Winning by Doing Nothing — Snorlax Stall for Vancouver and Beyond
Hello PokeBeach readers! Isaiah here, and I am happy to be writing another article for you all. Last time, I discussed one of my favorite decks in the current format, Banette ex, and its prospects before rotation. Following the Goiania Regional Championships in Brazil this past weekend, my position on this deck and where it lies in the format remain largely unchanged. I still believe that the deck is pretty strong for the Vancouver Regional Championship, and it’s super fun, too. I recommend trying it for a League Cup if you’re concerned about playing it for a Regional Championship.
As expected, Banette ex had no results in Goiania, but I don’t think this makes the deck bad — it’s just unpopular and probably had a zero-percent play rate. Aside from that, the results from Goiania were all over the place. The decks in Top 16 were fairly normal, with a healthy mix of the current meta, but in Top 8, the breakdown was bizarre. Two Roaring Moon ex, a Gardevoir ex, and an Entei V / Iron Valiant ex all lost in Top 8, which is not too crazy, but in Top 4, we see that Klawf finally got its first Top 8-or-better at a major event, which is a remarkable feat considering how mediocre the deck typically is in Day 2. The other deck in Top 4 was a simple Chien-Pao ex deck, which is not too much of a standout, though I do think its success is a continuation in a chain of spike results from an archetype that hasn’t put up many huge results until recently. The main thing I want to talk about today, however, is the Goiania finals match, where an Origin Forme Palkia VSTAR ultimately lost to Snorlax / Pidgeot ex.
After months of the pure version of Snorlax seeming like the better version, Pidgeot ex managed to swoop in at the very end of the format to finally claim a Regional Championships win — and honestly, I’m somewhat surprised. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love this version of Snorlax, and I am ecstatic that it finally won an event. But after months of trying to make the deck work reliably myself, I had written off this variant as unplayable. It struggled way too much with Giratina VSTAR, and with that deck in the middle of its rapid ascension to the top of the Paradox Rift format, it seemed like Pidgeot ex was doomed. The deck still saw some amount of success, but with so much working against it, it was unable to produce the big win I felt it was capable of.
That is, until Marco Cifuentes had a pretty perfect run with the deck, dodging many of its most difficult matchups and even squeaking out a win against a Giratina VSTAR player. Overall, I think that Marco’s list is pretty much perfect, so it’s going to be the focal point of this article.
Marco Cifuentes’s Pidgeot ex Control
In reality, “Pidgeot ex Control” is probably a more applicable name for this deck than “Snorlax Stall,” as it only includes one copy of Snorlax, but it does use Snorlax in enough of its game plans that the names are at least interchangeable. Deviating from the classic Block-and-pass strategy for much of the early game, this deck spends most of each game building up a huge hand and ripping cards out of the opponent’s hand with Luxray V. Eventually, once the time comes, the deck pivots into a Block strategy, slowly running the opponent out of ways to attack if Block does not win the game outright.
The addition of Pidgeot ex is what makes this deck tick, though, since it makes it far less reliant on Rotom V. This means that the deck is much less vulnerable to Spiritomb techs, which can otherwise sometimes cripple the pure version. However, as I alluded to earlier, while Pidgeot ex is this deck’s biggest strength, it is also its biggest weakness, especially when facing Giratina VSTAR. This is where Radiant Charizard comes in, offering an efficient response once it gets moving. While Radiant Charizard is far from perfect, it is remarkably effective at handling the Giratina VSTAR problem while also doing substantial work to smooth out other matchups, too.
Pretty much every card in this deck serves a significant purpose, which allows it to be one of the most versatile decks in the game. However, this also causes some space and consistency issues from time to time, which are ultimately two of the deck’s biggest problems other than the Giratina VSTAR matchup.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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