In the last big Pokémon Pocket tournament before Eevee Grove graces the scene, a new deck floated to the top, becoming a serious contender to rival the likes of Buzzwole and Silvally.
This deck, which took third and fifth place in the latest Ursiiday Pocket Weekly tournament on June 21, features Shiinotic and Magnezone. While only 15 players ran it, it was massively overrepresented at the top of the leaderboards and with an exceptional 59% winrate, could accurately be considered the most successful deck in the meta - even if it didn't quite hit the top spot.
This deck combines two Pokémon lines we've seen in meta decks before, mixing Shiinotic's ability to grab Pokémon cards and prevent bricking, with Magneton's fast energy ramping. And it turns out to be a winning combo, mixing speed and consistency with power.
This build has a few things in its favor. It runs the pom-pom bird to wreck decks like Solgeleo that are entirely reliant on an ex. Magnezone also deals 110 damage, exactly enough to deal with an un-caped Silvally, and has a very high HP total for a one-point Pokémon, able to tank an attack from basically anything.
Of course, with the ranked queue closed until the new set drops this evening, we don't truthfully know if this deck will still be a contender when the new cards arrive.
Currently, it seems possible that the newest Pokémon set for the mobile game won't have as much impact as those we've seen before. Supporters like Penny are nearly as bad as Looker, while ex cards like Flareon don't seem significantly better than what we've already got. That said, we've only seen a small handful of the upcoming cards so perhaps I'll eat my words - I remember everyone thought the ultrabeasts were underwhelming at first, too.
It's nice to see that older cards like Magnezone can still crop up in the top decks - it's slightly sad how fast Pokémon Pocket is getting power crept, to the point where basically everything from the first set is now unplayable. With that in mind, perhaps it's not the end of the world if Eevee Grove is a bit of a weaker set.
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