I'll share some interesting stats from new rotation games I've done or was a part of, be it our local games or our online games with the Fight Club group. I'll share some view from some top players to give you an early insight on what to expect in the coming weeks for the new Ultra Prism to Unified Minds format. And I'll share my own personal thought of this current format so far. I hope these stats and views will be helpful to those of you reading.
Early thoughts and views from the community is that we'll see the meta dominated by GXes and Malamar decks, with Pikachu & Zekrom-GX and Reshiram & Charizard both viewed by most as the best decks in the format. Three polls made by Luke Morsa were conducted on HeyFonte with the intention to see what the community felt would be the most popular decks at Worlds and the Top 10 decks in these polls were as follows:
Week 1
- Pikachu & Zekrom-GX
- Malamar Variants
- Reshiram & Charizard-GX/Green's Exploration
- Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel
- Dark Box
- Mewtwo & Mew-GX
- Shedinja
- Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX
- Lost March
- Spiritomb
Week 2
- Pikachu & Zekrom-GX
- Reshiram & Charizard-GX/Green's Exploration
- Malamar/Giratina/Spell Tag
- Dark Box
- Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel
- Malamar/Giratina & Garchomp-GX
- Mewtwo & Mew-GX
- Malamar/Ultra Necrozma-GX
- Shedinja
- Beheeyum
Wek 3
- Pikachu & Zekrom-GX
- Reshiram & Charizard-GX/Green's Exploration
- Malamar/Giratina/Spell Tag
- Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel
- Malamar/Giratina & Garchomp-GX
- Dark Box
- Malamar/Ultra Necrozma-GX
- Mewtwo & Mew-GX
- Shedinja
- Blacephalon UNB/Green's Exploration
On all three occasion, PikaRom was viewed as the most popular deck going into worlds, followed by ReshiZard and Malamar/Spell Tag. That seems to be the popular view of the current tier 1 decks, the meta triangle if you will. Blacephalon-GX, Dark Box and Malamar/TinaChomp are all viewed as possible tier 1 as well and could very well be with a good showing at Worlds.
But those are just thoughts from the Pokemon TCG community you might say, what about results? Lots of test sessions have been going in preparation for Worlds, locally and internationally. Our local games have been doing post rotation format for a while now here are the 10 best performing decks from our games here: (ppg -> points per game)
| Pikachu & Zekrom-GX | (45/29/6) | 141 points | 1.76 ppg |
| Dark Box | (30/32/3) | 93 points | 1.43 ppg |
| Reshiram & Charizard-GX | (27/21/3) | 84 points | 1.65 ppg |
| Malamar/Giratina & Garchomp-GX | (27/23/2) | 83 points | 1.59 ppg |
| Malamar/Ultra Necrozma-GX | (18/16/5) | 59 points | 1.51 ppg |
| Malamar/Spell Tag | (15/11/1) | 46 points | 1.70 ppg |
| Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX | (9/4/0) | 27 points | 2.08 ppg |
| Whimsicott-GX | (7/14/5) | 26 points | 1.00 ppg |
| Blacephalon-GX | (8/9/1) | 25 points | 1.39 ppg |
| Mewtwo & Mew-GX/Fire | (6/4/2) | 20 points | 1.67 ppg |
Take these results with a pinch of salt as our local players do like Malamar and apparently Dark Box a lot. Not a lot of Blacephalons or MewtwoMew haven't seen much play around here. Once again it's PikaRom at the top of the standings as the best performing deck, with ReshiZard not far behind.
But for a more international view, we also have had many games over at Fight Club, with players mostly based in America. Our test sessions there consists of one best of three game every night (except Weekends). Games are done on either PTCGO or through a webcam. Results from Fight Club testing so far: (ppg -> points per game)
| Pikachu & Zekrom-GX | (19/12/3) | 60 points | 1.75 ppg |
| Malamar/Spell Tag | (19/17/2) | 59 points | 1.55 ppg |
| Blacephalon-GX | (17/11/5) | 56 points | 1.87 ppg |
| Malamar/Giratina & Garchomp-GX | (16/13/4) | 52 points | 1.57 ppg |
| Reshiram & Charizard-GX | (10/9/0) | 30 points | 1.58 ppg |
| Dark Box | (9/13/3) | 30 points | 1.20 ppg |
| Malamar/Ultra Necrozma-GX | (8/7/3) | 27 points | 1.50 ppg |
| Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX | (4/2/0) | 12 points | 2.00 ppg |
| Naganadel-GX | (4/5/0) | 12 points | 1.33 ppg |
| Silvally-GX | (4/6/0) | 12 points | 1.2 ppg |
Once again PikaRom is the best performing deck, followed closely by Maly/Tag and the Blacephalon-GX variants (the usual and the ReshiBlown version). Dark Box, like it was locally, was played often but didn't do as well as the top decks.
Locally and internationally, PikaRom has been the deck to beat and I can see it being that way from now till the new set releases in November. It's the most consistent deck and has a lot of options for it to go with during games. The stats also show ReshiZard being another top deck to beat, although not as popular as PikaRom for the time being.
When it comes to Malamar, the jury is still out as to which version is better. Sadly, my favourite variant, the Ultra Necrozma version, has been the worst performing one so far. Spell Tag and TinaChomp have done well in games and have been very popular, both in Singapore and internationally which results to show for it.
Gardeon has had strong results in both areas as well despite not being very popular, the fact it has a 2 point per game average both times. I've played against it using the "BDIF" PikaRom and it's matchup is quite good against it. MewMew has seen little to no play so far anywhere! Even though the card is powerful, having the ability to copy any GX attack, it does tend to struggle against Malamar (even if you have Jirachi on your board) and any deck running Power Plant.
If I have to pick three decks that I'd say is the meta triangle, it would have to be PikaRom, ReshiZard and Malamar. Still, we do have to watch out for Blacephalon, Gardeon and Dark Box, these decks can win events if everything goes their way. If you're going to a League Cup or League Challenge or any events for the next few weeks, expect to see these decks around.
My results from testing so far.
My results from testing so far.
So new format equal excitement right? Not for me personally. I personally don't like how things are at the moment. From what I can see, if you're a non-GX deck not named Malamar, you don't stand a chance at all which is frankly quite sad. I've always been fond of evolution decks, especially Stage 2 decks and with Nest Ball AND Ultra Ball gone, there is no good way to find your Pokemon pieces unless you're a Psychic or Grass deck. You could go with Elm but that always felt a bit underwhelming for me.
Charizard from Team Up was always my favourite deck to play ever since it was released and I'm still trying to make it work in this format but the lack of ball search and Malamar being so popular makes it unplayable now. I've also tried to make the new Chandelure work with as many as 7 lists so far and well...I'm still trying. I've tried the new Haxorus and Garchomp out as well, and so far the latter has been the only deck with some success. Unfortunately, like Charizard, Malamar just wreck these decks so what's the point of trying?
I've been testing Malamar with Ultra Nec mostly with little to no results to show for, perhaps confirming my fears that it wasn't the best way to go. I've not had the best of times with the new format so far, locally or online test games on Fight Club.
Fight Club:
Aug 2 - Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar vs Blacephalon-GX/ReshiZard-GX (1-2)
Aug 5 - Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar vs TinaChomp-GX/Malamar (0-2)
Aug 6 - Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar vs Reshiram & Charizard-GX (1-2)
Aug 7 - Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar vs Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar (1-1)
Aug 8 - Reshiram & Charizard-GX vs Malamar/Spell Tag (2-1)
Aug 9 - Reshiram & Charizard-GX vs Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel (1-2)
Aug 12 - Mewtwo & Mew-GX/Fire vs Ultra Necrzoma-GX/Malamar (0-2)
Aug 13 - Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar vs TinaChomp-GX/Malamar (0-2)
Aug 14 - Pikachu & Zekrom-GX vs Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX (1-2)
Yup, 9 games played, 1 win, 1 draw, 7 losses. That's a winning rate of just 11% when I used to have a winning rate of almost 60% in the older format.
Local Games:
July 28 - Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar
R1 vs Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar (0-2)
R2 vs Pikachu & Zekrom-GX (0-2)
R3 vs Dark Box (2-1)
August 3 - Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar
R1 vs TinaChomp-GX/Malamar (2-0)
R2 vs Reshiram & Charizard-GX (2-0)
R3 vs Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel (2-1)
August 4 - Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar
R1 vs Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar (2-0)
R2 vs Reshiram & Charizard-GX (1-2)
R3 vs Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar (0-1)
August 7 - TinaChomp-GX/Malamar
R1 vs Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar (1-0)
R2 vs Dark Box (1-2)
R3 vs Reshiram & Charizard-GX (1-2)
August 10 - Chandelure/Charizard
R1 vs Mewtwo & Mew-GX (0-2)
R2 vs Bye (1-0)
R3 vs TinaChomp-GX/Malamar (0-2)
August 11 - Reshiram & Charizard-GX
R1 vs Pikachu & Zekrom-GX (2-1)
R2 vs TinaChomp/Malamar (2-1)
R3 vs Ultra Necrozma-GX/Malamar (1-2)
August 14 - Pikachu & Zekrom-GX
R1 vs Gardevoir & Sylveon-GX (1-2)
R2 vs Pikachu & Zekrom-GX (2-1)
R3 vs TinaChomp/Malamar (2-0)
Yup, I've been struggling with Malamar apart from one league game. Perhaps I should give the Spell Tag version a try. PikaRom is still something new to me which I need to get to grips as I made a silly mistake against a Gardeon, taking Thunder Mountain instead of Lysandre Labs which would have won me the game.
The greens version of ReshiZard is the first tank-style deck I've ever tried and those games were the most frustrating games. First of all I never saw a Volcanion in most of my games even though I played 4 of them. Secondly, Reset Stamp most of the time kills you and I like playing deck that has outs to these kind of tactics. And mostly, you don't always get the pieces you want at the right time. Even then, I still managed to get two wins out of it. Maybe I should give this another try.
MewtwoMew is one deck I'd want to explore a bit more, it has to be good but the Malamar matchup scares me and we'll always see Malamar here in Singapore. I do like having many options available for the deck but there are too many counters that just kills it off.
We don't just have a League Challenge coming up next week but also the Pro Circuit Summer Invitational tourney ($800 prize money), and I honestly have not found my comfort deck in this format. I've tried a number of decks and none of them are working the way I'd want it too. If anyone have any suggestion of decks I should try, do let me know.
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