The Evolution of Gardevoir ex
Hello everyone! Gardevoir ex dominated the tournament at NAIC with six decks in the Top 8 and it still appears to be well-positioned heading into the World Championships, however, one thing that was clear from NAIC is that many players could not agree on how to build Gardevoir ex. Most players chose to go with Drifloon and Bravery Charm for big damage output, along with Technical Machine: Evolution for setup, with Unfair Stamp as the ACE SPEC. Several players chose not to play Drifloon, however, and some also used Hyper Aroma as their ACE SPEC to help with getting Kirlia into play.
Gardevoir ex plays differently from how it did in the pre-rotation format. The deck used to take massive one-hit KOs using Zacian V‘s Storm Slash or Gardevoir‘s Brainwave attack. Now to deal big damage many decks play Drifloon and Bravery Charm, which is weak to Lost Vacuum and Jamming Tower. The strategy of using Bravery Charm to increase the damage output of Drifloon’s Balloon Blast and Scream Tail‘s Roaring Scream wasn’t enough on its own to make Gardevoir ex a top-tier deck during the Temporal Forces format, so it was hovering around the Tier 2 territory whilst Charizard ex dominated the metagame. This changed with the release of Twilight Masquerade and Munkidori.
Munkidori’s Adrena-Brain Ability gave the deck a way to take advantage of the damage placed on your Pokemon with Psychic Embrace, although requires you to have a Darkness Energy attached to use it. Using Adrena-Brain and attacking with Flutter Mane gives the deck an entirely different angle with which it can approach a matchup. Gardevoir ex also becomes a much stronger attacker when you have access to Adrena-Brain, as the 190 damage can be pushed to 220 without having to use another attack.
One thing that pretty much everybody has convened on after NAIC is that two copies of Munkidori are the way to go with Gardevoir ex. Most Gardevoir ex decklists at NAIC only chose to play one copy of Munkidori, however, some of the most successful ones included the second copy. Many players try to target the Munkidori when playing against Gardevoir ex, so having the second copy significantly helps you to re-establish it without having to find one of your Super Rod. You can use Adrena-Brain multiple times per turn as well, so if you are ever able to establish two Munkidoris with Darkness Energy each then you can move 60 damage onto your opponent’s board once each turn! This gives you significant control over the game and it is rare that I have established two Munkidori and used two Adrena-Brains in my turn and gone on to lose the game. Having multiple Munkidori is also important for the mirror match, as you can set up to KO Kirlia on your opponent’s Bench with your own Flutter Mane’s Hex Hurl attack. I do think that Munkidori is one of the strongest cards in the current Standard format, and that is why I have heavily emphasized it in my Gardevoir ex decklist!
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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