Pre-Cities: the Battle Road-era vomit list, and why I had to change it
Although Worlds was an amazing experience, the event itself was a rather disappointing 3-4 bomb. Yeah…Not a good way to finish an otherwise stellar season that was marked with 4 city wins, a regional win, and an insane Nats swiss run, but as the vernacular goes…Shit happens.
However, I picked up several valuable learning experiences – especially in Yuta Komatsuda's winning Luxray GL/Garchomp C list, which was an eerie reflection of a build I used back during the first City of 09-10. Spurred on by this, I decided to use a similar build for the next few weeks after the event, which looked something like this:
Pokemon (19):
3 Garchomp C
1 Garchomp C LV.X
2 Luxray GL
1 Luxray GL LV.X
1 Dialga G
1 Dialga G LV.X
2 Uxie LA
1 Uxie LV.X
1 Ambipom G/Dragonite FB (interchanged throughout all of league)
1 Unown Q MD
1 Crobat G
1 Bronzong G
1 Lucario GL
1 Azelf LA
1 Toxicroak G PR
Trainers (29):
4 Cyrus's Conspiracy
4 Pokemon Collector
4 Energy Gain
4 Poke Turn
2 Bebe's Search
2 Professor Oak's New Theory
2 SP Radar
1 Aaron's Collection
1 VS Seeker
1 Power Spray
1 Pokemon Communication
1 Luxury Ball
1 Energy Exchanger
1 Premier Ball
Energy (12):
4 DCE
3 Lightning
2 Warp
2 Metal
1 Psychic
I never used this list in any premier event: during all of Battle Roads I was off studying for the LSAT ("Law School Admission Test"), so the only contexts this deck was ever used in were in testing vs Fulop's Magnezone, or in College Station, TX league play. (Normally I'd be more apt to play rogue stuff, but Phil and Caroline mentioned a need for the players to have more SP to test against.)
Anyways, the influence from Yuta is pretty clear, what with the playing of PONT, no Call, and 1-1 Dialga. However, at times it really felt like a clunky pile of nonsense – largely due to the lack of Call. Although I only dropped about one game with this during the whole time I tested it, it just wasn't good enough, and was stuck with too many disgusting hands.
It doesn't just end with that, though…Otherwise, I wouldn't call this a "vomit" list. While the draw sure was nice, it felt like it had no real solid games due to the lack of Power Spray. While Luxing and Chomping are still ever-prevalent here, I don't feel like it could've been what it should've due to all of the…"Stuff" going on.
Did I have a lot of options? Yes. Did it greatly resemble the list that would eventually be used? Also yes. However, I'm not interested in losing because my hand is trash once every other game – that's been my failing with SP, and I'd much rather not see that happen.
So I eventually traded this back in for a standard build with Calls and higher Spray, and by Cities, most aspects of it were all-out average. Still, the build I would go on to use would be far from your "typical" Luxchomp…