Hi guys, I’ve just come back from playing in the Canberra/Sydney double regionals in Australia this past weekend. Today I will be sharing with you the deck that I played and discuss the cards choices, along with a few matchups I played.
For these two events, I ended up playing Greninja. The reason I chose Greninja is because I felt like it was the deck with the high ceiling, and had the most options in terms of game plan which allows you to adapt to any situation. Usually decks with the most upside and options are considered the best deck. Linear decks such as Night March are usually easy to counter as the idea is to do the same thing every game.
This is the list I ended up playing for day 1 in Canberra:
As you can see, I have included cards such as Hex Maniac and Lysandre which aren’t always seen in Greninja decks. I felt like I needed these to better my Trevenant/item lock match ups. In the end these two cards were rarely ever needed, and were only useful in 1 or 2 games. I also decided to play Rough Seas to help against Trevenant, which was by far the hardest match up in testing. I disregarded decks such Sceptile, since I did not feel was played in large numbers and accepted the autoloss.
The idea behind the Greninja deck is to evolve Froakie into Frogadier as soon as possible and get off a Water Duplicate to have multiple Frogadiers on your bench without having to evolve into multiple stage 1s. From there you can easily evolve into Greninja, and then Greninja Break. From there you can Giant Water Shuriken your opponents for 60 damage, plus decide whether you want to ability lock your opponent for 40 damage or attack for 60/80 damage. The snipe damage from Giant Water Shuriken adds up and allows you to KO some of your opponents Pokemon before you even use an attack!
Having to evolve all the way up to essentially a stage 3 means that your opponent would usually have taken around 2 prizes before you get a chance to attack. This allows us to play Ace Trainer, a disruption draw supporter rarely played by other decks. The ability to shuffle and draw 6, while making your opponent shuffle and draw 3 is very disruptive. It allows come from behind victories much like playing N late game in the previous formats.
My matchups in Canberra is as follows:
- Seismitoad EX/Giratina EX (WW) 1-0-0
- Seismitoad EX/Giratina EX (WW) 2-0-0
- Vespiquen Toolbox (WLW) 3-0-0
- Trevenant (LW) 3-0-1
- Night March (WL) 3-0-2
- Vespiquen/Vileplume (LL) 3-1-2
- Night March (WLW) 4-1-2
It was unfortunate that I had to play 3 of my friends round 3, 4 and 5 especially with the two ties, but that’s just luck of the draw. I saw a lot of item lock based decks on day 1 so I took out both battle compressors for an extra Wally and Ace Trainer for day 2 in Sydney. This was a meta call that I made based on the decks that I saw in Canberra and the decks that I was expecting to show up on day 2.
Day 2 Sydney matchups:
- Night March (WL) 0-0-1
- Manectric EX/Crobat (LWW) 1-0-1
- Vespiquen/Yveltal/Crobat (WL) 1-0-2
- Night March (WLL) 1-1-2
- Sceptile (LL) 1-2-2
- Night March (W) 2-2-2
- Garchomp (LWW) 3-2-2
Day two started off with a matchup that I should have won, but time was called one turn too early for me and my opponent was able to stall it out for a draw. It’s interesting to note that I played Hex Maniac on the first 2 turns of game 3. My opponent could not get anything going with Night March without being able to play his Shaymin EX. Round 4 I lost to Night March because I prized two Frogadier game 2 and 3. Game 3 I prized two Froakie as well and had to Sycamore away my only Sacred Ash turn 1 to avoid getting donked. Needless to say, I could not win that game. The next round I get paired up against my auto loss Sceptile, so I knew I had no chance of getting any points from this event.
With Greninja being a slower deck that quite often has to come from behind and has to set up, it is important to keep the time in mind and play at a fast pace. I only picked up the deck on Tuesday that week, so I hadn’t had much time to practice it, which is potentially why I went into time so often. Greninja is definitely a really fun deck with lots of different options. I encourage you guys to try it and let me know what you think!
Until next time,
Louis
Want this deck? Most of the cards come in BREAKpoint, so that would be the place to start.
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