How I felt about Standard coming out of Cities Before States, I had 119 Championship Points, and every single one of those was from tournaments in the Expanded format. At the Standard Cities that I played in, I felt lost and I couldn’t escape the feeling that I just didn’t have a good handle on the format. I was spoiled by the speed and consistency of Expanded. I did make top cut at a few Cities, but they were all Expanded; I was still fumbling around in the dark when it came to Standard. Luckily States has now passed netting me eighty points. In the process, I got to play a deck that I hadn’t gotten to play with before in my frenzy of Expanded Battle Compressor-focused decks. At the end of Cities, I watched the Some1’s PC video regarding Gallade/Octillery and after playing some games with the deck, I was enamored with it. It seemed so improbable that a deck without Shaymin that ran minimal Ultra Ball could succeed, but it functioned! It got my wheels spinning as to how t
