Blog The Return of an Old Friend: A Look at Pidgeot-EX for Standard!

Great article. I really love how you included the match-ups and everything.
 
Awesome article, I hated the idea of Pideot EX in a deck but you have me conviced.

Also, Garbodor will shut down Zoroark giving you a new ADV with the Mach Cyclone, and it has all the extra perks that you listed. With Garb also you turn that frowny face over the matchup with volcanion upside down!!
Totally gonna make one of these decks.
I love these outcast colorless megas, Kanga almost won worlds, Audino WON worlds, and Pidgeot looks promising!!
 
Great article. I really love how you included the match-ups and everything.

I tried to include as much information as possible. This article was almost 19k words in the first draft. I had to remove almost 10k words. I can't keep you here all day!

My heart is beating a little fast though. Its like dropping your kid off on their first day of school for the first time. I hope everyone is nice.

Loved this article, great work covering an unusual deck choice!
Unusual decks are my favorite. They offer so much cheese!

Awesome article, I hated the idea of Pideot EX in a deck but you have me conviced.

Also, Garbodor will shut down Zoroark giving you a new ADV with the Mach Cyclone, and it has all the extra perks that you listed. With Garb also you turn that frowny face over the matchup with volcanion upside down!!
Totally gonna make one of these decks.
I love these outcast colorless megas, Kanga almost won worlds, Audino WON worlds, and Pidgeot looks promising!!

It's a card that requires some skill to run for sure but with the right play style, you have something that can be hard to manage.

For the version with Garbodor, I found it lacking in the mid to late game because if you get N down to a low hand size, it could be hard to find those cards you need to stay in the game and part of me thinks that is why that Pidgeot-EX/Jolteon-EX deck got 9th place at that Regional.

Let me know how you choose to run it though and I'm glad this helped!
 
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Great article! Pidgeot seems interesting, and when I have money to spend after the Switch comes out, I'll be sure to get some packs of Evolutions. I thought it was a lackluster set at first, but now I think there are some good cards in there too.
And the FAs are just beautiful.
 
Great article! Pidgeot seems interesting, and when I have money to spend after the Switch comes out, I'll be sure to get some packs of Evolutions. I thought it was a lackluster set at first, but now I think there are some good cards in there too.
And the FAs are just beautiful.

You're in luck. Pidgeot EX is about 5 bucks for the full art and the mega full art is about 6.50. Better get them before they go up.
 
This article is great! I've been wondering how to run mega pidgeot for a while now, and your article explains it perfectly. I love how you have example matches as well. I hope to see more from you soon.
 
I do very much envy your love for the deck, and after reading the Mega Pidgeot Viability thread I can now see why you prefer playing it like this than how I discussed (the speed variant), but I do disagree that Speed Pidgeot (with ROS Banette [tool lock]) is useless.

I see now both variations are very different decks, the slow style you discuss relying on Mirror Move to hit lots of damage while the faster one locking them out of retreating and rendering their spirit links useless, so I think some discussion on options for blocking float stones (because I don't know about you, but at least 60% of competitive decks I see run float stones) if the player prefers to use Mach Cyclone as opposed to Mirror Move.

A mention of techs like ROS Altaria to prevent Lightning Pokémon from 1HK0ing you would've been good (Assault Vest doesn't really save you from XY/GEN Raichu)

I do like the in depth look at various match ups, and using Assault Vest is interesting but surely that reduces Mirror Move damage (unless you intend to end your turn by evolving?)
 
Wow this is amazing dude! I was think that Pidgeot has some playability but you went through everything with it, awesome article!
 
This deck is weird.
Like, weird in a sense where I wonder why you believe your deck is so good in the meta. I mean, you listed only 1 deck as unfavorable. If Greninja is the ONLY deck in the meta that can beat this deck (and once Giratina comes out Greninja is dead) why hasn't anyone made Top 32 at a regional playing Pidgeot?

Seems way too fishy.

EDIT: I'd also like to mention that in just about 3/4 of the listed decks you said Magearna-EX was useless, with the non-useless decks being Greninja (AKA dead with Giratina) and Mega Gardevoir. Why include it if it only works decent against 1 deck?
 
This article is great! I've been wondering how to run mega pidgeot for a while now, and your article explains it perfectly. I love how you have example matches as well. I hope to see more from you soon.

I thought it would be nice to give example of what to expect assuming the games were halfway decently.

I do very much envy your love for the deck, and after reading the Mega Pidgeot Viability thread I can now see why you prefer playing it like this than how I discussed (the speed variant), but I do disagree that Speed Pidgeot (with ROS Banette [tool lock]) is useless.

I see now both variations are very different decks, the slow style you discuss relying on Mirror Move to hit lots of damage while the faster one locking them out of retreating and rendering their spirit links useless, so I think some discussion on options for blocking float stones (because I don't know about you, but at least 60% of competitive decks I see run float stones) if the player prefers to use Mach Cyclone as opposed to Mirror Move.

A mention of techs like ROS Altaria to prevent Lightning Pokémon from 1HK0ing you would've been good (Assault Vest doesn't really save you from XY/GEN Raichu)

I do like the in depth look at various match ups, and using Assault Vest is interesting but surely that reduces Mirror Move damage (unless you intend to end your turn by evolving?)

I don't want to say its bad because I did (and somewhat still do) consider Banette for that very reason, as well as a way to slightly improve the Greninja matchup. As I tested with the idea, I found that is was doing more harm than good because in some matchups, it was completely useless. At times, it took away my turn of attacking when it came into play since it turned off my spirit links and since I intended to run Octillery, I can't have a 2 retreat Pokemon in play with a dead tool.

You did say you're using a speed version of the deck so our results will very but I think its not the right way to play the card. Do keep me posted on your results of the card though. The reason I rather have tools over turning them all off is because Assault Vest is more useful for us in more matchups and since our goal is to not get KO'd in one hit, anything that helps staying power is useful.

I did have a section of Honorable Mentions but I had to remove it to reduce word count but I did discuss it. It was something I would put a 1-1 of in the deck for but Zebstrika makes it hard for its inclusion. At the time of writing, Raichu is the only relevant lightning attacker and with a bench of 5, it does 200 damage and with Assault Vest, it need a bench of 7 to KO a mega Pidgeot in one hit. If the Lightning deck choose to run Zebstrika, then Altaria becomes completely useless. Trust me, I thought about it and it is something I really wanted to add.

This deck is weird.
Like, weird in a sense where I wonder why you believe your deck is so good in the meta. I mean, you listed only 1 deck as unfavorable. If Greninja is the ONLY deck in the meta that can beat this deck (and once Giratina comes out Greninja is dead) why hasn't anyone made Top 32 at a regional playing Pidgeot?

Seems way too fishy.

EDIT: I'd also like to mention that in just about 3/4 of the listed decks you said Magearna-EX was useless, with the non-useless decks being Greninja (AKA dead with Giratina) and Mega Gardevoir. Why include it if it only works decent against 1 deck?

Well, I also listed Volcanion as unfavorable. You may have missed that but I don't blame you, it is almost 9k words, which I was told might be one of the longest articles out there. Also, I wrote this article before that card was revealed and had no idea of its release date so I only wanted cards that could could get at the time, otherwise I would have to include cards from unreleased sets and I didn't want to do that.

Believe it or not, Pidgoet-EX and its mega aren't that bad of cards. They are quite able of holding their own. I mean, you make it seem like were using Magnezone-EX here, lol. Also, a Pidgeot-EX deck made top 16 at a Regional (9th place) so there is that.

As for Magearna-EX, while I do agree that its less useful in quite a few matchups, I find it good enough to include in the deck. Like I said in the article, I like to avoid shenanigans because I have a habit of running into them, like a lot. Just recently, I ran into a Creep Show Gengar deck, which I do consider shenanigans, and I don't like losing to them.

If you want to remove the card, you can because they are techs. Pidgeot-EX does benefit for other tech attackers, which can improve other matchup so you can continue the tanking process but this is your unconventional deck, like I side in the article.
 
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LOVE the article, placed the order for remaining cards I needed (mainly the Pidgeot-EX's and M Pidgeots I didn't pull in my booster box) and it looks like a ton of fun. Any opinions on running Hoopa-EX in this deck? I feel like, especially with the includion of Magearna-EX in the deck, it could function well.

Cheers,
AJ
 
@crystal_pidgeot

Whenever I use a deck with Colorless primary attackers, I usually include at least one Winona. Do you think she has any use in your Pidgeot decks?

Man, now I wish I didn't have that word limit because I explained that, lol. I wanted a Winona in my deck and my reason for wanting one in the deck was since I start with Hoopa-EX ALL the time with it being the only copy in the deck so I figured I'd test removing the Hoopa-EX and replace it with Winona to see how it works. It would remove the bad start with Hoopa-EX and give me at least 3 Pidgeot-EX the same turn but I decided against it because the deck that could use it better, doesn't and that deck being M Rayquaza-EX. Another factor for not using it was the fact that I couldn't really use Altaria due to Zebstrika existence and how splashable it is.

If something happens and people stopped using Zebstrika, I will use Altaria, which gives me reason to use Winona. Right now, at least for my deck, I don't have too much issue getting Pidgeot into play but I'd be willing to try 3 Ultra Ball and Winona but in this case, since we run Octillery (or Shaymin if you're running Garbodor), we might be much better off running Pokemon Fan Club so we could at least grab Remoraid too. This is a case of which card is normally better and how useful it is for the deck.

LOVE the article, placed the order for remaining cards I needed (mainly the Pidgeot-EX's and M Pidgeots I didn't pull in my booster box) and it looks like a ton of fun. Any opinions on running Hoopa-EX in this deck? I feel like, especially with the includion of Magearna-EX in the deck, it could function well.

Cheers,
AJ

I have a love hate relationship with Hoopa-EX. I tend to start with it more often than I should and when I do, it becomes a liability and I hate having them. With how often I start with it, I considered running a single copy of Winona over it to see if I'd see it in my opening hand.

Hoopa can be good, even more so if you want to use Shaymin-EX over Octillery so you can at least draw cards but I don't really feel you starve much for Pidgeot-EX. Before I would try Hoopa-EX again, I would try running Pokemon Fan Club over it. While we could Ultra Ball for one and get setup, just the risk of starting with it turns me off of it. You may like it but I think it would require a build that can manage it.
 
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Why doesn't your deck have any answer to Regice? That's a wide-range vulnerability.

It's good deck etiquette to always try diversifying your resources (Basic, EX, Stage 1/Stage 2/BREAK) so that you can't be locked down (or locked out) by the technicality of a simple effect.
 
Why doesn't your deck have any answer to Regice? That's a wide-range vulnerability.

It's good deck etiquette to always try diversifying your resources (Basic, EX, Stage 1/Stage 2/BREAK) so that you can't be locked down (or locked out) by the technicality of a simple effect.

I have Pokemon Ranger listed as a tech option simply because I haven't seen enough Regice to justify adding to the main list but I do acknowledge it could be a problem. There are about 8 deck spots available (more if you take out other cards you don't like), and you can fill out the deck how you like. You also have your option of non-EX attackers if you like Cobalion or something else more effective if you fear it.
 
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