Hey Guys, Phinn again. San Jose Regionals is in four days as I write this. I was growing tired of Yveltal when preparing for this event. I love the deck, but I realized that it might not be the best choice for San Jose. I tried to look to other options that can beat the parts of the meta that I care about. I looked to some different options that don’t see a ton of play, including the rogue deck that I created about two weeks ago. Between then and now, I have fixed my list up and figured out most of its strengths and weaknesses.

Another deck that came to my attention is Mega Manectric. This deck beats what I consider to be the most popular two decks, so I thought I would give it some testing. Below I cover the list that I came up with.

Then, there’s Eels. Eels is the deck that I am most interested in, by far. I feel that Eels tackles everything that is a strong option in this format, with what I consider to be a slightly more consistent engine. I am about 75% sure that I will be playing the list that you see towards the end of this piece.

I’ve also noticed that all three decks play one Mewtwo EX, and that two of the three play Escape Rope. Might not be the most relevant thing to note, but I like tracking when a certain card winds up in multiple decks.

First I’ll go over my new and improved Toad Fossils deck!

Seismitoad/Aerodactyl

I think this deck would absolutely be my pick if I could just get it to be a little more consistent. However, it is against the rules to have a weighted coin, and that’s the only way I can see to boost consistency with Twist Mountain. This is what the deck has going for it:

PROS

• Very strong Trevenant matchup. As I said in my last piece, Trevenant is the best deck in the format, and I still firmly believe that. Toad Fossils boasts a 75/25 matchup against Trev.
• Very strong Yveltal matchup. The counter to the best deck is the second most important deck to beat. This deck certainly does. Matchup is about 70/30.
• Has a better time against Groudon than you might think. The two Escape Rope and Aerodactyl (FAC) help to make Groudon a favorable matchup. Aerodactyl actually has Resistance, meaning the Groudon player needs to drop the stadium to take the knock out. They could potentially do it with two Strong Energy, but you should have just discarded one with your attack. Six Stadiums means that Tropical Beach will almost never be in play for more than one turn. Combine that with the fact that Puzzles cannot be used, and Groudon has very little consistency to work with. 60/40.
• In general, anything that evolves will struggle with this deck. The item lock mixed with Evolution Jammer is tough for any evolution deck.
• Always wins the stadium war. Nobody, and I mean nobody plays six stadiums. I do, so I win the war every game.
• Strong Seismitoad matchup. Aerodactyl repeatedly gets rid of Double Colorless energy, which means Toad decks need to completely rely on their Basic energy – that is, if they play any. Twist Mountain also stops the need for items to get Fossils in play, which means your strategy isn’t as hindered by item lock as other strategies are. Not to mention that (DEX) Aerodactyl’s ability makes it so you always do 10 more damage than your opponent without needing a tool.
• It’s rogue. Nobody really knows how to face this deck because most people don’t even know what Aerodactyl DEX does. Hell, a lot of people don’t even know what Twist Mountain is! Anybody you face will need to come up with a strategy on the spot. You get to watch your opponent squirm a little.
• It’s supah Spicy! Look at this deck, it’s soooo spicy!

CONS

• Coin flips. Any deck that relies on coin flips will struggle at least a little bit with consistency. I notice that between the Fossil items and Twist Mountain, you can get what you need pretty consistently. However, there are games when you simply cannot get your engine going. You surrender some games just to the poor flips. However, this happens pretty rarely.
• Occasional draw issues. While this can be said for any deck, I find that this list dead-draws occasionally. I have no tolerance for dead-drawing, so I do my best to make my decks as consistent as I can. This deck couldn’t fit EVERY consistency card that I wanted. Clearly, Yveltal has spoiled me.
• Great odds of starting with Toad. Some other Toad variants have trouble starting with Toad, while this one rarely does. Zubat does have the free retreat that people sometimes take advantage of. The issue is that a Turn1 Silent Lab from your opponent can stop you from the Turn-1 punch. This deck plays only six basics, and four of the six are your best starter. Mewtwo isn’t bad as an early game attacker, though; X Ball is really strong!
• Resources. I find that a large portion of my games have me with almost no cards left in my deck. I find that I have to take precautions, or otherwise play differently just to avoid decking out. The Archens do help to nullify this problem a little bit, but that’s only if they aren’t in play. Ideally, you can keep resources left until the end of the game. I notice that this happens a lot for me when I use Yveltal. Almost all of the cards left in my deck are resources like Dark Patch, DCE or VS Seeker. With Toad Fossils, I feel like the cards remaining are just miscellaneous stuff that didn’t end up being needed, or just never came into play.
• Inconsistent secondary attacker. Sometimes you just don’t get Aerodactyl FAC in to play. It’s uncomfortable being backed up into a position where you need to flip heads to attack. There’s always Mewtwo, but why am I playing Aerodactyl if I can’t attack with it when I need to?

Overall, I am a big fan of this deck. I just find that some of the needed consistency is not found in this list. I could most likely make a couple cuts to find the consistency, however doing so would worsen my consistency in other areas.

Do you want to dead draw, or get out Aerodactyls consistently? This is usually the decision I had to make several times in test and when building the deck.

Next up is my MegaMan. This is the list I ended up growing fond of: