Junior Division champion Shunto Sadahiro uses Giratina-EX and Garbodor to prevent his opponents from executing their strategies. Garbodor can prevent the effect of any Abilities, something his own attacking Pokémon don’t really rely on.

Riku Ushirosako earned his runner-up position by masterfully playing his Trevenant BREAK deck. With four Crushing Hammer Trainer cards in his deck, he was able to slow his opponents down, especially decks that use Special Energy such as Double Colorless or Double Dragon Energy.

With relatively few Pokémon and Energy in his deck, Roan Godfrey-Robbins left plenty of room for Trainer cards in his deck. Many of these cards let Roan get the cards he needs quickly. Often a Pokémon card game comes down who can get set up the fastest, and plentiful cards such as Professor Sycamore, Wally, and Trainers’ Mail help Roan do just that.

By using Basic Pokémon exclusively, Yuta Ozawa built a team that was quick to set up and start attacking. Yuta uses the Parallel City Stadium card not only to restrict the size of his opponent’s Bench, but also keeps it simply to knock out a Stadium card his opponent has put in play.

Because Giratina-EX’s locking effect comes from its Chaos Wheel attack, it’s important for Kai Abe to be able to move his Pokémon around freely. To help with this, he not only includes two Float Stone in his deck, he also has two Hydreigon-EX, whose Dragon Road lowers the Retreat Cost of Dragon-type Pokémon.

Enrico Marini’s Metal-type deck uses two Bronzong and a Bronzong BREAK as the foundation of his team. Bronzong BREAK is tailor-made to tackle Night March decks, capable of picking off the low-HP Pokémon sitting on his opponent’s Bench.

The Max Elixir Trainer card is ideal for decks that include only Basic Pokémon, such as the one Asaki Hasegawa reached the top cut with. Max Elixir lets you search the first six cards in your deck for Energy and attach them to a Basic Pokémon in play, making it easy to power up big Pokémon-EX attacks early in the game.

Christian Moreno ended up being the only player in the Junior Division top-8 to play a Night March deck. This deck runs on very little Energy, allowing more space for Trainer cards. Also, because Night March uses only Double Colorless Energy, the Special Charge Item card is useful for fetching them out of the discard pile once his Night March Pokémon start getting knocked out.