Malamar’s Relevance, Gardeon’s Potential, and Ability Zard’s Domination

We have had 3 major events in standard: World’s, Melbourne SPE, and Sheffield Regionals. Sheffield included Hidden Fates into Standard while World’s and Melbourne SPE did not, but there was only 1 Hidden Fates card in the Sheffield top 8 decks (Charizard-GX HIF in Mewtwo Box). Sometimes you want to deal 300. Based on this,  I am currently evaluating that Hidden Fates has yet to have much of an influence on the competitive standard meta. 

Malamar of any variant did not top 8 masters division at World’s, Melbourne, or Sheffield Regionals. Looking at Day 2 of World’s and Sheffield we can see that plenty of Malamar were present and we can go further to say that they were even piloted by talented players like Stephanie Ivanoff at Sheffield and Takuya Yoneda at Worlds. Melbourne had a much smaller representation in day 2 with only one Malamar deck reported. 

In lieu of Malamar’s moderate success at recent major events, the archetype has gained a negative stigma amongst many players. Players have labeled Malamar as an inconsistent, weak, and predictable deck. Contrast to these opinions, Spell Tag Malamar has been performing exceptionally well at League Cups in the US and is being piloted by reputable players. Some notable players that have found recent success with Spell Tag Malamar at League Cups include Chip Richey, Grant Manley, and Igor Costa. Below is Stephane Ivanoff’s Spell Tag Malamar list from Sheffield Regionals; it is 59/60 cards similar to a League Cup winning list that Grant Manley shared on Twitter. 

The public opinion of Malamar has been volatile and polarizing. Group think is always a factor, but Malamar has a particular stigma attached to it. Supporters highlight the decks consistency and detractors cite the deck's low power level and lack of big numbers. 

After World’s, Malamar took a big hit in expected performance due to it’s mediocre array of finishes in day 2. Competitive players began considering it as an undesirable archetype that doesn’t definitively beat anything, with 45% matchups across the board. A small fast-forward to the present puts us into a frenzy of League Cups where Malamar is now performing well. Opinions are changing back and forth and I have been observing players’ confusion on where this archetype stands exactly, especially with Atlantic City Regionals coming up at the end of the month. 

My answer to all of this? Spell Tag Malamar is an inherently functional and cohesive deck. But, I evaluate the viability of the deck differently for best of 1 than I do for best of 3 as many players now do. Malamar in its current optimal form normally plays longer games than most other current attacking archetypes due to its strategy which applies small to moderate amounts of damage over time with mostly single prize attackers. 50 minutes is typically not enough time for 3 average games of Pokemon between X deck and Spell Tag Malamar due to some combination of the natural pace set by single prize Pokemon, the setup and long early turns for Malamar, a few long decisions on the side of each player per game, and set up for games two and three. Usually you want to scoop the game to save time when you are in a very unfavorable position and it would take high-variance situations to come back and win. Spell Tag Malamar is hard to apply this strategy to as most games will be long and slow regardless of who is winning, and Malamar’s win condition is often not solidified until the last turn or turns as it has a tendency to play from behind and win off of single card inclusions. Because of the deck’s positive matchup spread versus the meta, I consider it one of the strongest 30 minute best of 1 decks, but I am extremely hesitant to enter a best of 3 tournament with the deck again in its current state and in this current meta. 

Green’s Gardevoir & Sylveon won Sheffield Regionals this past weekend and has become a favorite of mine over the past week or two due to its unique controlling attributes and playstyle. If you have yet to pilot Gardeon, you should know that it is a highly reactive deck due to healing, switching, and reset stamps; but, it can also be proactive with heavy Power Plant to restrict ability usage, fairy charms to wall off damage completely from specific types, and Magical Miracle GX which puts your opponent down to a zero card hand. 

Gardeon is in a weird spot as a play for major events, since it’s worst matchup is Ability Reshizard and that is one of the most popular and best decks in standard at the moment. Of course, one deck shouldn’t scare Gardeon away. Ability Zard was abundantly popular and successful in Sheffield yet Gardeon was able to win Sheffield Regionals which is a great testament to a deck’s potential even if it takes a bad matchup to the top deck. 

Ability Zard techs do exist and can make the matchup more manageable for Gardeon, but you’ll see this 1st place list omitted direct techs and went for streamlined consistency. Ability Zard techs include but are not limited to: Giant Bomb, Wait and See Hammer, and Judge. 

Other than its Ability Zard matchup, I am confident in saying that the majority of its matchups in the discovered meta are even to favorable aside from the stall / Control decks.

Ability Zard has claim to one of the best decks in the format and it has several classic features that have historically pushed decks into the top tiers:

1. A mixture of single prize and multiple prize attackers. The current builds of this deck are able to lead with single prize attackers that are able to knock out most Pokémon, and save their multiple prize Pokémon Reshizard and Heatran-GX for when they are necessary. This allows the deck to trade favorably or even at the very least with most decks in the meta. 
2. A gust effect. Whether you know it as Gust, Custom Catcher, or Guzma, the ability to choose an opponent’s benched Pokémon and make it their active has been an indubitably strong mechanic since the game’s inception. Ninetales TEU has Standard’s strongest and most efficient gust effect and it conveniently fits into a deck that runs a lot of disposable Fire energy.
3. Fire decks in general have Welder at their disposal which enables this deck to achieve its high damage potential consistently while also drawing cards. Energy acceleration is often an important part for decks with higher energy costs, and while this deck would likely not exist at the level it does without Welder I’m sure it would find some sort of success with other means of energy acceleration like Volcanion UNB.

While I understand and value the changes made from the World’s list to the Sheffield list, there are definitely pros and cons in my eyes. I like that Fire Crystal has been added as an out to energy in the form of a Trainer since Jirachi helps find Trainers easily. I also like that with the addition of Fire Crystal came Blacephalon UNB since its attack can reach great damage especially with energy retrieval available. However, the main drawback for me is that Victini Prism now caps at 220 damage since the energy count has been dropped from 18 to 13. While in the previous lists Victini Prism could knock out just about anything, I feel it will mainly be used on an opportune turn to gust up a Dedenne-GX and knock that out with Infinity while also replenishing your deck with fire energy. 

Until next week trainers! You can check out more of my work on youtube at Celio's Network!