Endmaker

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Which new cards are you most excited for?

For a game that's supposedly about magical animals, everyone is looking for 2-star cards of humans. (I know, I know, it's the meta / how useful they are.)

At the start of this season, I predicted that Cofagrigas would pop off.

With ranked battles back, there is now a more serious environment to test it out.

TLDR of my findings: it's no good. Play the meta decks if you want to climb ranks easily.

I made a couple of modifications to the deck before bringing it to ranked mode:

First up, one copy of Pokeball was replaced with Lisia. With 5 low-HP pokemons in the deck, Lisia is simply too good to pass up. Also, Chingling is rampant in the current meta and would block the usage of pokeballs.

The other change was to replace Red Card with Mars. Again, Chingling disables Red Card. The pokemons in this deck also tend to get knocked out a lot, which means Mars become more effective.

The results:

I played a total of 50 games with this deck, starting in Ultra Ball 3 and ending in Ultra Ball 4.

I won 26 of these games, lost 23 and tied 1.

That means that this deck has a win rate of 52%, which is a far cry from the winrate of a standard Mega Altaria deck (55-60%).

Now that I have played a significant number of games with Cofagrigas, its weaknesses became apparent.

First up, its HP of 120 is too low, well below the threshold of 130-140 HP, which means it gets knocked out by the likes of Hydreigon, Mega Altaria and Mega Blaziken easily. Bringing a Giant Cape doesn't help as its HP would only get extended to 140.

It's output damage of 120 is too low as well, requiring Red to cross the HP threshold. The thing is, everyone knows about the HP threshold and would run a copy of Giant Cape for pokemons that are vulnerable.

The discard mechanic turned out to be a huge drawback. Cofagrigas was only able to attack 1-2 turns before having to discard key cards or running out of cards to attack. Copycat was unable to compensate for this weakness as everyone have wised up to it and always dump their hand.

Its biggest weakness by far is its 2-energy retreat cost, both for its pre-evolution of Yamask as well as Cofagrigas itself. When Yamask is the only basic pokemon in my starting hand, it tends to stay in the active spot until it gets knocked out. It becomes especially bad when going first.

For all its downsides, this deck didn't do too badly with its 52% win rate. However, the real carry is Mega Altaria. Unfortunately, Cofagrigas simply doesn't have a place in this metagame.

Having said all that, it may be possible that this deck failed to perform well because its pilot (i.e. yours truly) suck at the game. To account for that, I needed some reference points i.e. I've got to check my win rates with other decks.

After these 50 games, I switched to a standard Decidueye deck:

It's not exactly meta, but it is solidly counter-meta and should have a positive performance.

I played 20 games, starting from the bottom of Ultra Ball 4 and ending in the middle.

I won 10 games and lost 10 games, so this deck has a winrate of 50%.

Technically, that means that the Cofagrigas deck performed better.

However, I'd argue that they have roughly the same performance, given that the sample size for Decidueye is much smaller, and that I got quite unlucky while playing this deck:

I ran into 3 Hydreigons - which Decidueye is supposed to counter and get a free win off of by the way - that managed to evolve by turn 2!

I then switched my deck to Mega Blaziken-Heatmor:

I only played 10 games with this deck, making it an incredibly small sample, but that's because that's all it took to climb the rest of the way into Master Ball.

I won 7 games and lost 3 games, with the final games being a 4-win streak.

Edit:

Correction, it's 7 wins and 4 losses. The tie is annoying.

I know that the sample size is small, but this is the kind of performance I'd expect of a meta deck.

Also, the point of high-roll decks like Hydreigon and Mega Blaziken is to get lucky and climb via win streaks.

Cofagrigas clearly cannot compete with a deck like this.

For reference, some of the most iconic pairs that came to mind are:

• Darkrai ex + Giratina ex
• Greninja + Cyrus
• Celebi ex + Serperior

Is it because of its sick artwork? Or is it because its super fun to play? Or something else entirely?

It feels like this card is being slept on.

120 damage for 2 energies on a stage 1, single-prized pokemon is seriously good.

The "discard 2 cards from your hand" side effect may seem bad, but it's possible to play around (and even make use of) it.

Here's a Mega Altaria - Cofagrigas deck that I've been playing:

deck:

• 2x Yamask
• 1x Jirachi
• 2x Chingling
• 2x Cofagrigas
• 2x Swablu
• 2x Mega Altaria
• 2x Pokeball
• 1x Red Card
• 2x Professor's Research
• 1x Cyrus
• 1x Red
• 2x Copycat

There are 2 ways this deck plays out: either Mega Altaria carries the game (like most other Mega Altaria decks), or Cofagrigas carries.

Naturally, this deck runs 2 copies of Yamask + Cofagrigas and Swablu + Mega Altaria for draw consistency. Likewise, 2 copies of Pokeball and Professor's Research for card draw.

2 copies of Chingling are included because they are that strong, stalling the first 1-2 turns while allowing you to store energies towards Cofagrigas and Mega Altaria.

Cyrus is there as a win condition in case Cofagrigas or Mega Altaria fail to KO the opponent's key pokemon.

Red is another major win condition, since Cofagrigas' 120 damage and Mega Altaria's 130 damage falls short of key breakpoints like Suicune's 140 hp.

Copycat is one of the main reasons for this deck being so strong. You can discard dead cards with Cofagrigas, then immediately draw a whole bunch using Copycat.

Red Card is there to punish opponents with too many cards in their hand, plus it pairs well with Copycat.

Jirachi is the one card I am most unsure of. I am still undecided on whether to replace it with Indeedee or even something else. Both are strong.

In this deck, the discard effect is turned into a strength instead of a weakness. I am sure y'all have experienced a number of games in the current meta where your opponent just shuffles your cards into your deck over and over.

The thing is, most cards can become a dead card depending on the situation.

• Chingling tend to be useless beyond the first few turns
• Jirachi is only situationally useful in late game through bench-sniping or Cyrus plays
• If you draw them way too late into the game, Pokeball and Prof are dead cards
• If your opponent plays a deck that uses up their hand quickly (e.g. Hydreigon), Copycat and Red Card are useless

Heck, even Yamask + Cofagrigas and Swablu + Mega Altaria can turn into dead cards. You likely won't need to put both copies of Cofagrigas into play, and (depending on the game) usually 1 Mega Altaria is enough. And sometimes, your Yamask or Swablu gets knocked out early. Any of these cases mean the remaining cards become dead.

By discarding these dead cards, you prevent your opponent from shuffling them back into your deck, which means lower chances of bad draws in subsequent turns.

Edit: Forgot to mention: reducing your hand size also means reduced effectiveness of your opponent's Copycat.

Note that this strategy benefits from the current metagame of multiple hand-shufflings. If the meta changes, this deck may not do as well.

Notable exclusions:

May - I noticed that May did not help me much in this deck, likely because this deck doesn't run any stage 2 pokemon. Finding the basic pokemons and evolving them is not difficult using the existing cards in the deck.

Lisia - There are 5 pokemons with 50 hp or lower, so it feels like a good inclusion. However, it may ruin Copycat if your bench is full and Cofagrigas isn't up by then. Also, none of the other cards feel right to replace. If we replace Jirachi with Lisia, that is one less draw target for Lisia. If we replace Copycat with Lisia, it reduces the consistency of the Cofagrigas discard + Copycat combo. I haven't tried replacing Prof with Lisia, but I suspect it makes drawing into the evolution pokemons - Cofagrigas and Mega Altaria - less consistent.

Indeedee - This and Jirachi are my most undecided cards for this deck. I can see the strength of Indeedee's heal and damage potential. However, Jirachi's global 30 damage is so good against babies. I'd say this is a flex pick depending on how the meta evolves. Either way, if they end up being a dead card, just discard them with Cofagrigas lol

Anything I missed? Tried the deck out? Let me know in the comments below!

I got Zapdos ex