Rising from the Burning Ashes

Hello 6P readers! We’re at the only point in the season where we seem to have a break from all the action. As we eagerly await news for the upcoming season (and I really -ope by the time you are reading this we’ve heard some news), I’m excited to dive into the new Burning Shadows set as my fellow writers have done this week. I’ll touch briefly on my NA International tournament here before getting to the new set as a lot of people have asked me about that tournament.

I had my heart set on Turbo Dark for the event, and had Mike Fouchet and Ross Cawthon convinced that it was the play, as it had such good Espeon/Garb and Zoroark/Drampa matchups. However, the days prior to the event led to underwhelming results, despite including a 1/1 Garbodor BKT line in order to further improve the Metagross-GX matchup.

I ended up switching to Decidueye/Ninetales at the last minute, with less than ideal testing with the deck and quite possibly a suboptimal list. It was nice to see the deck make it all the way to Top 4, meaning I didn’t make a terrible deck choice. Despite this, I do regret having switched decks so last minute and not dedicating enough time to the back up option. I finished with a disappointing 4-3-2 record, but hungrier than ever to close out the season with a bang at the most exclusive Pokémon tournament of the season.

I’ve had Day 2 secured pretty much since my 2nd place at the Oceania International, so points were of no matter to me. I’m looking for the big finishes and I intend to do my best at Worlds!

With the new set coming out right before Worlds and the Anaheim Open, I’m sure a lot of you have already printed out proxies of the cards you liked in order to try them out. In this article, I will go into detail of what I think are the cards from the set that will have an immediate impact in the metagame for those 2 tournaments.

Bursting In: Gardevoir-GX

All aboard the hype train! Recently we heard about this card winning a major tournament over in Japan with a very cool list where the structure reminded me a bit of the 2008-2010 “GG” deck comprised of Gardevoir and Gallade and plenty of support Pokémon.

Historically, decks that bypass the “1 Energy per turn” rule have always been viable and dominant. We can look back at Blaziken RS decks in 2004, Blastoise-ex FRLG in 2006, Metagross/Dragonite in 2007 and most recently Blastoise BCR which took the 2015 World title.

Gardevoir-GX’s Ability Secret Spring allows us to attach an extra Y Energy per turn without any restriction. It’s not uncommon for such Abilities to have some sort of limitation, such as only attaching to the Active or Benched Pokémon or to a certain type. This Ability on a Stage 2 means it’s compensated with no such restrictions, and it combo’s pretty nicely with Gardevoir-GX’s main attack: Infinite Force.

We’ve seen very similar attacks previously in M Mewtwo-EX BKT and less powerful version in Lugia-EX AOR and the newest Tapu Lele-GX. The 30× multiplier means Gardevoir-GX BUS will be easily taking down powered up threats without a huge Energy commitment, and paired with its own Ability, Double Colorless Energy and Choice Band, taking down 200+ HP Pokémon will be quite simple.

Currently, the metagame is filled with cost effective 1 Prize attackers, such as Garbodor, Zoroark and Tapu Koko and heavy hitting, high HP Pokémon such as Drampa-GX, Decidueye-GX or Metagross-GX. Being able to potentially 1HKO any and all of those threats with Infinite Force is what makes Gardevoir-GX such a huge threat.

The remaining traits which are its Metal weakness and Dark resistance are interesting as they will probably dictate 2 trends in the metagame. Metagross-GX remains quite viable in order to hit for weakness and Turbo Dark all but disappears from the metagame once and for all.

As you can see, the card is extremely good on its own. However, it also has a great partner in Gallade BKT to increase consistency and add a very useful Fighting typing. Both Stage 2s evolve from Ralts and can utilize Double Colorless Energy which is extremely convenient.

The list above is based on some that have done well in Japan, but with less techy cards such as Oricorio or Tapu Koko and focused more on consistency. Diancie BUS is an incredibly good card when paired with Brigette, as it allows you to search for an Evolution and evolve right away.

Growing into Size: Golisopod-GX

Once again, we have a really solid base list to go off of thanks to the Japanese tournament decklists. The combination of Decidueye-GX and Golisopod-GX makes sense as the latter is an Energy-efficient attacker that is boosted in its damage output thanks to Feather Arrow.

Golisopod-GX’s First Impression requires it to be on the Bench at some point in your turn to deal maximum damage output. Thankfully, the new Supporter Guzma allows you to promote one of your Benched Pokémon and activate said effect. You can also use a simple free retreater such as Tapu Koko or any Pokémon with Float Stone to get maximum damage out of First Impression.

Setting up multiple Golisopod-GX should not be difficult thanks to Forest of Giant Plants. However, we have no Battle Compressor in our format so the combo with Revitalizer is not as easy to pull off as it was in the Japanese list. This is how I would adjust the list for our current standard format and my initial testing set up for the deck:

Without Trainers’ Mail and Battle Compressor, the deck will be significantly slower than its original Japanese version, but Brigette and a thicker Golisopod-GX line should help stabilize the early game and allow for a solid mid-to-late game.

A different partner for Golispod-GX, which combos quite nicely with it, is Zoroark BKT. Here’s a possible different list, which could easily be modified to include something like Vaporeon to combat Volcanion more effectively:

Float Stone + Stand In is a reliable way to make sure you get maximum damage output from First Impression. Zoroark BKT in itself, as we all know by now, is a very solid attacker and adds another dimension to the deck. It also sports a weakness that isn’t Fire! Finally, the non-GX Golisopod GRI allows for some heavy hitting to opposing GX and Pokémon-EX.

The Phoenix of Forever: Ho-Oh-GX

pokemontrainerlisa.deviantart.com

Next up on my list of viable Burning Shadows cards is the legendary rainbow Pokémon, Ho-Oh-GX! This card is yet another great inclusion into Volcanion-EX based decks. Every set seems to keep bringing new tools to fire type decks and Ho-Oh-GX stands out for several reasons.

First off, its first attack lets you snipe any Pokémon for 50 damage for an RCC cost. Not bad, but not great either and definitely won’t be the reason this card sees play. However, dealing Bench damage is never a bad option to have. In a long, drawn out game, you can secure that last crucial prize on a Pokémon that might’ve survived earlier on.

The second attack is what makes Ho-Oh-GX a big powerhouse in my opinion. Dealing 180 damage for 4 Energy is a dream come true for Volcanion-EX decks. It’s a magic number to 1HKO most of the commonly played basic GXs and EXs and the drawback of not being able to use the attack next turn is something that the deck was already prepared to deal with.

The GX attack is definitely one of the worst ones out there though. It’ll be tempting to combo the GX attack with Charizard-GX or something else fancy like that but I’m certain it will ultimately prove ineffective in competitive play. This GX attack seems to simply be a nudge to Ho-Oh’s lore of being a phoenix Pokémon which are said to be reborn from ashes. Something we’ve also seen from previous Ho-Oh-EX cards with Abilities such as Rebirth.

Finally, a two Retreat Cost is actually something very manageable but seeing a fire type Pokémon that isn’t weak to water is actually pretty rare. Granted, lightning weakness is not great to have due to Acerola giving some extra traction to Tapu Koko-GX based decks, but I don’t expect these to make an impactful showing at Worlds or the Anaheim Open.

Once again, we have some sort of guidance to base our lists on: successful Japanese decks. However, they do have access to Blacksmith which makes a world of difference in this deck and that is one of the main reasons why Volcanion-EX decks are not as dominant in our format as they are in Japan’s. With this in mind, this is the initial list I have come up with to start playing around with:

Not running Max Elixir in Volcanion decks seems very strange, but we’ve already seen low counts of this card in the successful Volcanion lists as of late. This is compounded by the fact that we get the new Supporter, Kiawe, which allows for an immediate power up of Ho-Oh-GX or Turtonator-GX .

The deck now focuses on the turn 1 Kiawe off of a Tapu Lele-GX’s Wonder Tag to power up whatever is active. Ideally you will start with Ho-Oh-GX or find one on your first turn, power it up and then start getting KOs with Guzma on whatever can potentially be a threat.

In an ideal world, Ho-Oh-GX will be taking consecutive KOs through Guzma and Volcanion-EX’s Steam Up Ability to match the opponent’s HP when necessary. Due to this, Oranguru and Shaymin-EX stand out with their Abilities as they allow you to draw cards and still have Guzma as an option for your Supporter of the turn.

3 new tools for Volcanion that vastly improve it means Fire decks will certainly be present at Worlds and the Anaheim Open. It will be very interesting to see what sort of format develops between Gardevoir-GX BUS, Metagross-GX GRI, Golisopod-GX BUS and Volcanion-EX STS decks and if the pre-BUS dominant decks such as Decidueye/Vileplume or Drampa/Garb can stand up to these new threats.

Guessing Goodness: Burning Shadows’ Stars

Out of all the new GX’s in the new Burning Shadows set, those 3 are the ones that immediately stand out to me as the ones that will likely have an immediate impact on our metagame. The Japanese tournament results back this up for the most part despite their format being different from ours.

Other notable or interesting GXs are Alolan Muk-GX, Noivern-GX and Necrozma-GX. Alolan Muk-GX with Salazzle GRI and Noivern-GX as a standalone deck were upon by Xander in his latest article. Necrozma-GX is the one GX that appeared in the Japanese Garbodor lists, but it was paired with Dimension Valley, a card no longer legal in our format.

Dimension Valley makes Necrozma-GX’s GX attack so much better, as it can pay for its cost with a single Double Colorless Energy. Its main attack is nothing to scoff at, and Metagross-GX decks could definitely be adapted to run a Necrozma-GX focus to deal 1HKOs. The big hindrance to this would definitely be Necrozma’s weakness though, as being weak to Garbodor GRI is probably something unacceptable at this point in the metagame.

The use of Dimension Valley in such decks also made me think: what will happen beyond Worlds and the Anaheim Open? There aren’t any published Regionals dates yet for next season beyond Liverpool so far, but we can assume the US will have a healthy mix of Standard and Expanded Regionals in 2017-2018.

There are two GX which I think will definitely stand out in the Expanded format: Marshadow-GX and Darkrai-GX.

pokemondb.net

Being able to copy attacks is nothing new, as Mew cards have always had this sort of mechanic. However, Marshadow-GX is unique in the sense that it copies attacks from discarded Basic Pokémon.

As many of you might’ve guessed where I was going with this, Night March is the most obvious inclusion for this card. 150 HP is the lowest we’ve seen so far for a Pokémon-GX, but it’s a lot higher than Joltik’s 30 HP or Pumpkaboo’s 60. Lightning and Psychic type were already great coverage, but adding Fighting into the mix gives this deck even more tools to deal with the Dark type decks that have dominated the Expanded format for years. Even though Seismitoad-EX is still present and easily counters this type of deck, Lurantis-GX did win the last Expanded Regional held in Toronto, potentially discouraging Seismitoad from being played.

Expanded currently covers over 25 sets, so there is no shortage of options to choose from. It’s also impossible to prepare for every deck out there! However, Marshadow-GX might just be what Night March needed to propel itself back to the top of this format.

One last card that I think will have a much bigger impact in Expanded than Standard is Darkrai-GX. Historically, Dark has dominated Expanded. It isn’t winning every single event, but certainly always present in big numbers between Turbo Dark and Yveltal-based decks.

Darkrai’s Ability combos exceptionally well with Battle Compressor and also Darkrai-EX BKP by immediately adding 20 damage and can also take advantage of Dark Patch. The non-GX attack is actually quite underwhelming, since there are virtually no effects that you’d like to bypass aside from Jolteon-EX’s Flash Ray.

The GX attack could incite a return of Hypnotoxic Laser to competitive play as it allows to immediately take a 1HKO on the Active Pokémon thanks to the automatic poison. Thankfully, this combo is Expanded-exclusive. The only way to make use of this GX attack in Standard would be by pairing Darkrai-GX with Salazzle GRI but they certainly don’t share any other synergy whatsoever.

In my next article at the end of the month, I’m sure I’ll have a lot more experience with the newer cards and will go more into detail into refined lists and what my top options are looking like for the 2017 Pokémon World Championships.

Thanks for reading guys!

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