N’s Zoroark Deck Breakdown
Hello to all PokeBeach readers! This is Gabriel again with another Pokémon TCG article, and this time I want to talk about N’s Zoroark ex. Even though the deck is not the biggest success of the format according to recent tournaments (such as Atlanta and Champions Leagues in Japan), I believe it is worth taking the time to better understand its full potential, especially since we will have N’s Zoroark ex available in the Standard format for the next two years.
The current format, in a way, is a continuation of the pre-rotation format, with Dragapult ex and Gardevoir ex as the best decks in the format, while Tera Box, Tera Tank, Raging Bolt ex , Archaludon ex, and Gholdengo ex also remain in the fight. In general, the main change in the format is that it is slower and there is a little more difficulty in setting up the board.
The rotation had much more impact on the metagame than Journey Together; basically no new decks appeared with the new set with impressive results. N’s Zoroark ex is the best deck, appearing in the Top 16 in the Fukuoka Champions League, but did not appear in Miyagi or Atlanta. Even with not-so-encouraging results for Zoroark, I believe that the deck attracts a lot of attention and sometimes gives the impression that it has great potential to be explored. I have some doubts that I believe many other players must have, too, so I decided to study N’s Zoroark in more depth and find the answers.
N’s Zoroark ex Overview
N’s Zoroark ex is good because it draws cards, and thanks to this good consistency, we tolerate mediocre attacks from N’s Darmanitan and N’s Reshiram. The current format is slower and the best decks involve more elaborate setups. This includes Dragapult ex and Gardevoir ex, which are Stage 2 decks. Zoroark’s advantage lies in the fact that it is a Stage 1 deck that can punish more elaborate setups with Darmanitan’s attack, and in situations where this isn’t helpful, the 170 damage dealt by Reshiram’s attack takes most of the Knock Outs.
Regarding the attacker options available, we’s mainly limited to Reshiram and Darmanitan, but I see some potential in N’s Purrloin, mainly because it works with Binding Mochi. I see potential in N’s Sigilyph because while testing Zoroark I’ve realized that it is difficult to get the last Prize in some games. N’s Joltik is the one I like least, but it removes Pokémon Tools and paralyzes and this could be useful in some situations.
N’s Zoroark ex has good HP, although many decks in the format can Knock it Out with one attack. Whenever the opponent manages to do this, the matchup will be difficult. All others are playable. The attack has a low cost of two Energy and also has N’s PP Up to accelerate an Energy from the discard, which means in practice you can spend turns without attaching Energy and everything will be fine.
The fact that Zoroark is a Darkness type makes it work with Pecharunt ex, which consequently means it works with Binding Mochi to achieve 40 more damage per attack. Working with Pecharunt ex means having incredible mobility, but at the price of keeping a 190-HP two-Prize Pokémon on the Bench, which bad and goes completely against the strategy. On the field you only want Zoroark with its 280 HP and a Bench full of single-Prize Pokémon like Reshiram and Darmanitan. However, Pecharunt ex’s Ability is so useful, it’s almost impossible not to need it. And, since the deck needs Pecharunt ex, Binding Mochi becomes mandatory as well. Dealing 210 instead of 170 damage means that Zoroark is now able to KO Fezandipiti ex, and that means a lot.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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