ZoroGarb is the best deck in Expanded, which should not be a surprise to anyone considering the deck just won worlds and is the naturally progression of ZoroEggs. That is not to say no deck beats ZoroGarb or that ZoroGarb will certainly win Portland, but if the deck that wins dedicates a big portion of its list solely to counter ZoroGarb (such as Drampa Garbodor … Continue reading Expanded Zoroark Garbodor
Best of three in one of the more debatable machups of this format. Continue reading ZoroRoc VS VikaRay
Before you read this, I want to mention that this isn’t really an article. It is a short post with the ZoroPod list I have been working on and a little bit of commentary. Why did we give up on ZoroPod? There’s a common trend of players thinking ZoroPod is not as good as another Zoroark variant and then giving up on the deck. Only … Continue reading Bringing back ZoroPod
Quick game against Ultra Necrozma with me playing Rukan’s Malamar build. b Continue reading Malamar Necrozma VS Ultra Necrozma Malamar
In this video from a League Cup last weekend, I face Andy Hyun (Cut or Tap’s editor) in a Malamar mirror match. Continue reading Malamar Mirror Match!
In this video I face Gabe Smart in a couple games we played at a league cup this past weekend. While I do like doing commentary during game sometimes, this episode has commentary that was done after the games were recorded. Hope you like it! Continue reading ZoroRoc (Jimmy P’s list) VS Malamar (Rukan’s list)
The video bellow is a deck profile where Michael and I cover his rogue Zoroark deck that won him a cup with 48 master and earned him a second place finish at a League Challenge on the next day. After recording the deck profile I realized how long the video actually is. Some of you may not want to watch the entire 25 minutes so … Continue reading Michael Perez’s League Cup Winning BuzzRocZoroark Deck
ZoroRoc was far too overlooked when I took my first shot at this meta. Recently it has been one of my favorite options because of the aggression and consistency. The only problem matchups are Buzz Garb and BuzzRoc. In this piece I cover a list that has been modified to deal with both. Ultra Necrozma Malamar is another archetype that I have frequently been seeing … Continue reading More Standard Stuff: ZoroRoc, Ultra Necrozma Malamar, Buzz Garb, and Swampert + list updates for everything in the last article
This video explains the list I played at a league cup to get top 4, as well as the cards I would change now. I also discuss what position I think certain decks have in the meta and what my top choices for Philly Regionals are. Continue reading Top 4 BuzzRoc + Meta opinion update
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.)
