside the top 10. In reality, the exact opposite was true. Unlike with Lapras and Rainbow DeciPlume, I believe I can say exactly why this was.

Gardevoir is a very consistent deck with a lot of 50-50 (ish) matchups. It's a deck you play in a "blind field" - a large tournament with a wide-open meta. Rather than taking a risk on a deck designed to counter the meta, and sacrificing consistency, you can choose to go in with a deck that is practically guaranteed to get you some wins, albeit in close games. I don't think Gardevoir matches up well against DeciPlume, but against everything else, it stands a solid chance. I'm planning to research this concept of "blind field" decks further.

Dark Dragons, by contrast, is not a "blind field" deck. It's a very specific meta call a player makes when expecting a large amount of Special Energy decks - Vespiquen, for example, or M Mewtwo. The power of Chaos Wheel is fantastic against these kinds of decks, but Dark Dragons is not as consistent as its counterpart Turbo Dark. Turbo Dark was a better choice for Brazil because there was no indication going into the event that Special Energy decks would be popular; therefore, playing Dark Dragons would have been a sizable risk.

4. M Rayquaza
Going into Brazil, I had the Espeon-GX variant of M Rayquaza ranked highest (#8). The version that actually ended up doing well at the event was the Fire variant, which I had ranked #14. (Jolteon-EX was at 15; Metal was tied for 21.) This is interesting to me. Virtually all the League Cup data I'd gathered in the week prior to Brazil showed the Psychic variant performing well. I'd assume that this variant is simply more suited to small tournament play, and a different type of Ray was needed to succeed in a larger tournament. This is another thing I'd need to account for in my models.

While we're on the subject of Rayquaza, I want to point out a couple of interesting variants. One of the Brazil decks played Fire Energy but no Volcanion-EX - the Energy were solely to take advantage of Scorched Earth in the Volcanion matchup. Another played Gumshoos-GX, a style which saw a small amount of League Cup success and which I actually predicted would be a good play for Brazil.