Gholdengo is Better Than Ever and It’s (Probably) the Play for Worlds

I have spent most of July testing for Worlds and trying to come up with broken decks. Unfortunately, every cool and interesting deck I come up with is gatekept by Gardevoir ex. Nothing new under the sun, as they say. Gardevoir is as powerful and versatile as ever, bestowed with far too many broken options for whatever reason. The new set even brings it Jellicent ex, an oppressive Pokemon that simply adds to Gardevoir's power. Aside from Gardevoir itself, there is only one deck that has greatly impressed me in testing, and it's one I've written once or twice about before: Gholdengo ex.

Gholdengo remains one of the few decks with a good Gardevoir matchup, just how it was before. However, Jellicent ex poses a new obstacle. At first, I tried both Scizor and non-Scizor builds to see if either could gain an edge against Jellicent. After struggling without Scizor, I figured that a low-maintenance attacker that doesn't rely on Items for its damage output would be a good solution. However, Scizor still sucks, and it made no difference in the matchup. I was playing three Boss's Orders (Ghetsis) and Iron Bundle, and yet I was still struggling greatly against Jellicent. In particular, Frillish's Item lock was crippling because there was no way to get around it. After exhausting Energy to reach for two-Prize KO's, Gardevoir could simply chain Frillish and guarantee that I would run out of Energy. Now, I still expect some top Gardevoir players to forego Jellicent at Worlds, but the card should be prevalent enough that I don't want to take a loss to it either.

Ryan Antonucci mentioned to me how Gholdengo would be a good play because it beats Gardevoir, but it my experience up until that point, it was not a good matchup. He wanted to play his Gholdengo list against me on Gardevoir, and he promptly put me into the dirt. As it turns out, the solution was Levincia, which is not exactly revolutionary, but it was always a card I hated in Gholdengo. Previously, it was just bad, but with the shift in the meta, it is now good. This was something I overlooked due to my disdain for the card. Ryan's list also had two Munkidori, which is strong against Gardevoir and other matchups. Of course, the optimal list falls somewhere in between our two lists at the time, but he had those ideas to set me on the right path. I don't think I would have ever considered putting a second Munkidori into this deck, and I wouldn't have realized how strong Levincia is until much later.

Overall, I think Gholdengo is best as a straightforward build. The deck may be simple, but its raw power is unparalleled. Even with its linear nature, it also has a few tricks that help it gain an edge in various matchups. Although it doesn't automatically beat everything, and Flareon ex is still a horrendous matchup, it has solid matchups into the top meta decks. I think Gholdengo is one of the top plays for Worlds, right up there with Gardevoir itself. As of now, these are the only two decks I'm really considering, but there's still plenty of time left to find something else.

One of the reasons why Gholdengo is stronger now than ever is because of the introduction of Genesect ex. Although Genesect is a humble one-of (and you should not play more than that, in my opinion), it drastically improves the consistency and overall power of Gholdengo. This is because with just one Genesect, it turns all of our Nest Balls (and Arvens, by extension) into an infinite supply of Gholdengo. Think about that. One Nest Ball, in addition to how good the card is normally, instantly turns into a factory of endless Gholdengo. This is insane. Because of this, it may be tempting to play multiple Genesect, but that's not worth it. Although it is sad when Genesect is prized, the deck is still a normal Gholdengo deck without it. There are some games where you don't even need Genesect anyway. Here's my current list:

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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