Hello everyone! My name is Blake. I am a Senior division player and this is my first full season playing competitively. My play styles are Spread, Stall and decks focusing on single prize attackers. My accomplishments include Top 4 at Brisbane Regional Championships 2019, Top 32 at Oceania International Championships 2019 and 8 League Cup wins since 2017. This season I have not been able to attend many events but I have still earned 407 Championship points and a Top 16 place in the region. Here are my top three decks to take to League Cups in Oceania. They may surprise you!

Continue reading “Top three decks to take to Cups in Oceania – Blake S-A” →

The morning of Sydney Regionals a few weeks ago began like any other morning of a major event would for me; I woke up, took a shower, and headed for the venue. Unlike most events, however, I woke up in my own bed at 3:30AM and the venue was in another city, meaning my commute that morning involved a long drive, a plane trip and an expensive car ride. Why would I do this to myself? Why not just arrive with plenty of time and be well rested and prepared for the tournament? I can think of three reason. The answer is quite simple; I am not a sensible man.

Here are the three big mistakes I made preparing for the tournament. Please learn from me and never do these before an important event.

Continue reading “Rookie mistakes when preparing for a major event – Harrison Hodges” →

Hiya! My name is Daniel and I’ve been playing the game for almost five years. During this time I’ve seen the game as a player, a judge and league leader. In these roles, I have had the opportunity to teach people how to play the game, and I have personally found that it can be good to look at a wide range of mechanics in the game. This can help teach the idea of synergy between cards, as the way that cards work together may not always be immediately obvious.

In part 1, I will discuss three interesting mechanics of the game, and provide a deck list that you can use to construct your own deck to practice with! This deck is based around a theme deck, which makes the cards relatively easy to obtain.

Continue reading “Master the mechanics : Part 1 – Daniel Niutta” →

In this article, I will take an in-depth look at the ZapBeasts deck I piloted to Top 32 (and Christian Hasbani to Top 8) at Sydney Regional Championships. Firstly, I would like to give some credit to Christian, as he built the final 60 to be used for the tournament. Whilst I had some ideas with how the deck was developed and worked on a few niche matchups, he tested the deck heavily and it is definitely the perfect 60 for that Regionals… and perhaps for the future.

Continue reading “The Birds and the Beasts: A study of ZapBeasts – Jeremy Lim” →

A couple of weekends ago, I had the pleasure of attending a regional championships in my home city of Sydney. I was extremely stressed because in my first week of testing for Unbroken Bonds, I thought the format was a terrible mess and I couldn’t figure out which was the most powerful and consistent deck in the meta. I came to the conclusion that Zapdos with Ultra Beasts was the most consistent deck in terms of getting the job done, as it had decent match-ups all around. However, my frustrations kicked in as I kept missing energy on crucial turns with the deck – it only runs basic Lightning, Rainbow energies and a Beast energy. This is the point where I think I lost the plot a bit. It was also the point where my creative juices kicked in.

Continue reading “Finding success through Creativity – Christian Hasbani” →

With the debut of Unbroken Bonds a couple of weekends ago, players had their first taste of a powerful new deck – Weezing! The deck’s surprise factor has now gone, but that just means that Weezing is a threat out in the open. So how does it work? And how can we beat it?

Let’s take a look at how the deck performs against some of the popular decks in the current metagame:

Continue reading “The remedy for Weezing- Finn McKeefry” →

Hey Team,

We’re fresh off the back off Sydney Regionals, an event I’m sure we will all find memorable. On the Friday before the Regionals, myself and a handful of others had the absolute pleasure of experiencing the very first Professor Cup held in Australia! For some of us, this has been over 10 years of waiting.

For those of you unfamiliar, Professor Cups are tournaments open to qualified Professors (Judges and Tournament Organisers) only, usually with whacky, strange or even outrageous rules. These rules can range from deckbuilding/teambuilding restrictions, to gameplay rules. It’s an opportunity for Professors to demonstrate their mastery and knowledge of the Pokémon franchise while competing for trophies and staff spots at International Championships or Worlds! It’s a fun event where even TPCi staff enter the fray to take on the Professors.

Continue reading “The Sydney Professor Cup – Marcus Raj” →

Much like the blind formats seen in past events like LATAM IC and OCE IC, the metagame introduced at Santa Clara Regionals was incredibly varied, with a total of eleven archetypes making day two. Three decks in particular, Reshiram & Charizard GX, Jirachi Zapdos and Mill variants contributed two thirds of the day two spots.

Continue reading “Top decks and Techs from Santa Clara Regionals – Corey Munro” →

Being a Poképarent myself, I thought I might try to do a few articles to help kids and parents navigate the world of Pokémon.  For the first one I thought I would give a few tips for building decks for players in the Junior division.

Continue reading “Deck building for Competitive Juniors – Nick Bell” →