Does Blue Lock Beat Dragapult? Pidgeot Control
At the recent San Antonio Regionals, I was able to make cut with an interesting and unique build of Pidgeot ex Control, cooked up by the control god Sander Wojcik himself. I changed it a little so it wasn’t obvious I copied, but it was still obvious I copied. After a strong placement with such a cool deck, I wanted to write about it, but Prismatic Evolutions was releasing with Budew. Without access to Rare Candy, Pidgeot was basically off the table in some matchups, which was unacceptable. I initially thought that Pidgeot Control would die at the hands of Itchy Pollen. The only alternative to Rare Candy was manually evolving up to Pidgeot ex. Not only was this too slow, but it was also extremely unrealistic under Item lock. Even utilizing Technical Machine: Evolution was not consistent because the deck played low counts of Energy and no ways to conveniently search them out. However, there was one other option: Grand Tree.
Grand Tree is the perfect solution. It puts Pidgeot into play under Item lock, and does so quickly and conveniently. Grand Tree performs a very unique function that no other card can replicate. The cost, of course, is your ACE SPEC. If you want the Tree, you have to sacrifice the defensive flexibility of Hero's Cape , or the explosive potential of Precious Trolley or Secret Box. There are a lot of ACE SPECs that Pidgeot Control would like to play, but Grand Tree solves the most pressing issue that the deck faces. It is somewhat difficult to search out Grand Tree, so the deck relies heavily on Forest Seal Stone to do so. This is not so bad, as you would typically rely on Seal Stone anyway to set up Pidgeot. It’s the same thing, but even better. Instead of using Forest Seal Stone to search out the missing Rare Candy or Pidgeot ex, you use it for Grand Tree, which is effectively the combo in one card. This makes it easier than before to set up Pidgeot, since all you need is Forest Seal Stone or Grand Tree itself. If the Grand Tree is prized, the deck has to play Pidgeotto anyway, so there’s still the option to set up Pidgeot manually. And of course, Rare Candy is too good, so we still play one in case that option is more convenient. After all, there are still plenty of matchups where you won’t be Item locked. Once you get Pidgeot into play, you win.
Sander added some interesting innovations to the deck, including cards like Milotic, Toedscruel, and Radiant Alakazam. Milotic stops Professor Turo's Scenario, which allows you to easily trap decks like Gardevoir ex. Toedscruel was a tech for Regidrago VSTAR, which is no longer necessary since Regidrago has more or less dropped out of the meta. My favorite of the three is by far Radiant Alakazam. This Pokemon is very versatile and opens lots of creative lines. One common use for it is flooding the board with damage when you have your opponent Sob-locked with Wellspring Mask Ogerpon ex. This applies pressure, ends games a bit faster, and most importantly, makes it so that you don’t have to worry about decking out. At other times, it fixes damage so you can avoid taking KOs, or take multiple at once. With Penny, you can use Alakazam’s Ability twice in a turn to make a big combo play happen. With Psychic Energy in the deck, Radiant Alakazam can even be a useful attacker from time to time. It can also heal the opponent’s Pokemon to make them do less damage, such as Drifloon or Scream Tail, or to prolong the Black Kyurem ex lock against Dragapult ex.
Pidgeot Control is a fun and flexible deck that is quite strong in the current format. In fact, it was one of my top picks for EUIC, though I did go with Lost Box in the end. In case you are unfamiliar, the deck is basically an anti-meta archetype. Its game plan varies wildly from matchup to matchup, and it demands extensive metagame knowledge as well as technical and adaptable gameplay. Pidgeot Control is one of the more difficult decks to play, but it’s also woefully underrated. Opponents are extremely unlikely to know how to play against this deck, which can get you many wins in tournaments. Even strong players are probably not well versed in the matchup. Since it’s such an obscure and rare deck, people have no reason to prepare against it. Let’s take a look at the list.
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