This Deck Beats Everything — Gholdengo with Dragapult

At the recent Atlanta Regionals, I placed 10th with Gholdengo ex, a deck I was very confident in. After lots of testing and tweaking the deck, I was convinced that it was favored into every meta deck. If there was any point of concern, it was Flareon ex, a fringe Tier 2 deck that posed a very troublesome matchup.

However, there was no indication that this deck would be very popular, so I figured it was an acceptable loss to take. I ended up being right, as Flareon was less than three percent of the field. Having a good matchup against the remaining 97 percent meant that the deck was clearly the right play. Unfortunately, I ended up facing three Flareon decks during my run, since it did have a good conversion rate. This really put a damper on things, and I ended up narrowly missing out on top cut. Today I am going to fully explain my list and how to beat every meta deck with Gholdengo. My list has already been made public online. Here is what I played:

Why Gholdengo ex / Dragapult ex?

First let's look at why Gholdengo ex is the best deck overall. Going into the new format, I did a lot of testing to try and figure things out as much as possible. Japan's results provided a starting point, but you always want to take those with a grain of salt. There are some variables such as sample size, their tournament format, as well as limited information. For example, in their Champions League with this format, the most dominant decks were Feraligatr, Walls, and Tera Box. At Atlanta, all three of those decks flopped massively. I evaluated every deck based on three factors: power, consistency, and matchups. The deck that held up the most from Japan's results was Gholdengo.

The power of the deck doesn't strictly refer to the amount of damage, but more vaguely how good a deck performs in a vacuum. Gholdengo ex is a simple deck that holds up well in various scenarios, doesn't get cheesed out of games, and is overall no-nonsense. It is capable of playing a slow or fast game depending on the situation, and it can trade Prizes with the best of them. The deck also doesn't have any real exploitable weaknesses. All of these things contribute to the deck having an extremely high overall power level.

As for consistency, basically every deck can have some issues in this post-rotation format. Gholdengo ex does open up with brick hands on occasion, but relative to everything else, the deck still is still fairly consistent. Arven single-handedly sets up the deck, but Gholdengo isn't wholly reliant on it like other Arven-based decks. Gimmighoul can search out Energy, and both Gholdengo and Drakloak draw plenty of cards. While this deck isn't the pinnacle of consistency, it did feel about as consistent as any of the other top decks.

The matchups criteria is self-explanatory. The matchups I were most concerned about were Dragapult ex, Tera Box, and Raging Bolt ex. In the week leading up to the tournament, Terapagos ex and Gardevoir ex picked up steam as well. This category is where Gholdengo set itself far above every other deck. Every single meta matchup is favorable for Gholdengo. After a few games against Flareon ex, it was clear that was the sole bad matchup, but again, Flareon was expected to be a very low-percent deck. Gholdengo being a no-nonsense deck with no glaring weaknesses also allows it to hold up against random decks that you're sure to run into now and again.

Overall, Gholdengo has an extremely high power level, unparalleled matchups, and passable consistency, so it was the clear pick for me. I had many people ask me why I played Dragapult as Gholdengo's partner, as opposed to some alternatives like Scizor or Dudunsparce. I'm always surprised by this question because it seems like a silly one. To me, it is obvious that Dragapult is far superior to the other options and it isn't even close. Scizor provides a single-Prize attacker as well as an answer to Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon ex, but does nothing for consistency. Dudunsparce is some nice draw power, but is rather high maintenance and does not reliably counter Cornerstone (even with the Dudunsparce ex).

Dragapult ex gives you the best of both worlds. Drakloak improves consistency with some extra draw power, which is particularly great when opponents try to disrupt our hand. It's also a solid single-Prize attacker for fixing Prize trades. Dragapult itself completely smashes Cornerstone, no matter how much support it has. Dragapult also adds some much needed flexibility to the otherwise linear Gholdengo deck. If you're losing a Prize trade, Gholdengo alone can't do much about it. However, thanks to Counter Catcher and Iono, this deck can turn into a Dragapult deck at a moment's notice, which allows for some sweet comebacks. Two Phantom Dives is easily capable of taking four Prize cards, and it forces the opponent has to respond immediately, which can be very difficult after a Counter Catcher plus Iono play.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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