Deck Lists for Alternate SP, Stage Two, and Georgia Marathon-Winning Concepts
With only one weekend of City Championships left, my brother and I have been running through several alternative decks to play. We each have our reasons for hunting outside of the “big four” (Luxchomp, Dialgachomp, Gyarados, Vilegar): for me, it’s about finding a hidden winning strategy that I may have overlooked; for him, it’s recovering his season, and returning to his element and play-style.
However, the one thing that amazed both of us was how little variety there’s been in our metagame relative to how vast our card pool is. Want to change that? Here’s how…
Practically speaking, think of these as several mini deck articles. I won’t go into much detail about matchups, nor will I explain every card choice in-depth, but it should give you a good enough idea of how the decks work, and whether or not they would be good in your metagame.
For this article, the main goal is to consider some previously unconsidered decks; but beyond combating a stale metagame, and beyond anything pertaining to this format, the larger goals of this article are to:
- Understand why “good” decks fail due to metagame
- Show how an underdog can win a tournament
Even if these become outdated or modified-illegal, their general trends show us vital things about metagame, deck choice, and various rises and falls.
Part 0: A brief Aside: “On Rogue”
No, “rogue” doesn’t automatically equate to bad, or amount to an inflated sense of ego: as long as your deck choice is well-considered, and as long as you aren’t flaunting how gloriously unique you are, then it’s neither. Put simply, rogue is just when you go against the usual suspects, and run something different.
(And running something different has its merits, as shown by the World Championship wins of Tsuguyoshi Yamato, Jeremy Maron, and Stephen Silvestro. Besides, many famous archetypes over the years had to start out somewhere, so if you feel you have something great, then don’t lack confidence – play it!!!)
Part 1.0: Alternate SP Lists
We know Luxchomp…And we know Dialgachomp…Yeah, and we know Sableye, too. However, there are way more lists than that; way more ways to play SP. Here are just some of the alternate ways you could:
