Meta Recap - August 14th
The weekend is here! For many players this is a chance to catch up on the ladder. For others, the best event in gaming is happening once again. I’ll admit my bias, but PMPT is the best tournament to both watch and play in. It’s easier to join and compete than you think - I’d love to see you there.
For me, the weekends are a time of reflection. I take a step back, assess my week, and plan for the next. That’s exactly what I’ll be doing in today’s article, where we reflect on the tournament scene since the last weekend and look for insights using both the tournament page and the meta game data found on Pocketmads.
I’ll be mainly focusing on first place finishes, and will provide links to deck lists where I can. There’s a lot to go over, so let’s get to it.
Biggest Winners
When putting together this list, I decided to focus on standard tournaments with 32 or more players. Why 32? I feel like that’s a reasonable size of players to extract a consistently accurate reflection of the meta. If you’re like me, you’ve previously dismissed these “smaller” tournaments that don’t have close to one hundred or more participants, only looking at the top decks of larger sample sizes. I’m not sampling one large tournament, however - these past seven days we have a recorded 15,146 games on the site, with 411 unique decks being represented, across 32 different tournaments. By widening our scope just a bit we can get a better glimpse of what works and what doesn’t.
Side note - I sometimes forget that we in the Pocket community are incredibly spoiled by the sheer size of tournaments we have weekly. Last weekend we had over four hundred players in a tournament twice, which rivals many regional championships in other card games. To have access to a daily tournament scene where you’d have enough players to equal local qualifiers is amazing!
It should not come as a surprise that the most tournaments this week were won by the best Mega in the game - 
Mega Lucario ex. With a whopping 12.5% of the metashare, Lucario is holding its own against strong contenders for the best deck. We find across 1,921 games that 
Bonsly is the most played lead, followed by a tie with 
Hitmontop and 
Sawk. The 
Hitmonchan ex version - as piloted by 1st place finisher 𝗠𝗲𝗴𝗮 Alana 𝗘𝗫 - should not be underestimated.
If you’re playing in this weekend’s PMPT, expect to see all types of Lucario. One 125-player tournaments was won with Lucario/Greninja.
Hoopa ex showed up thrice on this created winner’s list; twice as the pure dark variant and once with Greninja. It’s currently boasting a 52% win rate, partly because I believe people are playing decks that counter fighting. I actually lost count to how many top eight finishes Hoopa has had this week! It’s as strong of a deck as ever, and not much has changed since I wrote about it on Monday.
Two fire decks caught me by surprise: One Mega Charizard Y and one Mega Blaziken with Skeledirge. Both of these decks were piloted by well-known players in PMPT, 7earless and Harian. The additions of 
Rainbow Cave and 
Wally have made Charizard much quicker, and the lack of yellow birds in the meta has removed the only barrier to seeing Char becoming relevant again.
Harian’s Mega Blaziken list forgoes the new energy ramp for card advantage by using 
Mime Jr.. The one line of 
Skeledirge helps you hit breakpoints otherwise impossible for the spicy chicken. It’s a super smart list, though we haven’t seen it pop up anymore since.
Chandelure has made a name for itself this past week due to its newest starter and inclusion, 
Oricorio. It’s only won one tournament this week, but at 135 players it showed it could hang with the best. It’s also made second place twice, and third place once. In other words, it’s putting in the work. This is currently Maddy’s favorite deck, who originally wanted to highlight it for a weekly wildcard but just kept winning with it to the point it didn’t qualify as a wildcard anymore. The decks I’ve seen have been testing different baby starters, such as Bonsly or 
Wynaut.
Other Movers and Shakers
Vespiquen, Mega Rayquaza, and Mega Sharpedo with Gyarados have also had their time in the spotlight Since Sunday. I suspect these will be prominent players this weekend,as well.
One Hydreigon list made it to the top while running 
Mega Sableye ex and 
Mega Absol ex. Hydreigon hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in B4, but this is one to watch out for; the only player running Hydreigon in this tournament made it all the way to first place.
Once again, I warn you: watch out for sleep. There is no such thing as bad publicity for those that run 
Igglybuff. Whether it’s in PMPT or on the ladder, you will face this archetype.
We’ve also seen an increase in grass decks. Check out yesterday’s article for more information on what’s been popping up!
Final Notes
Lucky Ice Pop has seen an increase in play; 45% of the top lists this past week slotted the best healing card in the game. We’ve also seen a resurgence of 
Repel, since Hoopa EX and Mega Rayquaza lists are strongly hurt by a well-timed gust.
What a week! It’s been an absolute blast watching the meta develop since the last PMPT. I don’t think we’ve settled in yet; there is still plenty of space for rogue or older decks to upset the competitive scene. Looking forward to reporting back to you on Monday with my findings. Until then, see you on the Ladder!