All About the Wall — Milotic ex / Farigiraf ex After Rotation
Hello everyone! Journey Together is here, and with it, the world moves into the new post-rotation format. VSTARs and Vs are finally gone, and with them some of the format’s strongest archetypes. We’ve had a few articles now going over the post-rotation meta as a whole; if you haven’t taken a look at those yet, I strongly recommend doing so, because in today’s article, we’ll be taking on that meta. That is, I’ll be going over an archetype that has established itself as the great anti-meta deck of the format: the triple wall of Milotic ex, Farigiraf ex , and Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon ex.
This deck is one of my favorites from the new format, and while it doesn’t beat everything, it does sport an impressive matchup spread. Look at the projected post-rotation meta and it becomes apparent why this deck is so dangerous. Simply put, many of the top post-rotation cards can’t damage one or more of this deck’s Pokemon. Milotic ex may not shut out every ex card, but it is invulnerable to Dragapult ex, Charizard ex, any Ogerpon ex, Terapagos ex, any of the Eeveelutions, Pikachu ex, and Ceruledge ex, to name a few. Farigiraf ex walls many of the dangerous Pokemon that Milotic can’t, including Raging Bolt ex , Miraidon ex, and Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex. Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon ex walls Archaludon ex, Gholdengo ex, Milotic ex, and many other random Pokemon with Abilities. Between the three of them, these Pokemon can effectively stop an enormous chunk of the meta. If you don’t happen to play one of the few decks that can get around the walls, then you may be looking at a quick loss — or a win if you’re on the right side of the wall!
Interestingly, all of the cards in this deck are ones that were already in the format; not a single one from Journey Together ended up making the list. This deck’s increase in strength comes not from the new set, but rather from the consolidation in the meta that comes as a result of the format rotation. Now that the deck doesn’t have to deal with strong alternate attackers like Radiant Charizard, or decks like Lost Box or Lugia VSTAR that counter its strategy with varied attackers, it is in a position to do much better.
Prior to Champions League Fukuoka, the Milotic ex deck was a common sight at City League tournaments, but I was somewhat surprised to see it do as well as it did at the big event. This isn’t because I lack confidence in the wall deck itself (quite the opposite), but rather because I expected the player base to be more prepared for it. It is an anti-meta deck after all, and you might think that it would be easy enough to play around — just tech in an attacker that can get around your deck’s wall, and you’re good to go. As it turns out, though, it’s not that easy. The fact that the wall deck was able to pick up half of the Top 8 spots at Champions League Fukuoka is an impressive testament to this. The reality of this deck is that even if you know it’s coming, it still isn’t all that easy to beat. One of the things about playing this deck is that it is not some slow, eventually-wear-them-down sort of stall deck. It doesn’t just try to hide behind the walls and hope for the best — rather, it tries to attack quickly itself, to immediately put pressure on the opponent. This makes it much harder to play around, since not only does an opponent have to have some way around the deck’s various protective Abilities, but they also have to be able to quickly utilize it, lest they fall too far behind. A simple one-of tech isn’t going to do the trick here — not when the wall deck can just KO it, and then keep taking Prizes while they try to recover and re-establish it.
Milotic ex / Farigiraf ex does have some bad matchups, and it is possible to build your deck to beat it, but it tends to take a pretty substantial investment in card space to do so. It’s the sort of deck that you’ll definitely want to be aware of, and even if you don’t end up playing it yourself, you will want to make sure you test against it — it’s easy to think that you have an effective game plan against it when in practice that might not be the case. In either case, a list to go off of would certainly help! Here is my current Milotic ex / Farigiraf ex / Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon ex list:
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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