Pokémon [14]
3 — Thundurus EX — Roaring Skies (26/108)
1 — Mewtwo EX — Next Destinies (54/99)
4 — Zapdos — Roaring Skies (23/108)
2 — Zekrom — Zekrom Figure Box (BW24)
2 — Blitzle — Noble Victories (35/101)
2 — Zebstrika — BREAKpoint (49/122)
Trainers [30]
1 — Computer Search — Boundaries Crossed (137/149)
2 — Energy Switch — Roaring Skies (109/108)
2 — Trainers' Mail — Ancient Origins (100/98)
4 — Max Elixir — BREAKpoint (102/122)
2 — N — Battle Arena Deck (BW100)
3 — Professor Sycamore — BREAKpoint (107/122)
4 — Professor Birch's Observations — Primal Clash (134/160)
4 — Giovanni's Scheme — BREAKthrough (138/162)
2 — Parallel City — BREAKthrough (145/162)
2 — Rough Seas — Primal Clash (137/160)
4 — Fighting Fury Belt — BREAKpoint (99/122)
Energy [16]
2 — Double Colorless Energy
14 — Lightning Energy
Epilogue
A Real Live One is a tribute to the classic Iron Maiden live album featuring some of the most iconic art in metal history. In fact, among their collection of iconic art, A Real Live One definitely stands out as one of the more intense visions of the beast, as it was the first to showcase Eddy the Head in such a dynamic vehemence. Yet sadly, this iconic art was replaced on the Japanese release of the album with an artwork featuring Eddy the Head rocking out in full Nihon glory.
Now, I'm sure a lot of Japanese fans felt ripped off by this, but without further ado ladies and gentlemen, that is where our deck here begins today—with the legendary high voltage theme of A Real Live One—and none other than the legendary Eddy the Gyp (or Eddy the Jap) on lead guitar.
Starting out, A Real Live One is a Swarmer-style deck, which means we want to get the first attack, and attempt to overwhelm our opponents with a lighting fast offensive that jumpstarts the damage stack. Our primary starter for this deck is [Drill Peck] Zapdos, which has been genuinely overlooked since its release due to its low damage, high second attack cost, and average measure of HP.
However, I would like to believe this has more to do with people genuinely lacking a fuller understanding the game's dynamics. Since as a swarmer—this card can do amazingly well.
For instance, [Drill Peck] can begin offsetting the damage stack in your favor for a single energy, respectably setting up for an easy knockout against a lead EX with your follow-up attacker. In some cases, you can even follow up with another Zapdos to get the job done—thus helping to spare your Prizes—while enabling you to continue to building your offensive momentum from the bench.
From there, the power of Fighting Fury Belt takes Zapdos' general potential and supercharges it. Tuning the power of [Drill Peck] up to a decent 30 damage for 1 energy—while boosting Zapdos' HP up to the EX class of 160.
Fighting Fury Belt would of course represent the Iron Maiden tour shirt (one of the single most legendary accessories to be gained from an Iron Maiden live show). I mean, it's quite possibly the climax of the show for many. And is so empowering, many people leave with it being one of their now most prized possessions.
And that is exactly the same effect it has for us here—dynamically empowering our Swarmer Pokémon on all levels. Which is why it's included in high volume here—it better suites our Swarmer strategy than a split between it and other tactical Pokémon Tool Cards (such as Float Stone) would do.
The Swarmer strategy does not primarily involve retreating or any fancy maneuvers. It involves a direct and consistent well-thought-out offensive movement. Whatever you send out as your Active, aims to stay your Active until it's knocked out. This is not to say that you should never retreat—or that there won't be games where retreating will be great move to make despite the expense. But this expression aims to elaborate on truest style of a Swarmer-type deck, so that it can understood how exactly Fighting Fury Belt best suites that style.
More offensive power—more staying power. For a Swarmer-style deck, that's all there is to victory. And so that is the method behind the madness here. Understand this well—and use this understanding to plan your follow up attackers as thoughtfully to execute this strategy right.
Now, while our opening Swarmer is attacking, we have a collection of energy acceleration Items we want to use to further accelerate our offensive momentum and further overwhelm our opponent with the damage. These two Items are the high voltage lines of Max Elixir and Energy Switch.
Max Elixir is actually a new edition to this deck from the original version, which was centered around Energy Switch—first seeking to utilize cards such as [Charge] Thundurus and [Energy Glide] Emolga EX to gather energy—and then make explicit use of Energy Switch to quickly power up the mighty [Voltage Rush] Thundurus EX.
However, there was a lack offensive potential at the start of the game, which saw that deck structure falling behind the damage stack too often for comfort and not being able to make up for it later. And it was from this analysis, that I got the notion of switching up the deck's style to a true Swarmer type—utilizing [Drill Peck] Zapdos to get the edge on the damage stack for a single energy—while attempting to empower the High Voltage Eddy the Head Thundurus EX from the bench with cards like Max Elixir and Energy Switch. This turned out to be much more successful, and led me to realize what amazing combo potential Energy Switch and Max Elixir had together.
They work really well to quickly energy your Pokémon's more costly attack, where in some rare cases for this deck, it might even be in your best interests to use them to power up Zapdos for [Raging Thunder]. Zapdos is one of your only lines of defense against Fighting-type decks—and at 130 to 150 damage a hit—this attack can even be used to entirely overwhelm some of them entirely.
Meanwhile, [Outrage] Zekrom on the bench acts as the perfect lightning rod for [Raging Thunder]. First, the damage can be used to empower Zekrom's [Outrage]. Yet secondly, it can be subsided by the effects of Rough Seas, to curb the liability of letting Zekrom sit on the bench in the lower ranges of HP.
Not that you should have much to fear (including the dark), as Zekrom's HP jumps up to an astounding 170 when rocking the almighty Iron Maiden tour shirt (respectfully turning Zekrom into one of the most formidable Pokémon to match against your opponents Pokémon EX).
For contrast, [Outrage] Zekrom only gives up a single prize when KO'd—while being able to take massive amounts of damage—and deal out a maximum of 210 damage between [Outrage], Fighting Fury Belt, and Giovanni's Scheme.
This is amazing potential! Yet even this pails in comparison to our lead powerhouse—Thundurus EX—who can swing off the bench entirely fresh and one-hit K.O. a number of things between just a single pair of [Voltage Rush]—and Fighting Fury Belt or Giovanni's Scheme. And if your opponent can't knock Thundurus EX out during their next turn, this can turn into a double play (with Thundurus EX potentially catching two bodies—and claiming up to four prizes total between them).
This level of power in the game is almost unsurpassed!
But that's not even the end of it, the voltage cranks up even higher when Zebstrika comes into play, and [Zap Zone] makes our voltage damage totally unstoppable! This is in fact the entire reason behind Zebstrika—and it plays a very crucial role in this deck for this reason.
We're running a lot of Basics—and we rely heavily on the power of Pokémon EX—to point where this deck would have a wide-range vulnerability if it weren't for the power of [Zap Zone] being able to remove all restrictions and enable us to power through our opponent's defenses (as only A Real Live One would be expected to do).
Furthering the power at our fingertips, our Stadium cards here are another pair of cards that play a crucial role in this deck. And to explain the tactical split between them, this split is intended to provide diversity to the scope of unique benefits that each card offers to this deck over the other.
For example, Rough Seas can be amazing to turn back the hands of time and offset the damage stack, but it's an "after the fact of" type of card. In the sense that it can only be used "after the fact of damage being done"—and so it can't be used for something like actually preventing a knockout from occurring in the first place. Parallel City on the other hand can do just that—and therein lies its greater potential for a number of cards in this deck (such as [Outrage] Zekrom especially).
The Blue Side enables us to cut down our opponent's bench without any restrictions to our damage restrictions (since we're not running any of those types)—while the Red Side provides an added defense against some of the most popular types in the game. This is an immense benefit, as if we were just running Rough Seas exclusively, it would turn into a vulnerability against us when facing Water-type decks. However, with the Parallel City split, we can actually use our other Stadium to get the edge against them.
As a fun fact, Silent Lab was another possible Stadium tech that I had considered for this deck. But I quickly came to the conclusion that it wouldn't likely be of any significant use in the numbers it's run in—so this card was ruled out in place of providing more consistency for a better tech option.
Chaos Tower was also originally apart of this deck as a tech, but was omitted for the same reason, accompanying the fact the card actually becomes a liability when we need to use it to remove Poisoned—and then the other side cancels out our ability to leave our opponent's Paralyzed with Thundurus EX.
Making sure to rule out as much liability as possible is absolutely crucial to the potency of your deck structure. Which you are about to learn more about, as we come full circle to our collection of Supporters here—which themselves have been tactically arranged with the intention to help accentuate the flow of the cards—as well as the flow of power through our hands.
On the broad end of this spread, we have a tactical split of 6 wheel Supporters and 3 Professor Sycamore. This is typically the split I like to run to help secure the heavy involvement of Professor Sycamore type cards in my deck structure. Those cards can be such a liability, so it naturally makes a lot of sense to cushion them with a wide-array of alternative card advantage options (in order to help lessen the possibility of Professor Sycamore working against you—by causing you to discard any number of precious cards that you won't be able to make use of later when you might desperately need to).
At the bulk of this wheel cushion, we have Professor Birch's Observations, which is an especially good card to run in this split. The reason for this being that Professor Sycamore makes one of the absolute best cards you could hope to catch on the short end of the draw with Professor Birch's Observations.
Bringing up the rear, N is our backup to Professor Birch's Observations itself. This was originally arranged the other way around (with 4 N and 3 Birch), but when the volume of Professor Sycamore went up to three to Support to short end of Birch, the volume of the two wheel Supporters was exchanged to better suite the deck structure as a whole.
This arrangement here aims to keep the flow of the cards as one-sided as possible—sparing just 2 copies of N for emergencies—or as an endgame disruption to the end the tour for our opponents.
On the far end of this array, I then replaced 2 copies of Great Ball that were in this deck with 2 copies of Trainers' Mail to help further accentuate reach of the safety net. To explain this, these 2 copies of Trainers' Mail (with the addition of Computer Search) take the volume of our Supporter base to an average of 13 cards (with a first play of Professor Birch's Observations). Now, the actual number is really 15, but this accounting for at least two of those cards being prized (which is generally a very common scenario).
In turn, the 13 Supporter-esque cards accounted for here, push our success rate of recovering a Supporter-esque card on short end of a 4 card draw to 116%. This 100% threshold is the probably the least amount you safety you want available to cover from the short end of Professor Birch's Observations.
At the farthest end of the spread, Giovanni's Scheme has been included in such high volume thanks to its extra potential for recovering from a short Professor Birch's Observations. Yet Giovanni's primary role here is not to accelerate the flow of the cards—it's to further the grip of power in the hands of our already overwhelmingly powerful Swarmers.
You see—money is power. And just like how you can never have too much money—you can never have too much power. This is one of Giovanni's most passionate beliefs. And the potential that Giovanni's Scheme provides to this deck serves as a living proof that this belief holds some definite truth in the world. Seizing the reigns of an immense power—and turning its touch into a death grip.
