New Standard, New Ninetales

Rotation has arrived and we have already jumped straight into tournaments for the 2018 season! We have had the Expanded Ft. Wayne regional Championships last weekend, seeing Michael Pramawat triumph with Night March. My season also properly began last weekend attending a League Cup where I played Greninja with 4 Energy Loto and 4 Timer Ball. This was due to me coming last in the Omnipoke North American International Championships Fantasy Draft that took place a few months ago (make sure you go and check out our YouTube channel once you’ve finished this article), and despite the deck being an absolute joke I had a lot of fun and came Top 4 which was a huge surprise, and am really glad to be getting back into playing Pokemon after not really playing properly for a couple of months.

Today however I’m here to talk about the Standard format and a more reasonable approach to Ninetales as a deck on the whole. Ninetales is a deck that I haven’t seen too many people talking about for post rotation. A lot of the hype has been around Gardevoir-GX and Metagross-GX and whilst these are very viable archetypes going into the early portion of the season, I think Ninetales definitely isn’t a deck to be slept on. Below I have included a super simplistic list for you guys to begin testing with and seeing how the deck function 

Looking at the deck on the whole, I think it is one of the most versatile decks we have in format right now. There are a lot of decks that are very “Set up and swing style” decks which just aim to hit whatever is staring them down in the active position and take 6 prizes as soon as possible. And whilst this is a perfectly fine strategy, I feel that Ninetales is a deck that actually has more than one-win condition to it and can not only catch people off guard, but can reward skilled players than can analyse the multiple ways the deck has of winning and find the best approach for the specific matchup.

Alolan Vulpix is the basic of our main attacker and is a fantastic beginning to the deck. Normally, these Basic Pokemon are pretty irrelevant and only serve the purpose of evolving into the stronger Pokemon you play. However, with Alolan Vulpix you actually have an incredibly viable early game attacker. Beacon searches out 2 Pokemon from the deck for 0 energy cost which is fantastic in the first few turns. This means that providing you have an energy and a way to access a Vulpix turn one you can be “Beaconing” straight away. Alolan Vulpix is played in decks as an early game option in its own right so having this as the basic of our main attacker is a huge consistency boost overall.

The main attacker of the deck is the GX Alolan Ninetales from Guardians Rising. This is still one of my favourite cards from the set and is so versatile. For a Double Colourless Energy you’re able to deal 50 damage wherever you want on the board which can really help setting up to KO some of the bigger Stage 2 GXs within the format right now such as Gardevoir. In combination with the Tapu Koko Promo too, you can also take out any basics that you’re opponent isn’t able to evolve quickly as this combination overall deals 70 damage over 2 turns, knocking out almost all basic non-EX/GXs. Ninetales second attack deals a huge 160 damage for just 3 energy, and although you’ll often have a Double colourless on Ninetales to be able to more efficiently discard energy, this is still a super-efficient attack. In combination with Aqua Patch too, you can set up this attack very quickly and start hitting huge numbers very early in the game. Finally, Ninetales’ GX attack is Ice Path GX and moves all damage counters from Ninetales to your opponents active Pokemon. This is essentially Damage Change Mewtwo but amped up as you also fully heal yourself. This means anything that doesn’t quite one-shot Ninetales will potentially end up KO’ing themselves. You can also combine the GX attack with Guzma to be able to KO something your opponent is setting up on the bench whilst keeping your Ninetales in the active position healthy.

Next up is a new addition from Burning Shadows, “Baby” Alolan Ninetales. This has the Luminous Barrier Ability which is pretty much identical to Safeguard from some Pokemon from the BW era. The ability prevents all effects of attacks, including damage, done to Alolan Ninetales by your opponents EX and GX Pokemon, and considering the format is full of these right now this is a really relevant ability to have. There is also no longer any Hex Maniac in the format meaning that Garbotoxin is the only Ability Lock to worry about. Some decks will just have no real answers to the ability and it will steal you games in certain situations. It is also often quite easy to see when an opponent is beginning to set up what could be an answer from them, giving you time to use the GX Ninetales to get rid of any potential threats to your Safeguarder before they become an issue. A lot of the time the best way of utilising BabyTales is to N your opponent to a low hand size and begin using the Non-GX then in order to also reduce the chance your opponent has an answer to the Ability.

Tapu Koko Promo is a fantastic addition to the deck, giving the deck a free retreater outside of Float Stones meaning that Aqua Patches are much more likely to be live overall. The spread attack, Flying Flip, also is a huge math fixer as between 1-2 Flying Flips will set up almost everything in the format for Ninetales to one-shot with a Choice Band later on in the game. Opponents are also much less likely to heal off 20-40 damage compared to 160-190 so it can also force awkward plays from opponents too.

2-2 Octillery is very good for keeping up with consistency in the late game, preventing you from being N’d to a low hand size and losing the game from that. Due to also running the Brigette Package and a lot of Alolan Vulpix, there is a very high chance of being able to find and set up Octillery in the early turns increasing our overall consistency throughout the game. There are also a lot of supporters within the deck that do not draw too many cards so begin able to have in built draw power outside of supporters means that playing things like Guzma and Kukui are not too detrimental to the set-up of the deck overall.

Finally, Tapu Lele-GX is of course a staple right now in 95% of decks and having a 3 count is almost always what you should run at the moment minimum in order to access your supporters throughout the game.

Onto the Supporters themselves and we start with the full 4-4 count of Professor Sycamore and N in order to make sure you always have drawing options whenever you need them. 3 Guzma again is super important for just having access to the card and since VS Seeker is no longer in Standard, resource management is at a premium in Standard and we always want to be taking prizes on exactly what we want. 2 Professor Kukui is a huge help with math much like Tapu Koko Promo. This pushed Ninetales attack to 180 damage without a Choice Band, knocking out many basic EXs and GXs, and up to 210 with a Choice Band, KOing many Stage 1 GXs. Finally 1 Brigette is fantastic since Lele can search it out on Turn one and begin getting your Vulpix, Remoraid and Koko promos out!

4 Ultra Ball is pretty standard in most lists at the moment, having good synergy in the deck in particular being able to discard Water Energy to set up for Aqua Patches later on in the game. Speaking of which there’s also 4 Aqua Patch. This helps streaming the attackers, even being able to set them up in a single turn with good draws, which can take opponents by surprise. 2 Field Blower is again pretty standard at the moment for being able to get rid of any Stadiums on the field, as well as things like Choice Band, Fighting Fury Belt and Float Stone which all see frequent play. Finally, 1 Rescue Stretcher is particularly good for again streaming attackers and getting another BabyTales, 3 can sometimes be too much for an opponent to deal with overall. 3 Choice Band is hugely important for being able to take at least one 1-shot during the game which can help win the prize trade into your favour quite nicely. It also makes sure BabyTales can 2-shot almost all EX/GXs in the format which again is very good for prize trading. Finally, 2 Float Stone of our own means opponents can’t Guzma stall targets like Octillery too well and we don’t have to waste energy attachments in order to move them.

Some tech options could include the devolution package (Necrozma-GX and Espeon-EX), Brooklet Hill, and a Tapu Fini-GX. These are the things you could be looking at playing if you want to play around with some of the counts of cards in the list above, but the list provided is a simplified list for you guys to begin testing with to hopefully get a feel for the deck.

I hope you have enjoyed the Article, please let me know down in the comments if there’s anything you’d change or perhaps something I have forgotten about in the tech section. Make sure you check out Omnipoke on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Twitch for more Pokemon content every day!