Pokemon - Bremen Regional Championships

Hello everyone and welcome to another article, this time taking a look at the recent results from the Bremen Regional Championships that took place last weekend in Bremen, Germany. This was the first Standard Post-Rotation Regionals so all eyes were on this weekend, and we saw a huge range of decks played, with 11 different decks represented within the Top 32 of the event.

My weekend

Unfortunately, my weekend was relatively underwhelming on the whole, finishing with a 3-3-3 record. I feel overall I was relatively close to doing well but had some unfortunately luck with my ties and losses on the whole. I did however make Top 32 in the League Cup on the second day, bubbling Top 16 with the same record. I decided to play Gardevoir-GX/Sylveon-GX after testing mainly Gardevoir-GX for the weeks leading up to the event. Sylveon-GX was a last minute addition discussed with Top 8 finisher Tamao Cameron just before the event and it seemed a lot of Gardevoir-GX players also decided to make this inclusion as the majority of Gardevoir-GX decks around the field were also playing Sylveon-GX. I want to carry on fine tuning the list and therefore I won’t be sharing the list in this article but my next article I’ll be taking a look at the deck overall.

Looking at Top 32

Look at the Top 32 of the event overall, we can see there were 11 different archetypes played. There were 9 Gardevoir-GX decks, 6 Golisopod-GX/Garbodor decks, 3 Drampa-GX/Garbodor decks, 3 Volcanion-EX decks, 3 Xerneas BREAK decks, 2 Metagross-GX decks, 2 Vikavolt/Tapu Bulu-GX decks, 1 Decidueye-GX/Ninetales- GX deck, 1 Decidueye-GX/Golisopod- GX deck, 1 Ho-oh- GX/Salazzle-GX deck and 1 Rainbow Force deck. As you can see the field was pretty diverse and there were definitely some surprises in deck choice overall.

Decidueye-GX still showed its worth in the first regionals without Forest of Giant Plants in format, after many players (including myself) had considered it pretty much dead as of the rotation. There was also a showing from Rainbow Force which was another deck that had seemingly dropped off the radar over the past few months. However as expected, the most populated archetypes within the Top 32 were Gardevoir-GX decks and Garbodor variants, both with 9 showings each. It seems that these two Worlds finals placing archetypes are still incredibly strong overall and achieved great success in the Regionals.

Below I have included an image from the “Complexity Card Gaming – Pokémon” Facebook page which represents the Top 32 graphically.

The winning list

Complexity Card Gaming’s Marc Lutz was the eventual champion of the tournament, with his Golisopod/Garbodor deck. This was one of the most highly represented decks in the tournament and Marc’s list was built to be super consistent to deal with the various different decks in the format. I have included his list below. Make sure you check out his Youtube and Twitch channels, “Matzlatz”, as well as “Complexity Card Gaming – Pokemon” on Facebook.

As we can see, the list is pretty standard on the whole, with not too many frills or gimmicks in order to be able to maximise the consistency and raw power of Golisopod-GX. The 3-3 line ensures he can always get multiple Wimpod’s out in order to begin Guzma/Acerola looping his Golisopod-GXs to be dealing 120 damage for 1 energy each turn. His 3-2/1 line of Garbodor favours a heavier line of “Garbotoxin” to try and deal with many different abilities within the format, such as Gardevoir-GX, Volcanion-EX, Tapu Lele-GX, Greninja BREAK and Octillery. He’s still included one of the “Trashalanche” Garbodor as a strong late game attacker that can take 2 prizes on an EX/GX very easily whilst only giving up 1 prize itself.

Tapu Koko Promo is a fantastic math fixer in many situations, creating 170 damage between a “First Impression” and “Flying Flip” provided one of these attacks is combined with a Choice Band. Also, having free retreat is a fantastic addition to the deck as it means in combination with the 4 Float Stone he plays, there are almost 0 Guzma stall targets, also its an activator for the bonus damage from “First Impression”. His spicy tech of choice is Tapu Fini-GX which has an incredibly useful GX attack in certain matchups. “Tapu Storm GX” shuffles the opponents active Pokemon back into their deck with all cards attached, which is incredibly useful in a format full of Stage 2s and setup Pokemon. This can buy extra turns to carry on applying pressure with the deck, and prevents opponents from building up 1 huge attacker against you to start dealing with your Golisopod-GXs. Since the GX attack is only 1 energy this can be set up in a single turn to take the opponent by surprise. Finally, the consistency of Tapu Lele-GX again shines through here in the 3 copies ran in order to always be able to search for the Supporter you want to play that turn.

Onto the Supporters and as we can see, Marc has gone for the full consistency of 4 Professor Sycamore and 4 N. This is in order to always have an out to a draw Supporter, and with no more VS Seeker in the format it is important to play a thick line of these style Supporters. In addition to the 4-4 Sycamore/N line, he is also running 4 Guzma. Guzma is an inherently powerful card in its own right but has even more value in this deck as Guzma is also a way to activating the bonus damage for “First Impression”. In addition to this, being able to Guzma and the use “Tapu Storm GX” on a benched Pokemon your opponent is setting up, is a huge tempo swing and can seriously disrupt their strategy. 3 Acerola is another great addition to the deck, as again not only does it act as an activator for “First Impression” provided there is something damaged in the active, but it also helps deny prizes from the opponent by wiping damage off of the board at the same time. Finally, he has included 1 Brigette to be able to use it on the first turn of the game to grab 3 Basics from his deck and begin his game plan.

Trainer wise, 4 Ultra Ball ensures he has many outs to the first turn Brigette play, and can easily get into his evolution Pokemon later on in the game as well as Tapu Lele-GX to grab Supporters throughout the game. 2 Field Blower helps stem the pain from Choice Bands and can get rid of more passive Tools such as Float Stone and Exp Share. 1 Rescue Stretcher helps continue to stream attackers and can avoid painful Pokemon discards in the early turns as there is some Pokemon recovery within the deck. Heavy Ball is an incredibly useful addition within the deck as it can search out Wimpod, Golisopod-GX and both Garbodors without having to discard any cards from hand. Finally, he has included a full 4-4 compliment of Choice Band and Float Stone. Choice band is a huge help as mentioned before in the combination of Tapu Koko and Golisopod-GX reaching 170 damage in 2 turns. The extra 30 damage also helps make “Crossing Cut GX” reach 180 damage, often KOing an EX/GX as well as pushing “Trashalanche” into 1-shot range a lot of the time in the late game. 4 Float Stone ensures Marc can always get “Garbotoxin” online when he wants to as well as making sure “First Impression” is doing the full 120 damage as often as possible.

Finally, onto Energy and Marc is running 3 Grass Energy, 4 Rainbow Energy and 4 Double Colorless Energy. The combination of 3 Grass as well as 4 Rainbow means that he has the relatively standard 7 outs in a deck to attaching to his main attacker before turn 2. However also running Rainbow Energy means that he can attack with “Trashalanche” and “Tapu Storm GX” later on in the game once he has found his Rainbow Energy after Turns 1 and 2. The Double Colorless Energy means that both of Golisopod-GX’s other attacks can be used, as well as spontaneous “Energy Drive” plays from Tapu Lele-GX to deal with anything that has a huge amount of energy on it.

Hopefully from my analysis and the overall view of the decklist itself, you can see that the list favours super consistency and is built in such a way that he can do exactly what he wants to turn after turn which lead him to victory in Bremen.

Thanks for reading and make sure to check out “Omnipoke” on all the various social media pages, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Twitch.