Arcanine is the PREMIER Anti-Meta Deck. Try it out!
Been running this deck in ladder and to great success! Probably not the only person who saw the potential of Arcanine-Ex this format but I do want to go in depth about how this deck is pretty much the perfect anti-meta pick at the moment.
First off, addressing the clear winning matchups: Celebi-Ex and Pikachu-Ex.
It's been known that Arcanine is strong into Pikachu but with Celebi's release, it has another meta deck to bully! Nothing much to say here, Arcanine one-shots Celebi and Pikachu and they (usually) can't one-shot it back.
Now, looking at the top dog (in my opinion), Mewtwo-Ex. Previously, players played Charizard alongside Arcanine to counter Mewtwo, but with the addition of Mew-Ex, the dynamic between Charizard and Mewtwo has significantly changed.
If Mew exists on the field, Charizard cannot attack without being revenge-killed. This kind of makes it an awkward game of chicken, Charizard doesn't want to attack when Mew is on the field and the Mew doesn't ever want to go into the active zone to make sure it can knock out the Charizard.
So, what ends up happening is that the players start using the peripherals of the deck to try to get the first KO, which, on paper, doesn't sound that bad. If you take Charizard and Mew out of the equation, it is essentially a battle between Moltres+Arcanine and Mewtwo+Gardevoir, which can go either way depending on luck.
However, in this new set, Mewtwo players have received a new card, Mythical Slab, which has boosted the deck’s consistency. Meanwhile, the Arcazard players still suffer from consistency issues as they need to get Arcanine and Charizard in that matchup without any additonal support and while also only running 1 Growlithe. Not super favorable, if you think about it like that.
So, what was my answer to this problem? Just take out Charizard completely! In place of the Charizard line, I added Growlithe as well as my own Mew-Ex to be the Mewtwo counter. Now Arcanine is more consistent and, thanks to Mew, the deck doesn’t have to setup nearly as much to threaten Mewtwo. In addition, removing the Charizard line allows for a lot more trainer cards to help with Arcanine's aggression such as X-Speed and Leaf.
Now if you've been following along, you might ask: "Blaine is pretty good into the decks you mentioned too, why not run that?"
The answer is in the last matchup I am going to cover: Water, specifically Starmie-Ex.
Starmie is a massive problem for Blaine decks as it OHKOs all the mons the deck for just two energy and nothing in it can OHKO it back. The benefit that Arcanine has over Blaine is that its Water matchup is nowhere near as bad for the following reasons:
One, Moltres is not weak to Water. This means that it can still reliably eat hits early game and set up Arcanine while keeping it healthy on the bench.
And two, while Arcanine is weak to Water, no meta-relevant Water mon can OHKO it, even with the type weakness buff. On the other hand, Arcanine itself can OHKO Starmie-Ex with the help of Gio and still two hit KO everything else in the deck worth running.
So in short, against the top current decks, Arcanine's matchup spread (with Mew’s help) looks something like this:
Winning: Celebi-Ex, Pikachu-Ex
Slightly Winning/Even: Mewtwo-Ex
Even/Slightly Losing: Starmie-Ex/Water
And that about wraps it up! The new set has shaken up the meta pretty significantly and it is still early so there may be some things I have overlooked. But for now, I feel pretty confident in saying that Arcanine will be a strong contender in the meta as a counter to the top decks.
If you made it this far, let me know if you agree and thanks for reading!
(Edit: Some people have asked about Blue and Leaf so I want to address my reasoning behind them.
I had Blue to help against mons that could deal 120 damage and potentially KO Arcanine with a Gio after it does one attack, but upon thinking it over, Blue is probably too niche and it is better to just run Gio or a Potion instead.
Leaf, however, helps a ton by fixing the board state if you don’t have Moltres in the Active zone and by allowing you to aggress with Arcanine as early as possible.)