Farewell Friends — My Entire Collection

Osaka Sumo Underground

 

The shameful son, that a'h swings both ways, runs the Osaka Sumo Underground—when suddenly his dad busts in to take over his operation—and begins directly pocketing the money he finds. The Osaka Sumo Underground is a deadly bloodsport gambling ring where fighters of all types battle to the bitter end—and sometimes to death. This deck came to be trying to come up with an alternative M Tyrannitar deck that utilized Max Elixir for the energy acceleration needed to power [Destroyer King].

 

The deck ultimately ended up further utilizing Fighting Fury Belt to create a sumo theme, and cut back on the emphasis placed on M Tyrannitar to diversify upon the deck's potential and the flavor of the theme. Instead, just a single copy of both are provided to be made good use of if-and-when the opportunity ever presents itself, while other very power Dark-type Pokémon provide all kinds of alternative offensive outlets.

 

Between [Dark Wing] Yveltal, Dark Patch, and Max Elixir, there's a lot of energy acceleration to heavily power this deck's offensive power, while Shadow Circle removes the Weakness, and the suite between Fighting Fury Belt, Dangerous Energy, and Giovanni's Scheme greatly broaden this deck's HP, Attack Power, and Damage Stack stats.

 

 

Osama Bin Laden

 

This deck is about to take you into the underbelly of Arabian, on a deadly secret mission to eradicate various Arabian mob members as the legendary Terrorist leader/US Military co-operative Osama Bin Laden. This is one of my most OG decks, and probably one of my most treasured decks. I came up with this deck in the early XY era, looking to create a deck that revolving around the intriguing [Dig Uppercut] Excadrill. This was a really interesting card to me, as were a number of Black White era cards whose potential was seemingly skipped over due to the popularity of cards like Darkwai-EX, Mewtwo-EX, the reign of the Plasma era, and then the reign of Yveltal-EX soon after.

 

This deck here combines the Virbank City Gym/Hypnotic Laser combo co-operative with Excadrill-EX, {Premonition} Lunatone, and [Cosmic Spin] Solrock. Even in its earliest build, this deck did fairly well, as [Dig Uppercut] enables continuous plays on cards like Pokémon Center Lady and Hypnotoxic Laser. One of it's biggest drawbacks was firepower, which previously it attempted to boost with the utility of Muscle Band, but was later replaced with a Bursting Balloon/Rock Guard/Eco Arm suite to much greater success.

 

This final edit of the deck contains a split between Olympia and Pokémon Center Lady. The addition of Olympia here seeks to provide some mobility for heavy Pokémon. It also potentially enables a Slugger powerplay to be made between a heavily damage Active Pokémon and a totally fresh Benched Pokémon. And as a special bonus, Olympia can also act as a check against Lysandre.

 

Lysandre itself was another card I've tried to work in here several times, but end up opt'ing it out every time, because I feel like it goes against the nature of the deck and it's presence isn't needed. You see, this deck naturally utilizes a heavily diverse Swarmer strategy between Virbank/Laser and Bursting Balloon/Rock Guard, providing diverse damage sources to combat against simple anti-EX, anti-Basic effects.

 

Akin to this, I feel like this deck should be able to bust through any simple defensive such as that, and ultimately overrun them without Lysandre being needed at all. The recent addition of Olympia further supports this potential, as Olympia's Switch potential enables this deck to counter-check against Type-disadvantages. One could even make the split 3-1 (between Olympia and Pokémon Center Lady) to further increase this potential.

 

  

Out to Pasture

 

This deck right here about a powerlifter who works at the slaughterhouse, when suddenly one day, one of heavyweight cows steps up to the harness just goes mad. It's like, "Bro, do you even lift?!" and bucks the powerlifter to the ground, beginning a rampage throughout the entire slaughterhouse looking to get back to the pasture—even if it means having to brutally gore through everybody first.

 

This is a {Flower Veil} Floette deck, that seeks to use heavily use this Ability to hyperboost the HP of Grass-type Pokémon for a long and relentless rampage from M Venusaur-EX. The original deck sought to utilize the original XY Venusaur and M Venusaur, because I figured [Poison Powder] works fair enough with Virbank City Gym, and the HP boost should be immensely helpful to M Venusaur while {Crisis Vine} tears through people.

 

However, this final edit of the deck replaces them with the Generations Venusaur and M Venusaur-EX for the fun of diversity and the obvious synergy they boast with the central theme. [Poison Impact] is even more powerful with Virbank City Gym given the additional Special Condition it invokes. And with 230 natural HP, while [Bloom Buster] deals 30 damage to EVERY Pokémon on the opponent's bench, the HP bonus from {Flower Veil} is likely to turn this M Venusaur into an even more powerful game finisher.

 

  

Pamper's Elite

 

Time to change poopy butt. Here's a creative M Mewtwo Y deck that seeks to utilize the mega acceleration of Virizion-EX to supercharge the power of M Mewtwo Y's [Psychic Infinity] attack. Despite the Type difference, these two cards have a lot of synergy together, given the combination of energy acceleration and Special Condition lock. Special Conditions can be really debilitating to M Mewtwo Y—one of its major vulnerabilities in-fact. However, Virizon's Ability provides a pretty definite guard against Special Conditions, which enables M Mewtwo EX to run wild without worries.

 

This deck seeks to further utilize some ingenuity between the combination of Tool Retriever and Ninja Boy, which hope to create a couple powerplays between M Mewtwo Y, Mewtwo Spirit Link, and Fighting Fury Belt effectively providing extensions on their use.

 

The first of these powerplays involves caching a Mewtwo Spirit Link on any Pokémon before a wheel, then returning to hand later with Tool Retriever, so that it can be used to quickly mega evolve Mewtwo-EX. The second involves Ninja Boy enabling any Pokémon to soak up the energy from [Emerald Slash]—then making a powerplay on Ninja Boy later to switch the heavily energized Pokémon to Mewtwo-EX.

 

For best results, I'd suggest a heavy tech of at least 2 Ninja Boy for this, just to help create some hard security for it being there. However, I can't really say the Ninja Boy powerplay is that necessary with there being 3 Mewtwo-EX, 4 Ultra Ball, Computer Search, 2 Sklya, and 2 Trainer's Mail to heavily support a quick and perfect setup.

 

 

Panda Diplomacy

 

This deck is in an alternative version of the Vixi Fuuu {Benevolent Boss} Pangoro deck. This deck challenges to do the very dangerous thing negated from the original concept—utilize Sky Field to superboost the HP effect of {Benevolent Boss}. Obviously, this is a very tricky process, because keeping Sky Field out is a tough venue by itself, but having Pokémon to recoup on the bench after getting Sky Field back on the field poses another challenge yet.

 

Pangoro also requires a lot of energy to attack, so to address both of these issues, this deck utilizes {Premonition} Lunatone and Ether to solve the energy issues, alongside an innovative 3 {Propagation} Exeggcute with Battle Compressor to solve the bench issue.

 

Traditionally, you would probably see 4 Exeggcute in a deck like this. But even at first thought, that should be noticeably too excessive. You only have three additional spots on the bench from Sky Field, where just 3 {Propagation} Exeggcute is all you need to create a definite fill for that spot. You can ace all three off the bat with just one play on Battle Compressor, so naturally, running more than three can be considerably naïve (especially when it comes to the opening clutch—where a full 4 Exeggcute can push its percentile rate over the safe threshold).

 

  

Panty Raid Takes Sapporo

 

Here's an alternative version of my original Panty Raid deck. This deck takes us from the college campus to the streets of Sapporo, Japan—where a Yuri Pantsu has recently had her panties ripped off her in broad daylight from under her short skirt—by a group of panty raiders that have been running wild across the city in recent days. Investigators have been working around the clock looking for leads—on a desperate crackdown to bring these panty raiders to justice.

 

The idea behind this deck was to make an offensive version of M Latios deck. The original Panty Raid deck focuses more on the potential of Latios Spirit Link, but there was another very prominent potential available with an offensive strategy focused primarily around [Fast Raid] & Muscle Band.

Traditionally, I would have wanted to compliment the power surge as much as possible, affixing a heavy presence of Giovanni's Scheme to the deck structure here. However, Latios-EX's second attack is an immense energy hike (even with Double Dragon Energy), and its first attack considerably doesn't do enough damage. So instead, the deck structure here contains a heavy array of disruption, to hit the opponent hard in a far more technical way, and hope to better compliment this deck's offensive edge.

 

 
PeeWee's Playhouse

 

Welcome to Pee Wee's Playhouse! It's a wacky fun place where anything can happen!

 

This is a creative M Alakazam deck about the legendary PeeWee Herman, who travels from the city of Cincinnati, Ohio—to Tokyo, Japan—to the big apple New York City—on a loner rebel adventure with his friend Dottie. This deck seeks to combine the power of [Zen Force] with [Team Plasma] Espeon and Ancient Trait Banette—two cards with an insane amount of synergy with [Zen Force].

 

The original version of this deck sought to utilize the Virbank City Gym/Hypnotoxic Laser pair, another set of cards with a lot of natural synergy with [Zen Force]. It did fairly well, but I found that it was much more successful to replace Virbank/Laser with Dimension Valley/Acro Bike. This deck has a lot of resourcing to do, and Acro Bike extends an incredible amount of potential to this. The utility of Dimension Valley is also a lot better, since utilizing excessive Banette pretty much depends on it.

 

On a final note, I felt like Scoop Up Cyclone was the natural selection as the Ace Spec card for this deck given its synergy with M Alakazam and Alakazam Spirit Link. M Alakazam doesn't have a lot of HP, but in addition to the reset Scoop Up Cyclone can provide—it can also double to provide an extension on {Kinesis} Ability—as well as spare an unfortunate Alazakam-EX that takes heavy damage having to start the game.

 

  

Play with Kitty [Remastered]

 

Here's a remastered version of the original Play with Kitty deck from May 2015. This version of the deck seeks to utilize Max Elixir, which was released far into the next year. This version of the deck also replaces [Energy Wheel]/[Hurricane] Tornadus with a heavier Pokémon-EX base including [Aero Ball] Lugia-EX and very special tech from Cobalion-EX.

As a fun fact, Cobalion-EX was actually heavily considered as a tech in the original Play with Kitty deck—but ended up getting disconsidered as unnecessary given the immense benefit that had {Mighty Shield} in Special Energy dominated Meta. The higher consistency of Aegislash-EX helped to get it on the bench and better the success of synergy with [Hurricane] Tornadus.

 

This version of the deck also replaces the more vulnerable [Call for Family] Klefki for the [Call for Family] Skarmory to some greater or lesser success. The addition of Fighting Fury Belt in this deck could have extended some potential to Klefki, but the Type-diversity that Skarmory provides to the deck is yet another very considerable factor for its greater success over Klefki.

 

The deck engine here replaces the one-sided draw strategy for an improvised Supporter array that intends to provide the fastest and greatest use of Max Elixir. The Out-Fighter strategy here hopes to make good use of Ace Trainer as well, while a heavy presence from Pokémon Center Lady provides an extension on the lessened presence of Steel Shelter (to help guard against Special Conditions—and dial back 60 damage for a very nice bonus).

A final tech on Olympia here seeks to do something really fancy, providing an extension on Pokémon Center Lady, while also providing an extension on Scramble Switch to boost the mobility of this deck's heavy Pokémon in the absence of Float Stone.

 

 

Playboy Mansion

 

"Come on down girls..."

 

This here is a really creative take on the Team Plasma [Vengeance] Flareon deck. Basically, what I said to myself was I wanted a deck that had a copy of ALL the Eeveelutions, that further included an energy of each Type, so that you could potentially bridge off [Energy Evolution] Eevee in any scenario.

I originally entertained to superpower the [Vengeance] attack by aggressively spamming through the deck between [Triple Draw] Kangaskhan-EX and Professor Sycamore. However, this final edit of the deck takes a more technical approach, including a split between Psychic's Third Eye, which enables a more tactical selection of cards, discarding only the unusable Pokémon in your hand for an equivalent straight draw off the top.

 

I figured the power of [Vengeance] by itself could be underwhelming, so M Kangaskhan-EX has been an addition to this deck from the very beginning. Would have loved to tech a copy of {Victory Star} Victini for it, but opted for an additional copy of [Energy Crush] Leafeon instead for its power.

 

  

Potatoes for Christmas

 

It's Christmas day in the town of Mariposa, California. And in one house terribly gripped in poverty—Jacoby Shaddix is only getting one present for Christmas—potatoes. This is a middle class poverty deck featuring the dual-type [Wicked Wind] Shiftry from the Steam Siege expansion.

Pretty simple deck strategy here, that aims to use Forest of Giant Plants to hyper-evolve Seedot to Shiftry, then bridge off all the disruption to keep the hand levels as even as possible to enable the extra damage from [Extrasensory]. [Outrage] Kyurem-EX is included here as an alternative offensive resource for the universal potential with Double Colorless Energy, the immense Slugger potential of the [Outrage] attack, as well the Type diversity it provides to compliment Shiftry's weakness to Fire-type.

 

As an advanced tip, the three Red Card aim to provide disruptive potential off a first turn play on N, in the event you have to play a card from your hand afterward (a very likely scenario). A play on Red Card after a first turn N sets the opponent at a disadvantage and helps to better enable [Extrasensory]. The higher volume further hopes to extends this potential longer into the game for even greater success from it.

Farewell Friends — My Entire Collection

Poundtown

 

This deck is about being taken to Poundtown—or more specifically—about me taking you to Poundtown. This is something I literally seem to have become an expert at in life. I find myself having to take someone new to Poundtown on a regular basis. It never seems to end. So just sit back and relax—because I'm going to take really good care of you—and fully indulge you in all my talent till your heart's content.

 

I think a survivalist deck would be the best way to explain this one, given how it combines the effects of heavy damage prevention with heavy damage healing. This deck strives to out-survive everything, and triumph with the most flawless victory possible.

 

[Geomancy] Xerneas is the most prominent starter for this deck, as its energy acceleration is the golden key to victory with high energy Pokémon. This deck here pairs the power of [Geomancy] with Diancie-EX and {Pressure} Lugia/Lugia BREAK—two very powerful cards—with all kinds of chemistry together in this deck structure here. Both have damage preventive Abilities that stack with Hard Charm and Parallel City, reducing the damage of an opponent's attack from 40 to 70 damage.

 

To perfectly compliment this, the high volume of 3 Fairy Drop and 3 Pokémon Center Lady further dial back the effects of the opponent's attack—reducing their best efforts to nothing at all. This ultimate defense technique is further coupled with very powerful attacks, and an array of hard disruption between between Judge, Delinquent, and Enhanced Hammer, sure to make Poundtown really exciting.

 

As an advanced deck structure technique, you'll notice there are only two copies of Xerneas BREAK in this deck. Although Xerneas BREAK is a really powerful card that a deck might want to make the most use out of that it can—the spitfire of Lugia BREAK is here to make up for the loss of Xerneas BREAK—while the lower number of copies helps to prevent Xerneas BREAK from being discarded.

 

 

Premier of China

 

China is a world of its own—so naturally a deck about the Premier of China should be a really complex and busy one. This creative deck seeks to put the Ancient Trait of Entei to its full potential, embodying a heavy volume of diverse Pokémon Tool cards to represent the full scope of talent and responsibilities enacted by the honorable premier. The deck engine here majorly consists of a straight draw tactic, combining the effects of Cheren/Tierno, Professor's Letter, and Scorched Earth, with the intention to best compliment to utility of Elsa here. Elsa is a direct retrieval card perfect for this deck to help quickly resource its immediate needs among the vast collection of Pokémon Tool cards here.

 

The collection of Pokémon Tool cards is a toolbox of sorts containing a number of tactical accessories to provide a diversity of offensive and defensive options against a number of different challenges. Weakness is possibly one of the most prominent challenges for Fire-type Pokémon, so two Weakness Policy here is a must. Fighting Fury Belt stacks wonderful with all the Basic Pokémon here, so it's a given why its consistency is so high here.

The tech of Evolite and Silver Bangle cater particularly to Ancient Trait Entei's [Flame Screen]—boosting both offensive and defense respectively. Rock Guard is pretty much all-purpose potential. It probably goes best with Ancient Trait Entei, give the ability to combine its effects with other powerful Tool cards. A final tech of Float Stone provides some mobility to help guard against Confused and Poison while doubling as an emergency escape route for heavy or energized Pokémon.

 

 

 

Princess and the Frog

 

This is a fairytale deck featuring a turbo Shaymin/Skyfield/Hoopa strategy revolving around the power of the [Round] attack. [Round] can be an incredibly powerful attack, dealing an exponential amount of damage for each Pokémon you have in play with the [Round] attack. The strategy here is pretty simple, the combination of cards in this deck structure are revolve around gather as many [Round] Pokémon on the bench as possible with Skyfield out—then quickly evolve Tympole to Seismitoad via Rare Candy—and hopefully One-Hit KO the opponent's Pokémon with [Round].

 

The deck structure here is incredibly tight knit, as every Trainer card in this deck provide extensions to one another, ultimately hyperboosting the consistency of the deck, the flow of the cards, and direct access of particular cards. Pokémon Fan Club works in this way with Ultra Ball and Master Ball, proving definite resourcing for a turn one setup alongside the Abilities of Shaymin-EX and Hoopa-EX. Skyla is run in a split with Teammates, as Teammates holds immense potential with Rare Candy and Seismitoad. The heavy tech of 2 Paint Roller enable a powerplay on Sky Field, for this deck to discard liable copies of Shaymin and Hoopa on the bench, and get them out of harms way.

 

On a final note, the energy base here makes great bait for Ultra Ball in place more precious cards, while provided in enough volume to still make consecutive energy plays all throughout the game.

 

 

Punch Power

 

Step up folks and test your might. [1] Here's a deck featuring the heavyhitting team of {King's Palace} Nidoking and Ancient Trait Nidoqueen, in a deck about the fun of the arcade Punch Machine. [1] The strategy for this deck involves the most tactical dual Stage 2 evolution chain building deck structure I could come up with. Building a Stage 2 evolution chain is challenge enough, but this deck seeks set the heavyweight record, and build side-by-side Nidoking/Nidoqueen lines in heavy volume.

 

To reinforce this as best as I could, this deck includes heavy volume of Bridgette to effectively set the foundation for the side-by-side Stage 2 evolution climb. From there, Evosoda/Level Ball/Master Ball and Wally super reinforce the lighting climb to Stage 2, together providing Rare Candy like jumps from Nidoran directly to Nidoking or Nidoqueen.

 

If you pay close attention, you'll notice how I applied a really innovative technique to deck structure here in hopes of besting its evolution chain success. This technique involved opting out one copy of Nidorina from the Ancient Trait Nidoqueen line for an additional copy of Wally. What this technique aims to do, is take a deadweight copy of the middle-placed card, and use it to add to the universal potential of evolution support. The Nidoqueen line gets an natural extension here from the Karen tech in this deck, while the three copies of Nidorina still provide a decent enough consistency for great success.

 

Both Stadiums compliment the power of this deck equally, so they're provided in an even split for best results. This even split also hopes to breed greater success against decks that run the same Stadiums, enabling alternating plays to ace out enemy Dimension Valleys and Virbank City Gyms, so copies of these cards don't collect in the hand and just adulterate the consistency of the deck.

 

[Reflective Shield] Sigilyph and [Damage Change] Mewtwo-EX provide perfect starters for this deck, as both cards make excellent leads to hold down the fort while Nidoking and Nidoqueen get ready from the bench. Giant Cape lastly finds its place here for its universal potential with every card in this deck. I considered all options, but in the end, Giant Cape stacks significantly with [Damage Change] Mewtwo, can used to great success with Sigilyph—and unlike Fighting Fury Belt—there's never a time you can't make use of it given its universal potential. It was a no contest.

 

 

Pundit Kitchen

 

This is a deck for all those people who stay up all night making political memes on Pundit Kitchen. This a [Triple Draw] Kangaskhan/[Hand Fling] Ambipom deck that seeks to diversify itself through the effects of the Type advantage Eeveelution cards. As with all humor, sometimes the jokes can be all in fun, but sometimes the punchline can be downright cruel. In the same way, [Hand Fling] can be loads of fun in this deck accompanying its straight draw strategy. But sometimes time can play a cruel trick against you, where tacking on the Type-advantage is going to be essential to victory.

 

The deck structure here is a pretty complex one. It majorly seeks to both hyper-accelerate the hand size to power up [Hand Fling], while also utilizing a number of direct retrieval cards to enable a choice selection of particularly important cards. At the apex of this, Caitlin provides some really amazing potential to this deck, enabling a powerful filter on the bulk of cards that it draws, placing them out of the way on the bottom of the deck, for a more organized draw off the top in search of what's needed.

 

Taking advantage of the Colorless theme here, this deck runs both Dark and Fairy energy, to bridge off the benefits of Fairy Garden and Shadow Circle for this deck's Pokémon. I would naturally place Shadow Circle as a bit greater importance over Fairy Garden (given how reckoning Type disadvantage can be). But free retreat can easily be just as important—so they're here in an even split for good measure—with Professor's Letter providing an instant outlet to their specific energy needs.

 

A tech on Mew-EX hopes to provide further Type advantage diversity to the Eeveelutions, while a tech of Exp. Share hopes to come in handy and enable a quick follow-up attack mid-or-endgame.

 

  

Republic of China

 

China—where occasionally a firefighter has to sneak on top of a roof to mug a man sitting on a ledge and prevent him from jumping to his death. Mystical land of flying dragons, medicine balls, kung fu, and one of the largest economies of people in the world. This right here begins a number of decks that I've come to dub, the Max Elixir Republic series. The story behind them is simple, I was basically just derping around checking out all the energy acceleration for the Fighting-type, when I decided to try combining their effects with Max Elixir seeking to create an alpha turbo deck for a number of different Fighting-type Pokémon-EX.

 

The strategy behind this deck here combines the energy acceleration of [Shout of Power] Landorus with Max Elixir in attempts to jumpstart the power of the mighty M Groudon-EX. This card can be a very challenging one to make good use of. It has a heavy resource dependency between the number of energy required for it to attack, and the need of expendable Stadium Cards, to boost the level of this attack's damage to significant amounts. The energy acceleration suite here hopes to quickly make these ends meet, while the tactical array that surrounds attempts to best support the deck's longevity.

 

Ultra Ball could be considered a very important card for making first turn use of [Shout of Power]. However, this deck only includes two of them, because Max Elixir helps to detract from the need to reply on [Shout of Power]. In addition to that, Korrina provides an instant extension to Ultra Ball, while this deck runs three copies of Juniper, which can provide an alternative outlet for [Shout of Power] (discarding basic energy from the hand—that can then be equipped with the attack's effect).

 

Providing the Stadium power, Silent Lab takes a heavy presence here as one of this deck's best selections. Silent Lab helps to set the game pace in this deck's favor by shutting down the card drawing power of {Set Up} Shaymin-EX, as well as disabling the damage reducing effects of cards like {Sparkle Veil} Diancie-EX and {Plump Body} Snorlax. This is especially beneficial to this deck, given the level of damage that [Shout of Power] does, and the fact that Silent Lab provides an extra special bonus to {Shining Spirit} Hawlucha, by disabling its own drawback ability, thus enabling Hawlucha's [Flying Press] to deal 120 damage against Pokémon-EX with Fighting-type Weakness.

 

A tech from Shine of Memories hopes to provide a special benefit to M Groudon, by enabling it to attack on three energy, and deal up to 120 damage with [Giant Claw] without any Stadium card in play. A further tech of Ancient Trait Regirock (alongside Dowsing Machine), provide extensions on Stadium cards and other Trainer cards, while Float Stone enables free movement between this deck's heavy Pokémon.

 

Zygarde-EX plays a supporting role as the counterpart EX in this deck. Zygarde provides Weakness-type diversity to Groudon, and receives a nice compliment to its [Cell Storm] attack with the heavy presence of Pokémon Center Lady here. Focus Sash is a late addition added to this deck at the last moment to further boast its longevity against Type disadvantage. Focus Sash stacks incredibly well with Hawlucha as well, enabling [Flying Press] to deal up to 160 damage with Strong Energy before Hawlucha can be Knocked Out.

 

 

Republic of India

 

The feature presentation of this Max Elixir Republic deck takes us on a magic carpet ride through the enchanted land of India. The decks strategy here combines a number of primary aspects, from the energy acceleration of [Shout of Power] Landorus/Ultra Ball/Max Elixir, to the bench punching combination between Landorus-EX, [Pure Power] Medicham, and [Muddy Water] Stunfisk. The energy acceleration aims to quickly energize the superpowers between Landorus-EX and Zygarde-EX.

Both Pokémon are very powerful, but their most prominent attacks involve a bit of an energy hike to make use of, where the energy acceleration strategy here (atop the Float Stone) form a Swarmer/Slugger style of combat that energize and mobilize these superpowers as quickly as possible to finish off the opponent's Active Pokémon, and create an unstoppable momentum from there. 

 

Although there's no Lysandre in this deck to provide a finishing touch on the heavy bench punching, the consecutive damage that stacks up can generally be enough so that Benched Pokémon naturally fall off, or wear them down to the point where they don't stand much of a fighting chance once they do hit the Active spot. Team Flare Grunt takes its place here as this deck's technical Supporter, and it works amazingly well to push the opponent back turns that enable the bench damage to quickly double and triple. A creative tech of Professor's Letter (the doctorate) provides an extension on the utility of Ultra Ball and Korrina, enabling a more definite start with [Shout of Power] Landorus.

 

However, given Max Elixir, [Shout of Power] isn't entirely needed at the start of the game. This deck can easily thrive off just Max Elixir, while using [Shout of Power] Landorus to get a jump on the damage stack. I hate to think this deck can afford to waste too many resources, and that's why you only see three copies of Ultra Ball here.

 

  

Republic of North Korea

 

In this Max Elixir Republic series deck, we journey into the prominent land of North Korea. A secluded nation terribly misunderstood by the world—with a history shrouded in mystery. Just between you and me, legend has it that North Korea actually came to be from a group of Korean liberators (led by Kim Il Sung) who sought to break free from South Korean oppression, and overthrow the oppressionist group in control, through a power in numbers strategy; seizing the brutally oppressed Northern Farm land, and forming a militant nation within it.

 

From there, North Korea became a secret militant force of justice, specializing in surgical operations against criminal members across the Asian emirates. Due to the nature of undercover work, this truth has been hindered to fabricate the legitimacy of their undercover fronts—unfortunately forcing the nation to carry shameful cross among the unknowing population of the world and its people.

 

The deck strategy here is a bit of unique one among the Max Elixir Republic series, namely because this deck runs the mighty Lucario-EX, whose [Corkscrew Smash] attack enables some extraordinary tactics that would be naïve to pass up on. M Lucario is also included here for much of the same reason. It has so much synergy with Max Elixir, it would be naïve to pass up on it. M Lucario here represents the legendary North Korean sniper—one of the most feared entities in the Asian underground.

 

A very creative heavy tech from Hitmonlee provides an extension on this flavor. One can replace it with Landorus-EX if they want, but Hitmonlee provides creative flare to this deck, stacks very well with Bursting Balloon—and as a single Prize Pokémon—creates a more difficult Prize exchange for the opponent to grind against. [Rumble] Zygarde finds its place here for the offensive diversity it adds to this deck, in addition to its synergy with Max Elixir and the Bursting Balloon/Rock Guard/Eco Arm suite. Bursting Balloon and Rock Guard both help to keep pace with the damage stack facing the two energy hike for [Rumble], while from the bench, Zygarde, makes a really amazing satellite for Max Elixir, given its high damage potential and single Prize factor.

 

{Premonition} Lunatone makes a tactical addition to this deck to help quickly resource powerful cards. It also helps to support the heavy presence of Judge, and the shortest straw it pulls for both players. The potential of Pokémon Center Lady should be obvious here. It offsets the damage stack with opponent facing heavy fire from powerful Fighting-types and the amplifying damage of Bursting Balloon and Rock Guard. Xerosic might not be as obvious, and it appears here over say, Team Flare Grunt, for its diverse potential. The ability to snipe Special Energy off Benched Pokémon, and remove Pokémon Tool cards like Fighting Fury Belt (to quickly close the gap on a Knock Out) simply sets Xerosic a bit above Team Flare Grunt. It's not even a question.

 

There is one card in question to me here though. The tech of Special Charge, which this deck wants to make use of as soon as it has the opportunity to use it (even if for only a single Strong Energy). It's strongly advised not to hesitate playing this card. However, I do question if it's really needed here though. It certainly seems like it, given there are only a few offensive resources, and level of damage on their attacks definitely benefit from as much extra reinforcement they can get. And that's what Special Charge hopes to provide—atop the prominent finishing touch it adds to the flavor of the deck.

  

  
Republic of the Congo

 

Grab your drums, tuck your pants into your boots, and suite up for war. This deck in the Max Elixir Republic series takes us through the jungles of the Congo for a Dangerous Match in the Dub Football League. The deck strategy here combines the above and below energy acceleration between Max Elixir and [Shout of Power] Landorus/Ultra Ball/Carbink BREAK. This double strategy aims to double up on energy as best as possible, to quickly power up the heavy energy needs of this deck's primary offensive resources—Golem-EX and Regirock-EX. These are very powerful Pokémon, and the Swarmer strategy here with Landorus helps to further compliment their power. {Regi Power} then further amplifies this power across the board, which most notably can take Golem's [Megaton Slam] up to 200 damage by itself. Add Strong Energy onto that, and Golem can begin One-Hit KO'ing Mega Pokémon (and even up and coming Pokémon GX).

 

Since Golem and Regirock genuinely possess some serious mobility issues, Special Conditions and cards like Lysandre can pose a serious threat against them. To check against this, the deck structure here contains a tactical array of cards between Float Stone, Scramble Switch, and Olympia, which together help run the underground railroad, and effectively bail this deck's Pokémon out from the bonds of such vulnerabilities. It further holds the potential to unlocks a Slugger-style of combat, furthering the diversity of this deck's combat overall. A single tech of Protection Cube is also included here especially for Golem, in the event it can be tapped into let Golem-EX run wild for the Golden Goal.

 

   
Republic of the United States

The final deck I have in the Max Elixir Republic series. This was actually a new one I whipped up to get a full set of five out of the series. This deck here features an alternative concept strategy between [Sol Generator] Solrock and Carbink BREAK for the setup. Traditionally, I would probably run Ultra Ball between these two, as [Sol Generator] can be used to gather Special Energy, which you can then pitch to Ultra Ball, and ultimately swing in with Carbink BREAK next to directly attach to your benched Fighting-type Pokémon.

Would be a really good strategy to run with M Steelix-EX I think, but this deck is utilizing the synergy between M Aerodactyl's [Rock Drill Dive] and Machamp's [Steaming Mad]. It's also running Max Elixir of course, which naturally helps to compensate for the the energy needs, and creates a perfect compliment for [Sol Generator] to gather Strong Energy and amplify the power of M Aerodactly-EX or Machamp-EX when it swings in next. This deck further runs a Bursting Balloon/Rock Guard/Eco Arm suite to help keep pace with the damage stack.
 

Farewell Friends — My Entire Collection

Razor's Edge

 

This is a deck about living on the razor's edge, and the concept of this deck has always revolved around this aspect, originally boasting a Prize edging strategy, that would force the opponent against hard hitting two prize Pokémon-EX, ultimately building up to a brutal finish that would then pit them against the super-empowered attacks of [Hurricane Kick] Lucario or [Revenge Blast] Shaymin-EX. This deck sat on hold for the longest time imaginable as it originally sought to incorporate the Full Art [Energy Press]/[Iron Breaker] Cobalion (which were very hard to find among Public Trades).

 

What ultimately resulted from this hold changed the face of this deck entirely. This version of the deck now focuses on a hyper-defensive strategy with [Fight Alone] Lucario taking the lead—Cobalion-EX and Lugia-EX providing bulk power and tactical prowess—and the very special [Revenge Blast] Cobalion from the Steam Siege expansion providing a much more efficient Prize-edge finisher over [Hurricane Kick] Lucario and the very out of place Grass-type Shaymin-EX.

 

With the addition of [Revenge Blast] Cobalion, it enabled this deck to focus itself into a pure Steel-type, and do away with [Hurricane Kick] Lucario entirely, and Fighting energy included to accommodate for it. As this deck took a pure Steel-type channel, Shield Energy then found a perfect place here to further stack with the hyper-defensive effects between Parallel City, Hard Charm, and Jamming Net.

 

The addition of Shield Energy was offset here to actually help properly adapt its potential, since it can't be equipped to Lugia-EX, or the Fighting-type Riolu prior to its evolution. Three is the magic number for cards you want to have a great chance of getting to within a single wheel of N, so the exchange of 1 Shield Energy for 1 basic Steel Energy hopes to best sync up with the evolution of Riolu to Lucario, while also doubling to help boost the success of Max Elixir.

 

Although this deck greatly benefits from the utility of Parallel City, it's run in a 2-2 split between Chaos Tower for extra reinforcement against Special Conditions, which given the absence of Float Stone here, can pose a very serious threat. This is even despite the utility and extension of Pokémon Center Lady, which remove Special Conditions, and works wonders with heavy defensive strategy here to set the opponent back further against the grind of stacking damage prevention effects.

 

However, with only three copies, it's not a card you want to waste prematurely, and some Special Condition invoking effects can reoccurring the Special Condition on the next turn. Considering this, Chaos Tower provides a permanent lockdown, and hopes to check against another important aspect while the bulk of Hard Charm, Jamming Net, Shield Energy provide strong defensive cover all their own. 

 

 

Reading Rainbow

 

"Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high."
"Take a look, it's in a book—a Reading Rainbow!"

 

Here's a creative idea I had for a theme featuring the {Adaptive Evolution} Butterfree/[Powerful Friends] deck. Back at the release of these cards, this was actually a deck strategy that I discovered myself before it ever hit the mainstream. This deck here is actually the remnants of that original deck.

 

One day, I had the brilliant idea to add M Rayquaza to this deck to provide some bulk power and compliment one of Miltank's considerable shortcomings. Despite Miltank's power, and its ability to attack on a single energy, Miltank can still fair very poorly against the Virbank/Laser combo, Fighting-type deck, and [Outrage] Dragons. M Rayquaza-EX on the other hand has a number of qualities that can turn the tables on a number of these vulnerabilities entirely. The power that M Rayquaza boasts is another very strong attribute to match up against heavy hitting decks like this.

 

Both Pokémon get a considerable HP boost from Aspertina Gym, taking M Rayquaza up to 240HP, while Miltank the combination of Aspertina Gym and Fighting Fury Belt take Miltank up to a hefty 160HP! Mew-EX provides an extension on both Miltank and Rayquaza, in addition to providing Type-diversity that helps this deck square off even better against Fighting-type and Lightning-type decks.

 

Olympia is the tech supporter of choice for her ability to double as a copy of Switch. This effectively enables a powerplay between benched Miltank, that can swap out a damaged Miltank for a fresh one from the bench, thus forcing the opponent to start over against a fresh Miltank. This also works incredibly well with Rayquaza-EX, and helps to spare precious energy, which this deck runs dangerously low on. These qualities help to give Olympia some edge here over the considerably champion of healing—Pokémon Center Lady.

 

As an advanced tech, a copy of the Delta Evolution M Rayquaza can be swapped for a copy of the Theta Max M Rayquaza. This tech enables diverse options with Winona, and unlocks a powerplay with Olympia where a heavily damaged Active Rayquaza-EX can duck behind a benched Miltank and mega evolve to fully heal itself—effectively placing the full power of M Rayquaza and [Emerald Break] in reserve on the bench. This tech also makes a great compliment to the accessory of Scoop Up Cyclone, which can be used in a powerplay to fully reset mega M Rayquazas and switch between the two types.

 

In this final edit, Karen and the storybook Dragonite-EX from Evolutions find a nice home in this deck. Karen is an amazing shutdown against [Bee Revenge] and [Night March] decks, while doubling to provide desperate extensions on copies of Milktank and the Butterfree evolution line. Then Dragonite-EX provides an extension on this potential through its {Pull Up} Ability—which provides an on-demand extension to extra copies of Miltank in the discard pile.  

 

 

Red Muscle Fiber

It's the 2004 Mr. Olympia—and defending champion Ronnie Coleman swears that his top contender Jay Cutler "must be smoking crack" for suggesting that Ronnie is 100% beatable in this year's competition. This deck utilizes a Landorus/Professor's Letter/Ultra Ball combination in a Swarmer/Slugger strategy to get a jump on the damage stack while quickly energizing one of its powerful follow-up offensive leads between Landorus-EX, Terrakion-EX, and [Team Magma] Aggron.

 

The deck structure here is suited for Terrakion-EX to be the strongest follow-up lead. Not only does Terrakion-EX possess an alternative Weakness from the primary starter [Shout of Power] Landrous, the utility of Professor's Letter makes a perfect compliment to the effect of Terrakion's [Pump Up Smash] attack.

 

As an alternative starting option, [Sol Generator] Solrock attempts to set up for the most powerful follow up possible, by gathering Strong Energy to load up on Landorus, Landorus-EX, Terrakion-EX, or even [Team Magma] Aggron to come out swinging as hard as possible in the absence of Swarmer damage.

 

Consider switching out as quickly as possible (or at least always leading with) [Shout of Power] Landorus after Solrock to soften up the opponent's Active Pokémon as best as possible. You'll be able to recoup the energy lost with [Shout of Power], further power-up your benched Pokémon with [Pump Up Smash] after that, and ultimately in the exchange, potentially grind your opponent's resource down to the bone as they struggle to keep up with the heavy damage and energy acceleration of this deck.

 

Float Stone helps to provide some very important mobility between traditionally heavy Pokémon, and enable a Slugger style of play alternating between Active and Benched Pokémon to create a heavy HP cache. Float Stone also helps to guard them against Special Conditions—Poisoned and Confused. However,  this deck (especially encompassing the use of Solrock) might also be able to greatly benefit from a 4-1-2 Bursting Balloon/Rock Guard/Eco Arm strategy—exchanging a copy of Solrock, a Basic energy, and all three copies of Float Stone—for that respective suite.

 

 

Rich Piano Man

 

Rich Piana, renowned lifelong bodybuilder and frontman for his 5% Nutrition brand is at the LA Expo calling out fellow Bodybuilder Mac Trucc to step outside and settle a petty grievance between them in a fisticuffs. After a bit of aggressive conversation back and forth, Mac Trucc drawing near to the daunting bodybuilder unleashes a straight right jab directly to Rich Piana's jaw.

 

And the man in the back said everyone attack / And it turned into a ballroom blitz.

 

A mass scuffle breaks out between Mac Trucc's boys ant the 5% Nutrition Crew. Rich Piana strives to assert some loose crowd control saying, "No! Just me and Mac Trucc—just me and Mac Trucc." as he repeatedly attempts to guide the commencement of an official (unofficial) duel between him and Mac Trucc after being directly assaulted.

 

And thus, we have our feature presentation here, a Nidoking BREAK/{Garbotoxin} deck that attempts to overt Special Condition preventive effects and crush the opponent in a deadly fisticuffs. This deck has some heavy evolution chain building to it, so it employs the help of both Evosoda and Level Ball in connection with Wally to supercharge its evolution chain building. For Stage 2 evolution chains whose Stage 1 Pokémon is 90HP or less, Level Ball is actually twice as effect as Evosoda, since it can double to resource copies of Basic Pokémon (either to set the foundation for the first evolution chain—or get a jump on building the next evolution line).

 

Chandelure takes a heavy presence of 4 here to help create the best possible catch for the opening spot, as Chandelure-EX is an amazing lead to Nidoking/Nidoking BREAK. Its [Eerie Light] attack is immensely debilitating, and can be quickly retreated on a single Mystery Energy to switch out for Nidoking or Nidoking BREAK to lead the fight. Nidoking's line takes the next best spot, where in this deck it should be easy to quickly ascend a Nidoran to a Nidoking in a single turn to slug it out the opponent's Active Pokémon.

 

Exp Share takes a special place here to hyper-accelerate this deck's follow-up potential on the offensive. Exp. Share stacks great with everything in this deck, especially Garbodor, to help meet the immense energy needs for its very powerful (but expensive) [Offensive Bomb] attack. This deck further includes a very heavy presence of Delinquent, which is intended to create a lockdown condition, against the heavy Poison damage of Nidoking BREAK. However, the Tool card split here could easily just tech a single Float Stone to better the energy spread—while Delinquent could also be replaced to some great expected success with Lysandre (or even better—Pokémon Center Lady).

 

 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner

 

"Hear the rime of the ancient Mariner. See his eye as he stops one of three Mesmerizes one of the wedding guests—stay here and listen to the nightmares of the sea."

 

Here's a Plasma Badge/{Power Connect} deck with a heavy cocktail of synergy boosting combinations between the effects of its cards. The first benefit of this Plasma Badge involves its ability to extend the energy acceleration of Colress Machine to the Pokémon sporting it. This can be a very worthwhile effect for certain Pokémon, as you can see in this deck, as Colress Machine enables the traditional Slugger Thundrus-EX to become a Swarmer style attacker. Colress Machine naturally provides the same effect for [Team Plasma] Zapdos, and it further enables the Slugger Zekrom (equipped with Plasma Badge) to unleash it's [Bolt Strike] attack a turn earlier and potentially get a nice jump start on the Prize exchange.

 

This energy acceleration is further complimented by the power increasing utility of [Team Plasma] Deoxys—whose {Power Connect} Ability stacks with one another—ultimately boosting the attacks of Team Plasma designated Pokémon by 10 damage each. This increased damage helps to significantly power-up the considerably underwhelming, yet immensely tactical predominant attacks of Thundrus and Zapdos. Much needed power that helps to close the time frame of how many attacks needed to Knock Out any given Pokémon. This time frame can be crucial when effects like Lysandre are considered, so the added power here is a really great compliment the attacks of Thundrus and Zapdos, while their effects hope to hold the opponent at bay.

 

These attacks rely on the flip of a coin, where {Victory Star} Victini comes in as a powerful utility that provides an additional coin flip, which boosts the success rate of these attacks to a 3 out 4 chance. Given the nature of probability, this is more likely to play out as a 5 out 6 success rate, because the high range of success nearing the 100% mark naturally boasts greater mathematical results (whereas lower ranges underneath the 50% mark veer towards lower successes rates).

 

Hoopa is included as a nice tech to help resource lots of [Team Plasma] Deoxys. It's there when you need it, but you don't necessarily need it, and more than a single copy would just get in the way for this reason. Pokémon Fan Club provides an extension on this deck's resourcing with Ultra Ball, while the tactical split between Sky Field and Plasma Frigate enables this deck to bench cards and get rid of them when they're no longer needed, to then remove the prominent Weakness factor for any Pokémon with Plasma Energy attached to them.

 

A final tech addition of [Circle Circuit] Raichu helps to diversify this deck's offensive potential—while potentially stacking with Sky Field—and ultimately symbolizing the grand principal of the ancient mariner's tale; "To teach God's word by his own example—that we must love all things that God made."

 

And the tale goes on and on and on...

 

 

Rocky I

 

Here's a classic deck of mine based on the legendary movie Rocky, where the underdog boxer Rocky Balboa takes on the fierce World Champion Apollo Creed in a very brutal rivalry to the bitter end. The first version of this deck was devised while I was on my "Everything's Does Better on Ether" kick, so the original strategy of this deck utilized a {Premonition} Lunatone/Ether combo, doubled up with Ultra Ball and [Shout of Power] Landorus for heavy energy acceleration on its lead Pokémon.

 

This updated version of the deck replaces Ether with the modern Max Elixir, as Max Elixir boasts a little more speed and overall potential towards the energy acceleration objective. With Lucario-EX as the lead here, this deck further seeks to take advantage of the card drawing power provided by the effect of [Corkscrew Smash]. Akin to this, you'll notice a heavy presence of technical Supporters Judge, Giovanni's Scheme, and Pokémon Center Lady. Judge is centerpiece starter, that provides hard disruption against the opponent's card advantage, while [Corkscrew Smash] offers this deck instant bounce back from the card's doubled-edged 4 card limitation.

 

Giovanni's Scheme furthers the damage stack, helping to breech One-Hit KO amounts of damage, and get a jump on the damage stack and Prize exchange. And last but certainly not least, Pokémon Center Lady provides a solid guard against Special Conditions while further offseting the damage stack in this deck's favor to keep its Pokémon in fight while the opponent's Pokémon hit the ground.

 

The potential of Korrina should be obvious here. It's a two-for-one direct retrieval that pairs perfectly with Scramble Switch and Max Elixir. However, it's also considerably an underwhelming Supporter that can only draw you two specific cards, and can't get you to number of specific resources in this deck (such as Stadium Cards, Energy cards, and Supporters). That's why Korrina is only present in three copies. Heavy wheel effects provide the bulk—while Korrina provides the cut.

 

Scramble Switch helps to provides somewhat of an extension on Pokémon Center Lady, which could easily see immense success with 4 copies in this deck. However, I opt'd to split the deck space between Giovanni's Scheme, to help better reinforce the flow of the cards in the event you don't get to start with Lucario-EX, and have to make a quick play on Judge. {Premonition} Lunatone is also here to help support the heavy use of Judge, and its presence here further explains the addition of [Cosmic Spin] Solrock, over an alternative offensive resource such as Evolutions Hitmonchan.

 

Although it seems like the Evolutions Hitmonchan would be a perfect accent to the flavor of this deck, the two cards have the same amount of HP, but Solrock's [Cosmic Spin] boasts an additional 10 damage, and the pair between Lunatone and Solrock help support this deck's use of Judge.

 

 

Safari

 

This deck is about a little story of mine. One day, I was up at Macy's in the mall, hanging around the men's designer fragrance counter, when a Rhyperion-looking woman came in inquiring about some cologne for her (most likely) Rhyperior-looking husband. The Rhyperior-looking woman had mentioned that her husband had run out of his favorite cologne, Safari by Ralph Lauren, which Macy's did carry anymore, because it was suggested to have been discontinued.

 

As a replacement, the sales lady at the counter suggested Vince Camuto as a replacement. Alarmed at her mix-matching of the man's said style, I quickly went over to the other side of the counter and brought the Rhyperior-looking woman a sample sprayed on card, saying, "Here, try this one. This Fahrenheit—by Dior. A very good alternative to the masculine style of Ralph Lauren Safari." 

 

The lady bobbled her head in awe at the scent of Fahrenheit, but unfortunately, succumbed to the suggestion of the sales woman—purchasing the original black label Vince Camuto instead—a terribly mix-matched sweet/metrosexual fragrance. I had mentally thought to myself that the lady probably went home and presented the cologne to her husband, only for him to begin beating her in an outrage saying, "What the F*CK is this?! ...Vince Camuto?! B*tch—I said SAFARI!!"

 

The deck here is a Regirock-EX/Carbink BREAK deck affixed with a heavy defensive Hard Charm/Jamming Net/Parallel City combination that gets further reinforcement from Rhyperion's {Rock Wall} Ability. Since weakness to Grass-type can be so domineering, this deck includes a tactical 2-2 Split between Hard Charm and Weakness Policy instead of just 4 Hard Charm.

 

Although it might seem awkward that this deck suggestively wants to fill up the bench, yet utilize the bench capping side of Parallel City, the logic behind this revolves around Regirock-EX being such a liability without the utility of Float Stone. You don't really want to load up the bench, except for maybe with Skarmory, to help thin the deck of them once the Parallel City hits the board. This deck involves a duck and cover strategy, where its best bench array is going to consists of a Carbink BREAK and two Rhyperior—with Regirock-EX taking the lead.

 

From here, you hold your Regirock-EX in your hand, and can drop one back on the bench once the first gets Knocked Out, then swinging Carbink BREAK in as the Active to begin a quick power-up for another assault with Regirock-EX or Rhyperior.

 

This deck utilizes Skarmory as the prime active for the resourcing of its [Call for Family] attack, but could easily switch up to a Swarmer style strategy, replacing Skarmory with some quick hitting Fighting-type (preferably one with a defensive effect that stacks with defensive theme here).

 

 

Sausage Fest

 

Jessie is a Korean girl who's going back to her homeland for the Autumn season to see her family, when she sees a flyer at the Airport for a big sausage festival, and decides to skip out on her flight to go have herself a good time. This is a Forest of Giant Plants deck that pairs the two superpowers of Yanmega BREAK and [Bee Revenge] Vespiquen for some really powerful synergy together.

 

Forest of the Giant Plants enables a hyper evolution for Stage 2 Grass Pokémon (which Yanmega BREAK plays the equivalent part of here). Stage 2 Pokémon legendarily boast elevated power to balance out the evolution chain hike, and in this deck, they not only provide a number of quick and powerful heavyhitters, but their numbers (when Knocked Out) further supercharge the power of [Bee Revenge].

 

It's a match made in heaven. And with {Sonic Vision} Yanmega playing the lead here, this deck structure is tailored to help support the potential of its Ability, which enables Yanmega and Yanmega BREAK to attack for free when a player has exactly four cards in hand. Heavy utility from Judge provides an instant ticket to this, while doubling as hard disruption against the opponent's hand. Trainers' Mail helps to provide a little extension for Forest of Giant Plants and Ultra Ball—which itself I find to be the best Ball to run with in this deck strategy—given its secondary potential to make use of odd end Pokémon near the endgame and further empower [Bee Revenge].

 

Consistency makes up the bulk for resourcing, so I don't really think any more than 3 copies of Ultra Ball are needed. You don't really want to discard too many cards for this deck either, since it needs the few precious energy it has, and needs every last Supporter to help take the edge off Judge. Shaymin-EX helps to provide an extension on this, with Ultra Ball further providing an extension on that.

 

Although attacking for free can enable some special potential with Max Potion, this deck only runs a single tech to provide a single powerplay on this. It might be useful, but this deck faces a much more precedent concern of resourcing the Pokémon and Stadium cards it needs right away, so the majority of the deck structure has to accommodate for that as carefully as possible. Just spamming through the deck could end up wasting a huge number of them, but this deck hopes to make use of at least 3 Yanmega BREAK on average.

 

A heavy tech of 2 Weakness Policy provide the finishing touch to this deck—as it has in ever other Forest of Giant Plants/Vespiquen/Stage 2 Grass deck I've made. I find that Weakness Policy provides the best utility over any other Pokémon Tool card available, by revoking the condition of Weakness, and potentially turning the tides against Fire-type decks entirely.

 

 

Screaming for Vengeance

 

Judas Priest is live tour in Nihon, performing their last show at the grand Tōdai-ji temple, and is about to play their last song of the night—Screaming for Vengeance—in hopes to end the night with the grandest style. The deck here is mighty Sky Field/M Rayquaza/Barrier Shrine, whose strategy involves loading up the bench and getting a Stadium lock with {Barrier Shrine} Ninetales. This Stadium lock enables a lock on the power of [Emerald Break]—boasting an incredible 240 damage with the bench full!

 

The deck structure here is tailored as best as I could provide a heavy coverage for the opening game scenario. Theta Max Rayquaza takes the place of Delta Evolution to enable Rayquaza-EX to better start the game and make a powerplay off Rayquaza Spirit Link for a full heal, setting the opponent against the crushing power of [Emerald Break] with Rayquaza at full HP.

 

[Outrage] Dragons make up the counterside of opening clutch, hoping to provide powerful time support for M Rayquaza with the diversity of their high HP, their Type diversity, and their Slugger potential. A heavy tech of 2 Enhanced Hammer hopes to further the time support, by potentially pushing an opponent back a turn against one of the worst decks to face that against. Among the Supporter spread, Skyla and Pokémon Fan Club hope to provide an extension on Ultra Ball, Enhanced Hammer, Shaymin-EX, and Hoopa-EX to further the flow of the cards. While Lysandre and Blacksmith hope to provide some technical power for the mid-game/endgame scenario.

 

With the elevated HP of the Pokémon GX coming up, a considerable tech for this deck could include a Volcanion-EX for the damage boosting power of {Steam Up}, which can enable M Rayquaza to One-Hit KO 250HP+ Pokémon GX.

 

 

Senbonzakura

 

He we have a very creative [Lifesplosion] deck that seeks to combine the power of [Petal Dance] Florges and [Painful Sword] Aegislash to create a deck that encompasses the Bankai spirit Senbonzakura, whom guards over Byakua Kuchiki, the 6th Division Captain of the Soul Society in the Bleach manga series.

 

[Lifesplosion] is a deck engine that I've always been very intrigued by. I've seen a lot of people cheat to make it work, but I've always strived to unlock that power the honest way, as I felt the diverse combinations of Stage 2 cards that could be had afterwards would breed a lot of fun. When [Painful Sword] Aegislash card was released, it intrigued as another really powerful card with a lot immense potential, so naturally I began looking into cards that might team well with this Aegislash in the [Lifesplosion] deck engine.

 

{Sinister Hand} Dusknoir was the first one that came to mine—a classic staple to the [Lifesplosion] deck. The other card that caught my eye was the surprising [Petal Dance] Florges, whom for a single energy, could deal 20 damage to all the opponent's Pokémon. This could be a perfect setup for the a double play on [Painful Sword]—to literally finish every one of the opponent's Pokémon off. {Sinister Hand} Dusknoir was originally a tech in this deck, but when sketching out the deck structure, I found myself very tight on space in the end. And after some test runs, ultimately decided that Dusknoir was only adulterating the consistency of the deck.

 

From this, I decided that it would ultimately be much more efficient to simply rely on consecutive offensive from Florgress, Aegislash, and Mew-EX. Florges only gives up a single prize, and although Mew-EX gives up two, it makes a very strong lead with Fighting Fury Belt for Aegislash to swing in last and finish the game with a final [Painful Sword]. This deck does veer close to the edge when it comes to the Prize exchange, but this aspect invokes a final line spoken by Byakuya Kuchki to Tsukishima, in a very close battle between the two, where it seemed Byakuya was nearly defeated.

 

"I used to think that battle was something you trained for and went into fully prepared. But today, for the first time, I experienced the ecstasy of being in the moment between life and death..."