CardBoard Warriors - A GLC Conquest Primer

GLC Conquest, a Best-of-X match between two players where they must achieve a win with each of their decks to be crowned the winner of the match. I am sure many GLC players have seen show matches on Andrew Mahone’s streams or the Full Grip Games Season Final between Ben Morse and Alex Carpenter best of 7 conquest.

Many of the locals here at Good Games Chicago have seen these conquest matches and were eager to partake in one, especially in a tournament setting. The biggest hurdle is the logistics of the tournament itself.

Tournament Logistics

We decided to run our first ever GLC Conquest Tournament on January 4th, 2025. The biggest obstacle was time. The most consistent thing across any streamed Conquest series was that each set (usually best of 5 or best of 7) would be several hours long. We run shorter rounds for our biweekly tournaments (35 minutes) due to limitations on the store hours, and 70 minutes seemed too short for a potential best of 3 GLC series. We eventually settled for 80 minute (+3 turns) rounds as it was 2 times the average round time for a normal GLC match (40 minutes). This would also allow some players to swap shared cards between their decks between games if they only owned one copy. (ex: Float Stone, Guzma & Hala, VS Seeker)

The total run time of the tournament was just shy of 6 hours with 4 rounds of Swiss, and after talking to many of the players, they agreed with my sentiment that the round time for Best of 3 Conquest should be 75 minutes + 3 turns. On average most of the matches would finish around the 50-65 minute mark, with some matches that went to game 3 going to time.

We ran our tournament using TOM, the Pokemon Company’s official tournament operation software. If you choose to also use TOM for your local GLC tournaments, I recommend using either the “TCG Prerelease/Draft” or “Custom” options. The “TCG Prerelease/Draft” mode has a base for 3 rounds of Swiss with every round after being optional. Otherwise you can use the Custom option and it will default to X number of Swiss rounds based on the number of entrants.

We do require decklists for all of our local GLC tournaments, because we love tracking the meta for each tournament and seeing it develop week to week.

I would definitely recommend holding a GLC best of 3 or Conquest tournament at your locals if the interest is there. All of our participants enjoyed the experience and are looking forward to doing another one in the future.

I do think Conquest tournaments give players a chance to really express their skill, especially since it is the best of 3. If you have a badge league it is also a good chance to award 2 badges for each type the winner played in the tournament due to how intense it can be.

Top 4

Dragon: 2
Psychic: 2
Water: 1
Colorless: 1
Fighting: 1
Metal: 1

Many of our players enjoyed the mind games of choosing what deck to play first and knowing the types that their opponent prefers. It added another layer of depth that our players enjoyed and discussed afterwards. I had several players also mention how this gave them the opportunity to play another type in addition to the type that they have been currently running to get a badge.

Top Lists

Below are the lists from the Top 4. Each of them was kind enough to provide some insight and feedback regarding their deck choices.

4th: Michael (@glcgoodgameschi); 3-1; Ancient Coalossal + Dragon w/ Haxorus

“I decided to play Dragon and Fighting simply because I wanted favorable match-ups into Colorless. Colorless has been an underlying issue in our meta. It’s powerful. There are multiple ways to play it and it’s a very easy first deck for a lot of the newer players in the room. Even I succumbed to its power and won my first badge with it. I have always been an enjoyer of the Fighting type since going 7-1 at Indy Regionals with Hitmonbros, and always have 2 or 3 different archetypes built. So I knew I wanted a fighting deck. I chose this particular build simply because it seemed fun & strong. Tar Generator is such a powerful ability when you can set it up and the combo of Great Tusk and Roaring Resolve Lucario works so well. The one thing I wish this deck had was more HP buff tools and better draw. This list isn’t my own. I’m not exactly sure who made this particular list but I believe it may be a Zman list. I tend to enjoy the lists he makes and shares. We have similar play styles I think. Likewise, Haxorus Dragon seemed like an excellent counter to Colorless as well as being a one hit KO option for pokémon like Okidogi and Wailord. Dragon is already strong and easy to power up so adding Haxorus just felt correct. I’m still unsure how I feel about Tatsugiri/Drakloak instead of Dragonite but I suppose 3 stage 2 Pokémon in a deck like this wouldn’t feel great. This is the Chop n’ Roll LAIC winning list. At the end of the day, I’m not the strongest deck builder myself. I enjoy using tried and true lists and figuring out their lines.”

3rd: Leah; 3-1; Colorless (Turbo Lax) + Psychic Spread

“Colorless: This is a pretty typical Snorlax/fire/Mela list with a few tweaks for our local meta. I like Dodrio instead of Kanghaskhan for the fighting matchup (plus the extra draw is nice), and Enhanced Hammer is great for the mirror. I try to prioritize supporters that cycle through the deck rather than shuffle - I don’t want to draw back into the cards that I just nest stashed. Erika’s Hospitality is a nice one in this deck because you end up with five cards in your hand after industrious incisors.

Psychic: I love spread decks, so I was really excited for the new Uxie from Surging Sparks. My previous iterations of this deck relied on Mismagius (SIT 64) and Weezing (UNB 74), two stage ones that had gotten badly outpaced by the turbo decks that have become so popular. Uxie really speeds up the early game, when you want to be building up a lot of damage on your opponent’s board. I’ve found it’s not that hard to start attacking with it turn 1 going second or turn 2 going first, although going second is definitely preferable.

The star of the deck is Blacephalon, which places 12 damage counters anywhere on your opponent’s board if they have 3 prizes left. If you’re able to stick something in the active and get Blacephalon’s attack off twice you’re in great shape, otherwise you can take multiple KOs on support pokemon or set up Mimikyu and Wobbuffet to take some big swings. If you’re following up with Mimikyu you do need to be careful to leave some damaged pokemon on the board.

Having played this deck more since Surging Sparks came out, I’ve added Meloetta (XY 193) and cut Blizzard Town. It probably also needs Rare Candy or Gladion, since prizing Kirlia is a big problem without them. Prioritizing doing damage vs. placing damage counters is very matchup dependent, so I’m expecting to keep adjusting attackers to keep up with the meta.”

2nd: Katra; 3-1; Psychic Spread + Future Metal (@ baerutt)

“The decks I chose to play during GLC Conquest were Psychic Spread and what I called Future Metal.

For a while, my play style has been adapting and I've been leaning towards decks that can rely on Basic Pokemon to get most of the job done.

Spread was an idea I've always wanted to do. Special Psychic was one of my first GLC decks as I really didn't like it. Tinkaton is a great card, but it gets OHKO'd by a lot of good basic Pokemon. When Uxie and Azelf got released in surging sparks it made the idea of Psychic Spread easier to execute in GLC. By continually reviving your Pokemon and dealing consistent damage, you can impact the board and end up with a huge finish from Wobbuffet, Azelf, or the surprisingly annoying card to find online, Tapu Lele. In addition, Weezing puts on massive pressure by sitting on the board in the active spot. Overall, I'd say that this deck list is complete.

To balance out the more controlly play of spread, I wanted to use a fast, blitzy deck. Future metal is a spin on Light Metal, but takes advantage of Techno Radar and Iron Treads. Iron Treads is a neat Pokemon, but in hind sight, I'm not sure if I want to play it or not in the future. While Wheel pass was helpful, it was harder than I thought to get the booster energy onto it and deal super effective damage to Turbo Normal. Overall, Future Booster Energy is a good card, but in the future I'm going to try and swap some cards out to make the deck more standard. While it put in some work, more than half of my victories with that deck were due to stupid good luck (turn 2 fainting my opponent's only Pokemon and my opponent forfeiting instead of going for the draw) While I don't hate Light Metal, I think I just need to make some small adjustments.”

1st: Connor; 4-0; Dragon + Brazilian Whales

“In the weeks and days leading up to the Conquest tournament, my strategy was to choose strong, robust decks that don't care too much about the Good Games meta landscape. Given that the event boils down to being a best of 3, I wanted decks at the highest power level where I could secure wins with this rare opportunity to play with less variance than best of 1. (i.e. the more games you play in a round the more likely the better deck sees success) I already had a Metal and Darkness badge, and ignoring generally weaker decks/types I was less experienced with, I was left with a pool of Water, Dragon, Fighting. Psychic, and Colorless to pick from. Good Games has historically seen a lot of success with Turbo Snorlax and given the affordability and availability of the archetype, I was expecting some players to pick it up as their second deck. Also there are players who bring it consistently each week leading to a predicted meta rich with Colorless. In addition, Darkness has been fairly popular with a few regulars, (Dark Poison specifically), but reflecting on the store's Trade Discord channel I was definitely aware of even more folks working on Dark builds. The store only has a couple of dedicated Lightning players, very little Grass, and a healthy amount of Psychic historically.

Anticipating a Colorless rich meta, I initially thought about bringing Fighting, either Okibros or some other variant. The problem is, even with major recent buffs, the lack of draw power (aka consistency), really went against my philosophy of bringing the highest level of power possible. Psychic is also diverse enough where I could have seen some of the best players bringing it to counter those bringing Fighting for Colorless reasons. And while I really enjoy Psychic and took a badge last season with it, the looming threat of more dark decks pushed me off of it. Finally, I didn't want to play Colorless. I felt it was too obvious and everybody at the store comes into our events knowing they could see one or two Snorlax during their run, so there is some level of baseline hostility towards the deck baked into the playerbase.

When it came down to it, Dragon was and continues to be so powerful. Raging Bolt, Crispin, Colress's Tenacity, and Tatsugiri + U-Turn Board just bring so many powerful and earlier lines with the usual suspects of attackers. Plopal's (Alex Carpenter) recent FGG winning list seemed like the best way to play the deck so I sleeved it up and that was deck #1.

Finally, Water is just an all around powerful deck with high consistency (Octillery, Inteleon), and of course absurd power in Wailord and Kyogre. I remember reading the Whales from Brazil post from Brunno Nevs on cardboardwarriors.net and found the list well rounded. After playing it, I struggled a little with having enough water energy to do what I wanted if I didn't have Starmie and couldn't find/prized Nessa, but some of that may have been weaker lines that I chose due to inexperience. Regardless, with little Lightning expected to be present, I thought it was a solid choice and so I sleeved up Brazilian Whales as #2.

On the day of, the tournament was a ton of fun and well run as all events are at Good Games Chicago (Thank you Pat, the main author of this article). I never saw an experienced Snorlax player in my tournament run which helps because no matter what that deck is scary, and even though I did run into Lightning, they never got fully established to overrun me when I was playing Water. The Dragon list felt like the best deck in the room, and the bulkiness of the Water list helped me squeak wins despite some misplays. In the final round, my opponent bricked heavy when they switched to their Psychic spread list, and I was able to quickly run the game and take home two badges.”