2024 Baltimore GLC Recap

A CBW tournament at a regional? The organizers of the 2024 Baltimore Regional event did not schedule GLC for the Friday before the tournament, so it was time for us to step in! Thanks to ZManCuddles and his huge Twitter following and Jesus that helped judge, we were able to run a 5 round, 51 player GLC event with a finals between the two 5-0 players!

I’ve compiled the list of decks that went 5-0 and x-1 during the 5 rounds of Swiss and will place them below with my thoughts. It was a really fun event that I was glad to be a part of. The GLC community is the best, and it’s great to meet GLC players at regionals!

Meta

Here is some metadata from the tournament. Starting off for round 1, we had the following meta breakdown:

Overall, there was a great distribution of types and really shows that people love to play their favorites in GLC. Colorless, Water and Psychic were the most popular types as generally expected, but Grass and Metal has a stronger representation than in previous large GLC tournaments.

After 3 rounds, the field of unbeatens still had some nice variety, but Colorless was clearly dominating with 3 players at 3-0.

A final meta breakdown of players at 4-1 or better left us with:

As the 5 rounds of swiss ended (before we were kicked out of the venue), we landed with 2 each of Colorless, Psychic and Water and 1 of Dragon and Metal. A great result and meta! Pilot skill made a huge difference in the results while still showing that the types with the biggest card pool usually end up with the most decks at the top.

Top Lists

Top cut was full of really solid and well thought out lists. To make it to the top of a 51 player tournament in GLC, you have to design your deck to be consistent and capable of coming from behind. Not a single archetype was repeated in the top 8, and there were some new inclusions from Shrouded Fable and Stellar Crown! Fan Rotom played a big role in the tournament, giving Colorless players reliable starts and even donk power. It was the star of the tournament, in my opinion. Full tournament results can be found here on Limitless.

8th Place, 4-1, Alex/Bohemian, Rain Dance Water

Alex played a variation of Rain Dance water while also utilizing the hard-hitting Palafin line. This deck is incredibly consistent and powerful. Kyogre snipes the bench at will, taking out the opponent’s best support Pokemon, while Palafin breaks walls and Inteleon tutors the perfect cards for the turn.

7th Place, 4-1, Connor McNamara

Connor took this metal list to 7th place! Notable cards played are Orthworm and Superior Energy Retrieval. Using SER to thin your hand and draw with Revavroom is a really interesting use case, and Orthworm is a giant wall that can fix math and soak up damage over multiple turns. Well done to Connor!

6th Place, 4-1, ZManCuddles, Munkidori Psychic

ZMan played his patented Munkidori list with Crispin (!) and two basic dark energies. This list is chock-full of great cards - Psychic has it all! Wobb shuts down your opponent early or takes late game clean-up KOs, while Mew is one of the best pivots in the format. Munkidori counters opposing spread decks and takes down small bench sitters, and Giratina provides the firepower to do so. A great list utilizing a lot of recent additions to the format!

5th Place, 4-1, Sean Keane

Sean was kind enough to write some feedback on his list for us! Here it is, straight from his mouth:

Based upon @ZmanCuddles' Crispin colorless list, this was my first look into GLC in the Stellar Crown format, though I've been running through turbo Snorlax with Swellow as my favorite deck ever since the Fossil Lab ban. The deck feels as strong as ever with Rotom and enables you to play some more pokemon without the worry of not getting off as explosive a start. Rotom was the star of the show, saving multiple bad starts on the way to a 4-1 finish on Friday and a combined 11-4 finish across the weekend in the "main" side events along with multiple dominant runs in some pods for tickets or for fun. Now for the Donphan in the room, Crispin is mid as fuck in this deck, with only 5 basic energy (3 fairy 2 fire) and the idea of always having a fire in discard to enable mela and raihan for whenever later in the game, that only has 4 crispin-able energy that leaves you susceptible to prizing one. In addition, on the first turn if I were to play it when it would be most impactful, I'd rather play GuzHala to enable an explosive Rotom play AND acceleration with the form of TM Turbo Energize, and late game when I need to recharge something like Snorlax for the 4th time, I'd rather be able to Mina to accelerate out of my thin deck, with the card being turned on from just a super rod or even might stretcher skwovet, and use my manual attach for one of the three double energy in the deck to hit the 3X requirement so much of the deck wants to hit (Swellow, Snorlax, Kang's 2nd attack in a pinch even) crispin reads to me as a situational 4th Double Energy in a deck that wants to get Three energy out in a single turn if it needs to recur snorlax again. To that end, I had cut Crispin for Boss's Orders for the subsequent events and it felt much more impactful, both in the presence of allowing Swellow to be a much more threatening bench sitter, even if it was a bluff, multiple opponents gusted the Swellow down upon reading it rather than an unpowered Snorlax. Though I did get Raihan to attach to Swellow, get crisis punch off Raihan attach twin from hand retreat swing 280 for two prizes for game.

4th Place, 4-1, David S

David piloted this very interesting Water list to top 4 of 51 players! I don’t commonly see Cetitan mixed in with Palafin and Seismitoad, but is totally doable and makes sense when running so many special energy, especially the Counter Energy and Reversal Energy. Palafin is a perfect Wobbuffet answer - self-evolving, no ability required and enough damage to take a KO. This is a low maintenance attacking Water list, and I know that Seismitoad can take games over as early as turn 2. 12 energy is a lot, but much of it has utility, such as Jet and Capture Energy. Cool list!

3rd Place, 4-1, Dr Funko

I am overjoyed to see Dragon reach 3rd! Congrats to Paolo on the placement, and this is a really great list focusing on Water and Fighting basic energy, spurning the commonly played basic Fire energies for a more consistent approach. This 3 stage 2 dragon list is utilizing all the many new trainer cards to help attack consistently on turn 2, if not turn 1. Crispin, Colress’s Tenacity, Tag Call and Guzma & Hala all get you attacking very quickly. Notably Lost City played a big role in the tournament and is a great card in Dragon. Haxorus also provided an answer to special energy threats and is a great wall breaker for the previously damage capped Dragon. Finally, Mallow and Lana is a special tech that is part of the Tag Call engine and heals a damaged Pokemon to help put the game out of reach (while also being a great tech against control). Well done!

Top Cut

Tyler and Caleb played out the finals, both at 5-0, to determine a true winner after 5 rounds of Swiss. Unfortunately, Caleb was donked early on, but as a junior, he had an amazing showing and played way above his age! Congrats to Tyler Matthews (Tzubi) on the win as he continues his GLC domination with the archetype he created, Lost Zone Psychic.

2nd Place, 5-1, Caleb F, Slaking Colorless

Caleb played a standard list of Slaking Colorless, looking very similar to Geffrey Van der Veken’s style. This list chose to lean into the Evo TM + Fan Rotom combo and had many explosive starts. Caleb played really well and used Snorlax and Slaking to power his way to victory.

1st Place, 6-0, Tyler Matthews, Tzubi

Tyler Matthews, Lost Zone Psychic creator, opted to include the Dusknoir line with the recent Marshadow ban. Even without the banned Duskull, he said that Dusknoir was one of the best cards of the tournament. It allowed KOing Snorlax much more easily and also manipulated early Blacephalon turns. He is also playing tons and tons of recovery with Tulip, Klara, Night Stretcher, Rescue Stretcher, VS Seeker, Pal Pad, Training Court and Rescue Carrier (whoa)! Well done by Tzubi and congrats to him for the 6-0 win!

In Conclusion

Thank you to everyone who participated in the tournament and to those of you who read this far. GLC is amazing and the best way to play Pokemon cards. I hope there are many more big tournaments in the future where we can see which types and players shine the brightest.