♪ "Pokémon Johto" ♪
Johto fans rejoice, for the Generation 2 themed Lost Thunder expansion brought with it one of the most fun cards of all time, Meganium! With one of the most interesting Abilities of the entire Sun & Moon series, this card ranks high in the hearts of those who played it.
Meganium's versatile Quick-Ripening Herb Ability allows decks to play variable toolboxes of Stage 2 Pokémon and set them up with ease once Meganium hits the board. The Ability has the same effect as the original version of the item card Rare Candy, (printed during the EX, Diamond & Pearl, and HeartGold & SoulSilver eras). This means that Stage 2 Pokémon can be immediately evolved with Quick-Ripening Herb without waiting a turn to do so.
Meganium came out at the perfect time, as Garbodor (BREAKPoint) rotated after the 2018 World Championships. Without Ability-lock to worry about, some crafty players got to work with Meganium.
The most notable Meganium variant that arose was the Meganium and Greninja GX focused deck played by former World Champion Shintaro Ito, and Atsutoshi Kubo, at the Champions League Niigata to 11th and 22nd places. This deck used the awesome power of Swampert from Celestial Storm to empty the deck, so that Greninja GX could attack with the powerful Super Boost Energy Prism Star, before returning into the deck every turn. This hit and run strategy forms one of my personal favorite decks, as Greninja is able to easily map out a game plan while slowing the opponent down.
While Greninja GX was the star of the show for Meganium, it wasn't the only Meganium deck out there. A rogue spread variant used Decidueye GX, Kingdra GX, and Porygon-Z from Burning Shadows to set up damage on all of the opponent's Pokémon before devolving them to take multiple knockouts at once.
A mill oriented build also popped up, piloted by Alessandro Cremascol to Harrogate Regionals, which focused on Rhyperior and Charizard GX from Burning Shadows to deck the opponent out, while stalling their attacks with wall Pokémon.
With all of these strategies behind it already, Meganium looked to have a bright future ahead of it, but everything changed for poor Meganium in February of 2019, when Pikachu & Zekrom GX “Pikarom” came to play. Pikarom was far too fast for Meganium to deal with, as it could easily take 3 Knockouts by the second turn of the game against Meganium, which needed more time to set up.
Meganium was down, but not out, as one more Meganium deck would pop up in the middle of 2019, with the release of Unbroken Bonds bringing it Triple Acceleration Energy in addition to a new attacker from the prior set, Nidoqueen. With this, Meganium had one last appearance as an all out one hit KO deck, before it decided to bow out of competition.
Tricky foxes and cake pops were something Meganium could handle, but the combined force of Mewtwo & Mew GX, and the other Tag Teams that came later on, left a metagame inhospitable for our long-necked plant friend.
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