Psychic Embracing Gardevoir ex for Milwaukee and Fresno
Hey everyone! It’s Charlie and I’m happy to be back with another article for the first time in a while! I just finished a long semester of school and finally got the chance to play in another Regionals last weekend in Hartford. I, unfortunately, finished 5-2-2 after a 5-0-1 start playing Gardevoir ex. While I missed Day 2, Justin Lambert was able to carry the list to bubble Top 64 and I still think the deck is incredibly powerful. Gardevoir ex has been incredibly slept on after Tord Reklev took it to the finals of EUIC, mostly because of its perceived terrible matchup against Lost Box / Kyogre, but I promise you the deck didn’t get any weaker! Since then, I’ve taken the deck to a League Cup win and another Top 8 finish, beating plenty of Lost Box along the way. I think this deck is still amazing due to its incredible consistency, options to approach matchups in different ways, and raw power that’s unrivaled in the current format.
Hartford Rundown
Here were the matchups I faced during my Hartford run:
- Lost Box WW 1-0
- Control WW 2-0
- Mew VMAX WW 3-0
- Arceus VSTAR / Duraludon VMAX / Umbreon VMAX WLT 3-0-1
- Arceus VSTAR / Duraludon VMAX / Umbreon VMAX WW 4-0-1
- Lugia VSTAR WW 5-0-1
- Arceus VSTAR / Umbreon VMAX WLL 5-1-1
- Lugia VSTAR WLT 5-1-2
- Lost Box LL 5-2-2
As you can see, I faced a lot of different decks throughout the day, most notably 3 Arceus VSTAR lists featuring Umbreon VMAX. I wasn’t prepared to play against those variants of the deck, but I feel like the matchup is still workable for Gardevoir ex assuming you get off to a solid start. I also faced 2 Lugia VSTAR lists and 2 Lost Boxes, both of which featured Dragonite V and Kyogre. I was able to beat the first Lost Box convincingly in two games, but I drew terrible hands and was donked by the second one in my win and in. Gardevoir ex decks don’t brick that often, but when they do, you have just about no chance of winning, so it was unfortunate that it happened in such an important match.
My Gardevoir ex List
While my list is relatively generic, I have a few major differences from the lists most people play that I’d love to talk about below. Here’s the list I played to Hartford and plan to play at my upcoming League Cup events:
Professor's Research and a Psychic Energy to play Gallade and a third Rare Candy. Here is my thought process behind each card, including why I made some of the changes I did and also chose not to make certain changes from Tord’s list:
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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