“Ghetsis's Hidden Past” –The History Behind Ghetsis in Expanded, and Teching for the Future
By Drew Allen
Hey, HeyTrainer readers. I’m Drew, and this is my first ever article here. I’ve been interested in taking up the “pen” in the Pokémon article community for a while, and I’m thankful John’s given me the opportunity. I’m super excited to share the cool history of this card, as well as a little bit of insight into teching as a whole. Without further ado, let's get into it.
GOING BACK
1. The “Birth” of Ghetsis: a Slow Start
For the majority of its competitive life, Ghetsis has been thought to be (and for the most part was) a mediocre card. Those of you who started playing after BLW-PLS probably don’t remember, but the hype for this card before release was pretty crazy – think Decidueye GX hype, but for a Supporter. With so many strong Item cards in the format like Pokémon Catcher, Hypnotoxic Laser, Random Receiver, Ultra Ball, Dark Patch, and Rare Candy, this card made perfect sense. Having the ability to disrupt your opponent’s Items through denial, lock or otherwise, has always been strong. Plus, you get to draw for as many Items as they have? Unreal!
However, back when Ghetsis just came out, the format was so heavily Supporter-based that a lot of the time you would Ghetsis for very few cards at the cost of setting up, and then your opponents would just Juniper or N themselves, set up their board, and win. Now you’re in a bit of a pickle, because instead of setting up yourself you just used your turn trying to disrupt your opponent to no avail. So for the time being the card was dead. Therefore, not many people played it.
2. An Impressive Showing
That is, however, until Worlds later that year where Chase Moloney, a close personal friend and in my opinion one of the best players to ever touch the game, snagged an outstanding top sixteen finish with two copies of the card in his deck – his first year in Masters, nonetheless. How did such a card go from being mediocre, to being worth 2 spots in his list?
It was all because of a very important shift in format. Long story short, Gothitelle/Accelgor gained Float Stone and became one of the strongest decks in the format, going on to win U.S. Nationals that year, so for Worlds a lot of players were thinking, “How do I beat this deck”? Paralysis is by far the strongest status effect in the Pokémon Trading Card Game, and combined with Item lock seemed unbeatable. That is, until people started to figure out that Keldeo EX’s Rush In can be combined with Float Stone, or Darkrai EX’s Dark Cloak to get a “Rush In Retreat” effect to get a fresh, non-Paralyzed attacker, and it was just as effective as it sounds. Darkrai now had a viable answer to Gothitelle, as well as being one of the strongest attackers in the format. In addition, not relying on Float Stone/Keldeo meant that missing both Tool Scrapper and Float Stone before Gothitelle hit the field didn’t mean the end of the world.
So what does Ghetsis have to do with all this? Flloat Stone/Keldeo, high Random Receiver counts, and Dark Patches made Darkrai vulnerable to Ghetsis. Chase then decided to play to beat those strong players in a mirror match with two Ghetsis, and with several mirror wins throughout the weekend, he proved that Ghetsis as a mirror tech performed effectively.
GHETSIS RESURECTION
1. The Texas Marathon Boys
Fast-forward to winter 2014. Ghetsis had seen very little play for the past 6 months. However, players then found a reason to gather for one of the most grueling, fun, and potentially rewarding events of the year: the Texas Marathon. For those of you that aren’t familiar with it, the Texas marathon was a tournament series that happened once a year, with at least five City Championships over the span of one week. This of course meant you had an abundance of points to be earned, but also an abundance of top players gunning for those same points.
Jeremy Jallen, Kevin Murphy, and of course Chase Moloney were all there ready to win some titles, and Ghetsis found his return. In Jeremy’s case, Ghetsis turned out to be a way to beat the Virizion/Genesect mirror. Holding onto your G-Booster, Energy Switches, and Tool Scrapper for just the right moment was how you went about winning this matchup, but having them shuffled back into the deck was a huge detriment to your opponent. Thus, Ghetsis rejoined the ranks of the top tables.
A good tech card helps against select matchups, including the mirror, while a GREAT tech card helps against everything. The metagame for the Texas marathon was a combination of Genesect, Plasma, Darkrai, and Blastoise – all decks which struggle to Ghetsis. As a group, the Texas Marathon Boys ended up winning four City Championship wins, with Jeremy and Kevin taking one each, and Chase taking two. Later that winter, Jeremy went 7-0 at a Regionals in the Genesect mirror, finishing at 8th losing to a completely unrelated autoloss matchup.
Unfortunately, Ghetsis for whatever reason fell off the face of the Earth yet again, and for a long time went underplayed in Standard and Expanded.
2. “Card’s Straight Broken”
At this point we’ve gone through a bunch of the Ghetsis’s history, as well as the reasons for why we teched it. Now let’s talk about the season Ghetsis became a format-defining staple:
Fast-forward: It's the Fall of 2015, and Ghetsis has been dead for over a year. This is mostly because of rotation, but I also think it's because it has seen no real reason to be played in Expanded…at least up to this point. Here I am in Houston with TJ Traquair and long-time HeyTrainer forum member Kale Chalifoux, two of my best friends in the game. Houston Regionals is tomorrow, and we're figuring out what to play when TJ drops this spooky Seismitoad/Giratina/Musharna list on me. It looks awesome, and I’m always down to play something spooky. So we’re playing a few games in the lobby, testing against Yveltal, Night March, and the mirror. They’re all testing well…that is, until we start playing against Blastoise. The deck was too fast – what else was there for us to do? TJ and I are then racking our brains over this and I’m honestly thinking of just playing Yveltal with Hex Maniac instead of taking an autoloss to a deck that just won a World Championship earlier in August of 2015.
Then Kale pipes up: “What about Ghetsis”?
"Holy moly, Kale – that might work." On paper it destroys Blastoise, right? So we try it: 1 Jirachi EX for searching Supporters, 1 Computer Search…and 1 Ghetsis. It turns out that Ghetsis to Quaking Punch is awful for any Blastoise deck, not to mention the added help it gives in just about every other matchup. So we keep it low key, because there’s a ton of top players at this event, including Jason Klaczynski, Michael Pramawat, Azul Garcia, and John Kettler. So we all agree that nobody should be saying Ghetsis, and from here on out let it be known only as “The Boy”™.
So we play a bunch more games with The Boy™, and he’s still just as good as we’d thought he’d be. I then remembered talking to Israel Sosa earlier that week about how he was going to be playing in California the same day we were playing in Houston. So I hit him up asking how he plans on dealing with Blastoise, assuming he was playing his signature Yveltal deck. He told me, “I’ll be playing Frozen City and Hex Maniac.”
I then empower him with the knowledge and strength that is “The Boy” ™, at which Sosa goes nuts. We all then do great in Houston, while Sosa steamrolls his entire tournament in California. Ghetsis in turn starts steamrolling the entire globe, and thus, The Boy™ is born.
LOOKING AHEAD AT SUN AND MOON
Touching on teching
I’d like to start off by saying that using critical thinking to analyze how some cards might be utilized as mirror techs – or otherwise – is something that’s good to practice whether you’ve been playing Pokemon since it started, or just picked it up last month. Honestly it’s kind of fun going through legal sets to see if there’s answers to specific problems a deck presents, and it’s a skill a lot of top players use. There are a lot of potential tech opportunities, but I’m going to talk about two big ones I’ve seen out of the latest Sun and Moon expansion:
Skarmory
First off we have Skarmory, which for a DCE discards all special energy in play. Seems pretty good; however, a ton of our metagame right now is basic energy. Volcanion, Speed dark, Lurantis, M-Gardevoir, are all popular concepts that this card would be pretty useless against. Even the decks that run special energy like Vespiquen, Yveltal, and M-Rayquaza can play around it. However, there’s been talk of a Solgaleo/Dark/Giratina deck going around, and I think Skarmory has the potential to be a top tier against that in the right list. So let’s say for example this deck gains some ground and becomes a part of the metagame, which I think is definitely a possibility. You’ve then decided to pick up this deck, but you expect a decent amount of others at your League Cup are also going to pick up the deck.
Easy solution? One Skarmory. You simply let your opponent set up and use their GX attack before you, drop Skarmory with a DCE, Ultra Road it into the active and discard 5 (10) energy with one attack. Seems like a pretty decent tech in the right meta, and while Magaerna will probably see some play in the deck a well timed silent lab or hex maniac to discard 5 energy is a great tradeoff. This is also to say nothing of how devastating Skarmory can be situationally against Darkrai/Giratina, which just won Anaheim Regionals.
Tauros GX
Another card which is already picking up steam in Standard, and will certainly be played in Expanded as many players' go-to GX is Tauros GX. A lot of top tier decks in Expanded run DCE, including Yveltal, Toad/Bats, and Night March. Something Toad Bats and Night March have in common is a poor Item Lock matchup, specifically to Trevenant XY. However, Tauros GX is a very effective counter to Trevenant: It attacks for one Energy, and easily revenge-kills Trevenants. Even under T1 Item lock your energy requirement is low, plus Rage and Horn Attack effectively counter Trevenant’s mediocre damage output on a singular Pokémon. In addition, if your opponent doesn’t have any other Phantumps on the board, using Mad Bull early can be a great option to potentially give youself a few turns without having to worry about being under Item lock.
Tauros GX in general is good to have in your deck if you’re running DCE because being able to utilize such a strong GX Attack is an opportunity that’s tough to pass up. It may not be as splashable as Ghetsis, but it certainly has splashability in its own right. Tauros, like Ghetsis, can win tons of games by itself, in perhaps healthier ways than Ghetsis can be.
Ghetsis’s Bright Future
As for The Boy ™ himself? I’m still personally playing it in every deck I run. Sableye/Garbodor has gained a lot of play, and as long as Yveltal/Maxie’s is a threat to your deck, you now have a way to win as early as the first turn. For players in general, I think Ghetsis will see tons of play in both Collinsville and Portland. It’s got a strong, bright future, and unless we see a format rotation in Expanded, it’ll stay around for a long time.