Mad Party and Night March in Standard and Expanded

Hello PokeBeach readers! In this article, I’m going to be going over Mad Party in both the Standard and Expanded formats. When Mad Party was revealed it immediately saw hype as a new and improved Night March deck, however, when it comes to the Standard format, Mad Party doesn’t have the same tools that Night March had. Without Battle Compressor or Ultra Ball it is much harder for Mad Party to power up its attacks and hit big Knock Outs — Mad Party does have some built-in draw and discard in the form of Polteageist, but this isn’t enough for the deck to be as aggressive as Night March was. So the question remains; what makes Mad Party good in Standard, and is it truly better than Night March in Expanded?

Why is Mad Party Good in Standard?

The Standard format is dominated by three-Prize Pokémon that are able to tank some hits and one-shot smaller Pokémon. Mad Party has a natural advantage against these decks due to its high damage output, and utilization of single-Prize attackers. It also thrives in this format because of the lack of sniping decks in the meta. Since all the Pokémon in Mad Party have such low HP, a format dominated by Dragapult VMAX would make the deck nearly unplayable, but because the only relevant deck with the ability to snipe the Bench is Pikachu and Zekrom-GX, Mad Party can thrive without the threat of an opponent sweeping your board.

The last thing that makes Mad Party so strong in Standard is how low maintenance it is. The deck is simply looking to discard Pokémon every turn and find either a Twin Energy or a Triple Acceleration Energy to attack. While these factors give Mad Party an advantage against most of the decks in the format, Arceus and Dialga and Palkia-GX is still an issue — if you expect ADP to be highly played in an event, Mad Party may not be the best choice.

The Standard List

Before I go into the list I want to give some credit to Daniel Altavilla and Gabriel Smart as I based my list off of theirs.

Three Sinistea

Aside from the Mad Party Pokémon, Sinistea is the first Pokémon on the list. I’ve opted to play Sinistea as a three-of rather than a four-of as you want to have Polteageist in your discard pile to power up your attacks, so playing four Sinistea is never helpful. This deck could arguably go down to two Sinistea to free up space for other cards such as a second Electromagnetic Radar, boosting the consistency of the deck. Currently, I believe playing the third Sinistea is still better as there are no Special Energy recovery options in Standard, so you often have to rely on Polteageist to attack throughout a game.

Three Dedenne-GX

Dedenne-GX is a double-edged sword in this deck — while it does allow the deck to maintain an aggressive strategy, giving up two Prizes can easily lose Mad Party the game. Some lists try to eliminate this issue by including cards like Giovanni's Exile or Island Challenge Amulet, but I feel these cards only lower the consistency of the deck and are not helpful enough to warrant inclusion. Giovanni’s Exile does have some utility outside of discarding Dedenne-GX, but I still believe it’s still worse than including another consistency card. I don’t think this deck needs to worry about the threat of an opponent gusting up Dedenne-GX as I believe Mad Party should be able to outpace the majority of decks anyway.

Mew

Mew is in the deck for the Pikachu and Zekrom-GX matchup, but preventing sniping from other decks such as Decidueye is also important. As I mentioned earlier, Mad Party is weak when it comes to sniping decks as its Pokémon have low HP and you rely on winning the Prize trade by attacking with single-Prize Pokémon. Mew would be dispensable if you predict a lack of sniping Pokémon, or if you believe the matchups do not warrant the need for Mew. Both Pikachu and Zekrom-GX and Decidueye are winnable for Mad Party without Mew, but Mew makes them near auto-wins if they don’t play counters such as Vikavolt V.

Two Hapu

Hapu gives this deck the extra consistency boost it needs to thrive in the current meta. Being able to discard Pokémon straight from your deck is a great effect to have as it also lets you keep resources in your hand such as extra Energy cards. Between Hapu and Polteageist, this deck is able to build a large hand without having to discard resources like with a Professor's Research. Hapu is superior to Marnie in this build as it digs one card deeper, as well as discarding cards, helping you power up your attacks. While Marnie would give this deck some comeback potential, it’s unnecessary for most games as making your opponent whiff doesn’t further your goal of winning the Prize trade when you’re taking consistent KOs.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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