One of the most interesting decks we have seen since the release of Journey Together and rotation is N’s Zoroark ex. While this deck boasts a strong Gardevoir matchup, a deck many have considered to be the best in the format, it only has a few Top Cut results, and otherwise fairly underwhelming finishes. The two main causes of this are the low play rate and high skill level of the deck. While some decks like Joltik play themselves and win fairly quickly, Zoroark’s games take a long time to complete and require a strong knowledge of the deck’s potential in order to properly map out your prizes. Every game feels like you put a ton of effort into winning, with the games all looking very close. This feeling can be very rewarding, but is also very exhausting in the tournament context. Despite all of this, I believe Zoroark is in a really good position for the World Championships, as long as someone can crack the list.
In this article, I will take a deep dive into deckbuilding theory for Zoroark, covering some top-performing NAIC lists, the many options in deck-building for popular matchups, and the lists I have liked the most in testing thus far.
NAIC Lists
Pre-NAIC, Zoroark looked to be an incredibly weak play. One big issue was that Gardevoir’s playrate plummeted due to fear of Grimmsnarl, which additionally was a tricky matchup for Zoroark. Besides this, with the introduction of Shaymin in Destined Rivals, one of Zoroark’s strongest tools, N’s Darmanitan, was significantly weakened, bringing down the power level of the deck significantly. Despite this all, the deck persevered, with many great players playing it. I want to focus on two lists especially, Cameron Shenoy’s Top 8 list and Marco Cifuentes’ Top 64 list, here they are for reference:
Cameron:
my.limitlesstcg.com/builder?i=10432JTG970432JTG980233JTG1160232TWM950132JTG260132JTG270133TWM1410132SFA380132OBF800433SSP1700333PAL1850233PAL1720233PAR1710233TEF1450133JTG1450433TEF1440333JTG1530233PAR1600232SFA610133SVI1730133SVI1820133TWM1630233MEW1650133SVI1690133PAR1770233PAL1710233JTG1520632SVE150133PAL192
Marco:
These lists have a few different key deckbuilding differences: their consistency Supporter, their attackers, ACE SPEC, and their acceleration. Many of the other differences in techs come from these choices.
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Thank you for these amazing thoughts on Zoro! I’ve been trying to work on my own list, and this has been really helpful. I’m curious though – how come your two lists are *either Arven or Darmanitan? Have you tried an Arven list that incorporates the 2-2 Darmanitan line? Thanks again!
It is really hard to fit the Arvens, Evos, Darmanitans and Reversals, because you also want Hildas/Ciphers to find Reversal consistently, so it just ends up being a bit too awkward. I have tried a list with a bit of everything, including 1-1 Darma and Arvens, however it was not effective enough in the matchups I wanted Darma for.