The 1st place deck in the 2013 winter regional championship was Darkrai EX/Mewtwo EX/Bouffalant. These decks are tricky to play against, due to their speed, and with new cards like Virbank City Gym, and Hypnotoxic Laser, it's only going to get tougher. The key to getting through their speed is either disruption, or haste of your own. The first card we will look at, is the supporter card N.
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The most important aspect of this card is timing. When you know for a fact that they've just junk hunted for the cards that make their deck tick. Keep an eye out for cards such as Dark Patch, Energy Switch, and those despicable Enhanced/Crushing Hammers. This requires extreme field/discard awareness at all times. Remember, the discard pile is always public knowledge and your opponent cannot deny you access to view their discard. Keep tabs on how many of these power cards that they've used.
There are always options for disruption based on what type of deck you are playing. For example, RayEels. Made popular by Zach Zamora at the Mississippi Valley Regional Championship, his Rayquaza/Eelektrik/Zebstrika deck managed to take him to top 16. Zebstrikas disconnect attack prevents your opponent from using item cards on their next turn, also dealing 40 damage. Psychic based decks always have the option to play the stage 2 pokemon, Gothitelle, whose ability states, as long as it is your active pokemon, she prevents your opponent from using item cards. Her attack isn't too shabby either. For 3 colorless energy, she does 30+ damage, doing 20 more for each psychic energy attached to her.
Next up, we have one of the most anti-meta cards to date. Given it's recent spotlight appearances in cities and regionals all over the world, Garbodor has risen to a meta position on our list. Paired with Darkrai EX, these two secured a second place victory at our very own Virginia Regional Championships. Garbodors ability, from anywhere on the field, shuts off all other pokemon abilities on the field, but ONLY whilst he has a pokemon tool attached to him. This leads us to one major, and apparent conclusion.
Tool scrapper, TOOL SCRAPPER, TOOL SCRAPPER. Getting rid of Garbodors tool (usually a rescue scarf), is the one key to getting around his ability. Just like N, using your tool scrappers at the right time (hindsight is 20/20 from a personal standpoint on this one), can make or break games.
Unfortunately, on this one. There aren't too many viable tech options, due to grass types having such weak support lately. This being said, there are a few cards that can secure some knock outs, in the right situations. For example, most ho-oh variants can tech in Virizion NVI or Shaymin EX. Virizion's Leaf Wallop attack can 2HKO a Keldeo or Blastoise, however this can easily be catchered around, due to the attack NEEDING to hit two turns in a row, and if Virizion is sent back to the bench, it resets his ability. Now, with Escape Rope in the mix, this becomes even more tricky. Next, Shaymin EX is a more viable option, but due to his low HP (110), he is rather easily bowled over, giving your opponent two prizes. On the plus side, after your opponent takes two prize cards, Shaymins attack will do 180 damage, due to weakness. Do the risks out-weigh the reward?
So, this will conclude this weeks discussion on the current meta, and how to counter it. However, know that the release of Plasma Storm has brought some new weapons to add to our arsenal. As always, we will keep on wuuub wuuub, droppin' the knowledge (it's cheesy and I love it).
P.S. - The following is a list of the top 4 decks from our regional championships.
1) Ray Cipoletti (Darkrai EX/Mewtwo EX/Bouffalant)
2) Dylan Bryan (Darkrai EX/Garbodor)
3) Michael Skoran (Blastoise/Keldeo EX)
4) Azul Garcia Griego (Darkrai EX/Mewtwo EX/Bouffalant)
(Also, to appease Kayla, none of the art used in this article belongs to me.)
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