Hmm... Both of these are definitely excellent abilities and I'd be happy with either of them. However, I feel that Decentralizer has some real interesting challenges going for it, should we choose it. Reading over the responses, Utility Counter is beginning to remind me of Decentralizer in a way. The goal with it was to help lower the centralization of the metagame by creating a Pokemon that can handle a number of the top 10 threats. While Arghonaut is indeed a very successful Pokemon, even though we were really keeping our eyes on just the top 10 Pokemon at most, because even just that portion of the metagame contains diverse threats, we wound up having to focus more on particular members of the top 10 (namely, the setup sweepers up there) in an attempt to make sure that Arghonaut would likely wind up being successful, and indeed, that is what happened at the end.
Thinking that over, if during CAP6 we decided that we couldn't (or in any case, it wasn't in our best interest to try to) make Arghonaut flexible enough to handle all of the top 10, is a concept where the goal is to make a Pokemon that has the ability to handle an even larger range of Pokemon, which are even more diverse from each other, really viable?
I suppose a response to that might be hear Utility Counter is more meant to be a flexible Pokemon that can handle a large number of Pokemon, but only a few at once (with the particulars depending on the set used or something along that line), whereas with Arghonaut wasn't quite so focused on the idea of flexibility, but rather be threatening to its targets regardless.
However, that leads to some different problem: in addition to making a flexible enough to actually be able to handle a large number of Pokemon as a whole, due to this second part of the concept, the method of using individual sets to only handle a small number of Pokemon at once runs the risk of making it too much of a specialist in actual gameplay. Through that method of accomplishing the goal, these individual sets run the risk of being outclassed by Pokemon like Blissey, which can easily handle a large number of Pokemon all at once with one basic set. Why use CAP 10 to handle a handful of threats on your team, when you can simply use a Pokemon like Blissey to handle all those same Pokemon and more that one particular set on it could handle, or Skarmory in the case of one of its other sets, or Tyranitar in the case of another, or Metagross in the case of yet another, etc.
Basically, in order to distinguish itself from them, the groups of Pokemon it handles with each set have to be fairly broad. However, then you get more towards the problem with Arghonaut again. Plus, it's pretty hard to outclass Pokemon like Blissey, Skarmory, or Tyranitar in their roles in an all-in-one Pokemon. Trying to do so, without having to resort to something like a new ability or one like Multitype, the closest we'd wind up to that would be Pokemon like Porygon-2 or Cresseila, both approaches that, while they do work, obviously don't work well-enough/aren't well looked upon as evidenced by the amount of usage they see.
Taking this all into consideration, while Utility Counter is definitely an interesting concept, it's one that I just can't really be sure how it will wind up. This is why Dragons [No] Be Here appeals to me grow. It's targeting a far more specific group of Pokemon, which have a lot more in common, which should help a lot in achieving a successful concept that winds up on track with the original concept. It also doesn't stand as much of a chance of winding up being an inferior-something or other, as no one Pokemon is really that apt at handling the Dragons, as with the right move, ones like Salamance have the ability to get around most of their checks, save uncommon stuff that no one seems to want to use to handle them, like Cresselia. Lastly, it provides a nice benefit to the metagame by having a definite, tangible, positive goal on it: reducing the centralization of the metagame around Dragons (and by extension, Steel-types, as one of their primary functions and reason their used is to try and stop said Dragons), resulting in a more diverse, balanced metagame.
Now, one might say that if that even if this Pokemon really is that great at beating Dragons, wouldn't the metagame just be replacing this Pokemon for some of the Steel usage, and otherwise be the same thing, only more centralized around CAP10 as an answer to Dragons than some of the Steels? Again, I turn to Arghonaut to answer this. It's concept was Decentralizer, and I believe there was some of the same worry about this there. However, the point wasn't to centralize the metagame around it instead of the Top 10--it was merely meant to be another option to handle some of them, and a very good one at that, and as a result decrease their usage, as with its presence, the number of viable ways to handle them went up.
It's the same thing with Deck's concept--the point is that with this Pokemon's presence, in addition to the already existing Steels and the like, the ease of finding a viable way to handle the Dragons to put on your team increases, and thus the usage of the Dragon's should decrease as a result. And since the concept is more focused than Arghonaut's originally was, on a group of Pokemon that have a lot more in common than the Top 10 at the time in general did, the concept should be just as, if not more, successful as Arghonaut and that's why, at least with my current understanding of them, that I prefer Deck Knight's concept more.
But in any case, even so, both concepts are definitely very interesting to me and I look forward to seeing just what kind of Pokemon we'll wind up this time, regardless of which one wins. Looks to be a very fun and interesting project (of course, it always winds up that way for me even if it doesn't seem to at first, so I suppose that's no surprise).
