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

Thought I would try out a different style for some of my pieces this week. Instead of coming out with one big article on one day, I’m going to have multiple shorter posts. I’ve done this a couple times in the past, but they were more just short articles rather than focused posts. This one is about my pretty off the wall Necrozma Malamar build … Continue reading Necrozma Malamar Focused on One-Prize Attackers – June 13, 2018

What’s up with it Cut or Tap readers, I just came fresh off of a 3-4 drop finish at Madison Regionals, and even though I had an awful day with the deck I’m convinced it is still a viable deck for the meta and deserves to see more play! Buzzwole lists are pretty difficult to beat, but I have a list that I think can … Continue reading I Thought About Locking You – Attacking Hoopa and a Buzzwole Update

As promised, this is the second article for this week. I have to say, I feel pretty good about the article I put out on Friday because the two decks I covered were the ones that did the best. Greninja also saw a surprising amount of success and Buzzwole Garbodor seems to have come back into the scene as well. This is a short piece … Continue reading Observations on Madison Regionals & Countering BuzzRoc

Madison Regionals is tomorrow and I wanted to get two options out before the event for anybody considering BuzzRoc or ZoroRoc. Psychic Necrozma Malamar has seen a lot of coverage from players and overall is a pretty easy deck to play. I felt like it needed less attention than the other top options. Ultra Necrozma would have been a good deck to cover as well, … Continue reading Buzzwole Lycanroc & Zoroark Lycanroc for Madison Regionals

In attempt to build a deck that I actually had the cards for, I ended up building Zoroark Garbodor. After playing my first 10 games with the deck and winning all of them, I was pretty interested in the deck. I later realized this deck was a lot like Zoroark Eggs because it can do the same thing Hex does every turn while still Trading … Continue reading Zoroark Garbodor

In this piece I am not going to talk about the cards that I don’t think are good becuase I see no point in doing so. Instead, I am only going to focus on the cards that I think actually have potential to be top tier and what I think they can combine with. This piece also has multiple lists for the potential top-tier archetypes. … Continue reading New Archetypes and Updated Decks with Forbidden Light!

Zoroark is the clear best deck in the format and there are very few decks that do a good job of countering it, meaning we should give a lot of attention to the ones that legitimately do. So, what are those decks? The more recent option that players seem to be favoring is Greninja and for good reason. In testing so far it does seem … Continue reading Utah Regionals – Final Opinions and Lists