Hey everyone, I’m Michael Davidson, a writer for Cut or Tap currently ranked 6th in North America for the 2025 season. I have been playing Gardevoir consistently for a decent portion of the season, achieving multiple Top Cuts and having not missed a Day 2 with the deck. Like many others, with the rotation of Refinement, I was very unsure whether Gardevoir would be able to remain a competent and serious meta threat, and didn’t put as much time into the deck as it might have warranted. I played some games however, and helped my friend Isaiah Bradner test his list of Gardevoir featuring a 3-3 line of N’s Zoroark ex, which ended up being refined down to the 1-2 Zoroark list Henry Chao used to take down the Atlanta Regional. In this article, I will discuss why Zoroark is the best engine for the deck, the deck’s matchups, and what changes could be optimal for the deck moving forward.
Why Zoroark?
As the format changed, myself, Henry Chao, and Isaiah Bradner looked for ways to continue playing the deck we had seen so much success with in the previous format, and noticed glaringly obvious flaws with the ways most people were playing the deck.
For one, the Ace Spec most people had been playing was Brilliant Blender. In theory, Blender is a strong inclusion for the deck and lets your list be less dedicated to discarding Psychics. However, the discard-and-draw effect of Refinement was incredibly strong not only for discarding Psychic energies, but also for removing bad cards from your deck and refining (pun intended) your deck to the most important cards in the late game, on top of the obvious benefits of having access to more cards. Blender, while providing a very powerful one-time effect, does not contribute to your board or change the contents of your hand, something the deck is no longer inherently strong enough to go without.
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