A few weekends ago - sorry for the delay - 78 players made the trek out to Akron, Ohio for the Full Grip Games release weekend tournament for Phantasmal Flames, competing for a share of the $3000 cash prizing!

The Meta

With the relatively low-impact additions of Phantasmal Flames, the types' meta share proportions remained similar to the Mega Evolution release tournament. The main shifts were a slight increase in type diversity, with Lightning and Darkness now registering at least a few players each - the latter possibly a reflection of the type's exciting new additions from the new set, as well as being a meta call in the face of Psychic's prevalence. Psychic still had by far the largest turnout of any type, at 31 decks - though of all the types, it probably also sports the greatest intra-type variation, with more than five distinct styles of deck represented on the day.

With comparison to the previous tournament, both the order and the counts of the top three type choices were almost unchanged. Dragon and Colourless - previously places four and five - saw significant drops to their play rates, both taking poor matchups into the current GLC Boogeyman, and winner of the previous tournament: "RDT" (Rocks, Dogi, Ting-Lu).

Without further ado, and in no particular order, let's see which decks came out on top!

Top Cut

Top 8

Ben "morsemakes" Morse

The first of four Psychic decks to make it into the top eight, Full Grip local and previous champion of the Destined Rivals $1k Ben Morse piloted this streamlined list to success! The list utilises Zacian and Wondrous Patch from the new set to reduce reliance on Energy acceleration Abilities like Xatu and Malamar, as well as including Psychic mainstays like Iron Boulder and Gallade. Rather than including a Bench Barrier Pokémon, this list opts to run Cresselia to mitigate the threat posed by spread attackers such as Ting-Lu - a creative meta call for this event!

Consiglio "Count Sliggoo" Roselli

The only player to make it to top cut while playing a type outside of the three most common picks, Consiglio's deck aims for speed above all else, focusing on enabling Orthworm's Crunch-Time Rush attack: 240 damage for [MCC], but only if three or fewer cards remain in your deck! To do this, the deck focuses strongly on Item cards, with PokéStop and the lesser-seen Supporter Clay enabling them to burn through their deck at a rapid pace. Achieving top eight with such an unconventional deck choice really speaks to Consiglio's skill, as well as their familiarity with their list!

Ryan Huggins

Psychic placement two out of four brings us Ryan's take on the type, which they call "Necromunki"! This list focuses on enabling Munkidori's Adrena-Brain Ability using the combination of Giratina and Netherworld Gate Gengar, both of which are able to repeatedly recur themselves from the discard pile, and both of which oprovide easy methods to apply damage counters to your own Pokémon - which can then be moved to your opponent's side of the field via Adrena Brain!

Anthony Spanitz

The sole representative of the much-hyped "RDT" list (Rocks, Dogi, Ting-Lu) to make it to the top eight! Piloting the winning list from the previous $3k, Anthony will have had to fight though a field full of carefully-considered techs in order to achieve this placement - no mean feat! Showcasing Fighting's boosts from the Mega Evolution set, this deck has options for every matchup: raw wall-breaking power from Okidogi, fast aggression from Solrock, and potent spread damage from Ting-Lu, all supported by Lunatone's powerful draw, and closed out by Blood Moon Ursaluna's fast-scaling damage.

Top 4

Nolan Freda

Piloting the same 60 cards as Trevor Redding in the previous $3k with optimised Basic Pokémon selections, Nolan went one better than Trevor and took the list from a top eight to a top 4 placement! This list showcases the classic "Rain Dance" style of water, accelerating Energy into play using Baxcalibur and Frosmoth to fuel big, expensive attacks. Powered by the consistency of cards like Inteleon and Octillery, in the hands of a skilled player, Water's consistency means it is almost never out of the fight!

Dillon "Dweesh" Ryan

Psychic's third representative in the placements, "The Dwixty" (Dweesh sixty) was the only one of the placing Psychic decks to include Dusknoir, as well as being the only one to forgo the acceleration of Xatu, showcasing another unique slant on the type. As in Ben's deck, this build also features Cresselia over a conventional Bench Barrier, and also includes Lusamine, to recur its powerful Stadium cards: Parallel City, Dimension Valley, and Tropical Beach. With even more interesting choices besides, this is was a strong performance with a creative deck!

Runner-Up

Austin "Burndad" Beeriman

Austin's deck certainly showcases a less standard way to play the Water type, combining a range of one-Energy attackers with Abilities to place extra damage counters onto the opposing side of the field - even going so far as to exchange the usual Shady Dealings Inteleon for Quick Shooting. This "Low Tide" strategy (presumably named for the low Energy costs of the attackers) allows the deck to start taking KOs quickly, while using any spare damage pings to build towards a 2-Prize turn later in the game. This second-place run is all the more impressive for the fact that, due to a deck list error, Frogadier was not named on the deck list - and therefore had to be substituted with a Basic Energy after a deck check. Without Rare Candy in the deck, this means that the Greninja line was completely unavailable throughout at least the top eight, making life much harder for Austin - well played in getting this far!

Winner

Hector Ibarra

Our final Psychic deck of the standings, and finally taking home a Full Grip $Xk win for the type - which hadn't yet been managed since the return of the $Xks despite its consistently-sizeable meta share, Hector's take on the type eschews the Gallade of the other top eight decks in favour of Shining Arcana Gardevoir. This card offers a flexible mix of powerful card draw and Energy acceleration in a single Pokémon - providing strong support to any strategy. The rest of the lineup features a myriad of ways to engineer a comeback, including Blacephalon, Munkidori, and (most excitingly on stream) Natu, combining its Δ+ Ancient Trait with Technical Machine: Blindside to snipe for multiple Prize cards - allowing the deck to find a route to victory even if the opponent takes an early lead!

Congratulations to Hector Ibarra for this excellent performance with an interesting deck!

Conclusion

Thanks to you all for reading to the end - and sorry again for the delay in posting, real life must get in the way of cardsports sometimes. It was awesome to see the variety of decks played - in terms of both style and type representation!

Thanks are also owed to Andrew Mahone and the medley of co-casters who joined in to bring us the action live on stream, and to Full Grip for hosting such an awesome event!

Congratulations once again to our champion, and we’ll see you again for the next one!