Expanded has a new ban and a new set to change up the format, which is a big improvement for a lot of us. This piece is going to serve as a guide for players new to the format. I’ll be talking about: Zoroark Night March Toad Trevenant Sableye Buzzwole Garbodor As I see it, these are the main archetypes of the format. It’s a … Continue reading A guide for players who are new to Expanded

Before I get into the article I want to apologize for the wait…sort of. I do not think a week is enough time to actually come up with any decent lists in a new format, so I decided to take some extra time to work on these five decks. My stepdad also passed about three weeks ago which has been hard on me to say … Continue reading NEW Post-Rotation decks! Malamar, ZoroPod, ZoroGarde, ZoroGarb, and BuzzRoc

At this point it seems pretty clear what the top tier decks are: BuzzRoc ZoroGarb ZoroCargo ZoroPod Rayquaza GX The first three are clearly top tier and ZoroPod is not an obvious top tier deck, but I firmly believe it should be there. My testing has been focused around beating these and finding alternatives to playing the mainstream options. In this piece I cover which … Continue reading Top 3 Plays for Worlds

Gallade seems to be getting a decent amount of hype right now, probably due to Zoroark’s dominance. Nathian Beck and I were interested to see if the archetype actually was worth using. Octillery is alright but it does not provide any extra attacking power and you cannot use it with Puzzle of Time. We agreed that the Zoroark variant was the way to go. Here’s … Continue reading Zoroark Gallade

This piece displays one of the rogue decks I have been working with, Oranguru Garbodor, and has list updates for ZoroCargo, ZoroPod, BuzzRoc, Mismagius Garbodor, and ZoroGarb. I ended up focusing too hard on Blowers in BuzzRoc, and I realized I was wrong about taking BuzzRoc as an autoloss with ZoroCargo, so I’ve fixed both of those mistakes. Mismagius just needed a small tweak. As … Continue reading Oranguru Garbodor & List Updates

I spent Friday and Saturday testing Standard with Celestial Storm, trying out new archetypes and the new lists I posted five days ago. I also got to test out my favorite rogue deck and 2004’s Blaziken! In this piece I cover the issues and benefits of Rayquaza (with my list for it), why Mismagius is a top tier deck (with my list for it), and … Continue reading Critiquing Rayquaza GX and Reviving Mismagius Garbodor

The new set hasn’t presented a ton of new cards for Zoroark to work with, but one in particular makes the archetype far stronger. Magcargo gives Zoroark a way to function consistently with as few as one Zoroark in play. This means if you have games where you cannot set up Zoroarks or end up prizing too many Zoruas or Zoroarks, you still can consistently … Continue reading Zoroark with Slugs, Trash, and Bugs (Standard + Celestial Storm format)

I analyzed my streamed match against Jimmy because I was not so confident in my play after the match was over and some people were telling me they thought I played it incorrectly. I’m going to go over everything that I now think was and was not a mistake. The funny part is that, in my opinion, I actually did not misplay in the ways … Continue reading Reviewing Round 4: Malamar Hoopa (Me) VS ZoroPod (Jimmy P.)

I’ve been busy over the last month doing almost nothing other than playing Pokemon, writing about Pokemon, and sleeping. Being on summer break has given me the time and energy to create lists for all of the top tier, excluding Buzz Garb. Never got around to that deck for some reason. This piece has my lists for Psychic Malamar, ZoroRoc, ZoroPod, BuzzRoc, and ZoroGarb as … Continue reading Final list for US Intercontinentals – ZoroPod, ZoroRoc, BuzzRoc, Malamar and ZoroGarb

I really wanted to make the whole ‘only have one-prize Pokemon in play’ idea work out, but the truth is that it is not a reasonable goal. Brigette is too important, and getting Brigette usually requires Tapu Lele, so by the first turn you usually have already done away with that goal. I did try out Ninja Boy as an attempt to get around that … Continue reading One-prize-based Malamar Update – 26 June 2018

Since I posted my first Zoroark Garbodor article there has been a lot that changed in the meta. Connor Petersen placed second at Mexico Regionals this past weekend with the list in this article. Prior to that, an entirely different variant of Buzzwole emerged at Madison and then was recreated at Mexico. Needless to say, a lot changed in the list in order to answer … Continue reading Zoroark Garbodor Update

Recently ZoroPod seems to have come back into the top tier. It could have been seen as a fluke if the deck had only seen success at one event, but ZoroPod performed better than any other deck last weekend with a first place at Mexico City’s Special Event and a second place at Sheffield’s Regional. The deck even scored top four at Hong Kong’s Special … Continue reading ZoroPod: Critiquing and synthesizing the successful lists – 21 June 2018

Thought I would try out a different style for some of my pieces this week. Instead of coming out with one big article on one day, I’m going to have multiple shorter posts. I’ve done this a couple times in the past, but they were more just short articles rather than focused posts. This one is about my pretty off the wall Necrozma Malamar build … Continue reading Necrozma Malamar Focused on One-Prize Attackers – June 13, 2018

What’s up with it Cut or Tap readers, I just came fresh off of a 3-4 drop finish at Madison Regionals, and even though I had an awful day with the deck I’m convinced it is still a viable deck for the meta and deserves to see more play! Buzzwole lists are pretty difficult to beat, but I have a list that I think can … Continue reading I Thought About Locking You – Attacking Hoopa and a Buzzwole Update