Gardevoir ex, the undying

Gardevoir is still around! Following his top 32 finish at EUIC, Stéphane breaks down the deck, his list, and explains the deck's main matchups.

EUIC is over, and what a tournament that was! It was the biggest Pokémon event we've seen outside of Asia (if you include all the games, not just TCG, I believe it was the biggest altogether), and the first in our post-rotation format. So far, I'm liking what we're seeing in our new metagame: classic decks like Charizard and Giratina are adapting, and even these aggressive decks can now run slower, more control-like cards like Eri and Banette ex. Like it or not, Control is definitely a solid contender in this new format, but more straightforward decks like Lugia VSTAR are also playable, and at the extreme end of the spectrum, Ancient Box is doing better than expected, winning in the Seniors Division.

As for myself, I got 23rd place playing a deck that many players seemed to have dismissed: Gardevoir ex. I didn't think much of the deck at first either, but Fabien Pujol spent a week in Japan in March, and he was having success with it in local events, apparently beating every Charizard ex deck he faced. I asked him for his list, started playtesting against myself to try out the matchup, and immediately became convinced of the deck's huge potential. What followed was three weeks of playtesting for a whole group of French Gardevoir fans. I won't bore you with the details of every iteration of the deck; we tried many cards, from Wyrdeer V to TM Devolution, and while we didn't all end up on the exact same list, the core of the deck was still the same.