Hello, Cut or Tap readers! I just got back from Anaheim, hot off a 7th Place finish at the World Championships with Gholdengo Togekiss. The deck was an interesting twist on the highly anticipated archetype, and it worked out great for everyone who played the list. In this article. I will go through the preparation for Worlds which led me to Dhengo, the logic behind the list, the matchups I faced, and how the deck will adapt to any changes in the meta.
Worlds Prep
Worlds is an entirely different beast of a tournament to prep for. In the past, for Regionals and Internationals, I can rely more on my intuition for playing my deck, and be benefitted by the average opponent being worse than me. At Worlds, all of my opponents are going to be great, especially with the new structure, which meant I needed to know my deck well, and have some way to get advantage without relying on my opponents’ misplays.
After NAIC, I started testing Gardevoir, as the deck had proved to have the best tournament win rate any deck has had in a while, and I had plenty of experience with it. Unfortunately, I felt the deck was really prone to variance against important matchups like PultNoir and Dhengo, which I projected to be the two most played decks. At such an important event, I did not want to chalk every game up to luck, so I decided to test two decks with onboard draw: N’s Zoroark and PultNoir. Ultimately, while I enjoyed both decks, they were struggling into Gholdengo, no matter how many techs I added. While I did not end up playing PultNoir, a few of my friends did to great success, so I do think the deck is very strong moving forward.
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Hi Piper, very good article. Thank you for all the details you shared. Regarding your future picks, which version of Zoroark do you think is the most solid?
I like Gabriel/Marco’s list, but I also really like Secret Box as the ACE SPEC. I think Mateusz’s list was really good for Worlds, but weaker going forward now that people have seen the list. I have also found that splitting Darmanitan and Toedscruel in the deck does not really work well, although the Cyrano engine feels really good.
hi, so were you going blind first with the deck?
Yes, blind first, then go second against Budew/Joltik decks to improve your starts.
I created my account just to read this article. It’s really good—congratulations!
I like playing with this deck, but I feel it’s difficult to deal with Cornerstone, especially if the opponent uses more than one.
Do you think baby Gholdengo is enough?
Do you have any recommendations to improve this matchup? Some people suggest adding Zacian ex (the promo one), while others mention Scizor…
Could you give me some tips about it?
Baby Dengo and Zacian are sufficient for 1 Cornerstone. If your opponent is playing 2 Corners they are likely ready for any techs, so unless you are playing Ceruledge you will likely lose. Scizor is pretty bad into Corner since it is very easy to play around.
Hi piper do yoy think this build could work for Frankfurt regionals or i have to change something in this list? Thank you