What in Tarnation? — Expanded Flareon and Gardevoir, Both With Propagation

Hey there PokeBeach readers! I’m really excited to be back writing for you guys, this time about the Expanded format. While I could write another article solely devoted to Toad / Bats and probably produce more new content for you all on the deck, this time I’ve decided to focus my writing on two decks that I believe are very under the radar currently and have a great chance at performing well at Collinsville. What are these two decks you ask? None other than Vespiquen / Flareon and M Gardevoir-EX, of course! While fellow writer Caleb Gedemer recently broke down Vespiquen (go check that out here), I’ve chosen to take the deck in a pretty significantly different direction, so I think both our articles will be of use. So without further ado, let’s get right into the decks.

Vespiquen / Flareon

I’ll be very upfront about this deck: I’ve played this deck at a major event before (even making Top 8 with a list I took from Andrew Wamboldt), and after that tournament I honestly never thought I’d consider this deck for a tournament again. Why did I come to that conclusion? Night March is just strictly better at abusing Battle Compressor than Flareon. Thus, I promised myself that if I ever had the urge to play Flareon at an Expanded tournament, I’d just play Night March instead. However, this was back when Life Dew was the best Ace Spec in Night March. Now, I believe the correct build is to play Computer Search along with Maxie's Hidden Ball Trick components. This left Flareon as the best abuser of Life Dew in the format, besides Sableye. By abusing Life Dew, as well as the fact that all of its main attackers only give up one Prize, Flareon is able to trade incredibly efficiently with almost every single deck in the format. Now that I’ve explained why I think Flareon has a place in the metagame again, let’s take a look at my current list.

Before I go any further, I’d like to give a shout out to my good friend, Hayden Cameron-Jacobus, whose list I used to base mine off of. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s discuss my card choices.

4-4 Vespiquen and Flareon

I think this is pretty self explanatory. These are my main attackers, and both of their attacks get stronger the more Pokemon you have in your discard, so running anything less than a full set of both is really foolish. I chose to play the new Eevee as it offers 10 more HP than the old Energy Evolution Eevee, and its Ability gives me more outs against Archeops.

Four Unown, Three Shaymin-EX, One Jirachi-EX, One Oranguru

These are my consistency Pokemon, and with nine of them, this deck runs incredibly smoothly. I chose not to max out on the Shaymin-EX in order to play one Jirachi-EX, as the ability to grab any Supporter, especially something like Teammates, is better than drawing through your deck hoping to hit that same card. Oranguru gives me insurance against Delinquent and late game N, which is incredibly useful in this deck. Since we play such a high count of support Pokemon, being able to use Oranguru’s Ability to get back up to three cards in hand allows you to use Ultra Ball late game to refresh your hand.

One Wobbuffet

Yveltal / Maxie’s is one of, if not the best, deck in the format currently, and Archeops is something incredibly threatening to this archetype. Thus, I’ve decided to tech extremely heavily for it to make sure that even if my opponent is able to get an Archeops into play, I will have many outs to evolve my Pokemon. Wobbuffet is one of my outs. Wobbuffet is also a really good starter in general, as it allows you to slow down your opponent while setting up your attackers behind it, as well as benefits from Tropical Beach if that is in play as well.

One Jolteon

I’m not sure how necessary this card is, as I already feel as if my Yveltal matchup is strong if they can’t get Archeops into play (which is when this card would hit the field), but I’m of the camp that believes that you should try to make your good matchups as good as possible and accept your autolosses elsewhere, and Jolteon fits that mindset. Even though Yveltal is already favorable, one slot makes the matchup even more favorable. For only one slot, I think Jolteon is definitely worth the inclusion, especially since Yveltal is primed to be the most played deck at Collinsville.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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