r/pkmntcg • u/Stealthy_Shadow • 19h ago
Meta Discussion Unique Decks at Worlds
Now that worlds is over, I wanted to look at some of the decks that had surprising placements and discuss them. There are definitely some big surprises for me if you take a deeper look into tournament results. This is not going to be every unique deck, just the ones I thought were really interesting and wanted to focus on.
First one I want to highlight is the 30th place deck by Gan Pee Wei Jun. This was a Toxtricity box with Pecharunt, Brute Bonnet, Chi-Yu, and Mega Absol. A heavy count of Munkidori here helps a ton as well I'm sure. There's obviously hand control with the Mega Absol, big damage with the Brute Bonnet, and even retreat lock options with Pecharunt. I see lots of potential here, but also that this would be very difficult to pilot properly. You would need to come in with a plan to each matchup here. Most of the attacking mons having only one copy does also worry me with the potential to lose important pieces to prizing. Still a really cool deck to see place so high at this level of competition.
Second deck I wanted to look at the 50th Place Sharpedo Deck by Shih Wei Chen. This is an archetype that has been all but dead since the release of Phantasmal Flames. Even the list here seems to be built with a straight forward approach in mind. There is 3 Pecharunt Ex in the deck and heavy amount of hand distruption that I find unique to this archetype. I think perhaps the heavy pokemon and supporter count here lets the player get around item lock and play ultra aggressive into the budews we typically see in Pult. They managed to beat every Pult they went against here so I think this one presents some serious potential when discussing Pult counters.
The third deck here is a complete shocker. One that absolutely no one had on their radar or even being in discussion anywhere I saw. That is the 115th placing deck by Alexandre Solé: Mega Chandelure. This deck didn't finish with the best standing but being able to make Day 2 is an achievement in of itself here. This list plays with a 4 of both the Mega Chandelure and the single prize version. The addition of Elgyem here also creates the possibility of moving energy around to really make that psuedo retreat lock happen. With both the Chandelures and Comfey in this list, I see a lot of options to create deck out games and win through a more control style approach. Overall, I really enjoyed the ideas behind this list and I look forward to seeing what else can happen going forward.
The last list I wanted to look at is the 120th placing Mega Venusaur list by Shizuki Nakagawa. This list feels like they take every bit of grass support that's come out recently and throw it in a deck. I do wonder how consistent it is to get setup here with needing up to 3 Stage 2s set up just to get good damage out. I would like to point out that this list has also cut any kind of healing you may see typically in these lists such as Wally's or maybe even a jumbo ice cream. Instead focusing on more search and consistency pieces. Maybe that is what a deck like this needed all along. There does seem to be a big weakness to single prize decks here as most of the losses are to decks like Alakazam and Festival Lead. Overall this seems like a more consistent way to build the deck that I found very interesting, but perhaps the one I'm the least excited to actually try. I would maybe want to cut the Mega Meganium from this if I were to try it.
Please share any other lists that interested you here. I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts on these decks or ways they could potentially be improved.
