Dallas and Beyond – Turbo Dark for Dallas, Plus TinaChomp in Standard
Hello everyone! I am excited to be back with another article for you all today. I have been playing a lot of Pokemon, even after returning from a nice week-long adventure at the Georgia marathon, and it has been a lot of fun. On top of that, I’ve learned a lot myself! My opinions across both formats have become more solid, I am more confident in the new Expanded format than I was before the marathon, and I feel that the current Standard format has largely been “solved” at this point.
I was able to take down a Standard League Cup with Garchomp and Giratina-GX, a deck I hadn’t played with before. I really liked the deck and appreciated the variety of strategies I could utilize to outplay opponents–I always felt like I had a shot at winning each game, even when things looked dire. I’ll be considering that deck as a top choice for future Standard events in this format.
Expanded, however, is probably where many players are directing their attention at the moment. The 2020 Dallas Regional Championships are just a few days away, and I am in the final stages of my testing. While I haven’t solidified a deck choice and don’t (yet) have a “secret deck,” I have formed some strong opinions, mostly regarding decks I do not like. I’ve also found a handful of decks I do really like, including Turbo Dark, which will be my main focus of the second part of this article. There will be other useful Expanded information included though, so please don’t get discouraged if you aren’t planning on playing Turbo Dark!
Without further ado, let’s start with Standard and take a look at that Garchomp & Giratina-GX deck.
Standard Garchomp & Giratina-GX
Deck analysis
This is the only Standard deck I’ve given any real attention to since I won that Cup with it. I believe it truly just outclasses the competition, as it has a ton of options and comeback potential, all while remaining fast and consistent. It has a way to handle every deck in the format, and the deck is interesting in that its games seem to play out differently almost every time.
Favorable matchups
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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