NoPoke said:
Rock Lock had fallen out of favour in the UK as it was found to be inconsistant. Hence Dragtrode, Gardevoir, and others showing up. Even Slaking hasn't made that big an impact as it does get beaten by Dragtrode as you yourself found out in the Swiss rounds: The Slaking vs Dragtrode matchup isn't an auto win for the Slaking player.
Played properly RockLock wins the DragTrode matchup hands down. It also wins against all the other matchups that you mentioned. Crystal Shard on Dark Tyranitar isn't that hard to pull off. TTar also OHKO's Sneasel. If a TTar goes down then Scramble brings them straight back into the game. Obviously in this matchup neither side can use Battle Frontier, it'll hurt the DragTrode play more though as they rely totally on Pidgeot to gain some sort of consistency. Without Pidgeot DragTrode has difficulty coming back.
Gardevoir is hilarious against DragTrode. Gardy should win most of the time. It just waits for all the energy to pile up, which DragTrode needs to do quickly to take out the Stage 1's before Gardy moves outside the range of OHKO. Obviously DragTrode's chances are increased by the use of Strength Charm which Dom found to great effect but that strategy requires Pidgeot to be consistent. Gardy also needs Pidgeot to work now, so whoever gets Pidgeot out first wins the game in that matchup. Gardevoir ex has just found an increase in favour as Vileplume ex has started to become a viable threat. The more it's seen, the more Gardy becomes stronger.
Gardy has always fed on weak Pokémon, weak attacks and weak consistency. Pidgeot pushes things forward for a lot of decks but obviously if you are searching for four cards every turn you have a distinct advantage. Unfortunately that goes against the DragTrode player in this matchup as they are pulling out more and more energy as time goes by. I say more and more, as less experienced players of DragTrode do this to have a back up hitter when the initial cleaner i.e. RkSneasel goes down. Overall at best Gardy is 50-50 with DragTrode, partly due to its big attack on weak basics in Feedback if DragTrode hasn't set up yet and has big hands, and partly because DragTrode favours lots of energy on the field and sneasel with 90HP can't handle a feedback which places damage mid to late game twice in a row.
RockLock versus Slaking isn't even funny. Slaking just folds completely. What should they do, play Battle Frontier? Oh well there goes their own Pidgeot draw. That's clever. The Slaking-DragTrode matchup would lie heavily in favour of Slaking through
a) powers off
b) type advantage
c) ability to OHKO anything in DragTrode
d) counter gyms can fit better and in larger quantities in Slaking.
Battle Frontier was the best thing to hit the UK metagame. Now everyone's confused as to what will and will not work. Anyone who plays 4 Frontier will be guaranteed to make top 8 I'm sure, too many people will still have faith in Pidgeot and they'll find as I have done through extensive playtesting that it just does not work any more. It's the reason why it was invented specifically for our market and not the Japanese one.
~fK
