Licks Gone Crazy — Going Rogue with Checkmate and Lickilicky

Hey everybody, I hope you qualified for the Players Cup if you were shooting for it! I did personally and have been on the hunt to find something that “beats everything”. Some of you might already find the current Standard format a bit stale; it has been in circulation for about two months now so I can sympathize. When I find myself thinking like this, I try to use it as a motivation to come up with something creative and new. I’ve got a couple rogue decks to chat about today. Neither is overwhelmingly flashy, they’re both in the works, and one may have more potential than the other. However, they are definitely worth the peep! Let’s begin with Checkmate, updated.

Checkmate

This deck has been around for a while now and I’ve written about it before. This archetype has been thought to be dead after Dragapult VMAX started seeing play, but there’s hope for it yet. Unfortunately, there’s no great Darkness-type attacker, but there are a few obscure options. I’ve tried Drapion, Incineroar-GX, Sableye V, Spiritomb, and Weavile. Of these, Weavile is the most realistic and most powerful. Plus, it happens to be strong against things other than Dragapult VMAX! If there’s other cause for concern regarding Checkmate it’s the first turn rule changes from earlier in the year. Professor Elm's Lecture was a big part of the deck’s setup and without that when going first, things get messy. You still want to go first with this deck, but there are ways to fill in for this change in setup. Warning, this is going to look like a complete pile:

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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