It's been 3 long years since we had actual big events in Singapore (the silly qualifiers during May-June do not count), but it's nice to finally play in one where it actually matters. We've all been waiting longer than the rest of the world to get our events back and while NA, LA, OC, EU, Japan and a few other parts of Asia were having their own events, we were left to sit by and just wait. But thankfully the wait is over, with the first Regional League event this past weekend.
I can't say I had the best preparation going into this one. Be it the fact that we only had 9 days to get new cards or some personal stuff going on. I knew I wasn't going to get many of the new stuff in time so I decided early on just to stick to what I had and run with it. Then came the other issue, that being that I didn't really have much to work with. I've had friends telling me in the lead up to the tourney to play the old BDIFs like Palkia, Mew or try to get Giratina, Kyurem or Zoroark VSTAR. Didn't have either Palkia or Mew so my options were limited to these:
Deck Choices
Top row were decks that I wanted to believe were good but in my heart I knew probably weren't:
- Dragapult VMAX seemed like a good idea into the new Lost Zone stuff since you can pick them off one by one.
- Centiskorch VMAX, you all know the story. We're living in Palkia's world now so it'll never happen again. I sadly will never ever get to play Centiskorch VMAX in a real big event.
- Malamar was one I thought could be decent if I drew well but then I realised, Lost City could be seen in some decks and Malamar doesn't naturally play stadiums so that could be a real pain to deal with so I didn't think about it.
And then we had the two decks on the side that I thought, maybe if I had the time, I could make them work:
- Gengar VMAX still seems good, you can get cheeky big KOs right off the bat. Really liked the Turbo Mew build with it. But the single prizer decks can be a problem. Going back to Houndoom wouldn't help much since it won't kill off Regis either.
- Ice Rider VMAX was the next thing I gravitated towards to after the demise of our dear beloved friend Centiskorch VMAX. As you can see from the picture, I only had proxies Palkia with me and Ice Riders lately do need it. My other option was to use the Froslass line for a similar reason.
So that left me with two decks. Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX and Arceus VSTAR. I had been building Urshifu as my deck of choice for the Town League at one point after I settled on Arceus but I then realised I was missing Snorlax, Drapion V and 4 Irida to get the best version of the deck. (Yup I don't own Irida)
So we're left with Arceus but which version of Arceus would I go with?
There were so many ways to build the deck as we all know and so I had to look through every options just to be sure.
- Inteleon build was the most common at one point but the last two times I played an Arceus deck with the Inteleon engine, it didn't go so well. A combined total of 3 of my games from the last two events with it went to time. So I was not prepared for that for the Regional.
- Jolteon with Memory Capsule was one I was strongly considering. Palkia was still going to be one of the best decks around and that has given it a lot of trouble. It also blocks out the likes of Greninja and the new Cramorant which I was expecting a lot of them to show up. One of my European friends was helping me out during the week and was a strong advocator for using Jolteon. But we've seen before that the Jolteon version can get stuck, not for me.
- I even though of a V-Toolbox style deck where I'd try to fit in all sorts of attackers to have an answer for each of the main big decks and a combo move of Wydeer V to take some of those energies, come into the active, swap with Thorton into any attacker in the discard, V or non V. The main engine was Melony and whoever could use it, be it Galarian Moltres, Entei, Zamazenta, Empoleon, Starmie and Dragonite to name the ones I had. But I came up with the idea very late on and I didn't want to bring something that wasn't refined enough to a regional event.
- So I was left with good ol' Bibarel. World championship winning deck. That's the one.
And I had played the Arceus/Flying Pikachu/Bibarel/Crobat deck for months, before the Worlds championship or NAIC. I took it to my locals just to give it a test run and managed to beat a Worlds player (Xaiver) who used one of the new Lost Zone decks which gave me confidence that the deck could still do well. My only loss that day was to a Goodra and I accepted was a horrid matchup.
I had most of my deck set and ready with the last pieces to fix, being a few energy choices, choice o tool, and the last tech attacker. At one point I had 2 Powerful energies, 2 Choice Belts and a Slaking V to make it a bit more aggressive and help me take down stuff like Giratina V, Palkia V, Kyurem V or whatever in the second turn. My good friend Luke Morsa (Celio's Network) talked me out of doing that and just go for a safer route with capture energies and Big Charms.
Now for the tech attacker and I just wasn't sure if Hisuian Decidueye was helpful at all. I didn't expect to see that many Arceus VSTARs around and I knew Mew would come in spades so Crobat VMAX was staying in. One of my biggest worries was Kyurem VMAX. Leading up to the week, it kept doing well online and I was worried people might jump onto it. Luke's suggestion was to go with Zamazenta V, something I had in my initial V-Toolbox deck. So that with two Metal energies was the last things added into the deck at 11pm the night before.
Deck is sorted, my limited amounts of testing was done, time for the regional. While I was sorting through my bulk to see what other tech attackers I could use, I found out I had a 1-1 Aggron VMAX line, and I had played the deck online and was a big fan of it so I got the other Aggron V to possibly play it for the Town League. I didn't think I was ready to go into the Regional with it since I hadn't played it much.
Also for anyone wondering how our invite structure is like this time around, it's the top 4 in the CSP standings who gets the Day 1 Worlds invite while the Championship winner gets a Day 2 invite. And with the way the CSP is payed out, you'd need to be winning these regionals and top 4 a few other regionals to have a realistic shot of making top 4.
Regional League (Day 1)
I wasn't feeling all that confident since I didn't get to test/practice all that much. The deck I played the most was Arceus but not the exact 60 since I kept swapping things around and changing stuff to see what worked and what didn't. I still haven't played against some of the newer decks enough to know what was the best route to take against them. Just had to try my best, wing it and see how it went. After deck checks are done, the wait begins.
And we waited. And we waited some more. Registration started at 10.30pm but Round 1 only starts at 1pm, I don't quite get why that is the case. Do we really need to manually check everyone and not just do random deck checks like what they do over in the TPCi events? That really felt needless. A whole host of us came down early just so we didn't have any issues with registrations and while the deck checks were done quickly, it didn't help that we were told Round 1/Player breifing would start at 1pm. And of course it started at 2pm. I'll skip events a bit here but the wait for rounds also didn't make sense to me.
Round 1 to Round 2 = 1 hour 9 minutes
Round 2 to Round 3 = 1 hour 2 minutes
Round 3 to Round 4 = 52 minutes
Round 4 to Round 5 = 1 hour
Round 5 to Round 6 = 1 hour 1 minute
Round 6 to Round 7 = 50 minutes
Round 7 to Round 8 = 47 minutes
It's a best of 1 event where matches take only 25 minutes, why were we waiting for double that amount for all but the last round? That is something I just could not understand. And many of us were annoyed at the lack of updates. Some of us wanted to get snacks or food in between rounds but wasn't sure how long it would take. By round 5, we all knew so everyone just did their own thing. I still don't know why it took so long for rounds to get paired, hopefully the people running the event fixes this because taking 50 minutes in between a bo1 tourney is not right. I was already feeling tired at the start of Round 2 from waiting around.
Round 1 - 0-0 - Table 59 W vs Ian Quah (Arceus VSTAR/Giratina VSTAR)
First up was Ian who was nice enough to give me some pieces of the new Lost Zone deck so thank you so much for that! I wasn't feeling so good when I saw he had Giratina, knowing that could be quite problematic for me but he made a mistake of using Capture Energy and taking a Crobat V. These things can happen to newer players in their first big events. That mistake turned the tide to my favour and he couldn't come back after that.
Round 2 - 1-0 - Table 19 L vs Klive Aw (Arceus VSTAR/Flying Pikachu VMAX/Giratina VSTAR)
Talk about mistakes, this time it was my turn. Even though it's only Round 2, we had been at the venue for close to 5 hours! It's supposed to be just a bo1 event yet after 5 hours, we're only at Round 2. So I was already tired going into this round, head hurting a bit and of course I messed up. I had the perfect turn 1 of Arceus and DTE, but with a Zamazenta stuck in the active. Turn 2, I top drew another DTE and for whatever reason, I attached a Metal energy onto my Arceus. I knew right away I messed up. And Klive being the pro he is, he took advantage and bossed up my Arceus and it was all downhill from there.
Round 3 - 1-1 - Table 28 W vs Awyong Liang Jun (No idea, he no-showed so free win for me)
They made me wait 10 minutes to get that win so I lost precious time to do my reporting work for my Pokestats crew or even take photos for the rest of the guys!
Round 4 - 2-1 - Table 8 W vs Wu Zheng Wei (Arceus VSTAR/Sylveon VMAX/Flying Pikachu VMAX)
This was almost a lost for me since I didn't get Arceus VSTAR turn 2 so I had to set up Flying Pika but never evolving it while he evolved his. I took his down and knowing he had no way to KO my Flying Pika, took out his Galarian Meowth. Now was the hope and wait bit, if he had boss he won the game but he didn't and I still had Lumineon to take down his own Lumineon on the bench.
Round 5 - 3-1 - Table 18 L vs Wong Wei Kit (Mew VMAX)
Painful and short game. Why do I keep meeting bossman in all of these big events. The SPE where I finished top 8, OCIC over in Australia and now this! I went first, had Flying Pika, attach metal energy and big charm. Pass. I top drew a Quick Ball and had the choice of either going for the gurantee Arceus but leave my dead hand dead or go for the Crobat in the hopes to draw something out of it. I went for the later and drew nothing out of it. Game over.
Round 6 - 3-2 - Table 20 W vs Ma Kian Wei (Lost Zone Toolbox)
Flying Pika VMAX doing Flying Pika VMAX stuff, he just couldn't handle Max Balloon. I still played as if he had something up his sleeve but apparently he didn't.
Round 7 - 4-2 - Table 19 L vs Kenny Lim (Arceus VSTAR/Flying Pikachu VMAX/Giratina VSTAR)
This one was quite upsetting. I was talking to Kenny before the round started along with a few other friends and we all found out we were 4-2, so we kept trying to cheer each other up, saying we will win out and try to make top cut. Sure enough I had to play one of my friends and I had a slow start so that sucked. Top cut hopes over.
Round 8 - 4-3 - Table 22 W vs Jervis Yeo (Arceus VSTAR/Inteleon)
Was feeling down after losing R7 so went into the last round just blank and hoping to get that win to guarantee a top 32 finish. Opponent had a slow start and I took out the Sobble he had just re-benched after using Drizzle and he got stuck after that. Got that win at least.
Final Result - 28th - 5/3/0 - 150 CSP
Top 32 in the end, pretty happy with that to in all honesty. Came into this with one simple aim, don't get more losses than wins. That's it. I wasn't feeling confident going into the regional so I surprised myself with a result like this one, a top 32 even! Was not expecting it. Still, 3 of my losses could have been easily avoided by misplays so I was still a bit irritated at myself for that.
Could have been top 16 or even better if I had just played perfectly and not messed up many times but that's me. Still need to work on that if I want to make it to Worlds since only top cut finishes at Regionals truly matter along with a Championship win. Still had fun, as it should be. I was just happy I got to see my friends again, some that I hadn't seen since 2019 or even longer!
Town League (Day 2)
For Day 2, I decided to have some fun and go with Arceus/Aggron. I didn't realise top 16 would score points in this one so I was thinking...did I make a mistake playing a deck I've never played IRL and only played online once (even though I did finish 2nd with it). No matter, still here to have fun and practice this new deck at a CSP paying event haha!
I was a big fan of the deck after just playing a few games with it online and I had seen it still doing well online so I had to give it a try since I didn't get the pieces to play Rapid Strike Urshifu as I had planned initially. I was dealing with a headache going into this event after such a long day so I was a bit worried about how my day would go with a new deck for me.
Round 1 - 0-0 - Table 17 W vs Leong Jun Hao (Origin Forme Palkia VSTAR/Inteleon)
My opponent wasn't sure how to tackle the Aggron problem so I was able to win that one with little issue. Aggron had a decent matchup vs Palkia thankfully.
Round 2 - 1-0 - Table 17 W vs Ma Kian Wei (Giratina VSTAR)
Met Kian Wei again and he was still on a Lost Zone deck. Aggron came to the rescue again taking out his Tina. Managed to set up Rock Slide to help me take an extra prize too.
Round 3 - 2-0 - Table 5 W vs Wayne Tan Wei Ping (Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX/Origin Forme Palkia VSTAR)
I'm sorry Wayne, champion of Singapore. He had no idea what I was playing and benched down two Ice Rider Vs right away and the moment I benched an Aggron I could tell he wasn't happy.
Round 4 - 3-0 - Table 3 L vs Lim Jit Min (Regigigas Toolbox)
Well I knew I was going to lose this one because Regi is an auto-lose for Aggron and I had such a slow start it didn't even matter. I never saw my Arceus VSTAR. My game plan was to charge up two Aggrons and try to Rock Slide my way into a few prizes but Regi just always has an answer.
Round 5 - 3-1 - Table 8 L vs Koh Wei Siang (Regigigas Toolbox)
Regi again. This time I started Aggron and I had no ball search so I had to charge it up right away with DTE, making Rock Slide a little bit less effective. Didn't matter, still an auto-loss.
Round 6 - 3-2 - Table 8 W vs Zamir Rosli (Arceus VSTAR/Giratina VSTAR)
I went into this game feeling very down. I worked so hard to get a 3-0 start (which rarely happens to me) just to hit two auto-losses. I felt a bit better when I saw my opponent was playing Arceus so I knew this was a good matchup. Think I even managed to take a KO with the help of 3 Goon pings at one point.
Final Result - 8th - 4/2/0 - 130 CSP
When the results came out initially, I was in 9th so I was even more upset after having a 3-0 start to end up outside of top 8. When I went to collect my prize, that's when we saw the actual result and I was 8th! I mean it's just 30 more points but still top 8 feels much nicer. Still not enough points to be anywhere close to the guys who finished in top cut of the Regionals as you will see soon. I was happy to get top 8 with a deck I had never played in real events before so that felt good, was a good "practice run" after all!
The Town League was much smoother, we didn't have to wait around long thankfully. Maybe it's because there were just 40+ of us while the Regional had 130+ but I felt it was much better this time around. No time wasted when necessary. The shortest wait time was the last round but at best, we were usually just waiting for 16 minutes after round ends and the pairings for the next round to go up which was much better than the previous day.
Round 1 to Round 2: 44 minutes
Round 2 to Round 3: 40 minutes
Round 3 to Round 4: 41 minutes
Round 4 to Round 5: 41 minutes
Round 5 to Round 6: 38 minutes
Overall, it was fun to be back playing in big events again. Sadly we're in this new reality of playing in a bo1 format and no matter what anyone can say to me or tell me, I'll never enjoy it. I won't ever understand why we had to switch from a perfectly fine bo3 to a horrible luck based bo1. Always good to see my friends and nice to meet many new faces too, some whom I've met through online.
Playing wise, I thought I should have done better, but I did the best I could at times. A few silly mistakes were made and I need to stop doing that. Deck choices were alright but if I had swapped the two, would my day have gotten better since my day 1 matchups where more suited for Aggron and day 2 more suited to Flying Pikachu? Tech choices also didn't pay off, I should have stuck with Hisuian Decidueye not realising how many Arceus decks I would end up hitting. We live and we learn.
Just to sum things up:
- The new lost zone deck is legit, with or without Giratina. The single prizer version feels like ZapBeast. Comfey takes the place of Jirachi, Cram takes the place of Zapdos, you've got a whole host of other tech attackers, and we still have Beast Ring in the form of Mirage Gate
- Giratina is good no matter who it's paired with, be it Arceus or Lost Zone engine. Be prepared to see more of it
- Honestly, Palkia should still be the BDIF. Mew will have it's phases while Arceus will stick around somehow.
- Regis sadly got better which can be a bit of a problem. Regi along with the new Lost Zone deck will bring back stuff like Empoleon, Weezing and other things to lock out abilities and possibly also items like Vikavolt V's first attack to slow the game down
- Of the other new decks, Kyurem did do well but I'm still not sold on it after testing it myself online. Hisuian Zoroark VSTAR, jury is still out on that one. Goodra seems like a good tank but I feel it can be beaten if played correctly
- If Regi wasn't a thing, I honestly think Arceus/Aggron could be a top contender
- I still hate bo1
- Playing pokemon is fun, you get to meet lots of cool people which I did for the most part. I sure missed seeing some of my friends, some I haven't seen since the last big event we had back in November 2019.
- While the playing is fun, the stuff around it was sometimes not so fun. Timings need to be set so us players know when we can do whatever we need to do and not worry about missing rounds. I mean surely we didn't need to wait 25 minutes after the end of the round and the start of another bo1 round
- Not having a stream this weekend was the biggest missed opportunity for the people running the regional. We were the first English Lost Origin legal tourney, I had friends from overseas asking if there would be a stream. Clearly people outside of Singapore were interested in our games for once. Yet we missed the boat on that one. Big fail.
- The match slip was confusing as hell. Why was the signature at the bottom and not next to our names, it'll make things so much easier. Not having the records show anywhere before rounds also meant any mistake made from reporting can easily be missed, which did happen!
- I don't know about the rest but I didn't like the setting in the middle of a crowded shopping mall where the games can be interrupted for no reason.
- If you have a decent enough draws throughout the day and meet the right matchups, anyone can make top cut in these regionals. There were a good 2-3 players who I've never heard of made top cut. 2-3 of them were junior or senior players as well, so you're never too young or too old to do well
Stats from both events
You know me, I have to work on some stats. So first up are the top 64 results from the Regional League. Why top 64? These are the ones who earned CSP.
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| If you want to see a bigger version of it, open a new tab for it. Should fix it. |
Mew and Palkia having the most players scoring points doesn't surprise me since they were two of the best decks from the last format so you'd expect to see that. Giratina being the next one, somewhat surprises me since it's new but then again it is a good deck and the people with money will be able to build it in time. Speak of the distorted devil, both versions of Giratina decks are in the top 5 along with the Lost Zone decks so clearly the new stuff have done well, which might be a worry for me since I'm stuck with the same old decks for the time being.
The ones not shown are the ones who scored 150 CSP or below to save space. But you can tell that having a top 4 finish in a regional gets you closer to that Worlds invite since only the top 4 guys who have scored 200 CSP or more will get in. Yong Siang is already half way there with his win. Jit Min got top 16 in the Regional and won the Town League but the points gap is so big he's only 5th after that but there is still lots more Town Leagues, 2 more Regionals and the Championship (that's the one with the day 2 invite) to come. Still a long way to go, the road to Yokohama doesn't get any easier.
All this talk about points but since the TPC people have posted the leaderboard, I'll post one:
Thanks for stopping by to read this!
