Kids See Ghosts — Banette-GX / Garbodor / Drampa-GX for Worlds

By: Zachary Lesage · Posted Posted onAug 21, 2018 at 7:53 PM · 0 Comments

What do ghosts eat for dinner? Spooketi! What does Banette-GX / Garbodor / Garbodor / Drampa-GX eat for dinner? The metagame! I hope that you enjoy my Gastly puns while reading through this ghoulish article today. You heard it! Banette-GX / Garbodor / Garbodor / Drampa-GX is a newcomer to the metagame and it seems to be one of the best decks heading into the World Championships and the Nashville Open. I will be going over why this deck is great, my list, and some of the popular matchups you can expect to face. The metagame is in a ghoulish spot right now; let’s jump into this haunted house of an article to get over our fears.

Why is Banette-GX / Garbodor / Garbodor / Drampa-GX a Strong Pick?

A few weeks ago, I heard talk of Xander Pero messing around with a Banette-GX / Garbodor / Garbodor / Drampa-GX deck that seemed to have a decent shot if everything in the metagame remained true. I am not sure if Pero is the first person to come up with this deck or where it’s origins come from, but his list inspired me the most. The metagame is slowly becoming stabilized in this final week before Worlds and the chart that I posted in my past few articles is almost concrete. There may be a surprise deck here or a new tech card there, but the below updated list is accurate. When looking at the metagame as a whole, I am convinced that Banette-GX / Garbodor / Garbodor / Drampa-GX is a top play. Here is my updated tier list.

Tier 1 (Highly Played)

Tier 2 (Moderately Played)

Tier 3 (Lightly Played)

My list has minor changes from my last article and there are only four new inclusions: Zoroark-GX / Gardevoir-GX / Gallade, Gardevoir-GX / Gallade / Mysterious Treasure, Buzzwole / Buzzwole-GX / Magcargo / Max Elixir, and Buzzwole / Garbodor / Garbodor / Shrine of Punishment. Those added decks are variations of other decks within the metagame to achieve a similar goal.

Banette-GX / Garbodor / Garbodor / Drampa-GX plays out more like a control deck than an aggressive deck. This is because it has Ability-lock in the form of Garbotoxin, your opponent won’t want to play Item cards due to  Trashalanche, and the Energy denial aspect coming from Drampa-GX. All of those qualities make it a great pick in the meta game because the format revolves around decks that utilize those concepts. Zoroark-GX decks are susceptible to Energy denial because they play Special Energy and they need to use Trade to set-up.

Rayquaza-GX is a deck that plays upwards of 10 Item cards in the first turn of the game which means that they are going to be punished by Trashalanche. The matchups get even better when you factor in that Buzzwole-GX / Garbodor, Buzzwole / Garbodor / Garbodor / Shrine of Punishment, and Buzzwole / Buzzwole-GX / Lycanroc-GX are all decks that suffer against Psychic-type Pokemon. Beyond having a good matchup spread, Banette-GX / Garbodor / Garbodor / Drampa-GX allows for in depth strategic plays. This is because Banette-GX can do a lot of damage with Shadow Chant and Shady Move can set-up bigger Knock Out plays throughout the game. Let’s jump into it now.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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