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Guide to ZoroRocWeavile match ups

One of the main shortcomings of the site has been the fact that I don’t cover match ups in much detail. I want to change that over the course of the next month or so. The next few articles will be covering specific decks and all of their match ups against the popular archetypes in the standard format. This piece is about the match ups of my ZoroRoc build that has an emphasis on Weavile. The deck has been seemingly bulletproof, giving me great placements every time I play it. Over the last two months with the deck I did the following using ZoroRocWeavile:

  • League Cup 1st
  • League Cup 2nd
  • League Cup 4th (Greensboro)
  • Win-a-box 1st
    [edit: as of March 24th, another Cup 1st place]

These are obviously not unbelievable accomplishments, but they show that the deck is consistent at the very least in small scale events (although the Greensboro cup had over 70 player). The second place most likely would have been a first if I didn’t make one misplay (video of the game here) and the top four easily could have been at least finals if I didn’t make the exact same mistake. For some reason I keep forgetting that Muk has four retreat. In both cases I had used up all my Double Colorless and switching options resulting in me decking out from my opponent Guzma’ing Muk. Oops.

A few general tips

The most common mistake I see players making is not setting up enough Zoroark. Any variant of Zoroark should have their top priority as getting (and maintaining) three Zoroark in play. An exception to this might be the Zapdos match up where Muk is actually a bigger priority. Don’t worry if you only have one alternative attacker in play. If you have two Zoro in play and your opponent KO’s one, you are at a single Trade on that coming turn. This will make it hard for you to set up more Zoroarks; from there you can easily lose tempo. Another exception to this rule is if you have Magcargo out; you can sometimes work with two Zoroark if that is the case.

A mistake I see players making in terms of their lists is not including either Magcargo or Mallow. The main problem I have with Zoroark is not hitting Double Colorless when I need it. You have to include a 1-1 Magcargo or at least one Mallow to help deal with that problem.

Lycanroc is a little overused. Of course Bloodthirsty Eyes is a great ability, but at the same time I see players overestimating it’s value. Most games I use one the Bloodthirsty Eyes in the first four turns or so and more towards the late game I will use the other Lycanroc, or not use it at all. In short, don’t feel like you need a Rockruff down turn one in every match up and only use Bloodthirsty Eyes when you are completely sure it is a great use of it. Players can been a little too ready to use Bloodthirsty Eyes when they really don’t need to.

Now I’ll get into the match ups. The descriptions will be assuming the following list:

ZoroRocWeavile

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