Night March in the New Expanded Format

Hello everyone and welcome to my first article on PokeBeach. I am excited to bring everyone to a deep dive into one of my favorite decks of all time, Night March. I have used this deck at multiple Regionals to great success. Last season I got a first, a Top 4, and a Top 16 using Night March. Additionally I am the most successful player with Night March according to rankings. Why is Night March one of my favorite decks of all time? It can one shot anything in the format, but at the cost of having extremely low HP. This glass cannon of a deck is powerful if used properly. Being a non-GX based deck it can grab the win even from behind. The positives of this deck are balanced by the difficulty of piloting it. The deck can be very technical to play, which may seem daunting at first, but with enough practice and the right list it can lead you to victory.

The new Expanded ban list is now in effect and it really shook up the metagame. Towards the end of last format games were pretty predictable and mapped out. Games would be decided by either a turn one Ghetsis or a Hex Maniac chain in the middle of the game. This devolved the format into a state where people tried to cheese wins by playing by playing high counts of Red Card to try and make their opponent draw dead. With the new ban list, this playstyle is now dead and we are free to enjoy my favorite Expanded deck. Night March was most at risk of being cheesed out by Ghetsis, but now it no longer has to worry about it. It can now focus on being a deck that does massive amounts of damage while focusing more spots to counter the Night March counter cards. I believe that Night March is in a great spot for the new format and will be a deck people will always have to keep a eye on.

Night March Pre-Ban

Night March used to be a deck that would try to utilize early disruption while trying to use as many Battle Compressor as possible. It would then finish out the game by relying on Puzzle of Time to get cards like Guzma, Counter Catcher, Double Colorless, and Joltik out of the discard pile and into play. This let the deck list be very greedy with its card counts. It was running around 10 single copies of cards thanks to the powerful recovery at its disposal. Here is the list I used at the last Expanded Regionals in Roanoke, VA.

Night March Post-Ban

So what did Night March lose from the new ban list? Ghetsis, Hex Maniac and Puzzle of Time are no longer playable which drastically changes the deck. Losing those cards takes away an entire style of options. No longer can Night March rely on its old tricks of using Puzzle of Time to recover cards and push through to the end. The next question becomes how do we change the way we play the game? Well for starters the list can no longer be as greedy as it used to be. It will have to play multiple copies of cards to compensate for the lost cards.  Night March is not the only deck that will shift thanks to the new bans which also means we have new threats we need to prepare for. The format lost Hex Maniac which means powerful Ability-based decks like Trevenant will be more of a threat in the later stages of the game. 

Tauros-GX

Tauros-GX is a fantastic card and deals with many of the threats that Night March otherwise struggles to beat. Mad Bull GX is a great answer to Seismitoad-EX, since its retaliation-geared attacks make Seismitoad think twice about continuously using its low-damage Quaking Punch. If they do not use Quaking Punch, the matchup swings heavily in your favor. If they do Quaking Punch, eventually Mad Bull GX and Rage will swing for high numbers. You are likely to take Prizes before they even get a chance to use Quaking Punch, and then Tauros will take another two Prizes with its GX move. From there the game can end very quickly.  

Tauros is also a very good card to use against Trevenant. Horn attack does 60 damage, the perfect number to OHKO a Phantump. Mad Bull GX lets you one shot a Trevenant BREAK after only two Silent Fear. After that Rage will be doing massive amounts of damage and could potentially one shot regular Trevenant. Tauros-GX is a great card that effectively deals with popular lockdown counters. 

Oranguru UPR

Oranguru is a card I am toying around with. It’s a great way to recover Battle Compressor after you use them and counters Karen, a simple counter to Night March. Most deck cannot keep up with the aggression of Night March. A typical counterstrategy is to not even try to keep up and grind the game out by reducing the amount of damage Night March can do. Previously this tactic did not work well because of Puzzle of Time, but since that is gone we have to come up with a different strategy. Since the common target of Puzzle of Time was Battle Compressor, we need a new way to reuse this card. Resource Management will let us get back enough Battle Compressor and other resources to finish out a game after a Karen. Another interesting note is that this card also counters Oricorio, somewhat. Using Oranguru does mean that you can’t do damage but with Night March you will typically be far enough ahead that this isn’t a problem. Oranguru also makes it impossible to lose Wailord-EX, which is always a plus.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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