Jordan’s Rogue Way and a Worlds Decklist

by Jordan ~ August 14th, 2011.

Hey everybody, my name is Jordan Baker. I’m 22 years old, I live in Michigan, and I’m a founding member of Team Warp Point. I’ve been playing Pokemon for just about two years now and you’ve probably never heard of me. My biggest accomplishment is making it to the top 16 round two years in a row with stupid ridiculous decks. Stupid, funny, quirky, gimmicky decks are sort of my specialty. I don’t really like playing meta decks and I despised SP decks with a passion when they were in format. However, I won’t play a deck just because it’s rogue, I also want it to be good.

I’m going to give you a really quick recap of some of the decks I’ve played over the past two years and then discuss my current deck that I’ll be playing for Worlds this year.

My love affair with rogue decks started last year at Regional’s.  Jumpluff had just come out and I decided that I wanted to play it. There were a lot of other people playing Jumpluff at regional’s, but most of these were JumpLux variants relying on Luxray G. Lv. X. My list played a heavy Sunflora line, and 3-2-3 Metagross LA, which has a built in Pokemon reversal in the form of a Poke-Power. For some reason the deck worked and I made it into the top cut, and past the round of 32 before being eliminated in the top 16 by JumpLux.

After regional’s we got Unleashed and my Nationals deck was born. I played Blastzel with 3-3 Floatzel and 3-3 Claydol. I started out 4-0 at Nationals before running into a Luxchomp list running Entei Raikou Legend. I had four Pokemon with 80 HP in play and my opponent took 4 prizes in one turn with Thunder Fall. I figured that ERL was going to be pretty rare and I went on with my day. Unfortunately my next opponent also played ERL and was able to pull of a quintuple KO. Needless to say, I wasn’t having a good day. I lost another game somewhere down the line and ended up dropping.

Probably my proudest rogue moment was playing Rampardos (PL) at this year’s regional championships. Nobody had a clue what Rampardos did or how to play against it. If I went second I was often hitting for 80 1st turn for just one energy. It had a surprisingly good Luxchomp match-up and I ended up making top cut. I beat a DonChamp deck in top 32 before running into my work nightmare in the round of 16. Mesprit. Rampardos relied heavily on Uxie drops and Unown R’s to get rolling as well as my own Mesprit and Crobat drops. My opponent’s Mesprit drops destroyed that plan.

OK, enough talking about out of format rogue decks that nobody cares about, or ever cared about. Onto what everybody actually wants to see.

Below you will see a different take on Stage 1 Rush. This is a list that myself and my brother Evan Baker have been testing for the past month.

Decklist? Decklist.

Pokemon T/S/S Energy
4 Yanma
3 Yanmega Prime
3 Zorua
3 Zoroark
3 Chinchou
3 Lanturn Prime
1 Pachirisu Cl
1 Cleffa
4 PONT
3 Copycat
2 Juniper
4 Communication
4 Reversal
3 Junk Arm
1 Switch
1 Pokegear
1 SSU
8 Lightning
4 DCE

In our testing this deck has a favorable matchup against just about everything except Yanmega/Magnezone. which is probably 40/60 unless you can get a good start and consistent energy drops.

I know many of you are going to be looking at Lanturn Prime and wondering why it’s in there. In actuality, it’s an awesome card right now and definitely overlooked. For a DCE and 1 lightning Lanturn OHKO’s just about everything that is big right now. Donphan, Reshiram, Yanmega, Typhlosion, Kingdra, etc. That much versatility in a single Pokemon is pretty impressive. Sure it get’s OHKO’d by some of these Pokemon too, but only Donphan is quicker and a smart player with this list should easily be able to outplay the traditional Stage 1 rush list. Being able to hit for two different weaknesses is really nice. 

Pachi is in here for the Magnezone matchup. A well-timed Pachi drop allows you to OHKO a Magnezone without your opponent ever seeing it coming. It is also useful in the rare occasion when you need to add a couple extra damage to Lanturn’s Powerful Spark attack. Super Scoop Up and Junk arm allow you to use this tactic multiple times if necessary.

The rest of the deck is pretty self-explanatory. It definitely takes some skill but the versatility of this deck allows you to outplay your opponents in a format that is basically luck based/attach and attack right now.

Who knows if this deck will still be viable when the new set comes out. It’s basically a Meta-counter right now so it really just depends on what the Meta is in a month’s time. Catcher will definitely help this deck. Everything retreats for cheap and reversal is already a huge aspect of the strategy.

Hopefully the deck works out at Worlds. I’ll be grinding in and Evan has an invite, so I guess we’ll see what happens.

This article is part of OneHitKO’s Guest Writer Week for August 2011. Please check out all the articles in the series, and please give the authors your feedback in the comment section below.

  1. Michael’s article about upcoming Japanese cards.
  2. Radu’s article about his Mew/Muk/Jumpluff/Vileplume deck and how it can be made better.
  3. Pooka introduces Worlds 2011.
  4. Alan’s article about how to run a Pokemon league.
  5. Jay. H takes a look at past formats of the game.
  6. Jordan’s article about running rogue decks and his worlds decklist.

That concludes our our first Guest Writer Week. Thanks to you authors and readers for making it a success! Hopefully we can do it again soon.

Category: Deck Discussion | Tags: , , , ,