Suicune V Tournament Recap

Hello again! It’s been a couple of months since I last wrote, but we are still chugging along in the same Standard format, Sword & Shield—Fusion Strike. The format is nearing its end, though, and the metagame has evolved to some extent in the weeks since my last article. Players are starting to construct lists for the soon-to-be-released Brilliant Stars set (and I have an article covering the new VSTAR mechanic planned here soon!), but there are still a couple weeks of SSH-FST to go, including a couple of IRL $1000 tournaments. 

This article will help anyone preparing to attend any of those $1k events or just looking to perform well in the last few days of online tournaments before Brilliant Stars drops. In my last article, I covered a Suicune V disruption-style deck I used to considerable success in online tournaments. Last month, I was able to make Top 4 at a $1k tournament in Chattanooga, TN using that deck, with only minor changes from the list in my article. In this article, I’ll recap that experience, discussing why I stuck with Suicune V, how my card choices affected my matches in the tournament, and how the metagame at the tournament reflected evolution from the earlier weeks of the SSH-FST format. At the end of the article, I’ll detail how I expect the Standard metagame to look for the remaining $1k events in this format, and offer a couple of lists I would consider. 

Chattanooga, TN $1k

This tournament had an attendance of 63 players mostly from the Chattanooga, Nashville, Huntsville, and Atlanta player bases. I was confident for some time that I was going to play my Suicune V disruption deck for the event; the only thing I was debating over in the preceding days was whether to play a tech for the Jolteon VMAX matchup.

Jolteon VMAX had been seeing heavy play in online tournaments, and is an extremely bad matchup for Suicune V; the combination of Lightning Weakness and sniping Sobble and Drizzile off the Bench means that you essentially never win the matchup unless the Jolteon VMAX player dead draws. In online events, I had either been playing a different deck such as Single Strike when I expected a lot of Jolteon VMAX, or I had experimented with a two-card tech package in Suicune V.

This package consisted of 1 Rapid Strike Urshifu V and 1 Rapid Strike Energy, an idea suggested to me by Vini Fernandez. (Recently, players such as Sackett Brehmer have been running this package in Jolteon VMAX itself, in an attempt to win the notoriously luck-based mirror.) I tested this out in a few online tournaments. First, I placed 9th of 330 in a Late Night Series… and used the tech package exactly zero times, since I avoided playing against any Jolteon VMAX despite it being the second-most-played archetype! (Technically, I did use the Rapid Strike Energy to win one game by attacking with Inteleon CRE.) With inconclusive data, I tried the package again in an Excalibur tournament and finished 4-2-1… but my tie and one of my losses came against Jolteon VMAX. The tie was a bit of an anomaly, as neither myself nor my opponent slowplayed but we both dead drew for several turns and took a lot of time in the late game to consider some complex probability decisions. In the loss, I simply Prized the Rapid Strike Urshifu V and did not take that Prize soon enough. 

These results suggested to me that this tech package was not effective in beating Jolteon VMAX. It certainly could win the matchup sometimes, but not nearly consistently enough to justify playing those two cards over the cards I had cut to fit them (1 Capacious Bucket and 1 Giant Cape, which are important for consistency and the Mew VMAX matchup respectively). If I am running a tech for a specific deck, especially a two-card tech, I want that tech to make the matchup better than 50-50. This package was certainly not accomplishing that, so I scrapped the idea. Jolteon VMAX’s ability to snipe your Sobble and Drizzile means it is often just too difficult to pull off the combo, since you need to find the single Rapid Strike Urshifu V as well as Raihan to search for Rapid Strike Energy and set up the attack in one turn.

My mindset for the $1k, then, was just to hope to not play against more than one Jolteon VMAX, and win every other matchup through superior play. Although Jolteon VMAX was consistently the second- or third- most played deck online at the time, Galarian Weezing/Galarian Moltres decks were steadily rising in popularity and performance. Lindsay Rohskopf informed me that many of the Georgia players coming to the event were planning to bring single-Prize Dark decks in that vein, and I felt fine about that matchup (I have always thought that deck to be somewhat underwhelming). I also expected many players to default to Mew VMAX and Single Strike (the top two decks at the start of the format), and felt comfortable with those matchups too. 

My predictions were rewarded, with my matchups at the $1k pretty much entirely consisting of those three decks (with one big exception I’ll get to in a bit). Suicune V was overall an excellent play for the tournament. Here was the final list I settled on:

I believe the only change here from the list in my article two months ago was swapping 1 Capacious Bucket for 1 Escape Rope. While 3 Capacious Bucket was a nice comfort in terms of consistency, the deck functions perfectly fine with 2, and I felt the Escape Rope was necessary to play given the expected popularity of the Galarian Weezing deck. While obviously you can’t search for the Escape Rope under Neutralizing Gas, it serves as one more out to draw into to break the Ability lock, and you can also search for it in advance if you expect Galarian Weezing to come into the Active Spot imminently. The card is also good in other scenarios. In fact, I have kept it in the deck for online tournament play even as Galarian Weezing’s popularity has declined somewhat, and am always surprised by the value it has provided in a number of scenarios. 

I haven’t written a tournament report in literally years (not since League Cups), but I feel like a short one here might be a worthwhile read. Since official play screeched to a halt in March 2020, my only tastes of physical PTCG play had been a three-round Whap Down Entertainment tournament, and a small Swiss-only store tournament. While not a huge event, the $1k was definitely a lot larger than those other two, and reminded me of the good old days of League Cups that so many players are longing to return to. It felt great to get back to those kinds of events, even if not on the Regional scale yet. Also, going through each of my matches will help illustrate why exactly Suicune V was a good play for the tournament and why my specific card choices in this list were effective. If you still have events left on your schedule for the SSH-FST format, hopefully you find some takeaways in this report. 

Round 1: Mew VMAX

I don’t remember all the details of this game but I do remember that I had a slow start, went down several Prizes, and then built a comeback off of Path to the Peak and my numerous Energy-denial cards. In online tournaments leading up to this $1k, I’d noticed many Mew VMAX lists paring down from 4 to 3 Stadiums, which was beneficial for me since it meant Path to the Peak was more likely to stick. Sure enough, a Path to the Peak lock combined with Fan of Waves and a couple clutch Crushing Hammer flips was enough to prevent my opponent from attacking for several turns in the late game, giving me enough time to develop my board and then chase his attackers with Boss’s Orders. My opponent possibly misplayed somewhat by relying too much on Meloetta as an attacker in the early game, which allowed him to get the early Prize lead and leave me with a board of only a couple Sobble, but meant that I could wipe three Fusion Strike Energy off the board by easily Knocking Out the Meloetta after using Fan of Waves on a Benched Mew VMAX. That illustrates part of the appeal of this Suicune V list; it’s not commonly played, so players often aren’t fully aware of the proper strategies to use against it. I think my opponent thought I was playing a more traditional Ludicolo variant of the deck (and chose his own plays accordingly), since I didn’t reveal Path to the Peak or Crushing Hammer until a few turns into the game. 

1-0

Round 2: Galarian Weezing/Galarian Moltres ( Jalen Jones )

Jalen actually ended up being the first-place finisher at the tournament; I was his only loss all day. We played a fun game with a lot of time spent thinking through decisions on both sides. I will say I hit a nice stroke of luck to swing things in my favor early on, as Jalen’s first-turn Marnie yielded me my one copy of Escape Rope that I’d teched specifically for this matchup. After Jalen used Ascension to evolve to Galarian Weezing, I was able to play the Escape Rope and instantly gain access to Shady Dealings, preventing me from wasting any time dead-drawing under Neutralizing Gas. Both of us still drew suboptimally for the first few turns, though; both our Benches were tiny and I had to two-shot his Galarian Weezing. 

From prior experience in this matchup I knew of two additional useful strategies in addition to the Escape Rope tech. First, it is very difficult for the Dark deck to both play Boss’s Orders and swing for big damage in the same turn. This meant that in most games, I would use Inteleon SSH as a single-Prize attacker to force a “seven-Prize game” for the Dark player. Unfortunately, Inteleon SSH was in my last two Prizes in this game and I wasn’t able to leverage it. 

The other thing I knew was that the Dark deck’s key late-game combo involves using Klara to grab Galarian Moltres out of the discard pile along with two Dark Energy to accelerate with Malevolent Charge, enabling an immediate attack with Fiery Wrath. Knowing this, at one point in the late game I used my Echoing Horn to place a Galarian Moltres from Jalen’s discard pile onto his Bench. This forced him to find the cards to search for and discard his second copy in addition to having the Klara combo, and he ended up whiffing. Just one missed turn of damage from the Dark player usually results in Suicune being able to scrape out the win, which is what ended up happening. 

2-0

Round 3: Single Strike

My streak of good matchups continued, further justifying my decision to go with Suicune V for this tournament. Walking around the room after my previous games had finished, it seemed like the top three archetypes in the room were Mew VMAX, Galarian Weezing, and Single Strike—all solidly winnable matchups for me. In this game, I went first and attached an Energy to Suicune V on turn one, then attached again and found a Boss’s Orders to take out a Houndour on the second turn, slowing my opponent’s setup. The matchup is fine either way but significantly favored if you go first, as the ability to play Boss’s Orders before your opponent’s second turn can give you much more control over the gamestate. My opponent didn’t seem totally comfortable with the matchup and made some questionable decisions around Tower of Darkness sequencing and attacker choice, and I held on to the lead I started with.

3-0 

Round 4: Duraludon VMAX

This matchup is extremely difficult for Suicune V; I knew a win here would probably require significant dead draws for my opponent. Duraludon VMAX plays with a limited Bench, runs multiple healing cards, and has huge HP—all traits that make Suicune V very bad against it. My opponent also ran Tool Scrapper to remove Cape of Toughness, meaning at least one of my Suicune V was going to be OHKOd. I knew the optimal lines for the matchup:

• Generally, limit your Bench to three to play around Avery
• Leverage Cape of Toughness to prevent OHKOs
• Leverage Inteleon SSH as an attacker to force a seven-Prize game
• Conserve Path to the Peak to get rid of Crystal Cave and allow yourself to damage Duraludon VMAX with Capture Energy attached
• Target Fighting Energy with Crushing Hammer, since Duraludon VMAX generally runs four copies with no way to recover them

…but, even if you play optimally, you need the Duraludon VMAX player to whiff a considerable amount of cards, and that didn’t happen in this game. It took almost all the time in the round, but eventually I ran out of resources and couldn’t hold up to 220 damage smacking my Active Pokemon every turn. 

3-1

Round 5: Single Strike ( Scott Stoeckley ) 

At this point I was a bit worried because I needed a 5-1 record for Top 8, and I had assumed I would be taking a loss to Jolteon VMAX today, not anticipating to hit a Duraludon VMAX. Basically, I needed to dodge Jolteon VMAX for the last two Swiss rounds—fortunately, the handful of Jolteon VMAX players had fallen victim to the Single Strike or Mew VMAX players and were mostly below my record. I ended up getting paired against my ride to the tournament, Scott Stoeckley of the FlowTKast, who was playing Single Strike. 

I had told Scott to tech one copy of Tool Jammer for the odd Suicune V player as well as to make the Jolteon VMAX matchup more favorable (that matchup is deceptively loseable for Single Strike, because it is the less consistent deck). Fortunately, my advice didn’t end up working against me, as both of us exchanged several turns of draw-passing under my Path to the Peak in the early game before I ripped my Professor’s Research off the topdeck to set up and take a significant lead. If the Suicune V player goes first, they are quite likely to be able to Knock Out a Houndour on the second turn (as happened in this game), meaning they just need to two-shot the Single Strike player’s first VMAX attacker and then Knock Out a Crobat V for game. Obviously this game plan changes if the opponent can avoid using VMAXes or Crobat V, but it happens this way in a large portion of games. In this game, I think I just swung into Scott’s Active Pokemon turn after turn as we both continued to flounder under Path to the Peak, and he was just never able to set up. It was unfortunate to have to knock him out of Top 8 contention, but I was still antsy about possibly hitting a Jolteon VMAX in the final Swiss round. 

4-1

Round 6: Galarian Weezing/Galarian Moltres

Fortunately, I ended up hitting another player running that Dark deck that had been seeing all the recent hype. I did not end up using the Escape Rope in this game, but was able to set up reasonably well and Knock Out the Galarian Weezing before too much Poison damage had accumulated, forcing my opponent to start chipping with Hoopa as he tried to set up his Inteleon lines. He told me after the match that he actually only played one copy of Galarian Moltres (and wished he’d played the usual two), which was affecting his consistency in a number of games including ours. I leveraged Inteleon SSH as a single-Prize attacker, and I also found Cape of Toughness extremely clutch as it meant the math for my opponent just never quite added up between Hoopa damage, Poison damage, and Quick Shooting pings. Echoing Horn was also clutch to add an additional +20 damage to Blizzard Rondo in the late game, checkmating my opponent as there was nothing in his deck he could place in the Active Spot to survive another attack. 

5-1

My round 4 loss had meant I had to take the hard way into Top 8 rather than starting 4-0 and double IDing, but I was rewarded with the #1 overall seed heading into cut. Most of us wanted to split the cash prizing, but one player declined, so we ended up playing things out. (That player ended up losing in Top 8 to Jalen, who then decided he’d also keep playing, since he liked his matchups, which paid off with his first-place finish.) 

Top 8: Mew VMAX

This was by far my most exciting match of the day. In game 1, I went down five Prizes to zero, and was very close to scooping the game, but since the pace of play on both sides was brisk, I identified a line to win and stuck with it. Path to the Peak and Fan of Waves pulled their weight, but I could not have won without a pair of incredibly clutch Crushing Hammer flips that rendered my opponent unable to attack for multiple turns as he could not draw out of Path to the Peak. (My opponent noted he couldn’t complain about luck as he’d gone 3 for 3 on Cram-o-Matic heads earlier in the game.) I think similarly to round 1, my opponent didn’t fully know my deck, played somewhat greedy with resources and wasted too many Elesa’s Sparkle, Energy, or Stadiums early on, but I didn’t have perfect knowledge of his hand or deck so I don’t want to knock his play. Regardless, I miraculously grinded this game back from the brink and took a 1-0 lead in the series. 

Game 2 was swift, as I essentially bricked and lost the game by Bench out if memory serves. I felt confident going into game 3 though; I’d taken game 1 despite it being very low-odds for me to win, and I’d gotten my dead-draw game out of the way. Game 3 actually ended up going similarly to game 1: I started slow, eventually stabilized thanks to Path to the Peak and Energy denial, and eventually developed a commanding board position. I don’t know for sure if my opponent played three or four Stadiums, but if he’d followed the recent online trend and cut to three, it had an obvious impact on this series. Path to the Peak was in play for so many turns in games 1 and 3 and prevented my opponent from doing basically anything in the late game. 

Top 4: Duraludon VMAX

My run ended as I paired up once again with the Duraludon VMAX player from round 4. I did not have a good setup and wasn’t able to follow all of the lines I outlined above, so after a quick game 1 loss, I said “there’s no way I’m winning both of the other two games, and I haven’t eaten all day,” and circled the series win for my opponent on the match slip. I was content with the Top 4 finish; the event had been a great opportunity to see friends and play some high-level games. It felt like a big League Cup, and I’d missed that feeling.

Suicune V ran great all day. The metagame was basically what I’d predicted: most of my matchups were favorable, condensed into just three archetypes, and I encountered one autoloss. The autoloss just happened to be Duraludon VMAX instead of Jolteon VMAX, and I had the misfortune to encounter him twice. Not much to be done about that. I don’t recommend teching for the Duraludon VMAX matchup just as I don’t recommend the Rapid Strike package for the Jolteon VMAX matchup—if you expect a ton of those decks, just play something other than Suicune V. 

Wrapping up SSH-FST: two lists for the end of the format

Shortly after this article is published I’ll be attending another $1k tournament, this time in Kennesaw, GA. As far as I’m aware, that and a $1k in Ontario, Canada the same weekend are the last major IRL events planned for this Standard format before Brilliant Stars is upon us. 

I might very well run it back with Suicune V Disruption, which has been my favorite deck this format, but I’m a little bit too scared of Jolteon VMAX again to feel that it’s a flawless pick. The Galarian Weezing decks have declined somewhat (although new “toolbox” decks following a similar engine are being played), Mew VMAX is still comfortably on top, and Single Strike decks have pivoted somewhat to the Gengar VMAX variant, which has a much easier time OHKOing Suicune V than the Umbreon VMAX-centric build. 

If I want to hop off the Suicune V train, here are two other decks I’d feel fine about playing for this weekend’s tournaments:

This list was built by Isaiah Bradner and I piloted it to 7th out of 249 at a recent Late Night Series, so it is proven to be at least functional. Don’t play less than two Crobat V and eight draw Supporters in your Single Strike lists! 2 Tool Jammer is a little techy, but they mean you take fewer losses to poor starts against Jolteon VMAX, and turn the Suicune V matchup from bad to good. A basic Energy is also unneeded. The only card I kind of missed was an additional Stadium to help lose fewer games to an early Path to the Peak; you can mess with cutting something for that if you want, but it’s not needed.

I first saw this particular list when Jonathan Patricio used it to win a 359-player Late Night event. I don’t know if he built it himself, but if he did, credit him with making what I think is the strongest Jolteon VMAX list in this format. The notable differences from the norm are the second Fan of Waves, which is excellent against Mew VMAX and Single Strike; and the one Capture Energy, which is basically just a fifth Quick Ball to ensure you always get a Jolteon V down on your first turn. Jolteon VMAX is, in my opinion, the second-most-insane deck in the format after Mew VMAX, but if you’re gonna lose with it, a lot of the time it starts with not finding a Jolteon V on that first turn. 

Conclusion

Maybe I’ve spent too much time harping on this Suicune V deck, but it has been one of the more rewarding decks in terms of skill expression that I’ve played in a while, and gives you the tools to outplay people in a wide array of matchups. You do need to be wary of Jolteon VMAX, but I encourage you to give this deck a spin on ladder or an online tournament before the format ends. I think the deck will still be viable (maybe even quietly good) in Brilliant Stars Standard, but I haven’t tested that format much yet. I will work on testing it with my teammates in the coming days, and I plan to have another article here in the near future going over some important cards and exciting new decks from that new set.

If Suicune V isn’t your thing, I’m confident in recommending Isaiah’s Single Strike list and the Jolteon VMAX list that I touched on here, whether you’re competing online, at locals, or even in one of those $1k events this coming weekend. 

Be back soon!