Discussion Let's Talk About the Meta

crispierdna

crispierdna

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hi all,
This is my first post on Pokebeach! I'm a longtime yugioh player and pokemon lurker, but I made the switch a little while back and am finally getting into the pokemon tcg competitive scene seriously. But you didn't come here to hear about me, let's talk about the meta going forward and some fun rogue options I've cooked up in my mind that I wanna hear y'all's opinion on. I'm also gonna take a second to plug this little script I threw together on Scratch that lets you mess around with any deck ideas you might want to just see a couple hands of. Let me know if you have any suggestions on improvements :)

Anyway, let's get down to the nitty gritty.

First, I'm trying to get an idea of what the meta is looking like both now and going into Celestial Storm and the new rotation. I'm gonna gear this analysis pretty heavily in that direction, so while you're welcome to suggest that certain decks/cards are powerful/weak right now, I'm mostly looking towards the future where certain archetypes/cards may not be available.

Second, I'm using the following resources to find cards and gather information. Let me know if you have a better source for all of this or suggestions on other sources for information! The Official Pokemon TCG Card Database | Bulbapedia's List of TCG Expansions and Set Lists | Pokemon's Official List of Tournament Results w/ Decklists

Alright, with all of that being said, I'm going to list what I perceive from various tournament results and online hype trains to be the "meta" decks (in no particular order):

Ultra Necrozma/Malamar/Mew
Buzzwole/Lycanroc
Sylveon/Gardevoir
Bulu (and to a lesser extent Rayquaza GX)/Vikavolt
Golisopod/Zoroark

Additionally, I've heard a good bit of talk about the following decks but I don't know enough about them to properly determine whether or not they're worth playing or not going forward. Let me know what you think:

Beast Box
Newgaleo GX/Metal Box
Lightning Variants (Raichu GX, Xurkitree GX, Luxray/Shining Celebi, ect.)
Fighting Variants (Zygrade GX/Lucario GX/Garchomp ect.)

Now that I've laid out what I see as the better incoming decks in the format, I need your help determining what I should actually be afraid of and how quickly I should expect these decks to be setting up. Let's have a discussion!
 
After rotation Buzzwole loses quite a bit in no longer having max elixir, strong energy, Octillery, and (to a much lesser extent) Regirock. It probably drops it of BDIF status at that point, leaving the spot open for new decks (though most likely this will be a Malamar Necrozma variant). However, it is worth noting that many of Buzzwole's counters are rotating too (FAC Mew, EVO Mewtwo, Mew EX).

Gardevoir suffers from losing Octillery, but the Sylveon GX side benefits greatly from losing N, which might be enough to bring the deck out of retirement.

Malamar/Necrozma decks are probably one of the least effected. Bulu variants can also adjust well. Rayquaza will fit nicely into these decks and/or become its own thing entirely.

I suspect that if Buzzwole gets nerfed a bit, we may see some new tricks from Ho-Oh/Turtonator/Victini<>

Buzzwole nerfs will also reopen the door for Silvally decks. Newgaleo is still so far away that we can't be sure what things will look like then. It will strengthen Solgaleo, but might not be enough to overcome stage 2 issues.
 
Oh, and I'm positive that we will have a competitive Dusk Mane deck.
 
Buzzwole is definitely going to suffer greatly due to the loss of Strong Energy and Max Elixir, so I don't entirely think that it's going to be that great in the upcoming SUM-on format.
Zoroark variants now have to be played differently because of the loss of Puzzle of Time and Brigette.
Gardevoir suffers greatly due to the loss of Octillery and Gallade but overall keeps its consistency with Sylveon GX/Sylveon FOL, however, Judge is going to stay in format. Whether or not Judge is going to be played that much can't entirely be predicted. I think this deck will be very powerful with the rise of Ultra Necrozma and the fall of Buzzwole.
Ultra Necrozma/Dawn Wings Necrozma/Malamar doesn't really get affected all that much, but we're losing Professor Sycamore, Mew, and Float Stone, which are huge parts of the deck.
Vikabulu doesn't get affected that much either, but we lose Heavy Ball, Sycamore, Mew, and Super Rod.

Overall, here's what we're losing staple-wise:
Mew FCO
Mewtwo EVO
Mew EX
Sudowoodo BKP
Octillery BKT
Professor Sycamore
N
Brigette
Super Rod
Max Elixir
Float Stone
Puzzle of Time
Evosoda
Parallel City
Strong Energy
Splash Energy


I feel like people will have to incorporate an extra search card like Friend Ball and add more draw supporters such as Copycat to keep the deck from dead-drawing. People may even use cards such as Drampa GX or Rayquaza GX just for a T1 GX attack and then use Hala.
 
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PokeMedic said:
Was that announced or is it just likely to be?
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It's most likely. they rotate generally a year's worth of sets (so 4 main ones and any extras ones within that year) which would rotates all XY sets except for EVO. But they also will rotate whole blocks out and since EVO is part of the BREAK block it's probably going too. Even if they don't rotate EVO it's a terrible set that has no impact on the meta (except for Starmie) so would be functionality SUM on anway
 
Until we have a complete setlist for our SM7 speculation is kind of pointless. Chances are, most of the decks that are good today will be good post rotation as well. Nothing takes a fundamentally deck destroying blow except the decks that are losing their main attackers, Greninja, Volcanion, ect.

Ultra Necrozma already has a post-brigette pokemon search engine so obviously that deck will still be good, in fact it can more effectively run high Lillie counts than most other decks because of its high count of hand discarding item cards. Zoroark still offers trade in a meta where decks will run lower consistency card counts, it will still be good. Sylveon's magical ribbon is much more relevant without N, Judge is not an effective replacement because Judging yourself to 4 is much, much less appealing than N'ing yourself to 6 as an early game response to a ribbon, and people will not want to run high counts of Judge because it's not a great shuffle supporter and not nearly as good at lategame hand disruption.

Vikabulu losing heavy ball and brigette is actually a pretty big deal, sort of comparable to frogs losing dive ball. Deck will still be viable, but it looks much, much less appealing as a way to hit 210 than Ultra Necrozma after this loss. We also lose Skyla, but Volkner is a completely acceptable replacement in every standard deck that uses it except hoopa stall.
 
CrownAxe said:
It's most likely. they rotate generally a year's worth of sets (so 4 main ones and any extras ones within that year) which would rotates all XY sets except for EVO. But they also will rotate whole blocks out and since EVO is part of the BREAK block it's probably going too. Even if they don't rotate EVO it's a terrible set that has no impact on the meta (except for Starmie) so would be functionality SUM on anway
Click to expand...
Don't forget Mewtwo! But yes, I do agree with you that it is 99.9% going to be a SUM on rotation this year.
 
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