I Still Love Gardevoir-GX! — Old Faithful in the Ultra Prism Metagame
Hey there Pokebeach! I’m back, and this time I’ll be talking about the deck I took to Collinsville Regionals a few weeks ago: Gardevoir-GX. In my last article, I mentioned that it was my second choice for the event after Golisopod-GX / Garbodor. While Goli / Garb was strong in my testing, it ended up being a little too inconsistent for my liking. Luckily for me, two of my friends, Olliver Barr and Chris Fulop, created a Gardevoir list that ran incredibly well for a Stage 2 deck.
After testing it for a bit and changing a few cards to my liking, I settled on Gardevoir for the event. I ended up in 63rd place with a 6-2-1 record. Today, I’ll be going over the list I used, some tech cards that you can toy around with, and some of the deck’s most important matchups in the format.
“You’re still playing Gardevoir-GX?”
Let’s address the biggest question you probably have right away: why am I still playing Gardevoir, instead of abusing Zoroark-GX like everyone else? I still believe Gardevoir is the best deck in the format — provided it sets up. I know I’m in the minority in thinking that, but in testing the deck does not have many bad matchups, and most of its poor matchups are fringe decks anyways. Despite how good the deck is, only a few other people I know are still a part of the Church of Gardevoir.
However, while Gardevoir is definitely the best deck in the format as far as matchups go, I cannot deny that Zoroark decks are more consistent. Thus, they perform better at large Regionals, as consistency is key for players who are looking to make a deep run. Personally, I’ve been playing this season with a boom-or-bust mentality — instead of playing safe in order to get an invite to Worlds — so I continue to play decks like Gardevoir.
The List
While Gardevoir usually struggles with consistency, the list I played at Collinsville ended up being the most consistent Stage 2 deck I have played in a long time. To boost the deck’s consistency, we cut the Max Potion in favor of a 2-2 Octillery line, two Gallade, and two Evosoda. While the deck lost a lot of mid-to-late-game staying power without the Max Potions, all of these additions were made with the intention of maximizing the odds of getting multiple Gardevoir out. This can be just as effective as having Max Potions with only one Gardevoir, which was a common occurrence with the previous Brokenvoir lists. With all of this added consistency, I was setting up incredibly quickly all throughout testing; and as soon as Gardevoir sets up, most decks are in trouble.
Now that I’ve explained the deck a bit and the changes that were made from previous Gardevoir lists, let’s take a look at the list I used at Collinsville:
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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