No Evolutions, No Problem: Basic Box Takes the Nice Regional

Every few months, a tournament reminds us that the best deck in the room is not always the most played one. The Nice Regional Championship ran on October 17 and 18 with 2,336 players, and the trophy went to Luc Gantner of Switzerland. His deck, Basic Box, runs 21 Pokemon, and every one of them is a Basic. No evolutions, no turns spent searching for a Stage 2, just big Pokemon ready the moment they hit the Bench. It is the second Regional win of the season for the deck, after Baltimore, in a format Dragapult was supposed to own.

Kangaskhan does the heavy lifting

Four copies of Mega Kangaskhan ex lead the list. It is a Basic Pokemon with 300 HP, and its Ability, Run Errand, draws two cards once a turn while it sits in the Active Spot. Its attack, Rapid-Fire Combo, starts at 200 damage and adds 50 more for each heads you flip before the first tails, so the ceiling is as high as your luck holds. Around it, Gantner packed two copies each of Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex, Latias ex and Lillie's Clefairy ex, plus single copies of Raging Bolt ex, Chien-Pao, Iron Crown ex, Passimian, Fezandipiti ex and Iron Leaves ex. Four Crispin and four Energy Switch move its many Energy types to whichever attacker the matchup asks for, and the whole 60 cards cost 64.97 USD ($91.06 CAD) on Limitless.

Dragapult filled the room and still lost

Dragapult builds made up 153 of the 429 players on Day 2, a 35.7 percent share that matches what we saw in Brisbane and Louisville. This time the conversion was poor, with only two Dragapult players in the Top 8 and four in the Top 16. Fifth place went to Yuya Kogai playing the exact list that Riley McKay used to win Louisville a week earlier, which says a lot about how prepared the room was for it. Dragapult ex is still a wonderful card, with Phantom Dive doing 200 damage while placing six damage counters on Benched Pokemon, but a deck everyone expects is a deck everyone practices against.

A final full of good stories

The final paired Gantner against Maxime Launay of France, who reached it with Dhelmise on a list built from lines of four: Shuppet and Banette, Poltchageist and Sinistcha, and four Dhelmise, supported by two Lillie's Clefairy ex and one Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex. The whole deck costs 22.33 USD ($31.30 CAD) on Limitless, about a third of the winning list, a hopeful number for anyone building on a budget. Hydrapple ex had the most efficient weekend of all, putting two players into the Top 8 from only 16 Day 2 players. Ripening Charge attaches an extra Grass Energy while healing 30 damage, and Syrup Storm adds 30 damage for every Grass Energy attached to all of your Pokemon. At the other end, N's Zoroark brought 31 players and placed nobody in the Top 16 for the second Regional in a row.

The lesson from Nice

My favorite detail is the simplest one. Gantner won Nice with the exact same 60 cards he took to 77th place at the Frankfurt Regional earlier this season. He learned his list, trusted it, and let a better weekend find him. With Delta Reign Prerelease events running this week and the new set arriving on November 6, the format is about to change again. Nice is a good reminder that knowing your deck inside out is a strategy all by itself.