Help Decks for post-rotation

HoustonHammerhead

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Well, now we know that there are new gusting options (Great Catcher, and Ball Search (Cherish Ball). Zapdos will fall apart as we lose all non-GX Pokemon search aside from Mysterious Treasure and the loss of Guzma. Most non-GX decks will struggle.

The Pokemon with specific search post rotation will be Psychic and Dragon types, Lightning GXs, Basic Grass, Pokemon with 60hp or less, and GXs in general. There is also Pokemon Communication which can snag any Pokemon from the deck, assuming you have a Pokemon in your hand.

As for recovery cards we have Lure Ball and Brock's Grit
Choice Helmet will potentially be our go to Pokemon tool.

Gusting will vary among decks but either Custom Catcher or Great Catcher

I imagine Blacephalon GX, Pikarom, and Ultra Malamar will be the best deck options for the next format. I also believe those are the 3 decks that will perform best at World's this year. A dark type box with WEavile GX and Naganadel may also perform well seeing the versatility and the power of Dark Pokemon and Weavile GX.
Reshiram & Charizard will struggle slightly due to the rotation of certain cards like Kiawe and Nest Ball.

Draw support remains strong as we keep Cynthia, Lillie, Tate & Liza, Ingo & Emmet, Zebstrika, Dedenne GX, Salazzle, and we get the new Naganadel GX in Unified Minds
Feel free to note whatever cards I missed in these categories


Ultra Beasts will also have Ultra Space in terms of specific searching, so we could see a more popular variants of Beast Boxes.
And then there is still Pokemon Fan Club to just straight up get 2 basics, so realistically searching just gets a little slower for some decks (like Zapdos, ReshiZard, etc)
 

HoustonHammerhead

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I expect Zapdos and friends to see some play, possibly with adding in Alolan Raichu & Raichu GX Tag Team, as it still has a lot of decent cards to help it
ReshiZard being how popular it is and still having a lot of fire tech cards will still see play.
Malamar will remain popular, probably more so now with the Mewtwo & Mew GX Tag Team.
CeliSaur will see some play sense it has a good search engine and can still tank very well, but hard to see how good it will do with fire still being popular.
Baby Blace will see some play but probably won't be as good.

Personally, I'm reallllllllly pulling for Slowpoke & Psyduck GX to take off and be a great deck lol
 

Duo

RIP Nessa 2023
Member
Well now that Alolan Persian GX is a thing that can be played with Black Market, that kind of changes up the whole ball game again (ha, a bonus pun because Ultra Ball and Nest Ball are rotating. Get it? Ball game? I'll be here all night) since it's specifically anti-Tag Team and anti-Ultra Beast, which basically comprise all of the best imagined meta picks right now (PikaRom, any Blacephalon, anything Naganadel, Ultra Necrozma/Malamar).

Thanks to the searching power of Viridian Forest, you can run multiple kinds of basic energy just to put the best kind of energy acceleration options in the deck without ever being out the dark energy to attack. So just as an example...running Alolan Persian GX with Malamar and playing something like 4 Darkness and 8 Psychic energy and maximizing consistency & energy discard by using Mysterious Treasure to search for the Malamar line and Professor Elm's lecture to get the basics in play.

Then just throw in some Psychic and Dark tech options for damage and you have yourself a decent deck I'd say.

As other people have said before, I think it's best to wait for the full set list of Unified Minds to come out before making any real calls. But at the same time I don't think there's any harm in building skeleton lists for potentially good decks to simply adapt them for rotation (i.e. pretty much all decks will probably be playing 4 copies of Pokegear 3.0 now and at least 1 Dedenne GX) and then adapting them later.
 

HoustonHammerhead

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I think you might be getting a little too hyped on Alolan Persian too quickly. Yes it has a great ability, but most decks run cards that can take care of it, and if they dont it's easy to tech against by running a Power Plant in your deck. That being said, I can see a Persian/Malamar deck winning some stuff but i have doubts that it will ever be a top deck
 

Duo

RIP Nessa 2023
Member
I'm not really trying to get hyped about the card, but mostly just offering up the fact that we can't ignore what else Unified Minds might bring to the table.

Decks like Ray GX could roll over it pretty easily, but based on opinions included in this thread, no one's mentioned Ray GX as potentially making a comeback after rotation.

There are a lot of unknowns, but the first step to solving those unknowns, IMO, is by putting all the options on the table. The fact that Alolan Persian GX's existence would cause people to have to tech for it is already meta influencing in my opinion. People who opt to tech against it would have less consistent decks to face off in the mirror against people who are taking the chance that they wouldn't meet an Alolan Persian GX player and run more cosistency, etc.
 

HoustonHammerhead

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Yeah I see where your coming from but it's a case by case basis on the the deck. Most electric decks dont need to tech against it because they run Zapdos, stall decks wont care much anyway, and if you play any variant of fire you *might* run volcanion already so while yeah it could cause a couple decks to make changes, it's hard to see it causing any decks to shut down, besides a beast box maybe.
 

KK-Swizzle

Aspiring Trainer
Advanced Member
Member
Ninetales seems like a great option for reliable gusting in fire decks, it will be relatively safe on the bench while other decks try to scrape multiple custom catchers together
 

Pokefam

300 something/400
Member
Please test buzzMosa With the power of turn one beast ring, being able to limit your opponent at 4 turn 1 (2mismagius + reset stamp) , and have a Ton of healing and already built in gusting (Life forrest Mixed Herds custom catcher)




Overall Fire is weaker so Buzzmosa just seems good of that


Pm @payton if you want the skeleton list
 

imashbuttons

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Please test buzzMosa With the power of turn one beast ring, being able to limit your opponent at 4 turn 1 (2mismagius + reset stamp) , and have a Ton of healing and already built in gusting (Life forrest Mixed Herds custom catcher)




Overall Fire is weaker so Buzzmosa just seems good of that


Pm @payton if you want the skeleton list
Curious as to why you believe fire is weaker?
 

HoustonHammerhead

Aspiring Trainer
Member
You could argue that fire maybe got "slower" due to losing search engines (but almost all decks did) but I wouldn't say weaker. ReshiZard still hits 230 turn 2 with moderate ease
 

Dark Espeon

Dark Avatar
Member
You could argue that fire maybe got "slower" due to losing search engines (but almost all decks did) but I wouldn't say weaker. ReshiZard still hits 230 turn 2 with moderate ease

I believe that Reshiram and Charizard became weaker since Choice Band rotated out. Reshiram and Charizard were one of the few decks that could dish out knock outs in one hit at a fast and reliable rate. Now the card cannot do that anymore.
 

Duo

RIP Nessa 2023
Member
Yes, but not every deck hit for 230 in one swing, 260 with choice band, which is enough to OHKO a PikaRom, and generally anything with up to 260 HP like the new Raichu & Alolan Raichu in Unified Minds. OHKOing PikaRom is a thing ReshiZard can't do anymore without some kind of extra damage from Shrine of Punishment or another kind of tickle attack. That's particularly relevant since PikaRom is looking to be one of the best decks after rotation due to EM Radar and Electropower being 2 utilites no other deck has access to.

Rayquaza GX losing Choice Band doesn't matter at all (I don't expect Ray GX to be meta relevant after rotation still anyway). PikaRom losing it doesn't matter that much because Electropower, and you expect to 2 hit KO things with that deck anyway. Blacephalon GX doesn't really care that much since like Ray GX it can just generate more damage through more energy.

But regardless of Choice Band rotating, ReshiZard gets "weaker" because it wouldn't be able to OHKO any of the upcoming 270+ HP Tag Teams with or without it anyway, such as Mewtwo & Mew, either of the new Dark Tag Teams from Unified Minds, or Garchomp & Giratina, all of which have the potential to become relevant.

Mewtwo & Mew especially.

If the meta gets stuffed with Stage 1 and Basic GXs then by all means Reshizard doesn't lose any actual power since 230 can cleanly OHKO all Stage 1s and Basics. But if Tag Teams rule the meta, Reshizard suffers without Choice Band being able to OHKO a good portion of them.
 

CrownAxe

Aspiring Trainer
Member
It's not like ReshiZard is the only fire deck though. Big Blowns loses very little and retains deck search with ultra space and treasure.

In regards to the original context of BuzzMosa and fire weakness there is still plenty of good fire out there
 
Top