Discussion Is Ultra Necrozma GX/Malamar the new BDIF?

optimal_max

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Seems like everybody and their brother is running Ultra Necrozma GX/Malamar on PTCGO, and for good reason. It is a VERY strong deck. Mysterious Treasure makes it easy to set up quickly. Necrozma's attack is phenomenal, and since it discards energy, it protects itself from attacks from Lele and Mega Mewtwo Ex.

It combos well with Dawn Wings Necrozma GX, which is psychic so it hits Buzzwole hard.

Will this deck take over as the new BDIF?
 
Sort of...

Celesteela-GX takes care of Gardevoir-GX outside of the case of Fairy Garden, and when combined w/ Malamars, Lunala PS, as well as the aforementioned Ultra Necrozma-GX, not to mention the usual Tapu Lele-GX, this metadeck can do wonders against anything else.

Without Celesteela-GX to deal w/ fairies that Ultra Nec is weak to, this is NOT worthy of BDIF consideration. Even then, it will have to share that status w/ Zygarde-GX/Buzzwole-GX, as they are just as good as Ultra Nec...

Want the blueprint? Check out my deck idea...
 
Buzzwole is really strong with the addition of beast ring, diancie and beast energy. Those are probably tier 1 and then everything else is a distant tier 2.
 
I don’t know. Buzz/roc is good against Malamar/Ultra Nec but I have had to rely on them whiffing an energy at least one turn to get ahead of it. Especially if they are playing mew. But I have had a few ideas to shut down Ultra Nec/Mal. Still testing
 
Short answer: Yeah

Long answer: PTCG card design is locked into a power creep spiral atm and basically every set since SM base, with the exception of SM5 has given us a new BDIF, the tier 1 decks shift with every set, probably because TPCI wants to shift more packs of new sets to prevent situations like we had late last block where the ORAS and early BREAK sets were just flat out better than the late BREAK sets so they were sitting on tons of surplus packs of sets like Evolutions and Fates Collide. There's a reason they put out so many boxes that contained about 50% late XY era packs in early SM. Typically they print the deck with an intent to render the current meta obsolete. Decidueye and especially Garbodor completely trashed ALL decks from the BREAK/ORAS blocks. They print cards like Gardevoir and Zoroark to counter Garbodor, then they print Buzzwole and Glaceon to counter Zoroark (not all of their planned counters work that well). Now we get Malamar/Necro to counter Buzzwole.

It's the classic introducing an invasive species to kill an invasive species tragedy. Once you print cards to force older cards out of the meta, the power level you need to reach to kick that card out of the meta is that much higher. They were much better at avoiding this, I feel, in the late XY era where top 8s typically had at least 4 or 5 different decks around, while nowadays we're lucky to see 3. But I guess that wasn't selling enough packs.
 
While Ultra-Necrozma is definitely strong, I find regular Necrozma/Malamar to be slightly better. You can use Marshadow if you're worried about the Zoroark MU. Ultra-Necrozma does have Beast Ring support though which regular Necrozma lacks and that can be clutch sometimes.

Theoretically Gardevoir should beat both Necrozma variants, but I don't think that many people would play Garde right now, as - unless you get lucky with your first 2 turns - it's just too slow for the current Standard meta.

I also think it's mostly just rock/paper/scissors right now (sounds familiar?), as usually Dawn Wings beats Buzzwole, Buzzwole beats Zoroark and Zoroark beats Dawn Wings.
 
Up until rotation, I would consider 2 decks tied to the BDIF title: Buzzroc and Malamar.
It's not a rule of thumb that Malamar will always beat Buzzroc. I've been messing with some Zoroark/Buzzwole lists on PTCGO and it actually works wonders. Zoroark has the psychic resistance and can "combo" with Mallow to get Beast Ring and Beast Energy to respond to a KO or even assemble 2 Buzzwoles with 2 Beast Rings.
Of course that you'll still need DCEs to keep early game pressure with Zoroark, that can compromise some energy attachments to Buzzwole, but can also retreat the mosquito in a pinch. Worth noting that Zoroark KOs Dawn Wings because of weakness. That's why I've been considering this build.
 
Gardy is a fine matchup for Ultra Necrozma, who can easily one shot gardy.

It's a game of 1-shots, except the Necrozma is faster giving it an advantage
 
It's sort of a toss-up with which Necrozma version is better.

I think the BUS Necrozma-GX version is better at the moment due to its one-Energy consistency.

Post rotation, the Ultra Necrozma version will be better. This is under the assumption that the deck isn't slowed down terribly after losing some key cards (Like Professor Sycamore) to the rotation.
 
Theoretically Gardevoir should beat both Necrozma variants, but I don't think that many people would play Garde right now, as - unless you get lucky with your first 2 turns - it's just too slow for the current Standard meta.
I've only recently (like the past few days) started binging practice with the Malamar deck but as far as I can tell, the Gardy matchup with the vanilla Necrozma is quite favored for Necrozma. With Max Elixirs and Gardy being a slower deck, it's easy to pile on 4 energies onto a Necrozma and blow up Gardies as they come back, meanwhile they struggle to take you out since you discard all of your energy after attacking.

Can't comment on how it is for Ultra Necrozma though, since I don't have two copies of U-Necrozma yet. :p

On paper though, I feel like vanilla Necrozma is slightly better simply due to consistency. Being able to more frequently start swinging on turn 2 is better than potentially doing 260 damage once you're fully set up imo. With U-Necrozma, I'm almost be tempted to ditch Malamar all together and run a deck entirely on Max Elixir + Beast Ring although that's tricky with the 2 energy types.
 
I think Ultra Nec would fail without Malamar as max elixirs are inconsistent unless you run like 14 basic energies. And then your relying on them taking the first two prizes to utilize beast ring.
 
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