Yesterday about 350 players participated in the Limitless Showdown, our first one in the Silver Tempest format. In this article, we’ll take a look at the results, and interview the winner of the tournament!

If you’d like to explore the tournament results yourself, you can find all decklists, the metagame shares, and more, here: play.limitlesstcg.com/tournament/limitless-showdown-5/standings

Top Cut Analysis

After 11 Swiss rounds, 10 players have reached the required 9 wins to participate in the Single Elimination top cut.

To noone’s surprise, Lugia ended up being both the most popular deck in the tournament, and the most represented one in top cut. However, it was very closely followed by Lost Zone variants, and if we were to group Sableye and Giratina variants together, they would convincingly take the number 1 spot! It looks like the premier Lost Origin archetypes are not going away anytime soon, even with how dominant Lugia is predicted to be.

Two of the three Lugia lists in top cut were the full Rainbow variant around Yveltal, Raikou and Radiant Charizard, while the best placing list omitted the Amazing Rare Pokémon in favor of Regigigas. Charizard seems to be almost universally agreed on as the best Radiant Pokémon in the deck, but in terms of alternative attackers there is still a lot of variety. Stoutland V hasn’t showed up in any of the top lists this time, but I think we could see more of it in the future, with how well Lost Box has performed.

Lost Zone variants appear a lot more open than towards the end of last format. Instead of most of them going with Radiant Charizard, we saw over 40% representation for Radiant Greninja, including the eventual winner of the tournament! It will be very difficult to know what to expect when someone opens with a Comfey at LAIC next weekend. The winning deck featured Kyogre, Raikou V and Snorlax in addition to Sableye and Cramorant, and that’s not even close to all the different Pokémon we’ve seen in Lost Box decks this tournament.

Meanwhile in Giratina decks, the Temple of Sinnoh counts have gone up drastically, but other than that the deck still looks about the same as last format, and keeps performing.

Mew is a deck that players expected to get a boost with the new Forest Seal Stone, and it did indeed have a very respectable showing with two of them in top cut. One of them is the traditional Meloetta Elesa variant that was predicted to make a comeback, while the other one is a very unique take on the DTE variant. It features 3 (!) Path to the Peak and 3 Marnie, as well as 4 Lost Vacuum to re-activate their own Abilities when needed, reminiscent of Zoroark Garbodor decks back in the day that controlled their own Ability lock with Field Blower.

The last deck in top cut was an Arceus Duraludon, but it ended up falling immediately to a Lugia with Yveltal and Lost Vacuum. Looking at the overall win rates, it doesn’t appear to be a reliable Lugia counter, but the very solid matchup against Lost Box will probably keep it around in the meta for a bit.

Winner Interview

As already mentioned, a very interesting Lost Box variant came out on top in the tournament! I’ve asked the winner Tsubasa Shimizu [JP] some questions about the deck!

How did you decide on playing Lost Box? What are the advantages of your Mirage Gate version, compared to the popular Charizard version?

I thought LTB had a winning strategy against all decks and was advantageous to Lugia! Compared to Radiant Charizard LTB, the synergy between Greninja and Sableye is attractive in its ability to control the board. I chose this deck because we felt it was unmanageably strong, especially after taking out Manaphy.

Your list has a lot of different attackers besides Sableye and Cramorant. Do you have any favorite one you’d like to highlight?

My favorite Pokémon in the deck is Raikou V! Especially when playing against Lugia, it always worked well in terms of putting pressure on the opponent.

You beat 5 Lugias on your way to the win. Do you feel like that’s an easy matchup for you, or were the games still close?

I felt we had the advantage against Lugia, but all games were still close. It was not an easy opponent to beat due to the presence of Stoutland V and the high HP of Archeops and other non-V Pokémon.

Being from Japan, how does in-person play look for you? Did you participate in any of the Champions Leagues?

If anything, I prefer to play in-person. I have participated in the Champion League in the past, but the best I could do was a top 64 finish, and the last three years I have not been able to participate because I was not selected in the lottery.

Lastly, anything else you’d like to mention?

I have yet to compete in the WCS, so this is the year I hope to represent Japan. Especially since it will be held in Japan this year, and I hope to meet all the international players at the event!

Shout-out to our partners that make the tournament’s prize pool possible!

If you’re looking for code cards to finish your deck on PTCGO, check out the PoTown Store, where you can buy codes with instant email delivery! If you are from Europe and looking for booster boxes or other sealed product, look no further than TCG Park, who offer competitive prices and free shipping on qualified orders. Last but not least, Dragon Shield is the go-to for sleeves and other card accessories!