A Fortunate Catch of the Eye

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On the morning of Limitless Qualifier #4, I woke up and started to mentally prepare myself for a tournament run that could mean my fourth second-stage placement in a row and possibly earning my invite to the Limitless Invitational. For me there was a lot on the line, and my anxiety was naturally pretty high. I was talking to my teammates in order to get myself to calm down while I waited for the first round to be posted when someone informed me that new cards for our upcoming set, Darkness Ablaze, had been revealed. Naturally, everyone started debating the viability of the new Vs and VMAXs, and how they might hold up in a theoretical future metagame. The attention of many people was captivated by Eternatus VMAX, and people started conversation over its place in this speculative meta. However, another card piqued my interest far more than any other card revealed. While everyone else was distracted with Eternatus, I was fixated on a widely overlooked pre-evolution: Gothita.

Gothita has the attack Fortune Eye, which, for a single P Energy, allows you to look at the top 5 cards of your opponent’s deck and reorder them as you please. This is unbelievably good and could be the saving grace for post-rotation Cinccino Control that I had been looking for. I was ecstatic.

As soon as I saw Gothita, I immediately started drafting a list. It not only excited me, but also gave me something to work on and get my mind off a stressful tournament, especially after a loss. Throughout the day, I slowly pieced together a list. Eventually, I finished a very rough draft and put it aside to focus on the tournament; I needed to win 4/4 of my next rounds to make Phase 2 once more. After finishing my final Limitless run, having just barely whiffed the invite, I continued to work on my Gothita list. Initially, I was trying to make Excadrill UNM work with it. There were obvious issues with the concept, as Excadrill not only took up too much space, but also required a F Energy in order to use its Rototiller attack. This meant that I would need to find room in an already extremely space-tight list and run two different types of Energy. I contemplated Aurora Energy, but I wanted to be able to reap the full benefits of Ordinary Rod, and run basic Energy. I pondered over my conundrum when I had an epiphany: Drilbur CEC.

When crafting an Excadrill list, the optimal Drilbur to run is obviously the Drilbur printed in Cosmic Eclipse, as it has Rototiller as well, but it only shuffles in 1 card instead of 4. On paper, in a more traditional Control build, that’s relevant because you are trying to lock your opponent’s hand with Chip-Chip Ice Axe and you can easily maintain the lock with Drilbur, recycling a Chip-Chip Ice Axe to cover the next turn, when you can evolve into Excadrill and start aggressively accelerating your win condition. However, Drilbur on its own is oddly versatile, as its Rototiller attack only costs a single C Energy.

Applying this back to Gothita, the biggest question was explicitly apparent: “Is one card enough?” Could Drilbur actually hold up a Control deck by retrieving a single resource per turn? The answer was a very surprising and very resounding “Yes.” Drilbur and Gothita individually are both slightly underwhelming in that Gothita needs a partner that can recycle resources in order to carry out its strategy throughout a long, drawn-out game. Drilbur needs a way to reliably fix the opponent’s topdeck, while also retrieving Bellelba & Brycen-Man to accelerate its win condition and discard the good cards that you don’t want your opponent having access to. However, Gothita and Drilbur are very synergistic in that they cover each other’s weaknesses. Gothita can rig 5 cards in any way it wants (meaning that multiple turns can be covered), while Drilbur can retrieve much-needed resources on turns where another Fortune Eye isn’t necessary. Together, as long as you can reliably pivot between them, they can maintain a complete hand lock and stop the opponent from finishing the game.

Post-Rotation Decklist (TEU–DAA)

How does the deck work?

The main idea behind the deck is to get rid of the opponent’s hand and then infinitely lock them by pivoting between Gothita and Drilbur. You can accomplish this by using Reset Stamp late in the game and following it up with Jessie & James in order to remove the few cards that your opponent got off of Reset Stamp, or you can use Jessie & James opportunistically if your opponent overextends their hand. However, it’s likely that most games will follow the Reset Stamp strategy. From there you use Fortune Eye to arrange your opponent’s top 5 cards in one of a few ways depending on the situation.

You don’t want your opponent to be able to attack, so you will often need to either use Lt. Surge’s Strategy to use both Jessie & James (to hand-lock) and Boss’s Orders (to trap something useless in the Active Spot). If the opponent doesn’t bench anything that is trap-able, then you can stockpile your Crushing Hammers in order to strand an attacker in the Active.

Besides its potential to stall the opponent, Lillie’s Poké Doll serves as a nice way to manipulate your turns. If there is ever a situation where you are about to deck out but need to use Fortune Eye to maintain the lock, you can retreat into a Doll, put it to the bottom of your deck, and use Fortune Eye without decking out.

A Few Common Combinations

One of the most difficult things about picking up a Control deck designed by someone else is learning the intended lines of play. I cannot teach every single niche situation and how to handle it, but I do think a good foundation of knowledge is extremely beneficial when trying to pick up a deck.

Notes

• B = Bad Card: A card your opponent would not draw out of the lock with.
• G = Good Card: A card that your opponent could draw out of the lock with, which you would want to discard or prevent your opponent from drawing.
• B-G-G-G-B: If your opponent’s deck has 2 bad cards in the top 5, this is often the optimal Fortune Eye play. If you order the cards to BGGGB, your opponent topdecks something useless, then during your turn you can mill the 3 good cards with Bellelba & Brycen-Man (BBM), and that leaves another useless card on top, which covers Drilbur recovering a card (usually Pal Pad) from the discard pile at the end of your turn.
• B-G-G-G-G: If your opponent has only 1 bad card in their top 5, the optimal order is often BGGGG. This way, your opponent topdecks a useless card, and then you can play BBM to discard 3 of the good cards, shuffle a Doll back into your deck to prevent decking out, and then using Fortune Eye again in order to take that last good card from the top and put a useless card from the next 4 on top.
• B-B-B-G-G: If your opponent’s deck has more than 2 bad cards in the top 5, it’s often smart to preserve those bad topdecks for future turns. You want your BBMs to hit 3 good cards. Otherwise, you can order the 3+ bad cards in the front, which would cover some Rototiller turns while you wait for 3 good cards to show up in the top 5.

The Typical Loop

A typical loop consists of using Pal Pad with no deck remaining and putting 2 Bellelba & Brycen-Man (BBM) from the discard into your deck. You follow this with a Fortune Eye to stack your opponent’s deck. Going back into your turn, your opponent topdecked something useless and they didn’t do anything. You topdeck BBM and you make a decision. Depending on how the top cards were ordered, you can either Fortune Eye again, or you can use the BBM to discard your opponent’s valuable cards. Much of this deck requires good foresight and there is a lot of routing you have to go through to play it optimally. You have to make a lot of decisions that are synergistic with each other.

Either way, your next action depends on your previous decision. If you waited a turn and used either Fortune Eye or Rototiller, you can use BBM to discard valuable cards and Rototiller the Pal Pad back again. Whenever you use BBM, you likely have set your opponent’s topdeck to something bad, and that will cover a Rototiller turn. If there was something good left at the top of their deck, you can retreat into the Poké Doll and put it to the bottom of the deck to cover another Fortune Eye turn. Once the Pal Pad has been recovered, the loop repeats. The deck is extremely reactive to how the Fortune Eyes play out.

The loop requires a lot of retreating, which is made possible through Air Balloon and Recycle Energy. There must always be an Air Balloon on Drilbur. It has an annoying 2 Retreat Cost, and it’s the only reliable way to keep the loop. Gothita has a Retreat Cost of 1, so once you have a P Energy attached to both Gothita and Drilbur, you can use Recycle Energy as your Energy attachment for the turn on Gothita in order to retreat it when necessary. You need Bench mobility to keep this lock.

The loop is powerful, but somewhat fragile. The list runs 4 Pal Pad as a sort of insurance. If you find yourself in a situation where you need to cover a lack of foresight or if the opponent’s top 5 cards were not favorable, you can cover suboptimal circumstances to keep your momentum.

Spare Pal Pads allow for a sense of security as well as a source of getting powerful turns off. If you recognize that there are a lot of really valuable cards in the top 5, you can use a spare Pal Pad to get Lt. Surge’s Strategy to discard 6 cards in one turn. You always have Make Do if you need to draw cards that turn. This source of aggressiveness allows the Control user to extend a little further once or twice a game to discard the opponent’s game-winning resources.

Possible Inclusions

I always try to inform my readers on how a deck might need to change in order to run more efficiently or adapt to the meta. This will prove more important in this deck’s case. Control decks are often built around what is in the expected meta and I’m sorry to say that this is a suboptimal list. We don’t know the extent of the DAA meta. I know that certain cards look powerful, and I should expect them, but we don’t know what a good list for those archetypes looks like yet. This Gothita list is extremely vanilla, and should be seen more as a template for the archetype rather than a list to be net-decked.

Power Plant

Power Plant is vital if Eternatus VMAX decks begin to run Weavile-GX. I assume they will but I don’t know. Power Plant is important because Weavile can circumvent your strategy to leave something useless in the Active. If you drop a Power Plant during the lock turn, you can stop this. Power Plant also allows the Control player to establish a firmer lock. Cards that could end the lock such as Dedenne-GX can quickly become dead cards that you can feed your opponent.

In addition, Eternatus might begin to run Chaotic Swell in order to stop this, so you may want to consider Marshadow UNB to counter that.

Something to Counter Lone Centiscorch VMAX

A big issue I’ve encountered is dealing with Centiscorch VMAX. If they bench something else besides Centiscorch, it’s not a problem. However, you don’t have a method of removing mass amounts of Energy like previous Control builds have. Your only way to remove Energy is Crushing Hammer, which isn’t a reliable card and considering that Centiscorch reattaches Energy from the discard pile, they likely won’t have much of an effect. I’ve thought of a few answers but I’m completely sure on which way is ideal considering an already space-tight list.

Lucario & Melmetal-GX

LucMetal is my current favorite of the options because it’s a good card for Control in general and can be used in more than one matchup. Lucario & Melmetal allows for mass Energy denial on a single target with its Full Metal Wall-GX attack. This solves the Centiscorch issue if it’s able to be pulled off. Sadly, there isn’t a reliable way to get 2 Energy onto LucMetal within one turn (obviously there is Metal Saucer but we can’t really afford more Energy types and Saucer), which means there will be a turn where you need to use Reset Stamp and hope that they don’t get a Boss’s Orders or a Welder and Energy to play around it. It would also take some foresight on Energy attachments, and it could go wrong quickly if the opponent has the right card at the right time.

Mawile-GX + Surprise Box

This is an interesting answer. It takes more room, which is rough, and it’s somewhat reliant on your opponent’s decklist, which is rough. However, it allows for you to force the opponent to have something useless on the field. Unfortunately, space is a huge issue for the deck, and I’m unsure how room could be made without cutting much-loved consistency. Mawile can also clog your Bench. You can always clear it with BBM, but it can still be awkward at times depending on what resources you have at your disposal and what other Supporters you need to use at any given time.

Excadrill UNM

I really like Drilbur as a recovery card, as it works really well with Gothita. However, it’s not an inherently flexible card outside of the loop. Recovering resources with Drilbur during the mid-game without a lock is super inefficient and, even in the end game, Drilbur is still confined to recovering a singular card. The spare Pal Pads often can cover recovering another card that’s needed, but there are only so many spare Pal Pads and spare turns to Rototiller during the lock. It’s hard to recover when you lose a lot of resources early. Excadrill would solve all these issues, and I think it would be a healthy addition. However, I don’t see how this list could find room for Excadrill. If Excadrill required a C Energy, it’d be perfect, but it doesn’t. If you find a way to fit Excadrill, it could seriously improve the deck’s ability to recover from unfortunate situations.

Marnie

After testing Marnie in the Cinccino/Zacian Control list in my last article, I have fallen in love with the card as an early/mid-game Supporter. It allows you to draw into resources you need to set up without discarding necessary resources you need for the late game (which we know is hard for the deck to recover from due to Drilbur’s inherently weak recovery potential). It also allows you to disrupt the opponent mid-game, which allows you to slow their momentum and also increase your chances to opportunistically lock them mid-game. Even writing about it now, I feel like I should be utilizing it. The only drawback is that Marnie would probably need to replace Professor’s Research, which can be super vital to dig deep early in order to set up properly. Maybe a 1/1 split is optimal? Regardless, I would highly recommend testing Marnie in the list.

More Reliable Energy Disruption

Crushing Hammer is a terrible card, and I will take that sentiment to my grave. I have never felt so defeated as I am when I go 0/7 on Hammers and I lose because of it. It happens way more than it should. If not for my passion for Control, Crushing Hammer would be enough to make me go insane playing these decks. Despite that, Crushing Hammer is a vital card for Control decks and very few modern Control decks can afford to cut them. I complain about them, but I often tend to play lists that lean on Hammers a little too much for my comfort. This list is no different.

I’m uncomfortable finding room for more reliable Energy disruption in this list, especially with Team Yell Grunt being such an inherently-weak form of Energy denial. At this point, finding that room would mean cutting consistency cards, which I’m not a fan of. Yell Grunt is synergistic with Persian, as Persian allows you to discard the Energy and Yell Grunt allows Persian to discard an extra card. However, especially with this being a vanilla list, I’m opting for consistency over luxury cards.

Another option would be to add Giratina UNM and Scoop Up Nets. This would be beneficial because Special Energy is seeing a fairly large uptick in play recently and Scoop Up Nets would add an extra element of maneuverability for the deck. If you do opt for the Nets, Jirachi TEU would be very synergistic, and that might be a more optimal source of consistency for the deck. However, that’s more space the deck doesn’t seem to have at the moment.

Matchups

As I always say, it’s good to understand a matchup and the game plan you should have in order to pilot a Control deck optimally. Luckily, this deck has a similar strategy against most decks: hand-lock, Fortune Eye, mill, Rototiller, repeat Steps 2–4 until you win. The exact method of locking may vary depending on the deck it’s facing, but it’s usually pretty similar. However, there is one card that invalidates this strategy this deck plays toward: Zacian V. Zacian V’s Ability Intrepid Sword allows them to draw an extra 3 cards and end their turn. This means that they would have to have 4 dead cards every Fortune Eye in order to keep the lock. That’s not going to happen. I’ve built the list in a way where it has a fighting chance against Zacian decks, but it adopts a completely unique element to your strategy.

How to Handle Zacian V

Persian is the key to this matchup. Your strategy requires a little luck, some fortunate Prizes, and I can’t say that the matchup is favored, especially because I expect ADPZ to be the dominant Zacian deck and ADPZ can take the game quickly. ADPZ will likely also play Energy Switch in order to increase their ability to win against VMAXs if they are forced to go second, so they will have an answer to early Energy disruption. The only way I can see this deck winning the ADPZ matchup is through a power-play with Persian.

Once you use Reset Stamp when your opponent is at 2 Prizes remaining (Prizes left may vary depending on the situation but it will often be 2), your opponent must not draw out of it with the 3 cards they have at their disposal (you can use Gothita to assist with that). They will then likely try to pare their hand down and use Intrepid Sword. If they were lucky, they might have pared down their hand and only have 4 cards in their hand and Persian can’t do anything. If not, Persian can try to prevent the opponent from having any good cards they may have drawn.

Regardless, you want to gust something that can’t attack into the Active with Boss’s Orders. If they don’t draw out of the lock with that hand, they have 5 cards in hand going into their turn and they cannot Intrepid Sword again because Persian would have a field day. From there, you can establish a lock with Gothita. At that point they either topdeck garbage because you are performing the lock, or they Intrepid Sword into an extra 3 cards (which you would know which 3 they are) and you could use Persian to get rid of those cards if necessary. Your strategy isn’t foolproof, and they are drawing quite a few cards before the lock can set. However, this is the deck’s out to beat Zacian, and it’s not impossible.

The hardest element to deal with is when the Zacian player is able to pare down their hand, so be mindful of that when using Persian. Having an extra Reset Stamp can be useful too, as you can prevent the opponent from drawing out of the lock if you see that the initial attempt won’t be successful (e.g., your first Fortune Eye after a Stamp shows that they can draw into a key card with Intrepid Sword regardless of manipulation after reducing their hand to avoid Persian). In the end, you still need to get a little lucky.

My Biggest Concern

I love this deck. Not only is it fun for me to play but I have a sense of pride that I created it and it works well so far. However, I do have a relatively large concern with the deck and it lies with the basic structure of the game: Prize cards.

This deck plays a lot of moving pieces, many of which the deck relies on but I can only afford to play 2 copies of due to the list being so space-tight. Reset Stamp, Gothita, Drilbur, Lt. Surge, Boss, Jessie & James, Air Balloon, etc. All of these cards are important for the deck and the deck hates prizing both copies of any of them. Some of them are less vital than others and their prizing can be played around, but prizing both of your Drilbur or Gothita can leave you at a massive disadvantage. Playing around with risky card counts isn’t unusual for Control-esque archetypes, and it’s a risk you have to take. However, on paper, this deck feels at an even higher risk than normal. Luckily, it hasn’t shown many issues so far in testing. However, it still makes me nervous.

POG Championship

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A pseudo-Worlds style event called the POG Championship has recently been announced and it seems as if it’s going to be held in the pre-rotation format. This means that we will be able to use cards from Ultra Prism up to Darkness Ablaze. I am 99% sure that I will be using an adaptation of Gothita Lock for this event. I’m curious how well the deck can shine with access to Oranguru UPR. Oranguru has the same retreat and attack cost of Drilbur, so it’s quite literally a direct upgrade. Oranguru would improve the deck’s ability to recover extra resources and therefore reduce the fragility of the lock. Oranguru would also improve the pace of the deck, as that extra resource would allow for more frequent double BBM turns. Again, I think this list will act as more of a template than anything else. However, I think it would be helpful to provide a pre-rotation template as well in order to demonstrate how the deck would change.

Pre-Rotation Decklist (UPR–DAA)

Just a few changes to note:

• Addition of Channeler: Turns off Vikavolt V’s Item-lock for a turn in order for you to establish a lock.
• Tate & Liza over Bird Keeper: Mostly just preference, I like the idea of a card that can shuffle–draw in niche situations where I might want to prevent a deck-out. However, Bird Keeper is nice too. It allows an easy pivot into a Doll to buy time in the early game and helps build a powerful hand.
• Addition of Power Plant: It’s insanely good in this deck in a vacuum. However, with Zeraora-GX still in format, you need an answer to PikaRom as well. Eternatus may play Weavile-GX, but PikaRom will play Zeraora-GX.
• -2nd Jessie & James, +1 Mars: Mars is a nice niche form of draw support and the fewer discarded cards will rarely matter as you will often be able to Reset Stamp most decks to 1. This allows the deck to have just a tad more consistency.
• Trimming the heavy Pal Pad count to 2: The deck needs room for Power Plant and Channeler and the 3rd and 4th Pal Pads are easy cuts. The deck doesn’t need the extra Pal Pads to cover Drilbur turns that aren’t Pal Pad because Oranguru now enables the deck to get more cards for free anyway. There isn’t a need for the high count anymore, so you can easily make room for new techs.

Possible Includes for Pre-Rotation

Articuno-GX

Articuno is easily the most enticing include for this version. It easily provides a reliable form of mass Energy disruption and gives you an out to lone Centiscorch. It’s also a seemingly easy addition. Because you would be less reliant on trapping something in the Active with Boss’s Orders, you can cut the 2nd Boss for Articuno-GX. From there, you can cut 2 P Energy and add a W Energy and a Rainbow/Aurora Energy. This way, each Pokémon that requires a specific Energy cost has 2 viable Energy in the deck and you still have 2 basic Energy in order to fully take advantage of Ordinary Rod. I would also recommend finding room for a single Switch, as it, along with your pivot Supporter, should make it fairly easy to get Articuno-GX out of the Active Spot and start the lock from there.

My only concern is that, because you don’t play Chip-Chip Ice Axe, there will likely be that single turn after Articuno-GX’s Cold Crush-GX attack where the opponent would be able to break the lock with a topdeck. However, Articuno is such a powerful tool to have in your arsenal that it may be a risk you want to take.

Faba/Girafarig LOT

These always help in a Control mirror match, but they also help limit your opponent’s options opportunistically. Doing something as simple as using Faba to get rid of an Air Balloon or Hiding D Energy can open up a win condition by making an opponent’s Pokémon trap-able.

Acro Bike

As I tested more and more Cinccino Control in the UPR–RCL format, I began to really like Acro Bike in the deck. In a deck where you want to have no cards left in your deck and want to hit the right pieces at the right time, Acro Bike is a huge asset. Unfortunately, it’s always hard to find room for a card like Acro Bike, as you need to play 3–4 of them. However, you might be able to cut the Great Balls. Great Ball is a good card, but Acro Bike can assist in finding that extra piece like Great Ball does, but it also guarantees to thin your deck every time, which Great Ball doesn’t. Personally, I’m quite a fan of having a healthy line of Pokémon-search cards in my Control decks, so, for now, I plan to stick with Great Ball.

Shuckle-GX

I both love and hate running Shuckle-GX in my deck. It’s often a dead card and it’s an extremely sub-optimal starter. However, Spiritomb can prove tricky to deal with for a Control deck, as they can Knock Out their own Pokémon with Spiritomb and Jynx, which proves troublesome when trying to trap something in the Active Spot. Shuckle allows you to beat Spiritomb by outpacing on Prizes, which is quite amusing to me. However, I think it’s somewhat unnecessary, as you can play around it a bit with Boss’s Orders, Mew, and constant Energy denial. Eventually your opponent may not have the resources left in their deck in order to recover and attack, regardless of the fact that they can KO themselves and go into Jirachi.

Final Thoughts

This deck feels really strong and is a lot of fun. I’m a little biased and I haven’t tested much else going into this format, but I’m fairly confident that this archetype has its place in the meta. I still need to test a more traditional Control build with Excadrill and Chip-Chip Ice Axe, but I’m pretty content with Gothita. The deck has a questionable ADPZ matchup and Centiscorch VMAX might prove to be an issue, but, as always, Control can/will adapt to the meta.

I cannot stress enough that this list is not perfect. Don’t treat it as such. It most likely needs to make room for Power Plant and it has to be altered to cope with the established meta. Consider this list to be a template. It can prove difficult to build a Control list with little knowledge of what the meta might be. Once we know what we need to prepare ourselves for, then we can make a refined list.

If you’ve read this far, thanks! I’ve been having a blast writing these articles lately and I’m unbelievably happy that people are enjoying them. If you have any questions, don’t feel hesitant to comment below or PM me on Facebook. I’m always down to talk a bit about Control and help people experience the playstyle in a positive and engaging way. Control is vastly misunderstood and I’m delighted to help rectify that. Otherwise, it seems as if I’m here to stay for a bit so I’ll see you guys in the next one!

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