The Meta, My Way

After playing many games in this format, I have a mentality for deck selection that is a little different from my usual. After the colossal group failure in London with Sableye / Radiant Charizard, I simply want to play a deck that is good. A deck that is consistent, functional, and reasonably strong. Basically, a deck that feels good to play (which Sableye / Radiant Charizard is not). Usually, I am overly concerned with matchups and tech cards, but the straightforward approach is better suited for this format (for now), and it’s probably what most players go with normally. Sableye / Radiant Charizard has a litany of problems that we did not foresee, but that’s neither here nor there.

For this reason, the consistency-focused Kyogre deck proved to be good. I think Kyogre’s matchups set it above the rest and qualify it as the best deck in the format, but there are other decks that I’ve been working on with the same mentality. The idea is to be consistent and functional; on average, you will win simply because your deck is better. Since this format is still in its infant stages after the rotation, there is a lot of innovation and optimization to be done with all of the various decks. Decks such as Lugia VSTAR and Miraidon ex are underexplored at the moment.

What is My Way?

When someone in my testing group (usually me) comes up with our own list for a particular meta deck, that is different from the way the deck is normally built, we have an inside joke that the deck is “my way.” Today I’ll be sharing two decks that I’ve been working on; Mew VMAX my way and Hisuian Goodra VSTAR my way. After playing with traditional lists for these decks, I’ve found them to be cripplingly inconsistent and suboptimal. Rather than giving up on the decks entirely, I was curious to see if I could improve the decks by making changes that most players would scoff at.

You will notice quickly that the lists are focused on consistency. We want to go fast and function smoothly. I went over this with the Kyogre deck, and further back, Turbo Dragonite Lost Box and Turbo Miraidon. I’m not making the changes to these decks just for consistency’s sake, but I have played a considerable amount with both versions (traditional and my way) and have noticed substantial improvements in both win rate and consistency with the ‘my way’ builds. Anyway, let’s get into it.

Mew VMAX, My Way

This list doesn’t introduce any revolutionary concepts, but I’ve tried to optimize it as much as possible and play to the deck’s strengths. The main difference from normal lists is the decreased counts of Path to the Peak and Lost Vacuum. These cards are useless at most times and clog up your hands, making for horrendous openings more often than should be the case for Mew VMAX. Not only is Path to the Peak inconvenient for Mew VMAX, but it is an active liability at most points in the game. Frankly, I would prefer to play zero Path to the Peak and zero Lost Vacuum. Unfortunately, Mew VMAX does occasionally have to rely on disruption tactics because it voluntarily enters a losing Prize trade against basically everything. You have no choice in the matter unless you are playing the Meloetta version.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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