Artwork by Canvascope
Hey everyone! Last week I was able to win the 2019 Greensboro Regional Championships using Drampa Garbodor. This deck has seen many great successes in the past but has been able to fly under the radar of most players this season. I want to share my experiences with the deck, my reason for playing it, and some advice for anyone interesting in picking up the deck for League Cups or Regionals in the future.
I originally wasn’t going to play in this event but changed my mind the day before. Nothing sounds better than trying to figure out the meta in one day, right?
After looking at what did well in Toronto, I operated on a few assumptions:
- The meta was unlikely going to see a crazy shift due to the lack of time between tournaments.
- PikaRom was still going to be popular due to its power, but its counters would also see play.
- ZoroGarb would see an uptick due to results and its solid match up spread.
- Archies was going to be a top contender for best deck in the format.
I was between playing Archie’s or Zoroark Garbodor. Archie’s felt like a well-rounded play because the deck was extremely powerful with its multitude of water attackers and it had solid answers to the entire meta. ZoroGarb was tempting as well due to the sheer power that Zoroark has in the expanded format coupled with how oppressive Garbotoxin can be in a format where more than half the decks rely on abilities.
The strengths of ZoroGarb deterred me from playing Archies. I’m sure the match up isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but the feeling of being vulnerable to Garbotoxin didn’t sit well. However, Zoroark felt just as susceptible to being countered by the field. Although it didn’t place well at the previous regional, PikaRom was in the center of many players’ minds and I excepted to see it with many of its counters present at the tournament. The biggest counter I was worried about was the Hitmonchan Wobb deck that poised a very large threat to ZoroGarb. The deck was hyped extremely hard during the week prior so I wasn’t feeling great about taking a hard match up to it.
At this point I identified the decks I wanted to beat; Hitmonchan, ZoroGarb, Archie’s and PikaRom, and realized that my tried and true Drampa Garb deck could beat them all. I knew how to play into Zoroark and Archies after piloting the deck at Dallas, the Hitmonchan match up seemed very favorable and I was willing to risk taking a few losses to Pikarom knowing I could pull sets out if they ever got too greedy. Mill decks were by far going to be the toughest to handle but I figured they were going to see a significant drop with the ban of Lusamine and people were more focused on dealing with PikaRom anyway that the deck seemed like a good call.
Fortunately, I made the right choice and was able to take home the big W! Now I want to share the list I was using and explain how some of the match ups work.
List
I’ll go into detail about the deck’s tech cards, but if you want an explanation of every card in the deck then I invite you to check out the deck profile video I did on the Sky Pillar’s YouTube channel.
Techs
Sigilyph-GX
The most pronounced card of the deck. I’ve memed about it before that the best quality about this card was its obscurity. While mostly kidding, it is the small, distinct, details of the card that make it stand out and a very potent threat for the meta.
Mirror Counter, the ability, is effective at pressuring your opponent to find options to deal with the Sigilyph without sacking their own EX or GX Pokémon. Their best choices are either using Guzma to get around it, attacking with a single prize Pokémon to avoid the splash back damage, or finding a way to shut off abilities, commonly with silent lab or Garb/Alolan Muk. Some decks can play around this better than others of course; Zorogarb decks generally do not care about the stupid psychic avianoid since shutting off abilities is already part of their strategy. However, decks like Pikarom and Archie’s, who usually only play one copy of Silent lab and limited single prize Pokémon, have lower odds of finding their answer before taking a significant amount of damage.
The attacks are much simpler to explain. Sonic Wing hits for 80 but is not affected by resistance. While not useful in every match up, +30 with choice band allows the card to hit for 110 which is good math for OHKOing Shaymin – EX and setting up two shots on cards like Zoroark-GX and Tag-Teams.
Intercept-GX is my favorite part of the card. Doing 60 damage times the amount of energies attached to your opponents active Pokémon, it gives the deck very reasonable answers to the very threatening TagTeam Pokémon in the format. If I get one energy on a Sigilyph, suddenly I’m threatening a potential KO on the next turn to any Magikarp/Wailord or Eevee/Snorelax Tag Team that my opponent chooses to sets up. You can also use it to keep your opponent from attaching too many energies to a PikaRom with the fear of being punished. This attack alone makes the card worth running and allows DramaGarb to hang with the new tag teams that have entered the format.
Wobbuffet
Wobbuffet is a popular card in many expanded decks because of its ability to shut off non-Psychic Pokémon abilities while in the active. It might seem like a redundant inclusion in a deck that already runs 2 copies of Garbotoxin Garbodor, however being able to turn off most abilities in the beginning of the game can significantly hinder decks like Archie’s Blastoise and Pikarom from gaining a lot of early game momentum.
Mr. Mime
I’ve gotten asked before why I run both Mr. Mime and Wobbuffet because it was more common in Dallas to tech one over the other for Archies (Wobb is obviously the superior counter). My reasoning is that now that PikaRom is very present in the format, Mr. Mime serves a dual purpose where it handles both Towering Splash GX and TagBolt GX. The mime is imperative in the PikaRom match up if you want to preserve your Sigilyph and keep it safe from being Guzma + GX for multiple prizes. The common argument is that “They’ll just silent lab and do it anyway” and while that might seem likely, remember that they usually only run one copy of Silent Lab and we are going to keep them under Parallel City to limit their Shaymin draws and controlling their hand size with N so their options to dig are significantly lower than usual. There is always the scenario where they have all the cards they need, and if so then GG, but Mr. Mime gives me just enough of an inch to stay ahead.
Adventure Bag
I loved running Adventure Bag all weekend. Increasing my outs to float + Garbotoxin and thinning the deck of two cards are both great reason for the inclusion. I also only run one copy of muscle band so this was perfect in situations where I needed to deal with a one prizer that my opponent sent out. This card also allows you to extend your teammates grabs because I can take X card plus Adventure Bag and get two tools so it was often better than just snagging a float stone. Overall a very solid card in the deck!
Match up Explanation
ZoroGarb (Even)
The ZoroGarb match up can be tricky, but it ultimately boils down to who can mange their resources better. The key resources Zoroark needs to win the game involve Sky Field, Pokémon to fill their bench, and Double Colorless Energy. The best way to approach this match is play the defensive game and try to take away as much of their resources as possible with righteous edge and stick them with the ol’ N to low + Garbotoxin + Parallel City. This match up plays incredibly close to how it did last season in expanded, the main difference being they no longer have puzzle of time to grab back resources.
During the first few turns you’ll want to search out 1-2 Drampas (Depending on your hand/start), a roadblock Sudowoodo to limit your opponent’s bench, and 1-2 Trubbish to get Garbotoxin Garbodor set up the following turn. Generally, I’ll Bridget for 1 Drampa, 1 Trubbish and 1 Sudowoodo to get things moving and try to get another Trubbish down on the following turn. The reason for only searching out one Trubbish with Bridgette is because of the limited outs to grabbing Sudowoodo and Drampa from the deck. Also, it’s generally unlikely for the Zoroark player to target a lone Trubbish on the second turn, especially if they want to deal with Sudowoodo limiting their bench.
The rest isn’t as straight forward and depends on what your opponent is doing. Generally, your best options are to keep DCE off the board with Drampa and N them after they take their first few prizes. You also want to be conservative with your Parallel cities. The goal is to keep parallel in play as long as possible so you need to be bumping sky fields and not the other way around. Remember, Pokémon and stadiums are two of Zoroark’s most important resources. The best strategy I’ve found is to let them fill their bench and punish it with a parallel city to remove Pokémon from play, Garbotoxin to cut off their draw engine, N to keep their hand size low, and either a righteous edge to remove the energy or an energy drive from Tapu Lele-GX to pressure the Zoroark (Trashalance is also very good if you can take the KO).
Wash-Rinse-Repeat this strategy until they are locked into a bad hand that they can’t draw out of and you can begin to take back the momentum of the game. Keep in mind that at any time they can hit the few cards they need to pull back ahead, but if you can remove their resources it becomes a lot harder for them to do so. I’ve found this match up takes a good understanding from both players and can change drastically if someone misplays. My advice if you’re interested in playing Drampa Garb is to get a lot of testing into this match up because both decks are very punishing towards each other and being more experienced can give you just enough of an edge to win the set.
Archie’s Blastoise (Favored)
This match up is very much the garb player’s to lose. The reason for labeling it favored (60/40) instead of extremely favored (80/20) is that if you don’t establish the right board, you will get ran over by the Archie’s player every time.
In the early game (Turns 1 &2), you need to establish ability lock within the first few turns, whether using Wobbuffet in active turn 1 or getting Garbotoxin set up turn 2, to prevent them from flooding their board with threats. They can probably still hit the Archie’s, even under Wobb lock, but they aren’t seeing a lot of cards without access to Shaymin so they are generally crippled in getting fully set up. At the same time, you also need to establish a Sigilyph with an energy attached to it in order to deal with a potential Whale or Eevee/Snorelax that could be a threat in the later turns. The ideal turn 1 would be to Brigette (assuming you have a draw supporter for next turn) for double Trubbish, Sigilyph and get an attachment to the Sigi. If you have access to float stone and can get Wobbuffet in the active, you can substitute a Trubbish for a Wobb and establish a second Trub on the following turn.
If you can get this set up, you should be very well positioned for the next few turns. From this point on the game plan is to keep their board under lock (using Garbotoxin and Parallel) and streaming Garbs to pick off the Pokémon with energy committed to them or their Blastoise if they aren’t attacking. If they haven’t been able to break garbotoxin, they will probably be manual attaching to one of their threats so it’s important that you keep the Sigilyph in play with energy so you can use Intercept-GX to punish any blitz turns that order pad heads + field blower could lead to. It’s also important to keep at least one choice band in the deck to be able to reach 270 on an Eevee/Snorlax Tag Team.
Basically, keep your board clean and filled with Garbodors and Sigilyph and you should be fine; just never get too greedy.
PikaRom (Even?)
This was the match up I was the least optimistic about going into the tournament. I hadn’t tested the match up, but it seemed very sketchy if they were able to get a PikaRom set up that I couldn’t answer in time. However, the best advice for playing Garbodor is still true: “they will always play enough items.” And that mostly proved to be true.
Realistically the only hurdle of this match up is finding ways to KO 2 PikaRoms before they can take over the board. The most effective strategy I’ve found is to get Wobb in the active asap to cut off their Shaymin draws and free retreat from Zeraora and get a few trubbish down to begin streaming Garbodors. I’ll generally try to set up a 2 shot on a Pikarom with Garb and clean it up using Sigilyph’s Intercept GX. Generally, that will work for one of the Pikaroms and the other can just be 2 shot (sometimes even 1 shot) by trashalance.
I would write more but I think the game plan is going to change depending how PikaRom decks adapt. The biggest advantages about my deck going into that weekend for all the PikaRom decks was the lack of familiarly with the match up. I would be surprised if this was still the case by Daytona, but nevertheless, I think this match up is going to need a lot more exploration before I can write confidently on how to win it.
Conclusion
Drampa Garbodor has proven that it still a viable archetype, with tools to even handle the most outrageous Tag Team Pokémon in the format. While not the easiest to pilot, I’ve found it to be a deck I always fall back on for its versatility and coverage in multiple formats. It is still going to be at the top of my list of decks to take to future tournament and hopefully is now on many other player’s as well. I’m looking forward to testing this deck more going into Daytona and Hartford but am going to be shifting gears as Denver is quickly approaching. For anyone interested in free Standard content, be sure to check back in to skypillartcg.com for more content as I begin testing for Denver Regionals.
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Great article! What’s your game plan against Trevenant?