Hop’s Trevenant: How a rogue deck won the latest European tournament of the season

Intro

Hello everyone! Some players say that the last European event is one full of surprises… and they are definitely not wrong. Over the past few years, we’ve seen some really interesting decklists making their way through the rounds and even getting the gold medal. If I have to wonder why people try to experiment so much, it is probably because a good number of players are already qualified for Worlds and they want to try something new for the big tournament. But still, what happened in Turin was something that no one could ever see coming because what won was not even a low-tier deck: it was one that no one had ever considered. Enter Hop’s Trevenant!

Understanding Trevenant and the “Hop” Archetype

The very first thing that I want to clarify is that Hop’s Trevenant is not a new deck. In fact, it has been around for a while now, specifically since the beginning of the year with the release of Ascended Heroes. Trevenant and Phantump both belong to the “Trainer’s cards”, a sort of archetype that falls under one certain iconic trainer and that have synergies with each other. For example, we have Cynthia’s archetype, Steven’s archetype or even Marnie’s archetype. If you don’t really know who Hop is, I don’t blame you since the poor guy is not precisely popular. Hop happens to be your rival in the Sword and Shield videogames and let’s just say it is not very well remembered by most fans, who preferred other characters like Leon or even Marnie.

In any case, the idea of Hop’s archetype in TCG is very straightforward: use Phantump for the first few turns and then just chain one Trevenant after another until you win. Simple, right?. Let’s deep dive a little bit more.

Phantump might seem like just a cute little pre-evolution you run just to make Trevenant live but the reality is that it is one of the most powerful weapons in your entire deck. It attacks for just one energy and then, if you are lucky with your flips, you basically gain immunity for one turn. And believe me when I say that just getting one head can completely change the course of the game. 

C Splashing Dodge 10
Flip a coin. If heads, during your opponent's next turn, prevent all damage from and effects of attacks done to this Pokémon.

And then of course, we have Trevenant, the card that actually gives name to the deck. Trevenant’s attack reads: 

Horrifying Revenge 30+
If any of your Hop's Pokémon were Knocked Out by damage from an attack during your opponent's last turn, this attack does 100 more damage.

As you can imagine, the idea is to force your opponent to go over your Hop’s Pokémon so that you can always deal 130 damage. Now, in a format where most two-prize attackers have 190-230 HP, dealing 130 damage might seem very lackluster but here is where the archetype factor comes into play! See, all Hops cards are designed to boost the attack of their Pokémon. Hop’s Choice Band, Postwick and Snorlax increase the damage dealt by the attacks of your Hop’s Pokémon by 30 each, so having a combination of these 3 cards (which is honestly pretty easy) gives you an additional 90 damage. Just like that Trevanant is not dealing 130 but 220 for just one energy, turn after turn! You see where I am going?

As I said, this is a deck that is very decent but has certain weaknesses that have historically prevented it from being part of the top meta choices. To begin with, being forced to run as many Hop’s cards as possible means you don’t have enough space for tech cards, which makes certain matchups fairly difficult. In addition, Trevenant is particularly weak to decks that can spread damage (Froslass Munkidori style) of those that run cards to wipe the board in one turn (Dusknoir). Because of that, Trevenant has always remained a very under-the-radar deck, not considered seriously for competitive play.

Turin’s Special event and its metagame

So with this context, we arrive at Turin's Special Event, the very last European tournament of the season. This is very important to keep in mind since I think it would have been impossible for Trevenant to win in earlier moments. Think about the following: most players competing in Turin were either already qualified for worlds (therefore, playing in a more relaxed way) or trying to get the very last Championship Points they needed to get the invite to San Francisco. Because the metagame almost exclusively revolves around Dragapult (which is something we have already discussed), it was expected that some of the most predominant decks would be Dragapult counters, which sometimes relies very heavily on two-prize Pokémon.

This was the environment Spanish player José López perfectly leveraged. His choice was clear: A deck that was very consistent, that could play very aggressively in the first few turns of the game and that had the surprise factor on its side.

This is the deck José piloted in the event. 

1st Place Special Event Turin - Jose López

The first thing that we see about this particular build is how strong it is. It perfectly maximizes what makes Trevenant great and focuses on getting as many combo pieces as possible during the setup turns. Also, three Pokégears and three copies of Night Stretcher ensure the deck never runs out of gas. Perhaps what catches the eye is the inclusion of two cards that can be considered situational (and yes, they are): Shaymin and Ruffian. I had the possibility of speaking with Jose after the tournament and he confessed Ruffian was completely useless but was afraid of needing an answer against decks that heavily relied on special energies. Shaymin, on the other hand, was the undisputed MVP of the tournament.

Without Shaymin, the deck loses against anything that is able to target the bench, like Mega Starmie, Water Ogerpon and even Slowking. However, being able to protect the bench can suddenly turn an autoloss into a very favorable matchup just including that one copy of Shaymin. In fact, the pèrfect example was the final game of the tournament. José was facing Netherlands player Brennan Kamerman, who had a perfect record. Brennan’s deck centered on using Slowking’s copycat ability to execute a turn 2 Trifrost attack from Kyurem and destroy his opponent’s boards before they could set up. Since not many players included Shaymin in his deck, he was able to wreak havoc every round. During one of the pre-game interviews, Brennan was asked precisely about Shaymin. He shrugged and answered “Well, if my opponent runs Shaymin and plays it, I guess I just lose, I don’t have an answer. And this is exactly what happened in the finals. Brennan played well and did all he could but at the end of the day, the matchup was so unbalanced that Jose pulled a clean 2-0 in the finals. 

What can we learn about all this?

While we all love a good story like a rogue deck claiming a victory in one of the most centralized formats of recent history, I think it is important not to fall into the emotional trap and jump into wrong conclusions.

While Jose deserves all the praise he is getting for being able to pilot such a unique deck into the event, it does not mean that Trevenat suddenly becomes the deck to beat. Quite the contrary and allow me to elaborate. There are two main reasons that explain why Trevenant achieved this feat. 
Some of the most popular Dragapult counters had a weird match-up against Trevenant. 
People didn’t even know what the deck was about and made mistakes. This was made abundantly clear during the streamed games, where even the official casters were struggling to understand what was going on. Now that players are a bit more familiar with Trevenant, the surprise factor is no longer there.

In fact, before writing this article, I did some digging to see what the real matchup spread was, and honestly, the numbers are not that great. Trevenant has a pretty unfavourable pairing against Dragapult (which is like 50% of the meta) and it does not really improve that much against most of the other popular decks. So please don’t assume that because Trevanant won a tournament it is now the best new deck and that you are going to win every single game. Understand that Trevenant is, at the end of the day, a rogue deck for a reason and it will continue to remain so. 

Of course, that does not mean you should not play Trevanant! I honestly love the deck and it is really, really fun, but just be aware of the place it holds against all the other meta strategies. In any case, I really recommend you check Turin’s Day 2 stream to get a better grasp at how the deck works, it is amazing to see.

Thanks for reading!