This Unknown Rogue Deck is Broken!

You may think this title is clickbait, but it's not. I have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to cook up some crazy decks in the current format. Most of them run into one issue or another, but today I'm here to discuss one of the winners. This is actually a deck I've written about before, but it never caught on due to its poor Regidrago VSTAR matchup at the time: Aegislash. Aegislash's Ability stops damage from Pokemon ex, just like Mimikyu. Unlike Mimikyu, Aegislash comes with more HP and a more powerful attack. The extra HP suits it well, as it now survives attacks from nearly every single-prize Pokemon. Where Mimikyu would fall to Drakloak, Fan Rotom, etc., Aegislash easily tanks the hit and KO's back. Of course, since Aegislash is a Stage 2, it is much more difficult to put into play. In order to make effective use of it, we have to build the deck entirely around setting up multiple Aegislash. This is perfectly fine, since most matchups are auto-wins as long as you get enough Aegislash into play.

Looking at the meta decks, nearly all of them rely heavily on Pokemon ex to attack. This positions Aegislash incredibly well into the current metagame. In fact, I wish I had played this deck at Milwaukee Regionals. So why didn't I? Aegislash suffers from a similar affliction as many other decks in this format: a bad Gardevoir ex matchup. This is actually the only problem with the deck, but it was a big enough one for me to immediately discount it as an option for Milwaukee Regionals. After Gardevoir won three straight major events, I was expecting it to be a bigger threat. Yet I'm here writing about the deck now, and I think this is actually fine. Many other decks with a bad Gardevoir matchup still see tons of play and success. Raging Bolt ex, Dragapult ex, Flareon ex, etc. are living proof that if a deck is good enough, it can stomach a poor Gardevoir matchup and still be worth playing. Aegislash is special because it has a near auto-win against literally every single other matchup. It would not be unreasonable to bring Aegislash to a Regional expecting it to beat everything that isn't Gardevoir, while accepting a loss to every Gardevoir you face.

I have tweaked this deck quite a bit since first building the list for this format, and I quite like the current iteration. Overall, it is built to be very straightforward and set up multiple Aegislash, as that is how the deck beats nearly everything. If there was any tech that could consistently beat Gardevoir, that would probably be worth including as well. I've considered Toedscruel to stop their Night Stretchers, but I think that would have to be at least a 2-2 line to actually work. And then you'd need some way to prevent it from getting stuck in the Active Spot. Overall, it could be worth looking into more, but it's probably too high maintenance. While it may seem difficult to set up multiple Stage 2 Pokemon, this deck can comfortably make use of both the Rare Candy and Technical Machine: Evolution routes. What's more, this is the perfect opportunity to utilize Grand Tree. Aegislash perfectly fulfills all of the conditions to optimally extract value from Grand Tree, and I think it is a phenomenal ACE SPEC for this deck! Between all of these options, churning Aegislash out onto the board is a simple task indeed.

I mentioned in my last article that the flexibility of being able to play both a fast and slow game depending on the situation is a rare and valuable attribute in the current format. That's what my Tera Box list did with the Pidgeot ex inclusion, it's one of Gardevoir's defining traits, and Aegislash can do it to an extent as well. If your opponent is taking their time (like Dragapult), we are more than happy to sit behind Budew or Cleffa and build up multiple Aegislash. If they're going fast and applying lots of pressure, we can burst out a response by playing Colress's Tenacity for Grand Tree and Reversal Energy. While Aegislash is far from the epitome of speed, it has plenty of options to stabilize and prevent the opponent from running us off the board with fast pressure. Here's my current list:

This concludes the public portion of this article.

If you'd like to continue reading, consider purchasing a PokeBeach premium membership! If you're not completely satisfied with your membership, you can request a full refund within 30 days.

Each week we post high-quality content from some of the game's top players. Our article program isn't a corporate operation, advertising front, or for-profit business. We set our prices so that we can pay the game's top players to write the best content for our subscribers. Each article topic is carefully selected, goes through multiple drafts, and is touched up by our editors. We take great pride in our program!