Intro
I don’t know how I do it.
Normally, actors get type-cast by other people, such as their directors or their audience. But for some crazy reason, I’ve typecast myself as the Underground staff’s designated Gengar guy. Even though I’ve never used a Gengar deck in a premier event until just a couple weeks ago, I’ve found myself writing about it no less than two times in the past.
The strange thing, though, is that I actually like to talk about the two Gengar decks out right now, since they win in such different ways as opposed to other archetypes.
Today’s article will be my third – and probably final – dedicated to Gengar. The first segment will be dealing with my last few musings on Vilegar for the MD-BW format, and the second will look towards the future, detailing my comprehensive testing of Lostgar for the HGSS-on format (which is, of course, the presumptive format for U.S. Nationals, Canadian Nationals, Worlds, and the 2011-2012 season).
This ought to have a little bit of something for everyone, so I don’t really encourage skipping around: some sections you may not initially have interest in will go into presently relevant issue, so check out both parts!
With those formalities out of the way, let’s get into the bulk of things…
2011 Spring Battle Roads: Concluding the Vilegar Canon
Some of you may question the wisdom of putting an MD-BW segment into a late May article. However, for the sake of those who have Nationals utilizing this format, as well as many of you planning on attending Battle Roads in these next couple of weeks, I feel that knowing the final ins and outs of this deck is essential.
Like many of my fellow competitive players, I too have moved on to testing the HGSS-on format almost exclusively; however, that hasn’t kept me from testing this fascinating “twilight” format, and in most of my experiences, I’ve found Vilegar to be a clear-cut tier one choice.
From the moment I heard “Sabledonk ruins the format” being cranked out from the keyboards of players worldwide, I had a gut feeling that Vilegar was, by default, a top contender. This was later confirmed when one of my testing partners and I dealt out twenty games of the Sabledonk/Vilegar matchup, in which Vilegar won approximately two-thirds of the time.
Even when running Regice, Unown [Dark] and Pokémon Collectors, we failed to improve the little dark gnome’s win percentage, so I was absolutely confident that the threat could be dealt with.
Since this testing, Sabledonk has been disproved itself as a “best deck in format” (BDIF). But even without that threat, Vilegar has a powerful edge against a vast majority of competitors in this metagame (or as some may consider it, a lack thereof).
So with that, I decided to go with this fleshed-out Vilegar skeleton for both of my Battle Roads…
