Decks must both be able to disrupt lock decks (Psychic Slowpoke / Brock’s Mankey / Muk Lock or Dark Vileplume / Alakazam Lock) and withstand aggressive decks with the best attackers (Lightning-Fighting Dodrio / Wigglytuff or Psychic-Fighting Clefable / Dark Golbat / Sabrina’s Kadabra) in the game to be competitive. The tricky part is many lock/stall decks play high-damage-dealing Pokemon and aggressive decks may play Pokemon or Trainers to stall out the game while they setup to win. Counterplay to commonly played strong cards will go a long way toward winning games, and access to a single card in a matchup may be the difference between winning and losing (see my introduction to deck-building in 15/3 for more information on commonly played cards and their potential counters)!

Past Metagame Summaries can be viewed here:

• Middle of Year 2025
• End of Year 2024

And to keep up-to-date, the Limitless results for Pokemon 1999 Prop 15/3 leagues (usually just a small amount of players) can be found here!

The Metagame Summarized – August 2025

After more than a year since the Brew City Showdown, it feels things are changing up a bit: more games being played with different decks has started to introduce challengers (and possible dominators) to straight-forward Dodrio decks with Big Basics (and lower amounts of consistency cards). 

The former “deck to beat”, Dodrio decks with Big Basics (and usually additional Evolution lines) succeed due to their ability to play multiple Gust of Wind and Super Energy Removal (as well as other disruptive Trainers and hefty dose of Item Finders, though, some versions may play Pokemon Traders). The Big Basic strategy is its own form of consistency: each Pokemon drawn operates effectively with just an energy or two.

The primary Big Basic strategy – Lightning – deck’s Rocket’s Zapdos and Electabuzz are a tyrannical pairing, but many Types of Big Basics are powerful. These decks look to win games through high efficient gameplay with hard-hitting attacks supplemented by smaller bits of disruption. It appears these decks gain an advantage by playing at least two Types of Pokemon, one often Fighting, to attack more often for weakness; Fighting-Psychic, Fire-Fighting and Lightning-Fighting all appear to be competitive pairings.

The Dodrio Big Basic decks may be rivaled by opponents with hard-hitting Evolutions (and the Pokemon Powers they wield) along with type resistance and toolbox approaches. Base Set Electrode, Charizard, Alakazam, Blastoise, Brock’s Ninetales and Venusaur are some Pokemon that could (or can!) support an effective game plan against Big Basics and disruptive Trainers. Kangaskhan, Koga’s Pidgey, Dark Dragonair and Dark Dragonite open up playing specific Pokemon with niche application without playing too many consistency Trainers. Primarily, these decks look to survive the early game and then overpower their opponents usually while leveraging one or more Pokemon Powers, well-lined-up attacks and sometimes game-warping Trainers.

The Evolution-based and/or toolbox decks (and Dodrio decks that introduce Evolutions or types of Energy) have to contend with the Lock and Stall strategies: high amounts of Energy Removal, Slowpoke, Brock’s Mankey (67), Muk, Aerodactyl and Dark Vileplume. Muk may also be included in decks that take more of a Big Basic or Evolution approach (at the cost of making those decks slightly worse against other Big Basic decks) in an attempt to hard-counter decks focused Pokemon Powers. Alternatively, a Stall or Lock deck may look to play Dodrio and perfectly lineup attackers against popular strategies and win on prizes. Lock and Stall decks require careful management of resources to beat (and having some cards dedicated to the match-up will help immensely).

The nature of the Base-Gym card population and the Prop 15/3 deck-building rules leads to a few cards defining the more popular Energy Types that see play. Two Jungle Colorless Stage 1 Evolutions, Wigglytuff and Clefable, set the most ubiquitous, efficient ways to do damage. Their Weakness and Resistance set the Energy-type based metagame: Fighting is a premium attacking Type and Psychic is a risky attacking Type. But many of the best Fighting attackers, Base Set Hitmonchan and Gym Heroes Brock’s Mankey (#68), as well as premium Lock pieces Fossil Muk and Base Set Alakazam, have Psychic Weakness (making it a somewhat desirable attacking Type). One of the other most important Colorless Mon, Dodrio, resists Fighting but has a Weakness to Lightning. Lightning’s Big Basics (Base Set Electabuzz and Gym Challenge Rocket’s Zapdos) offer a fluxing duo of Weakness and Resistance to Fighting, while Clefable can one-hit-knock-out Rocket’s Zapdos with a single Energy attack. These relationships make Fighting, Lightning and Psychic among the most popular Types (and also showcase the risk of playing Blastoise or Grass Pokemon with Psychic Weakness); the Type of Pokemon to include in a deck feeds into the metagame strategies above.

With all of the above said, it’s important to consider that decks operate on a spectrum of strategies, varying their approach as they draw cards and anticipate or respond to their opponents’ actions. Including a single copy or two of niche application cards can give a deck many different routes to victory (where a deck with 3 copies of most cards will fail due to lacking responses or correct attackers, especially against Lock/Stall decks). Be flexible and be successful: the Prop 15/3 (Base-Gym) metagame is still evolving and there is a lot of room for exploration. I hope to share my journey testing decks and ideas in further posts and updates to this blog. Enjoy brewing and battling!