Top Expanded Decks for the Roanoke Regionals

With the Roanoke Regional Championship coming up right around the corner, I have been thinking a lot about which decks are the best plays for the event.  These are my top 5 picks.

5. Night March 

Night March is a very strong deck, and it ruled expanded for a significant amount of time.  It’s time as the alpha deck in the format seems to have come and gone, though. Both Drampa Garb and Zoroark found ways to completely shut down this glass cannon.  Drampa uses Garbodor and Oricorio while Zoroark uses Hex, its massive hp, and Ghetsis. It is definitely the most hated deck in the last three seasons, and it will run over any player who isn’t prepared for it.  Night March also knows that chaos is a ladder. While I don’t expect it to do dominate the tournament by any means, I think it is a solid play for newer players.

Here is a straightforward Night March deck list with Zoroark.  It is completely fine to drop the Zoroark and play a more teched out deck (you would play a one of Oranguru as well), but I prefer the Zoroark version.

4. Trevenant 

Trevenant is one of the most frustrating decks to play against.  Not being able to play items, sometimes before you get a turn, can be quite difficult to handle.  The deck had some amazing pilots fail to find success at the last expanded regional. From my conversations with them, it seems like Trevenant had two major issues.  First, Zoroark is a bad matchup. Zoroark doesn’t need items to draw to find what it needs. It plays two Hex Maniac, and it has both weakness and resistance in its favor against Trevenant.  The second issue was starting Pokemon besides Phantump. Sometimes it is very difficult to get the early lock established, and opponents were able to get an unstoppable board state.

The list is a modified version of Michael Catron’s top 16 list from the previous meta.

3. Drampa Garbodor

Drampa Garbodor has been one of the most successful decks in Expanded this season.  It was the first deck to take down Zoroark GX since its release in Shining Legends. It dethroned Night March in Daytona.  It is a deck with a lot of options. The reason it isn’t higher is that it has to make a few really important decisions on what it wants to counter for Roanoke.  In a new format with so many great decks, that is not a decision I want to make. However, I expect a lot of great players to pilot this to great success.

This is Igor Costa’s winning list from Costa Mesa.  It may very well dominate Buzzwole, but I would consider adding another counter, like Mewtwo EX, just to guarantee the very common matchup.

2. Buzzwole

Buzzwole is the most hyped deck going into the tournament.  At one point, I was all aboard the hype train. While I still think the deck is amazing, it has to find a way to solidify the Zoroark matchup in order to take its place on the expanded throne.  The new cards that Buzz has access to include the baby Buzzwole and Beast Ring. Beast Ring is extremely powerful, especially in a format with Korrina. Buzz has to win the weakness battle against Drampa Garbodor, and it needs to out counter Zoroark.  Expect to play AT LEAST one Buzzwole in Virginia, maybe even 3-4.

This list is adapted from Rahul Reddy’s list.  I think taking out Lycanroc may also be a fine approach to the deck.  I dropped a strong for another fighting. You need as many as possible with all of the basic energy acceleration.

1. Zoroark

  Zoroark is the best Pokemon card ever printed.  In expanded, the deck has a significant amount of space for techs, so I expect good players to be prepared for the massive amounts of Buzzwole.  Outside of Buzzwole decks, the deck can do something amazing that no deck, outside of maybe Night March, has been able to pull off. This deck can string Hex Maniac for three, four, or even five or more turns!  The ability to consistently turn off your opponent’s abilities while still drawing lots of cards keeps a lot of fringe decks in their place. A lot of people are talking about Malamar as an option. Imagine being hexed four turns in a row with that deck.  How are you supposed to build an attacker? Imagine trying to find another attacker and a DCE in Night March when you cannot use Tapu Lele GX or Shaymin EX. Being under Hex Maniac every turn is even very difficult for Zoroark to handle in the mirror match.  Zoroark is able to tech an Exeggutor to combat this, a luxury that other ability-based decks simply don’t have. I fully expect Zoroark to come out on top again in Roanoke, but only time will tell.

This is a list that Peter Kica posted on Twitter.  It uses bench Barrier Mr. Mime and Mewtwo EX to combat Buzzwole.  Those are definitely great techs to take the deck forward into the new format.

If you decide you want to play something else in Roanoke, it needs to beat three of the four of Zoroark, Buzzwole, Malamar, and Drampa.  I expect those to be the most played decks. Despite Sableye Garbodor’s recent victory, I expect it not to be widely played. True or not, there is a widely held belief that the deck is very hard to play, and it takes a long time to master its matchups.  Good luck to everyone at Roanoke!