A New Way to Play ADP – A Review of ClayDPZ in Standard
Hello everyone! Welcome back to PokeBeach and another one of my articles! I hope everyone is doing well and ready to read about some Pokemon because I have a lot to say today! In my last article, where I went over Lucario and Melmetal-GX / Zacian V and the Standard format as a whole, I mentioned that the metagame was at a bit of a standstill when it came time to provide my tier list update. There wasn’t a whole lot going on at the time, but the Players Cup II has changed things a little bit.
The main thing to come to light since my last article is the inclusion of the Clay engine in Arceus and Dialga and Palkia-GX / Zacian V, which has seemingly proved to be the best way to play the already best deck. That is going to be the main focus of my article because it is a major change to the way the deck is built and will have a large impact on the metagame for the time being. Additionally, I will go over the other new innovations to come out of the Players Cup II and other online tournaments, and provide an updated tier list.
There should be something for everyone in this article since I am covering a majority of the Standard format, so I hope everyone is as excited as I am. Without any further delay, let’s get things going with a review of the new way to play Arceus and Dialga and Palkia-GX / Zacian V.
ClayDPZ
In this section, I am going to fully cover the newly played Clay version of Arceus and Dialga and Palkia / Zacian V. I am honestly not sure who originally piloted the deck, but I first laid eyes on it when Jon Eng won an online tournament with the deck. Since then, I have seen many players using lists extremely similar to the one he played. The one below is only a few cards off of a lot of the ones already seeing success because there isn’t a whole lot of room for innovation.
The deck is extremely fast-paced and aims to end the game as soon as possible, so all of the cards in the deck support that strategy. Arceus and Dialga and Palkia-GX / Zacian V was already considered the best deck and the deck to beat, and somehow I think it actually got better. Time to take a look at the decklist, followed by some decklist analysis and more.
Decklist
Card Choices
Four Zacian V
Everyone knows Zacian V by now as it is one of the strongest Pokemon the game has ever seen. Not only is this Pokemon the deck’s “main attacker”, but it is great for early game consistency and its presence on the field is a requirement for pulling off the turn one Altered Creation GX because Metal Saucer needs a target in order to accelerate the Energy. Zacian V is a great Basic to start with, especially when going first, and having four of them increases the amount that will happen. Starting Zacian V is extra nice because it means you did not immediately lose a support Pokemon to it being your starter. On top of having a higher count of ideal starters, having four of these makes up for prizing and Clay issues, which can be a big problem if you only include three in your deck. Situations like that are definitely variance, but you don’t want to fall victim to not having enough Zacian V too often.
Three Dedenne-GX, One Crobat V
These are the support Pokemon of the entire meta right now, as almost every deck includes one or both of these, so these inclusions should not surprise anyone. The deck does include somewhat of a thick line, and that is because the deck will make use of them often during the short game this deck aims to play. On turn one, a Dedenne-GX is used consistently often, and sometimes Crobat V is used on top of that to dig for that turn one Altered Creation GX. Since the deck aims to win in three to four turns, any turn after that where a gust effect is needed to be found, one of these support Pokemon will likely be made use of. It is ironic that this deck makes such great use of these support Pokemon because these are the same Pokemon that the deck targets down to win the game so quickly.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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