In the past week I’ve seen loads of complaints from Pokémon Pocket players about Solgaleo ex, with fans calling the giant metal lion overpowered, or pointing out how powercrept it is over similar ‘mons from previous packs (such as Machamp ex).
But despite the Skarmory/Solgaleo deck being my personal nemesis – with that accursed Incineroar it’s only equal – in the latest big Pokémon Pocket tournament it performed surprisingly badly.
Despite there being plenty of Solgaleo players among the 1,046 taking part in Ursiiday’s Pocket Weekly 27 tournament on May 3, we have to go right down to 23rd place before they start showing up in the standings, which suggests that this is nowhere near the best deck in the meta.
So what is? Well, despite the yellow bird being a formidable stumbling block, Darkrai and Giratina seem to be demonstrating some surprising resilience, with one or the other (or both) appearing in six out of the top ten decks.
But the meta doesn’t seem stale, as despite the prevalence of last season’s best Pokémon cards, there’s still a variety of interesting decks at the top.
For instance, we have the fire type deck making good use of Rare Candy to run both Charizard ex and Incineroar. There’s also Rampardos, now teamed up with Garchomp ex rather than Lucario. And a little lower down the table, Arceus is still here – the favored strategy is Crobat, now that Stage 2s are so much more viable.
We’ll go into the top two decks in slightly more detail. Second place is Magnezone/Oricorio, using the latter to stall, while Magnezone builds up for some big hits. With any Oricorio deck, if you’re able to KO all the opponent’s non-ex Pokémon, you’re guaranteed the win, which makes for some interesting play and counterplay.
And finally, the top deck – at least at this early stage – is a rather slowpaced strategy running Snorlax, Greninja, and Giratina ex. Since I’m a filthy netdecker, I immediately pounced on this list to start grinding through Ranked mode, and it’s a really intriguing one, that’s fiendishly difficult to play well.
One interesting challenge with this build is that you have no way to retreat your Snorlax once it’s in the active spot, so you can end up out-maneouvered. You also have to be very mindful about where you’re investing your energy. Still, when it all goes well and you’re able to build up three threatening Pokémon at the same time, the deck really sings.
Overall, the meta still feels like it’s shifting, which is kind of what you want to see in the first two weeks with a new set – it’s a sign that nothing is obviously ultra powerful, or that there are counters to every meta strategy. We’ll definitely be checking back in next week though, to see how things have progressed.
It’s also nice to see that the Ursii tournament is back up to over 1,000 players. Over the weeks we’ve seen attendance gradually drop, slowly dwindling down to less than 700. It seems like the new set has done its job and reignited interest – so we’ll see if it can maintain it.
What Pokémon Pocket decks are you currently playing? Come and brag about your winrate in our exciting new Discord. And if you’re feeling bad about spending too much on the app, this list of the ludicrous amounts fans have coughed up for rare Pokémon cards may be balm for the soul.
Source: Wargamer
