ZoroGarb is the best deck in Expanded, which should not be a surprise to anyone considering the deck just won worlds and is the naturally progression of ZoroEggs. That is not to say no deck beats ZoroGarb or that ZoroGarb will certainly win Portland, but if the deck that wins dedicates a big portion of its list solely to counter ZoroGarb (such as Drampa Garbodor did last season) then that deck is not the BDIF, ZoroGarb is. Some of these counter decks might work; Night March and Necrozma Garbodor are in my top three because they take slightly favorable Zoroark matchups. Two other short pieces will be posted by tomorrow talking about those decks along with BuzzRoc, Archie’s Blastoise, and Marshadow Milotic.
Last season’s archetypes don’t measure up
ZoroGarb has the highest consistency level out of any deck in Expanded, that alone should be convincing. Combine that with the deck’s ability to lock abilities, hit for 210 consistently, and Red Card. Zoroark gives you borderline perfect resource management, can make use of the perfect synergy with Shaymin EX and Sky Field/Colress, and locks opposing abilities with Klefki. It’s hard to find a deck that combines so many broken combos. But that is contrasted with a deck that doesn’t really have any overpowered combo, but still will see a ton of play.
BuzzRoc is a solid option that many people are interested in, considering they believe it has a favorable Zoroark matchup and it’s ‘the deck that has a chance against anything’. Consider how little BuzzRoc can actually use Expanded cards; it is the only archetype that actually cannot take advantage of VS Seeker properly, the deck cannot use Shaymin EX effectively, and the only real advantage it has is Korrina, which does not seem overpowered in the slightest. There is no broken or game-breaking combo in a BuzzRoc deck. It is essentially just what it was at the end of this last season with a couple somewhat helpful additions to adapt to Expanded.
If you look at the deck in terms of it’s matchups, there’s not much it can do against good players. Sure, a B tier BuzzRoc player against a B tier ZoroGarb player will leave the BuzzRoc player with the win a good amount of the time, but that is not at all the case if they were both top tier players. ZoroGarb, the way my colleges and I have built it, beats BuzzRoc at about 65/35. Necrozma Garbodor is coming back into style with the Promo Tapu Lele around as well, and BuzzRoc is not beating that deck consistently. BuzzRoc is ill equipped to deal with Garbodor decks to a point where they are forced to not play VS Seekers, hoping they can keep item counts down. The bigger problem now is Garbotoxin. How do you deal with a knock out on your active with an N to 2 or 1 under Garbotoxin? The majority of the time you do not and the Garbodor player comes out on top. Drampa Garbodor does not have solid consistent attackers against BuzzRoc, but with Tool Drop in Necrozma Garbodor, you can OHKO Buzzwoles every turn while Toxin locks them.
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