Hello everyone and welcome to another article here! You see, I was not planning to write something like this, but a couple of weeks ago, after Mew took another major Regional win, I wrote a tweet (can we use that word now that the official name is X?) saying that Mew VMAX was undoubtedly one of the strongest decks in the history of Pokémon TCG and that I couldn’t remember anything similar. 

I know it is very risky to label something as “the strongest” or “the best”, especially because when it comes to asking players what the best card or deck is, it is very rare to find consensus. And there is nothing that sparks fiercer discussions than talking about power levels. I was well aware of what I was getting into when I wrote the tweet and I still stand by it, but it was interesting the amount of people that countered saying that Zoroark was even better than Mew is now. I still have an opinion on that (and you will find out if you reach the end of the article!), but since I do wholeheartedly agree that Zoroark has been one of the most impactful and successful cards ever, I think it is worth taking a trip back in time and explaining the incomparable impact that Zoroark had. Grab some pop-corn and play your favorite Pokémon OST (preferably from Black and White) as we are going down memory lane.

Note from an author that doesn’t want to ignite controversy: Before going into the article itself, I want to clarify something. There had been some really, really unbeatable decks in the history of Pokémon and some of them were so powerful that an emergency ban had to be issued. But the difference between these decks and Zoroark or Mew was that they were undisputed Tier S for a limited period of time, like Drampador or Seismitoad EX. This is something that happens all the time in TCGs. A new set is released, a deck takes over and suddenly 70% of the meta share is that deck and the remaining 30% is a direct counter. However, these decks last for a couple of months, tops. While Zoroark and Mew had not been at the level of a deck that made all other ones unplayable, I am tagging them as “the best” because of the consistency of results they got from the moment they released. There was not a time where they were not relevant and a solid option for playing at the highest level.

Breaking down Zoroark GX

Zoroark GX was released as a part of a holiday mini-set, which meant it was a bit difficult to get at first (at least for Pokémon standards). I remembered recording a video talking about the scans and people in the comments section being skeptical when we explained the potential the card had. One of the main arguments against Zoroark being broken was that its damage output was decent but not incredible in the sense that it couldn’t KO big Pokémon in a single hit. Another one was that people struggle seeing it being an effective inclusion in already existing decks. Once it was released, I tested it and paired it up with Ninetales GX and was surprised by the results. It was really, really good. But while I knew its potential, I honestly didn’t anticipate how much impact it was going to have over the next two years…

Looking at it now, Zoroark is a card that does everything you want in a Pokémon game and does it right. It is a stage 2 Pokemon with 210 HP, an ability and a couple of attacks. The ability allows you to discard one card from your hand every turn and draw 2 more. This ability stacks, meaning if you had Zoroark you could potentially draw eight cards, 13% of your deck. Can you imagine the amount of resources this gives you? And that alone was not enough. Zoroark could attack very easily just by using Double Colorless Energy and deal a very decent damage (typically it would go between 100 and 120). That damage could easily increase with some modifiers like Kukui and Choice Band, but that is something we will cover a bit later. It also had a second attack but since it required very specific types of energies it was very rarely used.

My point is that Zoroark, on its own, was one of the most well-rounded cards ever printed in Pokémon TCG. One incredible advantage in that, considering the energy requirement could be met very easily, it could fit literally everywhere. It could be a good support Pokémon in decks that needed to discard cards and get more consistency or it could be just used on its own. And soon enough, the world was going to see it.

Early variants and major success

In the same way I started testing Zoroark as a support pokémon, it immediately became clear that Zoroark was not (only) there to complement other strategies. It was so powerful that the focus was the other way around: you could just include a 4/4 line of Zoroark and then complement it with whatever types of Pokémon you felt like. Zoroark was at the same time a building base, a drawing engine and an attacker. And that is exactly what happened and what allowed Zoroark to start climbing its way up in the metagame ladder.

The first major win that marked a turning point in the history of Zoroark was 2017/18 with a Norwegian player Tord Reklev winning the European Championships with Zoroark Golisopod. He was not the only one that played that deck in the tournament and many Zoroarks variants got into the top positions. This is the list Tord used back then:

The beauty and effectiveness of this deck is unmatched. It could literally beat anything. The strategy was not to go all aggro and take KO after KO. In fact, it was the contrary: nothing could theoretically KO your Pokémon in one hit so you were constantly alternating between Golisopod and Zoroark, healing them with Acerola and drawing all the cards you wanted in the process. I cannot stress how effective this mid-range approach was.

 

One of the reasons why Zoroak was so powerful was because of all the great cards it had access to. Acerola, as I mentioned, was an incredible supporter that denied KOs for your opponent; Tapu Lele GX gave you any supporter you needed; Field Blower helped combat Garbodor’s blocking ability and Puzzle of Time… well, what can I say about this card… It granted you to recycle 4 cards of your choice during a game. If you combine all of it in one single deck, the result is absolutely insane.

I might be a bit biased here because I don’t have all the data at hand right now, but I would dare to say Zoroark Golisopod was one of the most popular (if not the most popular) Zoroark variant and the absolute historial peak on the deck.

But as I said, players realized that they could basically take 80% of a regular Zoroark deck and just add different attackers to have alternative types of plays and alternatives. And that is how the Zoroark spring began. One that I really liked and that was pretty close in terms of consistency and power to Golisopod was Lycanroc. Lycanroc offered the possibility of using a gusting effect without using your supporter of the turn and was an attacker capable of taking other big threats out in just one single hit, unlike any other Zoroark variant.

But the amount of options that were available? I could spend the entire day going over them. To emphasize this fact, let me tell you that there was a point where Zoroark no longer proved to be great paired with other Stage 1 cards but was also amazing with Stage 2. Yes, you heard right. Ok, so you know what? Let me show that to you. I am going to list the variants I remember, top of my head, not looking, I promise: Zoroark Golisopod, Zoroark Lycanrock, Zoroark Weavile, Zoroark Counter Attackers, Zoroark Gardevoir, Zoroark Decidueye, Zoroark Solgaleo, Zoroark Control (w/ Oranguru), Zoroark Persian, Zoroark Buzzwole, Zoroark Gardodor, Zoroark Lucario and Zoroark Metal. And I am not even counting the ones that were created in the Expanded format… I invite you to go to the following Limitless link and see a historical record of all the tournaments and variants where Zoroark got in the top positions.

Ok, so point proved. Zoroark was really versatile and successful. But how successful exactly, you might wonder? Successful as to become the undisputed world champion…

Becoming the best in the world

The year 2018 was the year when Zoroark got crowned. Piloted by Robin Schulzt, Zoroark proved that consistency mattered and that with the right approach, it was an unstoppable force of nature. Robin decided to combine it with Garbodor because of two very powerful reasons: First of all, it allowed him to use Garbodor’s Garbotoxin ability to shut down any ability on the field at will. Second, Garbodor from Guardian Rising was the ultimate late-game sweeper and a great tool to counter Buzzwole, whose fighting-type could be a real problem for Zoroark.

It might sound strange for someone that has not played the deck to hear that a deck that kinda relied on drawing abilities would opt to shut abilities down. Wasn’t that actually against your own interest? Yes, but it really depended on the moment you decided to start the lock. Something important here is to remember that Robin ran multiple copies of Field Blower, which allowed him to basically end the lock whenever he wanted. And the fact that certain decks lost when they were not allowed to use abilities makes it more than worth it. I invite you to see the finals of that year and see this combo in action with your own eyes.

 

This is the list that got Zoroark the title of the best deck in the world:

Adapting to survive a new era

Zoroark won and it was not a surprise. But the game kept moving and new mechanics were introduced in the game. It was precisely then that one of the most powerful types of cards got revealed: Pokémon Tag Team.

Tag Teams were absolute monsters. In fact, I sometimes wonder if something as powerful will get printed again. At the cost of giving 3 prize cards when they were defeated in battle, they dealt massive amounts of damage and had a ridiculously high HP. One would imagine that it was, after all that time, the final end of Zoroark. Well… it was not.
Zoroark did what it had always done until now: adapt and make sure it still had the tools to win against other decks. This last iteration of Zoroark was actually pretty interesting to see. Of course, Zoroark was far from being the deck it was once when the meta was slower and Pokémon had less HP. But as you would remember for a classic movie franchise, life finds a way. 

It got combined with Persian GX, which provided very interesting search options for mid and late game and with specific attackers that did a good job dealing with the most powerful Tag Team at the team: Reshiram and Charizard GX. With Deawong or Slowking (I remember seeing the two different variants) Zoroak still stood a chance. And a really good one, indeed. 

One year went by and the 2019 Worlds Championship took place in Washington DC. At that moment, something very unusual happened and it was decided that a Rotation was in place. To give you some context, the rotation normally happened before the start of a new season and Worlds was considered the last tournament of a season. However, things got sped up and that meant that Zoroark was no longer legal for the tournament. Mewtwo Tag Team ended up winning the entire event.

I have always joked with my friends that the only reason why this happened is because Pokémon didn’t want to have the same deck winning two years in a row and while this is, well, just a joke, I think that there is maybe a piece of reality in it.

A power that transcends the standard

We have gone over how Zoaroark evolved, reached its peak with Golisopod and adapted for all its lifecycle and became one of the most powerful and successful decks ever. However, there is something I didn’t mention and I think it is worth for you to know which is that the entire focus of this analysis has been the Standard format, the most played one that exists in Pokémon. But it is not the only one.

Expanded is, at the time I am writing this article, a dead format. It allows so many cards and lacks a clear cut that is no longer sustainable. The Official Pokémon Company has just decided to “ignore” it and you can’t find any real tournaments now (in fact, you can not even play Expanded in the official online client). Whether they will eventually decide to take Expanded back is something that I always ask myself.

But from 2017 to 2019, there were still Regionals being played in the Expanded format that gathered hundreds of people. And you know what was winning and being positioned as one of the most powerful strategies in that environment? No! How did you guess? Our friend Zoroark GX.

Sometimes a card that is good at Standard happens to me mediocre in other formats because, you know, old power creep and all of that. But in the case of Expanded, Zoroark was just even better. It had cards that allowed it to be more consistent, more aggressive and play different types of styles during the game, swifting from control to aggro when it needed it. As it happened in Standard, Zoroark evolved in Expanded as well but it was just that its success was a bit less noticed just because an important percentage of the player base didn’t care much about Expanded and didn’t have most of the cards to play it.
Remember how some time ago I wrote an article talking about the most broken deck in the recent history of Pokémon, featuring Seismitoad EX? Among other variants, Zoroark got the Item Lock button and got paired with the one and only Seismitoad EX to crush dreams in Expanded.

Mew vs Zoroark

I promised I still had an opinion on the Mew VMAX vs Zoroark GX debate so If you’ve gotten this far, the least I can do is to answer. I, of course, might be biased because I was not a Zoroark player back then (well, I was in Expanded) and on the contrary, some of my best results as a competitor have been thanks to Mew VMAX but trying to remain objective I still think Mew is a bit highly placed. Not because Zoroark was not spectacular - it was. Both decks won the World Championship and multiple regionals. Both decks remained top choices till the moment they were no longer legal. 

But there is one clear difference in my mind. Zoroark GX, as a card, was so “generic” and versatile that it could combine with any other attacker, as you have seen, and be relevant for the metagame whenever it was needed. Mew VMAX is what it is. It has a very limited deckbuilding space and while you can definitely tech, the cards you cards you can add are just a few. On top of that, Mew has some very, very direct counters that Zoroark never had. Drapion and Spiritomb are cards that are only played in Standard because players want to secure the Mew match up. They do only exist because of Mew and they would never be played if Mew didn’t exist. Sure, Zoroark had some “counters'' too (Buzzwole) but these counter cards were so powerful and so generic that they were played in many, many decks just because they were very powerful, regardless of Zoroark being a match you needed to prepare for or not. On top of that, Zoroark could still tech to beat its counters. But a standard Mew version can still beat its counters just by the power it holds.

So, as a conclusion, I feel that the answer depends on what we are actually evaluating. If we look at versatility, a Zoroark “base” is definitely the most powerful one we’ve ever had in Pokémon TCG. If we look at a “deck”, meaning, a fully 60-cards build, clear strategy that always has had the same attackers, same support Pokémon and same style of play, then Mew is definitely a deck that cannot be compared. Zoroark had the possibility of adapting but Mew didn’t and still got incredible results. That speaks of a deck with power like no other.

Conclusion

This has been, by far, one of the funnest articles I’ve ever written. Don’t think that my intention was to “prove” that Mew was better or anything like that. Zoroark has been one of the most defining decks in the history of Pokémon and a truly legendary card. That is something no one can ever discuss.

I lost against Zoroark again and again when it was legal. I am still amazed they released such a powerful, versatile card and I wanted to pay tribute to it by embarking on a journey with all of you. And while I have done so, a lot of memories have flown back.

You know, I always think that an objective opinion doesn’t exist but facts are there. And Zoroark was and will probably be among the very best. For the time being, I hope that you enjoyed reading the article and that, in case you didn’t play that era, you feel closer to this part of the Pokémon TCG History. Who knows, maybe at some point it is decided to bring back retro formats, like Edison and Goat in Yu-gi-oh!, and we will get to play Zoroark mirrors again (they were not super fun).

Thanks for reading!