Round 1 of The Ascension Premier League!

The Ascension Premier League’s first ever season kicked off with a bang! 9 players took the field on Saturday, the 11th of August,2018 at Team Ascension’s home base, Toys City Puri Indah Mall. Here’s how things played out on the first round of Indonesia’s Pokemon TCG Top Flight!

1. Redemptus Elmar Rusli (Yveltal Break AKA Oranguru Legends)

2. Jericho Wiyandy ( Zoroark GX - Lycanroc GX)

3. Joel Andrew Suryadi (Metagross GX)

4. Benedict Alfred Matthews (Zoroark GX-Garbodor)

5. Gilbert Valentino (Lucario GX - Lycanroc GX)

6. Aldo Putra (Tapu Koko GX - Vikavolt)

7. Auriel Abraham Karlam (Ultra Necrozma GX - malamar)

8. Christian Liu (Necrozma GX - Malamar)

9. Dendy Santoso (Buzzwole GX - Lycanroc GX)

For those familiar with the Indonesian Pokemon TCG community, the results of this 1st round came as a surprise, because while two prominent players, Redemptus Elmar Rusli and Joel Andrew Suryadi came first and third respectively, Jericho Wiyandy and Benedict Alfred Matthews are relative new comers to the Indonesian competitive scene. Aside from this, other new comers such as Gilbert Valentino and Aldo Putra came on top of tournament favourites such as 2 time League Cup winner Christian Liu, 2 times Worlds competitor Dendy Santoso and a veteran player such as myself.

One common theme that we have seen in the Indonesian meta game is how diverse it is. While this is a relatively small sample when compared to the meta game in larger communities, it does show that the current meta is quite even with many viable deck options available to players. Many players may wish to adjust the deck they play to the type of tournament they are playing in and what their goals may be in that specific tournament.

Since the Yveltal Break deck that topped was a complete carbon copy of a deck that recently topped a major event, I won't be going over it. I'll instead be going over meta gaming, a skill that Elmar exemplified by choosing to play Yveltal Break.

As the Indonesian community is quite small, Redemptus Elmar has a solid idea as to who he may be facing of against in this league round. As he knew that there were going to be 4 new players making their debut as well as 4 other players (myself included) who often test with him and expect him to play one of his regular decks (Gardevoire GX or Necrozma GX - Malamar), he decided to throw an odd ball and stun his competition with either a deck they’re entirely unfamiliar with or a deck that they were not prepared to play against.

The shock therapy that Elmar induced into his competition won him the round, while the 3 other decks that made the top 4 were decks that placed a heavy emphasis on consistency like Zoroark GX based decks with their constant Trades or Joel’s Metagross GX deck based on the combo between Baby Metagross and Steven’s Resolve in combination with a steady access to energy via Metagross GX’s ability and the ability to set up quickly by gaining access to large amounts of specific cards at once by using the Steven’s Resolve and Baby Metagross combo in conjuction with Algorithm GX.

Decks like Buzzwole GX and Malamar-Necrozma based decks on the other hand had difficulty dealing with the plethora of one prize attackers Yveltal Break employs as well as constantly having to find a way to either kill Hoopa or find a Guzma and use it to kill something else without having to sacrifice building up a board state due to not being able to play a draw supporter while not having access to an alternative draw engine (aside from Oranguru or Octillery which are often times the first thing that the Yveltal player kills).

So now that all that is out of the way, what are my predictions for the next round? Well, Elmar has control over the meta game now as he has a target set on him. He can choose to continue to play Yveltal Break, which I predict he will do as I doubt most players will adjust their decks significantly to counter him, but if they do, we’ll be seeing a lot of counter catchers and double Orangurus. I predict we’ll see about the same meta next round with slight adjustments at the very most.

That’s it for today! Thanks so much for reading and see you in the next one!