I’ve been busy over the last month doing almost nothing other than playing Pokemon, writing about Pokemon, and sleeping. Being on summer break has given me the time and energy to create lists for all of the top tier, excluding Buzz Garb. Never got around to that deck for some reason. This piece has my lists for Psychic Malamar, ZoroRoc, ZoroPod, BuzzRoc, and ZoroGarb as you may have guessed from the title. My top two choices are ZoroRoc and ZoroGarb, but I certainly think Malamar is a great choice for some people and that ZoroPod is a great option for others. BuzzRoc is pretty much the BDIF, so that is obviously a deck almost anybody should consider.

Although I have posted lists and articles for a lot of these decks recently, a good lot has changed in most of the lists. Malamar in particular went in a very different direction. I posted the 4-4-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 Malamar list recently, which I had an affinity for, but over the course of more testing I realized the deck needed to change. A lot of the people I coach either were considering Malamar or are going to play Malamar for NAIC. As a result, I actually spent more time editing and working with the deck than any of the others. What I arrived at looks far more like what Caleb used to earn 2nd place at Mexico’s Special event. I didn’t use his list as a starting point or really even acknowledge it until recently when someone told me to reference it. The fact that we came to so many of the same conclusions independently tells me that we’re onto something.

Malamar Hoopa

Hoopa > all the other one-prize Pokemon

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