The truth is, I did not test Night March enough. I got to the point where my list was what I still consider perfect (except maybe Marowak over Ranger), but I didn’t know the matchups. It wasn’t until round 6 that I realized you’re supposed to go second in several matchups, that against Sableye Garbodor you simply KO Sableyes while Colressing every turn, and that … Continue reading Post-Portland; Night March’s Future

Garb Box is the only top tier option I haven’t talked about on the site yet, which is mostly because I kept feeling like I didn’t have the list quite right. Now I’m at a point where the list is about as good as I believe it can get (at least with the approach I took) and I have decided to stop editing the deck. … Continue reading Garbodor Box and ZoroGarb update

The bans and addition of a few new sets have brought back and changed some past archetypes, as well as creating Milotic Marshadow. I have been working on these three decks, not necessarily because I plan to use any of them for Portland Regionals but so that I can give you guys some strong lists if you are interested in them. Let’s start with Archie’s … Continue reading Archie’s Blastoise, BuzzRoc, and Milotic Marshadow

Night March is one of my top options because it seems under-teched for. The addition of Order Pad and Maxie gives the deck more strength than Zoroark does in this meta. Night March is a deck that does not really need an explanation to help understand why it is good, what needs an explanation is why the deck would not be good. We had an … Continue reading Night March

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 … Continue reading Expanded Zoroark Garbodor

The video bellow is a deck profile where Michael and I cover his rogue Zoroark deck that won him a cup with 48 master and earned him a second place finish at a League Challenge on the next day. After recording the deck profile I realized how long the video actually is. Some of you may not want to watch the entire 25 minutes so … Continue reading Michael Perez’s League Cup Winning BuzzRocZoroark Deck

ZoroRoc was far too overlooked when I took my first shot at this meta. Recently it has been one of my favorite options because of the aggression and consistency. The only problem matchups are Buzz Garb and BuzzRoc. In this piece I cover a list that has been modified to deal with both. Ultra Necrozma Malamar is another archetype that I have frequently been seeing … Continue reading More Standard Stuff: ZoroRoc, Ultra Necrozma Malamar, Buzz Garb, and Swampert + list updates for everything in the last article

Expanded has a new ban and a new set to change up the format, which is a big improvement for a lot of us. This piece is going to serve as a guide for players new to the format. I’ll be talking about: Zoroark Night March Toad Trevenant Sableye Buzzwole Garbodor As I see it, these are the main archetypes of the format. It’s a … Continue reading A guide for players who are new to Expanded

Before I get into the article I want to apologize for the wait…sort of. I do not think a week is enough time to actually come up with any decent lists in a new format, so I decided to take some extra time to work on these five decks. My stepdad also passed about three weeks ago which has been hard on me to say … Continue reading NEW Post-Rotation decks! Malamar, ZoroPod, ZoroGarde, ZoroGarb, and BuzzRoc

At this point it seems pretty clear what the top tier decks are: BuzzRoc ZoroGarb ZoroCargo ZoroPod Rayquaza GX The first three are clearly top tier and ZoroPod is not an obvious top tier deck, but I firmly believe it should be there. My testing has been focused around beating these and finding alternatives to playing the mainstream options. In this piece I cover which … Continue reading Top 3 Plays for Worlds

Gallade seems to be getting a decent amount of hype right now, probably due to Zoroark’s dominance. Nathian Beck and I were interested to see if the archetype actually was worth using. Octillery is alright but it does not provide any extra attacking power and you cannot use it with Puzzle of Time. We agreed that the Zoroark variant was the way to go. Here’s … Continue reading Zoroark Gallade

This piece displays one of the rogue decks I have been working with, Oranguru Garbodor, and has list updates for ZoroCargo, ZoroPod, BuzzRoc, Mismagius Garbodor, and ZoroGarb. I ended up focusing too hard on Blowers in BuzzRoc, and I realized I was wrong about taking BuzzRoc as an autoloss with ZoroCargo, so I’ve fixed both of those mistakes. Mismagius just needed a small tweak. As … Continue reading Oranguru Garbodor & List Updates

I spent Friday and Saturday testing Standard with Celestial Storm, trying out new archetypes and the new lists I posted five days ago. I also got to test out my favorite rogue deck and 2004’s Blaziken! In this piece I cover the issues and benefits of Rayquaza (with my list for it), why Mismagius is a top tier deck (with my list for it), and … Continue reading Critiquing Rayquaza GX and Reviving Mismagius Garbodor

The new set hasn’t presented a ton of new cards for Zoroark to work with, but one in particular makes the archetype far stronger. Magcargo gives Zoroark a way to function consistently with as few as one Zoroark in play. This means if you have games where you cannot set up Zoroarks or end up prizing too many Zoruas or Zoroarks, you still can consistently … Continue reading Zoroark with Slugs, Trash, and Bugs (Standard + Celestial Storm format)

I analyzed my streamed match against Jimmy because I was not so confident in my play after the match was over and some people were telling me they thought I played it incorrectly. I’m going to go over everything that I now think was and was not a mistake. The funny part is that, in my opinion, I actually did not misplay in the ways … Continue reading Reviewing Round 4: Malamar Hoopa (Me) VS ZoroPod (Jimmy P.)

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 … Continue reading Final list for US Intercontinentals – ZoroPod, ZoroRoc, BuzzRoc, Malamar and ZoroGarb

I really wanted to make the whole ‘only have one-prize Pokemon in play’ idea work out, but the truth is that it is not a reasonable goal. Brigette is too important, and getting Brigette usually requires Tapu Lele, so by the first turn you usually have already done away with that goal. I did try out Ninja Boy as an attempt to get around that … Continue reading One-prize-based Malamar Update – 26 June 2018

Since I posted my first Zoroark Garbodor article there has been a lot that changed in the meta. Connor Petersen placed second at Mexico Regionals this past weekend with the list in this article. Prior to that, an entirely different variant of Buzzwole emerged at Madison and then was recreated at Mexico. Needless to say, a lot changed in the list in order to answer … Continue reading Zoroark Garbodor Update

Recently ZoroPod seems to have come back into the top tier. It could have been seen as a fluke if the deck had only seen success at one event, but ZoroPod performed better than any other deck last weekend with a first place at Mexico City’s Special Event and a second place at Sheffield’s Regional. The deck even scored top four at Hong Kong’s Special … Continue reading ZoroPod: Critiquing and synthesizing the successful lists – 21 June 2018