Here's a summary of how my 3rd part of the season went, just the GBL reviews as the UBLs haven't started. It will start this weekend, and there's 3 of them so things can still shake up in the chase for the Worlds invite. But err spoiler alert, if I thought my 2nd part of this season was bad, wait till you see how everything went down this time around.
Spoiler alert, I will miss the first UBL of Season 3 this weekend in Novena. I have errr....another event to attend to...
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| Points Standings after UBL S2/before start of GBL S3 I had gone from 11th at one point to now down to 18th and I needed to set up my game. The issue is I had already hit my BFL, and they were mostly good ones too so I had to score Top 4s to score additional points so the aim for this part of the season was to score more Top 4 finishes, maybe a Top 2 somewhere but obviously the biggest aim is to win a GBL. Winning a GBL = getting an invite to play in the UBL. As someone who missed all 3 UBLs the first season, I know how hugely important it is to get one of these, especially since I might have to miss a UBL event this time around either due to Melbourne trip or San Fran trip either side of the UBL period. I mean sure winning a Pidgeot ex is nice and all but points and the invite means more to me. I was doing ok-ish. I was happy that at least my consistency has improved from all the previous years. That was always one of my biggest issues and to have just one non-points finish in 14 events is quite a good achievement for what I want to do. The problem is the finishes haven't been good enough, it's usually just the Top 8 or Top 16 area, not higher. That's where I needed to improve. This final part of the season was an interesting one too as we start with the new 2025 rotation, aka Scarlet & Violet to Journey Together format! We're now back to the owner's cards from years ago (think the Gym Heroes that era). Apr 19th - Great Ball League S3 #1 - Rowell Video  Elected: Yes Deck: Terapagos ex/Noctowl Score: 6-2 (18th/206) +8 LP (+0 due to BFL)
TankPagos was my comfort deck at this point, I won a big online tournament with it so I knew I had to run it. Deck was still good even with some new changes but being a Noctowl deck, it's bound to have some bad hands and that ended up costing me my games in R1 and R5 (against my own brother too). Apr 20th - Great Ball League S3 #4 - Deckard Gaming  Elected: Declined but Walk-In Succesful Deck: Gholdengo ex/Dudunsparce Score: 3-2 (7th/32) +10 LP (+0 due to BFL)
I had a good run with Gholdengo in the previous UBL and wanted to continue running it. Was trying out the Dudunsparce package and it was ok, wasn't that amazing. A couple of dumb misplays saw me go from a 3-0 start to finishing 3-2 and whiffing the top 4 finish I needed to score more points. Apr 23rd - Great Ball League S3 #8 - ZoomiesGaming  Elected: Yes Deck: Gholdengo ex/N's Zoroark ex Score: 3-2 (12th/32)
I swapped out the Dudunsparce for Zoroark to see how that would work, and to be fair, the N's Zoroark ex did pull it's weight in the deck, I really liked it. You're always bound to draw into dead cards so now you can just throw them away instead of possibly drawing into more of them from Dudunsparce. Both losses were to my two worst matchups in the whole room, Froslass and Flareon. Both seemed winnable but a slow start cost me any hopes of doing much. Apr 26th - Great Ball League S3 #9 - Card Connect Elected: Declined & Failed Walk-In Deck: Would have played Dragapult ex/Dusknoir Apr 26th - Great Ball League S3 #10 - Dimension Gaming Elected: Declined & Failed Walk-In Deck: Would have played Dragapult ex/Dusknoir Apr 27th - Great Ball League S3 #11 - Utopia Games  Elected: Yes Deck: Dragapult ex/Dusknoir Score: 2-4 (36th/64)
Two missed attempts at playing Pult Dusk, I finally played it and well....it did not go well. R3 was a weird mirror match where we both were stuck forever but I misplayed going for a risky play when I didn't need to. Didn't recover from that loss, lost to Zard then hit two Rag Bolts which can be a horrible matchup when they start the baby bolt twice. Also prizing 2 Dreepys or 2 Drakloaks every other game does not help! Apr 28th - Great Ball League S3 #13 - 1 of 1 Collectibles Elected: Declined & Failed Walk-In Deck: Would have played Tera Box May 1st - Great Ball League S3 #14 - Deckard Gaming Elected: Declined & Failed Walk-In Deck: Would have played Dragapult ex May 1st - Great Ball League S3 #15 - Concept City .png) Elected: Declined but Walk-In Successful Deck: Dragapult ex Score: 3-2 (11th/32) +8 LP (+0 due to BFL)
Tried the solo version, it felt fine honestly. I still am not sure which one is better. The first two rounds the deck just didn't want to work. It worked the next 3 rounds. It seems more consistent. I do like having Luminous Energy to attach to the Pult line instead of having to find the two different energies for the energy attachment. The Genesect also pulled it's weight in most of the games. May 3rd - Great Ball League S3 #16 - Agora Hobby  Elected: Yes Deck: Dragapult ex Score: 4-2 (15th/56) +8 LP (+0 LP due to BFL)
I saw the list that got 2nd in Seville and I liked it so I had to try it out. 17 supporters in a Budew meta does seem good so you're not so reliant on items. The 4 boss was perfect for this list and honestly the 4 Brocks were fine, it helped me set up quicker than my opponents. Well except R2 and R4, two slow starts there go me. May 4th - Great Ball League S3 #23 - Utopia Games  Elected: Yes Deck: Gholdengo ex/Dragapult ex Score: 3-3 (12th/40) +8 LP (+0 LP due to BFL)
Gholdengo and Dragapult? I had to try it out and see what the fuss was all about. The deck has had a lot of good results recently. My games with it....well I didn't get to see how good it really was. 3 of my losses were just down the slow set-up so it was a bit concerning that it happened in half my games. I did go 1st most of the time which is not good for this deck. Bo1 stuff ain't it? May 6th - Great Ball League S3 #29 - Cardboard Collectible  Elected: Yes Deck: Joltik Box Score: 4-1 (5th/32) +10 LP (+0 LP due to BFL)
I just had no idea what to play after so many bad results and thought I should give the Joltik Box a try. In the morning of the day, I played the deck in two online tourneys and it went well so I had to try it out after that but still having never played the deck IRL, I was still a bit nervous playing it. The event was almost perfect, my only loss was to Noel on Pult Dusk, his endless hand distruption just meant I couldn't set up the ideal board state for the late game to do much. Still, I thought I had done enough to make top 4 after winning my last round but imagine my sadness to hear I was 5th in standings, I kinda guessed that was it for my chances to score any points this season. May 7th - Great Ball League S3 #30 - Happyland Collectibles Elected: Declined & Failed Walk-In Deck: Would have played Charizard ex/Dusknoir May 9th - Great Ball League S3 #31 - Concept City .png) Elected: Yes Deck: Raging Bolt ex/Teal Mask Ogerpon ex Score: 2-3 (16th/32) +8 LP (+0 LP due to BFL)
Not sure why I ended up playing this actually. It seemed like a good play, especially with the baby bolt. But the deck did not impress me. It just couldn't do what I wanted it to do, always slow to do much too, could never set up the board for what I wanted it to be. I just didn't feel good with it. I will say it's not as easy to play as people claimed it to be previously. So that's my re-cap of how my GBLs went for Season 3 went, aka no good. No points added to my account sadly. Still no new comfort deck found either which is a bit scary as I'm playing in the Melbourne Regional this weekend. So here's what the standings look like after the 31 GBL events for this season with just the 3 UBLs and the MBL left to go!  Points Standings before UBL S3 It's a tight race going on for the Top 8 spots. Alester, Terry and Jeremy are quite safe I think, since they're all in the 300+ points range. From 5th downards it's a close fight down to 10th. Even those below 10th honestly still have a chance if they win the Ultra Ball League, which is how some of these guys are in the fight to begin with! And yep there's me, down in 26th. At this point in S2 before the UBLs, I was 11th! I've dropped 15 spots because I didn't score any points since the 3rd UBL from S2. Just a small recap of how my Season 3 went, before the UBLs:
Yes I technically scored points in 7 of the 9 events I played in but since none of them were a Top 4 finish, I didn't score any points since I didn't better my previous results (10 LP aka Top 8 finishes in GBLs), so I went the whole of Season 3 GBLs without adding more points to my account, thus the reason why I dropped all the way down to 26th. And as you can notice, I've been jumping around decks. I haven't felt comfortable with any deck in this format which doesn't feel good. But it's quite funny to see that Joltik Box got me my best result when I hadn't even played the deck before that GBL, I was learning it on the fly. Went to 14 GBL venues this time (11 last time) , I was elected in 7 of them, not elected for the other 5 so I tried to walk in for those. 40% sucess rate when it comes to walking in this time, 2 out of 5 is better than 0 out of 5 last season haha. So now a 64% success rate at getting to play in a GBL, more GBLs meant more chances to play, especially with two of them having 4 or more evens held on the same day so anyone who wanted to play was bound to play! Didn't do the play in 2 GBL strategy again, but this time I actually had a chance to and I didn't take it. Whoops. Declined rate was 22 out of 31 events, that's a lot of declines man. 70% decline (last time out it was 75%). Which meant I was elected into two other evens that I didn't go to because of time clashes with other GBLs. Of the 9 events I played in, played 8 different decks for those events, the only repeat being the solo Dragapult deck in back to back GBL events. Scored points technically with all but two deck. Last time out it was just one. Dragapult/Dusknoir made the list again but this time joined by Gholdengo with Zoroark. Not much stats to share this time sadly because well.....there were so many events happening at the same time, I never got much info for the places I didn't go to. But here's a quick roundown of what the winners are:
Thanks for reading and all the best to everyone playing in the upcoming 3 Ultra Ball events! |
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