Last time, we looked at the meta of Kanto with only the first 151 pokémon and no Powers at all. Since then, we have looked over the different Powers for all 18 types, and I hope they will lead to a more balanced meta where Grass does not dominate everything.
The effect of the Powers on the meta comes through three sources:
- The Powers themselves. Some of them might be overpowered or underpowered compared to each-other.
- The new strategies and counters available. I expect that big pokémon will be weaker now, and that pokémon with power-like effects will be less important.
- More cards to play with. Earlier, each type was kind of limited in which cards to bring into the deck. More choice, more power.
Earlier, we saw Grass, Water and Poison as the three strongest decks, probably because these are the types with most pokémon to choose from. There are an equal amount of Powers per type, meaning this discrepancy has been fixed.
From some 3000 decks and twenty thousand duels, I have pulled out the 75 best decks. Their type-distribution is as follows:
- 13 - Grass/Flying
- 12 - Rock/Ground
- 11 - Poison/Ghost
- 9 - Ground/Rock
- 8 - Water/Electric
- 6 - Electric/Water and Bug/Fairy
- 3 - Fire/Fighting
- 2 - Psychic/Steel and Ghost/Poison
- 1 - Steel/Psychic and Normal/Dark
It might look like Grass still is strongest, but considering dual typings, Rock/Ground and Ground/Rock in total have 21 of the 75 decks. Though this sounds like a lot, it still is much more balanced than last time.
Introducing Imaze:
Imaze is a hard control deck. With two Rock Slides, two Earthquakes, two Dugtrios and a Nidoking, it has quite a lot of options to remove its opponent's board if wide, and when it is high, it can use Petrify instead.
It is able to stay alive, then, but how does it win? The two Kabutops and two Omanytes give it sufficient Fossil fuel to run for a while. I think a Fossil on average goes about five times before running out, giving the deck quite a lot of extra time. With two Tests of Time, it is sure to get the +4 health Idol Power, which, together with Rock Defense lets it accumulate an insane amount of health.
Its strategy of getting to fatigue can be seen from its average win being two turns later than its average loss. The Marowaks, when as well-protected as they are in this deck, probably let it win quite a lot of games before going so far, though.
Next up, let us see if the Grass decks are the same as before, or have changed, too:
Freylout looks to be a combo-oriented deck, wanting to stack up buffs onto Quick or Flying pokémon. The buffs are supplied from Bulbasaur and Ivysaur, while Pidget, Pidgeotto, Doduo and To The Skies! offer Quick and Flying cards. Twister, Weepinbell and Naturalise let it remove threats, but only for so long.
The combo of Freylout seems to be an early one, because it most often wins on turn 10, and if the game goes on for much longer than that, it has a higher chance of losing.
I am quite happy with this. It utilises the synergy between Flying and Grass much better than before, where it simply stacked up buffs senselessly. The synergy between a pokémon with flying and Exeggutor is also quite neat.
For the third deck, it is only fair to look at a Poison/Ghost deck, which, together with the extra Ghost/Poison decks shares a tied second place. One of them has the pretty cool name of Zidoqueen:
Whenever you see a Bellsprout, uyu need to ask yourself what it is for. Looking it over, almost all the cards have cries (again, don't look at Arbok, that's a typo). I think it is safe to say that these Bellsprouts are general purpose. They also combo well with Victreebel to give you infinite card return, if that is what you desire in life.
While Zidoqueen is a late-game deck, it wins and loses games at about the same turn, showing that it is not a fatigue-centric deck, though the Haunters might help that strategy if need be. It has several options for taking out cards, though several, like Arbok and Nidoqueen, are not immediate.
If anything, Spirit Infusion on its own might be the central combo-piece of the deck. This makes sense: For Spirit Infusion to work, you need to last until a couple of turns past reaching the max 8 mana, counting up fainted pokémon. Then you must put Spirit Infusion on a card already on board, or a cheap card you can put besides it, like Zubat or Bellsprout. And finally, you need to remove any potential blockers the opponent puts out. Apparently, Zidoqueen has just enough of these pieces to reach a 62% win-rate.
Finally, though split along Water/Electric and Electric/Water, fourth place goes to their 14 combined decks. Since we looked at a Water/Electric deck last, let us instead take a look at the Electric/Water deck, Elezabuzz.
I think we have found our tempo-deck. When we looked at the other decks, turn 10 or 11 seemed quite normal, but here we have turn 8 as the average end of game.
Elezabuzz knows two things: zapping things with Discharge, Pikachu and Electrabuzz, and bubbling things with Goldeen, Wartortle and Form Bubbles.
Tentacool doubles as blocker, an early aggressive card, and a great target for Bolt of Power.
And then, an ingenious combo to end the game: Playing Seadra, dumping your hand, and then playing Golduck.
I just do not agree with putting in two Golducks. It is a bit risky. And Slowpoke seems like a total misfit in this type of deck. But apparently, the AI knows best, because I could scarcely reach 57% win-rate myself.
Now that powers have been added to the Kanto meta, not only has the balance of power shifted towards Ground/Rock and control type strategies, but it is overall a lot more balanced. The four main deck types are almost equal in frequency, while earlier, Grass/Flying on its own took up more than half the succesful decks.
If there is one weakness, it is that while there are a lot of Powers, there are a lot of Powers. Imaze almost has as many Powers as pokémon, and while it fits the archetype, it might also point out a problem with missing diversity in pokémon, especially among a type like Dark, where we still have not seen a single pokémon in Kanto.
Well, what else to do than to move on to Johto?