blog Blacephalon still blows the meta away!

Blacephalon still blows the meta away!

Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to another article here at CCG Castle. I know Vivid Voltage is just around the corner and everyone –including me– is waiting impatiently to try new strategies. But today, I’d like to cover the one last deck for the past format: Baby Blowns. I was actually not planning on writing about this strategy but seeing how the meta has evolved in the past few weeks, I feel there is actually a chance for Baby Blows to still compete in these last moments of Standard.


Let’s rewind a bit. Blacephalon was first released in Unbroken Bonds and although its attack requirements were pretty high, everyone immediately saw it could have potential. As such, this one-prize-attacker that discarded fire energies to reach massive numbers started to see play combined with Wishful Baton and Green’s Explorations. The deck was really solid and got some important top placements at international tournaments. Since then, two rotations have happened and the loss of cards was so substantial for the deck that most players thought it was impossible to continue playing Blacephalon with success. But time proved that wrong. First partnering with Pidgeotto and now with Zacian & Oricorio GX, the reality is that Blacephalon has continued being a menace for the metagame, especially in environments where there is a lot of big Tag Team or VMAX Pokémon.


And yes, it is not that Blacephalon has suddenly become better than it was a few months ago but what’s happened is that the recent evolution of the format has created a very good situation for the deck. If you think about that, many meta decks have started teching cards like Team Yell grunt and Crushing hammer to disrupt energy and win against these kind of decks that can only attach one energy per turn (like Eternatus or, to an extend ADP). Also, players have been trying to run decks that can counter some of the more popular strategies and that’s why Lucario Melmetan and Decidueye Altaria became common choices in the latest tournaments. If you combine all this factors, you can see why Baby Blacephalon can be a very strong play: it does not suffer that much against energy denial and it can win pretty comfortably against the ADP counters.


 It is true that the deck has some consistency issues and that it does not have as many resources as it did a year ago, so that’s why it needs to be played in a slower way – but for most of the cases, it is enough. Sometimes, all that Blacephalon needs to do is gather enough fire energies and KO 2 Tag Team or VMAX.  For that, it uses the drawing power of Zacian for the first turn of the games and Dedenne, Crobat and Oricorio for mid & late. The fact that almost every attacker in the deck are precisely “mini” Pokémon ensures that the Blacephalon player has enough time to get all the resources even if reset stamp is played.


All in all, Baby Blacephalon is certainly a weaker deck than it was a year ago but in the correct environment it can be the perfect meta call. It came as no surprise that many players opted for that strategy during the final phases of the Players Cup II. If you are looking for a different deck other than ADP and that can surprise your opponents, give a chance to Baby Blacephalon before Vivid Voltage turns everything upside down. 

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