Hi my name is Ven, or on other forums yoyos, varit, etc, what I mainly do is deck construction discussion, i.e. how to play decks in an efficient manner, synergy, consistency, I used to be on an American ptcg testing team and played with some aforementioned players throughout north America, blah, blah, blah, boring stuff. In the past few months however have spent a lot of time playing fire emblem awakening, watching various series on Netflix such as the trailer park boys, working nights at my very lazy job and training for exhibition match's across the west coast 15-3 minutes at a time (actually fighting). Suffice to say that I haven't really thought to much about the game in the past few months, But it's not entirely hard to get back into the game as long as I go to league and see what people are playing there and online, as well as having a healthy connection to the community itself.
Though it has been a long standing argument of though I am a good player I don't consider winning LC's and usually walk away with a 2-1-0 record with a 3rd to 4th place standing, wouldn't that just make me a bad player overall? Not entirely and that depends on the meta/area you play in, in my area a lot of the players are influenced by what is made online through usually pokebeach, sixprizes and the various fonte groups on facebook, I find that the more so dominate players such as myself are more into things such as six prizes underground, hey trainer, road to states/regs/nats/worlds, etc (for valid reason), and the difference between those 2 at times is rather startling to say the least. Not to say that difference between the two is just a matter of opinion, but it is, on one side you have pokebeach, six prizes, pokegym players who comparably get about a boon of 300 points per season and have a 0.08% chance of getting through the grinders. Where as hey trainers player base, at 40%, already have 500+ points for the year to get into worlds already. Yet people will only either give the information needed for playing these decks to deserving players or figure it out over time. Suffice again to say does that make even the player base on serebii, mainly made up of vgc players bad? No, you could say the same about regular six prizes and arrive at that same answer, alot of top level players will only say enough due to one reason, most of the format and the cards are already online, if your at that level you should already understand how to use those cards to that extent, i.e. based off of what you know. It doesn't even matter if your a new player or an experienced player it is all the same. So the conclusion of this is, I know how to play at a very high level I just don't have alot of really good players in my area to play against and due to that I'm more interested in playing against new players to see of they can play at that level. I should also note that my area has adopted a very aggressive mentality towards the game on a competitive level which just makes me not really care about playing well at all.
Now onto the boring stuff decklists (jk), what has the best chance of winning, what is the new up and comer, what are decks that haven't really been that noticeable as of late, so the top cards/decks under consideration (not posting actual deck lists, If you want lists posted for explanation that can be easily done).
Yveltal/garbo
Yveltal/garbo tech (the difference between the 2 is more so what is used to combat other decks, a straight yveltal/garbo list will just play that, the cookie cutter, the tech version will play massive techs to combat the weakness)
Aromatisse/variants (due to the high volume of decks played, plasmatisse, aromatisse/kangaskhan, fairies, aromatisse/klingklang, etc, it is just better to list variants)
Pyroar/variants (said to be playing big basics, LandorusEX, mewtwoEX, etc)
Raindance decks (blastoise/Black kyuremEX, rayboar/RayquazaEX, energy splash decks)
Plasma (so snorlax, lugia and kyurem builds)
Virizion/genesect/raichu (due to how splashable raichu is it is very versatile in almost every deck as a pyroar, lugia and yveltal counter)
Lock vs garbo (lock decks that use sigi, pyroar, Latias, etc are on the rise however some formats play heavy garbo list's to combat the problem, even decks like rain dance and etc, some nationals showed that decks that played heavy yveltal/garbo ruled ability based formats where as formats that didn't had very unorthodox winners, though no format showed a clearly consistent winner other then yveltal/garbo)
Stage decks (decks such as garchomp, shifty, miltank/greninja, flareon, empoleon, weavile, dragonite/garbo, etc will be seen at worlds, these decks seem to fall short of the expectation of those decks and cards above it
Now going from nats into worlds.
Though Canadian nats is soon underway, and Ontario is holding a pre-nats tournament on the 22nd and nats on the 28th and US nats on the 4th of july, nats has been yet to be decided for the top half of north America. Here is a large list of top 8 decks and players from around the world
http://thetopcut.net/2014/05/29/2014-national-championship-results/
Keep in mind this is an idea of what will be seen at worlds this year. Also I thought I would use top cut to show the nats winners to say that both pooka (kyle sucevich) and Josie Rojano will be commentating worlds and US nats along side jwittz (Josh wittenkeller) and exobite (Dylan Mayo). A big hand to them as they have been keeping a very large profile for pokemon tcg (minus Jwittz over the past year, Jwittz, though I did meet him at worlds last year and came across as a decent person and fairly knowledgeable towards the tcg back then hasn't really done that much for the tcg over the past 6+ months leaves me wondering how he will commentate this year overall.
With shoutout's over, decks listed, forums contended, and my personal background going into the end of the tournament season explained, what about the actually tournaments themselves???
Tournament Hype train. OMG PYROAOR< YVELTAL?GARBOGAHHHHHH!!!!!!
Before every tournament and even after every tournament, even if it's other articles listed on sixprizes, pokegym, heytrainer, celadon, etc you see at the beginning, the aforementioning of the hype train. "So yeah I checked on forums and stuff, and saw people and friends talking a lot about pyroar being big and yveltal/garbo did well by winning a few nationals, should this be a thing to worry about?". Truth is an experienced player will just tell you the same thing I will tell you now, consistency beats techs guaranteed, though those techs in various matchups can go a long way, though it usually depends on what those techs are used for overall. Hype trains I notice for the most part defeat players and good-great players by making either poor deck choice's or just not being able to concentrate on the game at hand. Thinking about the game, spending time with your deck and thinking of ways to win against various matchups do help overall but it's more about matchups and choices to those matchups while playing, but It's mainly about the ability to play well overall.
I have to say endings aren't really my specialty, and it just comes down to players making choices, even with the massive amount of collective information found over various forums, websites, etc, it doesn't really tell you how to win tournaments, and how can a person who doesn't really care to win tournaments tell you how to win at the end of the day is just something for yourself to figure out, we all have our own motives behind things its the ability to do that defines itself, or something philosophical like that. But to those that are planning on attending I wish you guys the best of luck and I plan on watching all 3 of the tournaments listed in this article to cheer on the various players of the tcg, if not I plan on playing regionals in the states next year so who knows I might be your next opponent, peace.
Though it has been a long standing argument of though I am a good player I don't consider winning LC's and usually walk away with a 2-1-0 record with a 3rd to 4th place standing, wouldn't that just make me a bad player overall? Not entirely and that depends on the meta/area you play in, in my area a lot of the players are influenced by what is made online through usually pokebeach, sixprizes and the various fonte groups on facebook, I find that the more so dominate players such as myself are more into things such as six prizes underground, hey trainer, road to states/regs/nats/worlds, etc (for valid reason), and the difference between those 2 at times is rather startling to say the least. Not to say that difference between the two is just a matter of opinion, but it is, on one side you have pokebeach, six prizes, pokegym players who comparably get about a boon of 300 points per season and have a 0.08% chance of getting through the grinders. Where as hey trainers player base, at 40%, already have 500+ points for the year to get into worlds already. Yet people will only either give the information needed for playing these decks to deserving players or figure it out over time. Suffice again to say does that make even the player base on serebii, mainly made up of vgc players bad? No, you could say the same about regular six prizes and arrive at that same answer, alot of top level players will only say enough due to one reason, most of the format and the cards are already online, if your at that level you should already understand how to use those cards to that extent, i.e. based off of what you know. It doesn't even matter if your a new player or an experienced player it is all the same. So the conclusion of this is, I know how to play at a very high level I just don't have alot of really good players in my area to play against and due to that I'm more interested in playing against new players to see of they can play at that level. I should also note that my area has adopted a very aggressive mentality towards the game on a competitive level which just makes me not really care about playing well at all.
Now onto the boring stuff decklists (jk), what has the best chance of winning, what is the new up and comer, what are decks that haven't really been that noticeable as of late, so the top cards/decks under consideration (not posting actual deck lists, If you want lists posted for explanation that can be easily done).
Yveltal/garbo
Yveltal/garbo tech (the difference between the 2 is more so what is used to combat other decks, a straight yveltal/garbo list will just play that, the cookie cutter, the tech version will play massive techs to combat the weakness)
Aromatisse/variants (due to the high volume of decks played, plasmatisse, aromatisse/kangaskhan, fairies, aromatisse/klingklang, etc, it is just better to list variants)
Pyroar/variants (said to be playing big basics, LandorusEX, mewtwoEX, etc)
Raindance decks (blastoise/Black kyuremEX, rayboar/RayquazaEX, energy splash decks)
Plasma (so snorlax, lugia and kyurem builds)
Virizion/genesect/raichu (due to how splashable raichu is it is very versatile in almost every deck as a pyroar, lugia and yveltal counter)
Lock vs garbo (lock decks that use sigi, pyroar, Latias, etc are on the rise however some formats play heavy garbo list's to combat the problem, even decks like rain dance and etc, some nationals showed that decks that played heavy yveltal/garbo ruled ability based formats where as formats that didn't had very unorthodox winners, though no format showed a clearly consistent winner other then yveltal/garbo)
Stage decks (decks such as garchomp, shifty, miltank/greninja, flareon, empoleon, weavile, dragonite/garbo, etc will be seen at worlds, these decks seem to fall short of the expectation of those decks and cards above it
Now going from nats into worlds.
Though Canadian nats is soon underway, and Ontario is holding a pre-nats tournament on the 22nd and nats on the 28th and US nats on the 4th of july, nats has been yet to be decided for the top half of north America. Here is a large list of top 8 decks and players from around the world
http://thetopcut.net/2014/05/29/2014-national-championship-results/
Keep in mind this is an idea of what will be seen at worlds this year. Also I thought I would use top cut to show the nats winners to say that both pooka (kyle sucevich) and Josie Rojano will be commentating worlds and US nats along side jwittz (Josh wittenkeller) and exobite (Dylan Mayo). A big hand to them as they have been keeping a very large profile for pokemon tcg (minus Jwittz over the past year, Jwittz, though I did meet him at worlds last year and came across as a decent person and fairly knowledgeable towards the tcg back then hasn't really done that much for the tcg over the past 6+ months leaves me wondering how he will commentate this year overall.
With shoutout's over, decks listed, forums contended, and my personal background going into the end of the tournament season explained, what about the actually tournaments themselves???
Tournament Hype train. OMG PYROAOR< YVELTAL?GARBOGAHHHHHH!!!!!!
Before every tournament and even after every tournament, even if it's other articles listed on sixprizes, pokegym, heytrainer, celadon, etc you see at the beginning, the aforementioning of the hype train. "So yeah I checked on forums and stuff, and saw people and friends talking a lot about pyroar being big and yveltal/garbo did well by winning a few nationals, should this be a thing to worry about?". Truth is an experienced player will just tell you the same thing I will tell you now, consistency beats techs guaranteed, though those techs in various matchups can go a long way, though it usually depends on what those techs are used for overall. Hype trains I notice for the most part defeat players and good-great players by making either poor deck choice's or just not being able to concentrate on the game at hand. Thinking about the game, spending time with your deck and thinking of ways to win against various matchups do help overall but it's more about matchups and choices to those matchups while playing, but It's mainly about the ability to play well overall.
I have to say endings aren't really my specialty, and it just comes down to players making choices, even with the massive amount of collective information found over various forums, websites, etc, it doesn't really tell you how to win tournaments, and how can a person who doesn't really care to win tournaments tell you how to win at the end of the day is just something for yourself to figure out, we all have our own motives behind things its the ability to do that defines itself, or something philosophical like that. But to those that are planning on attending I wish you guys the best of luck and I plan on watching all 3 of the tournaments listed in this article to cheer on the various players of the tcg, if not I plan on playing regionals in the states next year so who knows I might be your next opponent, peace.