Hello Hat Lovers,

We’re back! After eight years since attending my first one, I finally top cut a regional. This is the report of my team building process, the final product, and my tournament run.

Teambuilding

Given that I was not able to prep for Portland very well after returning from EUIC three weeks prior, I decided to use some variant of Palance for this regional  (Flutter Mane / Amoonguss / Arcanine / Palafin). Palance is a stable team that rarely gives away big advantages per turn, and while it also often only creates incremental progress, I figured that a team like this would give me the best chance of success. I figured that because of my poor prep, Palance could allow me to simply outplay my opponent even if I did lack understanding of the meta game and match ups. I also had some understanding of the archetype given it is what I used at London, and the fact that it was such an established core meant that I did not have to prove to myself with practice that the team could succeed.

I used Ting-Lu and Gothitelle as the last two at EUIC and I tested the most vanilla version of the team with Baxcalibur over Gothitelle, but did not feel either version suited what I wanted to accomplish with the team. Gothitelle felt like a sidegrade rather than something that improved match ups, and I did not want to use Baxcalibur as I felt people would know the match up far better than I did. Despite its success, the Baxcalibur version also felt like it could be something that people could overprepare for. 

After testing different ideas and Lexar Dondozo, Chi-Yu + Iron Bundle was the only duo that I resonated with and thought would be unlikely to be overprepared for, but I had no idea how to build around it. I found Dondozo too difficult to use. I figured that it would probably be okay to mush Chi-Yu + Iron Bundle together with Palance even if doing so meant that I had two Fire types and two Water types. Despite this, I second guessed bringing Baxcalibur + Palance and only submitted my teamlist on the car ride to Portland. I decided that the process that lead to committing to Palance + Chi-Yu + Iron Bundle gave me a better chance to succeed than the reasoning to use Baxcalibur, even if the Baxcalibur version was a more established team.

Iron Bundle generally has a positive match up versus opposing Palance, which was suggested to me as an important goal to meet when deciding one of the last slots on Palance. The combination of Iron Bundle + Chi-Yu also gave me an abundance of options to break Amoonguss, which I felt was the backbone of Palance’s stability. This team did have structural issues when I wanted to bring Palafin, though. Palafin was awkward when I brought it without Arcanine and Amoonguss because Iron Bundle and Chi-Yu are difficult Pokemon to switch in. My general game plan for the tournament was to bring Palance whenever I was unfamiliar with the match up, and to bring Iron Bundle + Chi-Yu if I faced Palance. This plan did not work as intended at all as I only brought Palance to one set and somehow did not face opposing Palance, but the team performed well anyway.

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