Dragapult ex, For Sure This Time
Upon the release of Twilight Masquerade, I was worried that Dragapult ex would be far too powerful and oppressive. After its dominance in Japan, I thought Dragapult ex was the new gatekeeper of the format, however, these preliminary results gave rise to decks like Lugia VSTAR and Raging Bolt ex , which ended up being the most hyped decks right before NAIC. These decks match up well against Dragapult ex, scaring it away for NAIC. As a result, NAIC was dominated by decks like Gardevoir ex and Lost Zone box. These are single-Prize attacking decks that do well into Lugia VSTAR and Raging Bolt ex, but not necessarily against Dragapult ex. Dragapult ex was the new deck on the block and an unknown quantity — relatively few players ended up pulling the trigger on Dragapult ex for NAIC, and the deck flopped massively. Its only real finishes were as decorative pieces in other decks, such as Jacob Eye’s Regidrago VSTAR deck and Tord Reklev’s Charizard ex.
These developments in the meta make logical sense, and if the trend is to be continued, that might mean that Dragapult ex is primed for success. Furthermore, one of the most hyped decks from Shrouded Fable is Charizard ex with Dusknoir. It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of Charizard ex, but if it has one weakness, it’s the Dragapult ex matchup. Regidrago VSTAR is a decent matchup, especially with many of them cutting their tech copy of Raging Bolt ex in exchange for Giratina VSTAR. I think this is correct, as Giratina VSTAR is much better than Raging Bolt ex on average, and less of a liability, however, it leaves them vulnerable to specifically Dragapult ex, as they no longer have a way to one-shot it. If any Regidrago VSTAR players are cautious of the matchup, they might still play Raging Bolt ex.
Dragapult ex is an inherently powerful card — I believe that part of the reason for its failure at NAIC was because it was new and not yet optimized. Furthermore, as far as I’m aware, no top players chose to play the deck. While Dragapult ex does better against decks with low-HP Pokemon, it still has a decent shot of winning most matchups. With Shrouded Fable, Dragapult ex is a benefactor of incorporating Dusknoir. While Dusknoir’s synergy isn’t quite as powerful as with Charizard ex, it is still ridiculous. In addition to Dragapult ex’s normal snipe damage, Dusknoir compounds the threat and enables some truly outrageous combos. Alternatively, you can simply use Dusknoir to make Dragapult ex one-shot anything. You can also play Radiant Charizard, Defiance Band, and Counter Catcher, like Charizard ex decks.
Dragapult ex Variants
First I’ll discuss Dragapult ex with Xatu, which is a fun and underappreciated deck if you ask me. I have some recency bias though, as I just won a League Challenge with the deck on the same day I’m writing this. I don’t think this deck can as easily incorporate cards from Shrouded Fable, so I’ll also be going over my Dragapult ex / Pidgeot ex list, which has some striking similarities to my Charizard ex build. I don’t know which version is better at the moment.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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