It’s yet another ranked season in Pokemon Pocket. I am done climbing the ranks and so I thought may as well share my experience.

The meta is very diverse compared to before. I faced a variety of decks: Mega Venusaur, Mega Charizard, Mega Altaria, Magnezone, Hydreigon, etc. Suicune-Greninja actually made up a very small percentage of the decks I’ve played against. I’d say it was quite fun to play ranked mode.

Unlike in previous seasons, I don’t really want to waste time fucking around with niche decks; I only played meta decks and their variants this time. Here is how well they performed:

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Mega Altaria - Sylveon

The first deck I played is a less common Mega Altaria Variant.

The whole idea behind this deck is to have maximum drawing power with the likes of Sylveon and Lisia. Keeping in line with the theme of all-in card draw, this deck runs Find-a-friend Swablu in place of Sing Swablu. There’s even a copy of Copycat to unbrick your hand on the off chance that you somehow still brick.

Honestly, I am still not sure what’s the optimal build for this deck. I found that I needed Cyrus and Sabrina, but Mars can be game-changing too.

Even if it is suboptimal, its draw power makes this deck super consistent. You are sure to find your Mega Altaria and fill your bench, swinging for 130 damage in no time.

I played 20 games with this deck, winning 12 and losing 8, resulting in a win rate of 60%. It took me from 790 points (starting from Ultra ball 4) to 893 points.

Interestingly, this deck seems to struggle against Mega Charizard.

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Suicune - Greninja

I was getting bored of Mega Altaria so I switched decks. I noticed that I was running into plenty of Mega Altaria, so I might as well play its counter: Suicune - Greninja.

By this point, the optimal build for Suicune - Greninja has been figured out, so I am just playing this standard version.

Naturally, Suicune - Greninja performs well enough.

I played 20 games like before, winning 13 and losing 7 games this time to give a win rate of 65%.

Suicune - Greninja may no longer be the dominant beast it once was, but it is still a reliable way to climb in ranked mode. I climbed to Master ball rank with this deck, reaching 1007 points.

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Magnezone

My last deck of the season is a Magnezone variant.

Instead of running two copies of Oricorio, or Mega Absol + Darkrai, I opted for two copies of Chingling. I hardly see its counters - Jirachi and Furfrou - in my games, but am seeing plenty of Greninja and Hydreigon.

Just like the Mega Altaria - Sylveon deck, the rest of the cards in this deck are meant to support the Magnezone core with maximum consistency: Lisia, Clemont, Copycat and May.

I only played 8 games with this deck because that’s all it took to reach the 1070 points threshold to reset to Ultra ball 4 next season.

The sample size is smaller, but I won 6 games and lost 2, getting a win rate of 75% and ending the season with 1080 points total.

I believe I played against Suicune - Greninja only once with this deck and actually lost this match-up lol. However, it made up for this loss by crushing every Mega Altaria decks that I came across.