What I don't understand is why people are saying ZPS is such a horrible deck. It features a basic with 130 HP and can do 120 damage from turn 1 on. What's not to like?
Where's GrandmaJoner to complain and whine about Canadian bashing?
But there shouldn't be any effect. If anyone is influenced by Canada Nationals, they won't be someone to worry about in top cut! <3
If you aren't playing Defender in any Zekrom deck, I don't think you are playing it correctly.
120... you'll do 20... which would make the donphan have to have a pluspower to KO you the next turn. It also helps vs Magnezone [making them remove 3 energy], and other Zekrom + Reshiram. It basically requires all of the big dogs to have a pluspower to knock you out.
The wording of Defender is now as follows, "Attach Defender to 1 of your Pokémon. Discard this card at the end of your opponent’s next turn. Any damage done to the Pokémon Defender is attached to by attacks is reduced by 20 (after applying Weakness and Resistance)." Defender now protects against all attacks, even ones not made by the opponent. (Apr 11, 2011 TPCi Announcements; May 5, 2011 PUI Rules Team)
The Early Judge along with Yanmega early really hurts. It could hurt you too, but I built my list around countering that as well with many hand refreshment cards.
because if it's okay for US to criticize others without knowing the whole story, then it becomes okay for Americans to do the same to one-another
No. It wasn't his build that was bad, evidently. In fact, he clearly had a pretty good build. However, ZPS is an inferior archetype. I could collaborate for days with the best players in the world finding out the best way to play Speed Slowbro and I guarantee you that it would still be terrible. If someone called the deck bad, that wouldn't be saying that it was necessarily constructed badly... it would be saying that the entire idea is bad.
Obviously, he's not the one who came up with the idea for ZPS. He just decided to play it, and probably had a pretty good build. He won a Nationals. Good for him. That doesn't change the fact that the idea behind ZPS is probably subpar.
I think that probably summarizes what Jimmy meant when he called it an inferior deck. No criticism intended of the player.
Hey no one expected Beedrill to do well either until SilvestroI love how the first reaction of so many of you when discussing Canadian players is to go to Golem/Exploud... Oh no, a rogue deck won something, the meta must be terrible!!! It's never possible that the rogue deck was build well enough to counter the meta... or is it? Like Cyrus said, Exploud EX had good matchups against Speed Spread and Flygon decks. ZPS (not rogue, but is considered to be lower tier) has an awesome matchup against Yanmega (which flooded top cut because MagneBoar failed for the most part).
At US nats 2008, a Torterra deck came third in a format completely dominated by PLOX. Does that mean that none of you knew how to build/play PLOX properly? NO! It means a player was skilled enough to create and play a deck that was able to beat the format. This is no different. Edward played a deck that ran through Yanmega this year, and Geneses played a deck that ran through Flygon & Speed Spread in 2007. Rogue decks can be successful, that's why people play them. Deal with it!
It is an inferior deck, but that's not a knock against the player unless he's explicitly claiming it's the BDIF. Maybe he only played it because Shaymin is his favorite Pokemon. In my mind, it parallels the results of Germany's nationals last year. I haven't heard of a more surprising and impressive win than David S. accomplished with Flygon/Torterra/Nidoqueen. It was a spectacular choice for the metagame, and he is a very skillful player, but it's not a knock against him to point out that it was nowhere near BDIF.But, by calling it an inferior deck are you not directly criticizing the player who built it?
And, from everything I've seen, he didn't get lucky and "miss all those donphans," there wasn't a lot of Donphans in the first place. Worst case scenario, he made a good meta call.