1st Indonesian League Challenge @ Open Kitchen Neo Soho For The 2018-2019 Play Pokemon Season Wrap U

The first competitive Pokemon TCG event in Indonesia has just wrapped up last weekend and we're here to bring you the details! With only 3 Indonesian players qualified for the World Championships this season and with none of them having access to travel awards or stipends, unfortunately no Indonesian players will be competing at World 2018. Thus, the XY8 on format will only have 4 more league challenges to it's name in Indonesia before players will be looking to test for the upcoming SM on format. But with championship points and Pokemon league promotional cards still up for grabs, Indonesian players scrambled to rebuild their XY8 on decks to compete for top spots at these last 4 LCs. In this first of four events to be played out in the span of this month, this is how things played out!

Total Players: 15 masters

1st Place: Fariz Hirzan - Ultra Necrozma GX - Malamar

2nd Place: Christian Liu (Team Ascension) - Straight Zoroark GX Toolbox

3rd Place: Alexander Darmawan (Master) - Buzzwole GX - Lycanroc GX ft Baby Buzzwole

4th Place: Dendy Santoso (Team Ascension) - Buzzwole GX -Lycanroc GX ft Baby Buzzwole

Deck Breakdown:

Ultra Necrozma GX - Malamar: 3

Buzzwole GX - Lycanroc GX ft Baby Buzzwole: 2

Zygarde GX : 2

Gardevoire GX: 2

Necrozma GX - Malamar: 1

Zoroark GX - Gardevoire GX : 1

Naganadel GX Beast Box : 1

Straight Zoroark GX Toolbox: 1

Others (Unknown) : 2

OBSERVATIONS

As we can see, the meta was pretty diverse. But it stood out that ultimately, 3 of the top 4 players piloted Beast Ring reliant decks that relied on Beast Ring as an effective means of acceleration in the prize race, or in some cases, as a means of recover from a poor early game set up or disruption plays from the opponent E.g taking out Malamars and Octilleries.

It become apparent that the current meta has transformed into a rapid fire prize war where speed pays off while disruption strategies may be deemed too time consuming and inefficient simply due to the heavy reliance most decks seem to place on playing their Beast Rings as means of becoming tempo swingers. And while it is true that sole reliance on Beast Rings is unsustainable when faced with early game disruption, it does do one thing very well, and that is BUY TURNS.

For instance, if I was playing an Ultra Necrozma GX - Malamar mirror match and two of my Malamars were taken down before I landed a single hit on my opponent, a single Beast Ring, some Inkays on my bench and ideally , a Moon Eclipse GX, will swing the match heavily in my favour, or at the very least back in the balance. And even if I wasn't able to pull of a Moon Eclipse GX, the Beast Ring would have easily compensated for the lack of Malamars left on my bench.

But enough about Beast Ring, what other observations have I made through out the span of this tournament? Well, they also have to do with buying turns. While I spoke lowly of early game disruption in this meta, something that I now believe to be essential to every deck is a viable late game disruption strategy. Now you may be asking, shouldn't you be focused on closing out the game in the latter stages of the game? Why are you instead suggesting that I spend my valuable (and often times ver limited resources) on disruption instead of ending the game?

Well, this is because as we have seen not only in this tournament, but in most tournaments over the past few months, Malamar based decks have proven to be a dominant force in the meta. And if there is anything a Malamar (Or Buzzwole with no Octillery on the bench) deck lacks, it is a non-supporter draw engine! As a Malamar player myself, it is an extremely common occurrence that my opponent play N and sends me down to 1 or 2 cards, and all of a sudden, a game that I thought I had complete control of slides from my fingers. And I have tried all sorts of methods to fix this issue, from playing the Instruct Oranguru, to playing Octillery, and EVEN ZOROARK GX! All of those solutions were not consistent and I was still losing plenty of games from an N to 1 scenario.

So with all that said, what conclusion have I come up with? Well, I have concluded that there is one deck that with all the above taken into consideration, is extremely viable and a deck that I strongly recommend anyone competing in Worlds or the Nashville Open to at least consider.

And that deck is of course ZOROARK GX - GARBODOR!

With everything I have discussed above, there is a clear meta triangle. Malamar beats Buzzwole (Psychic weakness and multiple 1 prize attackers), Buzzwole beats (most) Zororark variants (Fighting weakness and quick energy set up), and Zoroark variants beat Malamar (Access to non-supporter draw engine + late game N). With all that said, Zororark GX - Garbodor has the added advantage against Malamar with the ability not only to N them to 1 or 2 and still have a draw engine, but also have the option to ability lock them and make them think twice before playing items. Yet, against Buzzwole GX, the Zororark GX deck has the option of focusing more on Transalanche Garbodor which has weakness on Buzzwole while ability locking the Buzzwole deck to prevent Abbysal Hand or Bloodthirsty Eyes and limiting their hand by playing N late game. Additionally, Zoroark GX - Garbodor has the added luxury of adding in tech attackers such as Mimikyu and Mew EX due to there being some slots that can be taken away from consistency cards that I think you can afford to cut (Zoroark GX based decks are already very consistent) available which place additional pressure on Buzzwole.

Suggester Deck List:

Pokemon: (22)

4x Zororark GX

4x Zorua

4x Trubbish (Acid Spray)

2x Garbodor (Garbotoxin)

2x Garbodor (Transalanche)

1x Mimikyu

1x Kartana GX

2x Tapu Lele GX

Energy: (8)

4x Double Colourless Energy

4x Unit Energy (Metal, Psychic, Electric)

Supporters: (12)

2x Brigette

3x N

3x Cynthia

1x Professor Sycamore

3x Guzma

1x Accerola

Items: (17)

4x Ultra Ball

4x Puzzle of Time

3 x Float Stone

2x Choice Band

2x Field Blower

1x Enhanced Hammer

1x Rescue Stretcher

Stadiums: (2)

2x Parallel City

That's all for today folks! Thanks so much for reading and hope to see you in the next one!