Team CGC Trading Cards Made Day Two in the Pokémon Knoxville Regional Championships!

Following Kidd Starck’s win at the CGC Trading Cards Invitational, Team CGC Trading Cards had a quick turnaround to the Pokémon Knoxville Regional Championships on February 24-26, with 1,139 Master-level competitors in attendance.

Representing Team CGC Trading Cards, Azul Garcia Griego placed 105th (7/4/3), Kidd Starck placed 121st(6/5/2), Caleb Gedemer placed 166th (5/2/2) and Daniel Altavilla placed 207th (5/3/1). With this Day Two placing, Kidd Starck earned enough Championship Points to join Azul and Caleb in qualifying for the Pokémon World Championships, in Yokohama, Japan on August 11-13.

The team continued to use the Lost Box deck format, which has proven successful with certain variations over the past few months, at Knoxville. Continuing to struggle against the ever-popular Lugia VSTAR deck, the team removed all V cards from its deck, and focused on Celebrations Kyogre and the Crown Zenith Zamazenta. Zamazenta was a strong competitor in decks at the Orlando Regional and was a valid option for change. When asked for comment, Azul noted that the key to their deck strategy is establishing consistency against competing decks.

When asked about the strategy of using this deck format, Caleb Gedemer had this to say: “After a few decks like Vikavolt and Regis were ironed out, the team was at an impasse - either stick to a tried-and-true Lost Box deck or come up with something new on the fly. Azul had the idea to streamline the Lost Box archetype the team had been playing for months now into a simple version that still packed Kyogre. Most of this was just theory, and playing more games with the deck may have put the team off it.”

When theorizing about their current deck structure, Kidd remarked: “Sableye, is the strongest thing at the psychic-type that we could be doing and well, Kyogre’s the strongest thing in the water-type we could be doing. Zamazenta is probably the strongest you could be doing in metal-types. So, it’s like even though we don’t have Dragonite sometimes or the Zeraora, when they don’t get the Dunsparce or whatever it is, we still are doing very powerful things, even if we have less options.”

Left to right: Kidd Starck, Danny Oesterreich and Azul Garcia Griego.

Team CGC Trading Cards was assembled by Danny Oesterreich in 2022, and is comprised of seasoned players Daniel Altavilla, Azul Garcia Griego, Caleb Gedemer and Kidd Starck. The team will compete next at the Vancouver Regional Championships, at the Vancouver Convention Center, in Vancouver, Canada on March 10-12.

Please join us in wishing the team the best of luck throughout the season and keep an eye out for new updates on the team’s performance by following CGC Trading Cards social channels, @CGCcards. You can also watch the events live on the Pokémon YouTube and Twitch channels to see players do battle.

To learn more about Team CGC Trading Cards, click here.