Trick or Treat

TRICK OR TREAT DECK

No descriptions today—just some Halloween fun. Here is a Highlander deck in the spirit of Halloween. See if you can figure out all of the references here representing each card.

Happy Halloween!!

All Hallows' Eve

Pokémon [16]

2 — Chandelure EX — Legendary Treasures (77/113)
2 — Gengar EX — Phantom Forces (114/119)

2 — Sigilyph — Plasma Freeze (118/116)

3 — Lunatone — Plasma Storm (73/135)

4 — Pumpkaboo — XY Base Set (56/146)

3 — Gourgeist — XY Base Set (57/146)

Trainers [27]

1 — Scramble Switch — Plasma Storm (129/135)

4 — Trainers' Mail — Ancient Origins (100/98)

4 — Hypnotoxic Laser — Plasma Storm (123/135)

4 — Robo Substitute — Phantom Forces (102/119)

3 — Teammates — Primal Clash (160/160)

4 — Shauna — Phantom Forces (104/119)

4 — N — Dark Explorers (96/108)

4 — Virbank City Gym — Plasma Storm (126/135)

Energy [17]

4 — Mystery Energy — Phantom Forces (112/119)

4 — Double Colorless Energy

9 — Psychic Energy

MAIN STRATEGY

Lunatone: It's All Hallow's Eve—and the moon hangs ominously in the sky. Lunatone is mostly here for flavor, but it also makes a really great transitional resource to keep the cards coming to us. What we've got here is a deck that's light on hard resources, and the last thing we want is for any of those resources to left all alone in the dark. {Premonition} works wonders in this way, enabling us to filter through the top two cards of our deck so we don't lose our way.

We don't want to get ahead of ourselves though. The technical resources in this deck are dense, not only are there a number of them, there's a heavy volume of each provided here. Coinciding with this, there's generally a narrow chance that whatever we need can't be obtained by greater means with one of our Supporters—so don't look back. Keep the light in front of you, and save {Premonition} for the end of the turn to keep us from the dangers of what lurks in the darkness.

Sigilyph: Shadows on the moon—sometimes they feel closer to us than they appear. Like the haunting feeling that something surrounds us. It stops us for a moment, frozen in place—just like Sigilyph can do against our opponents. We want Sigilyph to dance around our opponent's Pokémon, and that makes Mystery Energy a really great choice for this card. Send them in to block your opponent's most powerful resources, but retreat them as soon as {Safeguard} has no effect.

Sigilyph will totally dominate against players who have packed their decks with Pokémon EX exclusively, but that is about the extent of Sigilyph's potential. Keep one on the bench for reserve, but don't start attaching energies to it unless it's a priority you face. In doing that prematurely, you could end up setting yourself one too many steps behind and get lost in your shadow.

Gengar & Chandelure EX: Ghosts in the night—whose presence becomes hauntingly close to us as the veil between the two worlds becomes thinnest. Gengar revolves around [Dark Corridor] with Robo Substitute and Virbank City Gym—like the hand of death. By the time the chill of Gengar's touch subsides, the defending Pokémon is likely to be passed out cold from 180 damage stacked up over the course of two turns. [Night Attack] makes a strong tactical option as well, in the event your opponent attempts to retreat and throw something basic in your way. Gengar can phase right through whatever might be trying to block him and get the job done.

Chandelure and [Cursed Drop] holds much of the same potential, only a little stronger, and more diverse with the ability to spread the damage counters out. [Cursed Drop] is likely to be your primary attack in this deck. It's quick, it's tactical, and it compliments cards like Hypnotoxic Laser very well. [Eerie Light] on the other hand can be somewhat of a delve into darkness. If you can reach the light, it can be used to burn your opponent's to the ground. Expect that to be a bit of a challenge though, since we're using Virbank City Gym and not Dimension Valley.

Our greatest strategy will generally involve placing a Mystery Energy on Chandelure, so we can quickly retreat it in and out as we need. From there we can deftly employ [Cursed Drop] as a compliment to cards like Hypnotoxic Laser and Gourgeist—or settle Chandelure alongside shadows of the moon, until [Eerie Light] can be used to guide our opponents into the afterlife.

Pumpkaboo & Gourgeist: Lost souls that wander the earth—their pain and sorrow can be felt on this special night—but it's said that memory of it will haunt you for the rest of your life. Be warned. Gourgeist is a very dangerous card—one that doesn't take sides—and has no problem equally being the end of you, as well as it can be the end of your opponent. [Spirit Scream] holds the power to reduce any Pokémon to 10HP—yet at the cost of reducing its own HP to the same amount.

Hypnotoxic Laser is a specialty with this attack—to instantly send any Pokémon to the grave after poison damage. This technique usually comes at the cost of losing a prize card though, once Gourgeist gets knocked out during your opponent's next turn, so we want to reserve the power of Gourgeist for something truly worthy of sending to hell with it.

Be careful with these two cards. Gourgeist has a rather low HP, so you don't want Pumpkaboo out there as our starter. You want to keep Pumpkaboo on the bench until you can get Gourgeist ready to scare some unsuspecting soul half to death with [Spirit Scream].

To set the mood for this, I've provided a 4/3 split between the two cards. The higher end gives us some room to breathe (with the rather delicate Pumpkaboo)—while the lower end helps to prevent Gourgeist from making a tortured soul out of us.

In this deck, you'll only be able to make use of about two Gourgeist at most in any given game. So three is a good number to ghostride the flow of the cards, while that one extra slot makes a far better use elsewhere (like a card that supports the flow of the cards in general)—which can help us when it comes to these cards as well as many others.

Ghost Hunting Item Cards: Robo Substitute—that's us to ghosts. We can't see them, but we can feel them around us, and it's scary because we're not exactly sure what they're capable of. We want to throw these out there like we would do our younger brother or sister—to hide behind for Gengar EX—or just to stall for time until we can get our energy up to defend ourselves.

Hypnotic Laser is our heavy weapons. It's loaded with holy water, sparkling grape juice (a Christmas staple), and stale Mt. Dew. So if there's anything that's going to kill a ghost—it's this. Because we all know holy water is already good for it. And Christmas like...cancels out Halloween—right? The Mt. Dew is not only stale—it's watered down. We could probably kill anyone with this, so let's not get careless. I don't know what I'm saying here really, I can't image anyone who wouldn't panic when it comes to ghosts. Murphy's Law also dictates that you don't have to see the enemy—to shoot the enemy. Spray and pray. So just do your best stay alive, I guess.

Trainer's Mail is our ghost deterrent—the flashlight. And Scramble Switch is the button on it. Keeping them away to begin with is always better than killing them. That is the principal of deterrency. So unless we're about to make a dash for it, we want to flash these like crazy to find our item cards that keep the advantage on our side. This is one of the only resources we have to filter out the deck's contents—and with the concentration of item cards here (alongside the faintness of hard resources) our best move is likeliest to be spam Trainer's Mail.

Halloween Thrillseekers & Virbank City Gym: It's All Hallows' Eve—and we're going on a date through the graveyard. Are you getting excited too? Because my heart is starting to race just thinking about it. Once we get there, we're going to find a nice spot—far in the back—where we can light some candles and set the mood for some real excitement.

At the end of the development process, I reached the Supporter section—which hauntingly appeared to me as a ghost bridge over a long body of water. After trying a few combinations, I became unsure for a moment as of to crossover. The concentration of utility resources in this deck (which are essential to the foundation of this deck)—alongside the low abundancy of hard resources (such as Basic Pokémon)—seemed like such a paradox world, that it seemed as though there was no way of truly crossing this bridge without falling through at some point sooner or later.

It was at that point, that I had decided I must be striving to be too tactical—and from that conceived the notion that the nature of this deck demanded more simplicity in order to stabilize the deck structure.

This deck has a lot of item cards in it, and each of them are very important, so it can't really afford to be discarding cards with Supporters like Professor Juniper. In addition to that, this deck could suffer immensely from a short draw early in the game (the likes of such Supporters as Professor Birch's Observations). So I continued isolate points of interest like this based on my experience with what I worked with until I came to what we have here—which is moreso a tactical pair of Supporters—than it is a tactical spread.

Wheel supporters provide a strong measure of flexibility to spare us our precious item cards and Gourgeist when we can't use them, yet can't afford to throw away either. These wheel effect supporters in specific do very well to guide us through the darkness alongside one retrieval effect Supporter that has some very special potential here—thanks to the presence of Robo Substitute in this deck. Teammates also compliments the power of Trainer's Mail very well, since the potential of that card by itself can be underwhelming at times due to the nature of its restriction.

As a suite of cards however, your pace should pick up increasingly as you play them out. We're not filtering out the deck from the board, but from within the Trainer card engine itself. And although this isn't as quick as the board method, it enables us to work with a greater abundance of inherently strong Item card instead—which there wouldn't be enough space for otherwise, because those spaces would need to be appropriated in order to support our board demands.

It's a simple one—but the tactic for these cards primarily revolves around leading with Teammates most of all. We don't have many Pokémon in this deck to spare, so if you see that the opportunity to make use of a Teammates is present—take it right away if you can.

From there on out, you'll probably want to alternate between Shauna and N. The stability of our grounding can dramatically veer between two extremes due to the structure of this deck. And that is why I say to alternate between them if you can. Shauna keeps our card advantage one-sided—and with Trainer's Mail—we can peer through the deck and grab extra cards anyways (so there's no need for us to get greedy). Pay closer attention to what's going on around you—and try keep your opponent in the dark—where the ghosts can eat them up.

Honeymoon In Vegas

Pokémon [16]

3 — Diancie EX — Mega Diancie Collection Box (XY43)
2 — Mega Diancie EX — Mega Diancie Collection Box (XY44)

2 — Malamar EX — Phantom Forces (58/119)

2 — Spiritomb — Legendary Treasures (87/113)
3 — Skarmory — Roaring Skies (69/108)
4 — Xerneas — XY Base Set (96/146)

Trainers [26]

1 — Scramble Switch — Plasma Storm (129/135)
2 — Enhanced Hammer — Dark Explorers (94/108)
2 — Paint Roller — Ancient Origins (79/98)
3 — Ultra Ball — Dark Explorers (102/108)

2 — Ace Trainer — Ancient Origins (69/98)
2 — Professor Juniper — Dark Explorers (98/108)
3 — Steven — Roaring Skies (90/108)
3 — Professor Birch's Observations — Primal Clash (90/108)

2 — Lucky Helmet — Ancient Origins (77/98)

2 — Trick Coin — Phantom Forces (108/119)

4 — Fairy Garden — XY Base Set (117/146)

Energy [18]

2 — Double Colorless Energy

4 — Dark Energy

14 — Fairy Energy

MAIN STRATEGY

Xerneas & Skarmory: These two cards symbolize our transportation to Las Vegas. Because we could fly there if you want—or we could drive there instead, because that can be all kinds of fun. Xerneas is our primary stater for this deck, we want to get Xerneas out by no later than the second turn, to start attaching energies with [Geomancy] to either Malamar or Diancie (depending on your needs). Based on my experience with this deck, Xerneas doesn't come in very handy after that—especially since there are only 12 Fairy energies in this deck, and that doesn't give us much room to stretch the power of [Geomancy] very far.

Xerneas is kind of like renting a Ferrari. It's fast, and fun, and looks real good—but once our time is up—we've gotta take it back right away, because there's no way we can afford another day. We might have to sell our car, and fly back home—and that's about equal to the potential of [Rainbow Spear] in this deck. You'll go broke trying to power up a Xerneas to use this attack—so don't even bother.

Skarmory is our best option between the two when it comes to offensive power. [Blow Through] is only two energy, with a frequent chance its power will be boosted to 60 for us. This should be more than enough to follow through behind powerful attackers like Malamar EX and Mega Diance. But it isn't very strong by itself, and therein lies the importance of planning out your offensive very carefully. Because a moderate attack like [Blow Through] at 60 damage isn't going to carry you very far if that's all you've got to rely on.

In addition to offensive power, Skarmory is also our backup starter for this deck, which runs on a pretty strict clock for a couple of reasons. And for those reasons, [Call for Family] is the main reason why Skarmory is in this deck. It can be essential to keep this deck in pace with the game.

However, if you throw Skarmory out there in your opening turn—it can be crucial that you don't leave him out there. Use [Call for Family] once—fetch yourself a Xerneas, and whichever Pokémon EX that suites your needs, then get him out of there right away so you can begin powering up your bench with [Geomancy].

We've got a very limited number of offensive cards in this deck—and if you can't get the job done between them—then your luck is up. And that's why the technique here involves getting those high rollers out on the prowl as soon as possible (to cut back on the heat that they take). So keep that in mind because it can be the difference between success or fail. You can always throw him back out there later if you need to stall for a turn or two while you get your offensive all geared up.

Malamar EX & Mega Diancie: Diancie represents the newlyweds in Vegas—and Malamar EX represents what should be—the last (and best) part of the honeymoon (the sweet stuff). These two are your high rollers—and my God do they make really great couple. Most decks revolve around the power of Pokémon EX, and that makes Mega Diancie your primary between the two.

In many cases, getting Mega Diancie out and attacking can be all it takes to win the game. [Diamond Force] takes three energy to get going, but against an opponent who's packed their deck with Pokémon EX—it's all downhill from there. [Diamond Force] is going to prevent the damage from your opponent's Pokémon EX, even if Mega Diancie isn't the Active Pokémon anymore. Not to mention, once lady luck is out there working her magic, it can buy you all kinds of time to load up Malamar EX with energies—while further putting your opponent's Active Pokémon to sleep each turn—via {Hyper Hypnosis}.

They're kind of like the perfect slot-machine couple. The lucky one sits there and rakes it in little by little, while other comes back for the extra until the love between them wins it all.

Another reason why Malamar EX is such a great counterpart to Diancie—is because it's so strong by itself. Unlike Diancie EX, which really isn't powerful enough to stand alone (especially late in the game). Her HP is really low, and her [Luminous Swirl] attack requires a color heavy three energy to use. And although it can be powerful—it's still far too unpredictable to rely on.

Mega Diancie has some pretty low HP as well—and no Spirit Link either—with her own color heavy three energy attack. These qualities make Diancie & Mega Diancie rather technical cards to use. Like many beautiful things—they're delicate. And so it takes a light touch to handle them. And this explains their low numbers here. They can be powerful, but in order to harness that power, you'll have to build your deck in respects to their lesser qualities if you don't want those qualities to ultimately hold you back (because they're sure to otherwise).

Spiritomb: Spiritomb is like the blacklist at the casino that makes it impossible for you to win at the slot machines. It uses face recognition technology to determine if you're a frequent visitor, and then tracks your location to the exact slot machine (or series of slot machines) that you sit down at and reduces the rate to nothing. The system also analyzes your betting pattern, and if it detects that your betting pattern is too aggressive—it will blacklist you on the spot.

This is an Extended format deck, so among the other options that were available, the narrow open spot lead me to notion that Spiritomb would be a really great choice—since it blocks the power of ACE SPEC cards, which are prominently game winning staples in Extended format decks.

Ironically, there's an ACE SPEC card in this deck, and that's not usually the style that you want to roll with if you're going to be blocking that potential (because it can often hold you back in a tight spot). However, in my experience I've come to realize some potential for running both in the same deck. Where the technique simply involves running a very select number of Spiritomb so that its existence remains light in the deck—where it's easy to get out, and easy to get rid of.

However, in order to utilize this properly, the deck itself has to be one that doesn't rely on the power of [Hexed Mirror] at all. I have some that strongly benefit from it, but that requires you to run higher numbers Spiritomb to make use of—and in a deck like this that would only be many types of get in the way. As it stands, it does still get in the way some—yet based on my experience I think that it's been far more beneficial than it has been a liability.

Scramble Switch, Enhanced Hammer, & Paint Roller: Scramble Switch is the slot machine button—and Enhanced Hammer is like the playtime's over bitch. That's how we paint the town. These cards together make a really aggressive combination. They check some very prominent powers in the game. I have yet to see a single game they don't command respect. There aren't really any special instructions for using them, seeing has how the nature of the cards is basic removal.

However, you can consider a neat trick with Paint Roller, by using it to wipe out your own Stadium card before you re-up your hand with something like Ace Trainer or Professor Juniper. You might get a card from it that you can use right away, further improving the concentration of your next draw.

Every card counts, and there are four copies of Fairy Garden in this deck—yet due to the general offensive strategy, there's not as big a need for it here as with certain other decks. You shouldn't really need to retreat that often here, which makes Fairy Garden a rather expendable card. So consider this tactic if you've got some room to spare—in many cases you'll be able to replace Fairy Garden with another copy right away after the draw.

Ultra Ball: Our coin cup. Goes well with Mega Diancie—but that's about all there is to it.

Card Advantage Supporters: Ace Trainer is our power couple, and Professor Birch's Observations is like the fatty at the buffet. This guy got up to fill his plate three times since we've been here. Next we've got our man Steven—the hotel manager. And lastly we have Professor Juniper—the casino teller. She said that she'll give us 20% of our earnings in chips right now if we don't cash out until the end of the night. I say we take her up on that and let's go take a nap on the couch.

This is a really technical deck, and working that requires a more technical Supporter spread than normal. I've gained a lot of experience with this thankfully, and the more experience I gain, the better I've become at putting together extremely technical combination. The biggest aspect of developing a tactical spread is contouring your Supporter cards around the nature of your surrounding content. You want to choose Supporter cards with effects that compliment the nature of your cards in some way—or that counterbalance some problematic attribute of theirs.

For example, this deck doesn't have a lot of Pokémon in it, and among those it does have, most of them it can't even make use of. The nature of these cards becomes a potential blockade (because we can't make any use them). And that is going to be problematic since they would go back into the deck to dilute the potency of our draw in wheel effects.

Ultra Ball is here to counterbalance this some, yet more proficiently we have Professor Juniper on the high end of this to provide a very strong drawing option—that not only gives us a powerful number of cards—but also enables us to ditch any problematic cards so they're not in the way anymore.

Next, Steven is the axis of this tactical spread. We only have one Dark-type Pokémon in this deck that needs its type energy to support it. So based on the dynamics of Special Energy (and how they work with the flow of the cards)—four energy should be enough to support that. However, as with Special Energy, it's not exactly absolute—and that's what makes Steven such a great card for this deck. It not only holds the amazing potential to reserve a specific energy for us, it can also reserve the exact style of Supporter we need to use next.

Steven is a great card when it comes to adaptability, but I've come to learn that this card can also work against us in a technical decks such as this one (where the needs are more specific and less general). In a deck like this, four copies won't help you as much as they seem to hurt you—and that's why the numbers have been slightly dialed down here. It helps to reserve his best potential for us, without him often overstaying his welcome.

On the flip side, Professor Birch's Observations has been dialed up slightly, because his potential is more general—and those elevated numbers aim to create a heatsink—that cools down the flow of the cards by providing a little extra circulation. A lot isn't needed, that could actually hold us back by taking up unnecessary spots that are better held by more tactical cards (such as Item cards).

Just a little extra (or little less) can make a world of difference, and this is the principal I use when determining the perfect numbers for any given card (especially Supporter cards). I take my collective experience and estimate what should be the perfect amount, then go little by little up or down, paying close attention to the variance between those numbers to determine the perfect measure.

There are quite a few ways to toss cards in this deck, and that give Professor Birch's Observations a little extra potential here—yet the foundation of the deck as a whole suggests we'll need a little extra if we want to tap into that. The ideal scenario isn't always going to be present, and so the slightly elevated numbers provide some cushion for the pushin'.

On the far end of town, Ace Trainer makes a tactical pair with Professor Juniper—proving the especially powerful effect of a double-advantage. It can only be used when your opponent has fewer prize cards than you, but it will strongly re-up your hand while cutting your opponent's down to size. In many ways, Ace Trainer is even better than N—yet I find it to be such a technical card, that it moreso runs along the same lines as Teammates.

If you can make use out of more than three copies, that's beyond me.

The card's condition is actually pretty hard to fulfill without setting yourself on the losing end of the game's momentum. It tends to be that once the prize cards start picking up, they finish picking up fast. You don't want to set yourself on the losing end of that momentum for the simple advantage of cards in your hand. What your opponent will have secured in the process is board advantage—and when that's strongly against you all the cards in the world are useless.

Two is a comfortable number for Ace Trainer. You don't want to try using it all the time. It makes a really great game winning card—for cutting off your opponent's momentum, and taking the cards out of their hand that they desperately needed to keep pace with you in a close game. Making good use of this card involves a very narrow window of opportunity, so you'll generally want to keep the numbers low (so that it doesn't disrupt the flow of the cards)—and also run it alongside a card like Steven—that can put Ace Trainer by your side right when you need it.

Lucky Helmet & Trick Coin: Our lucky underwear—and what could be the coin that wins it all for us. This right here is actually a Pokémon Tool split that I'd never think possible. The numbers are so narrow, and Pokémon Tool cards generally require a lot of depth and concentration to make perfect use of. Surprisingly, it actually works pretty well. At two copies each, they seem to float around with the same consistency as Enhanced Hammer—which does very well at two copies—and just as useful.

Lucky Helmet fits our starters perfectly, and works extra wonders when we have to throw out a decoy Pokémon to stall for time. Lucky Helmet can net us a lot of important cards, which includes some of the powerful removal cards we've got—or getting us to our ACE SPEC card—as well as netting us a few extra cards to throw away to Ultra Ball. Lucky Helmet provides us with some straight draw power—the potential of which is an amazing compliment to otherwise immensely complex Supporter suite that this deck utilizes.

Trick Coin also does really well here despite the spare numbers. Its place follows a principal that I often use when developing my deck structures. The principal revolves around certain complimentary cards in the deck—and involves including a number of copies no greater than the number of copies of the primary card itself. This technique works really well to provide exactly what we need—yet within strict proportion—which opens up potential for diversity elsewhere.

Getting Malamar EX onto the bench is pretty much a have-to-do each game—but we're only looking to get one good copy out on the board, so two copies of Trick Coin actually does well to deliver the goods—and often even leave us with a little extra to play with. I was surprised. I'm not normally comfortable with a split between any less than 3/2. And I would have done that here with Lucky Helmet at the higher end of the split. But there wasn't any room for that—so I was forced to play it out as it is—and in the end it turned out to be a sweet bit of serendipity.

Till Death Do Us Part

Pokémon [19]

4 — Gardevoir EX — Primal Clash (105/160)
3 — Mega Gardevoir EX — Primal Clash (156/160)

4 — Audino — Boundaries Crossed (126/149)
4 — Carbink — Flashfire (68/106)
4 — Xerneas — XY Base Set (96/146)

Trainers [22]

1 — Master Ball — Plasma Blast (94/101)
4 — Trainers' Mail — Roaring Skies (92/108)

2 — Skyla — Boundaries Crossed (149/149)
2 — Lysandre — Flashfire (104/106)
3 — Colress — Plasma Storm (118/135)
4 — N — Dark Explorers (96/108)

3 — Gardevoir Spirit Link — Primal Clash (130/160)

4 — Fairy Garden — XY Base Set (117/146)

Energy [19]

3 — Wonder Energy — Primal Clash (114/160)
16 — Fairy Energy

MAIN STRATEGY

Xerneas: Xerneas here is like the husband. He gets out there and brings home the bacon—and gives it all his woman so she can stay looking real good. The strategy here for Xerneas is much the same as any other. You want to lead with Xerneas as often as possible and use [Geomancy] to begin filtering out your deck and attaching as many Fairy energy onto your benched Pokémon as you can. Unlike some other decks though, this deck can't afford to do this carelessly. So you're going to want to be very cautious in the way you use [Geomancy] here.

Nearly every one of our Pokémon in this deck require three energy to attack. And once you're all out of energies—that's it. This deck can run out of energies really fast, and that can leave you totally stranded with an odd end when it comes to energies. For best results, try to stick with your main girl Gardevoir as best as possible—and from there follow up with Audino, Xerneas, or another Gardevoir. Concentration is very important—so don't get careless and put them all over the place.

Gardevoir & Mega Gardevoir: Here we have the girl in all her glory—the bride. This woman is the center of our universe. Our main offensive in this deck relies on Mega Gardevoir and her infinitely powerful attack—[Bright Arrow]. Since time is always of the essence, we want to get Mega Gardevoir out on the offensive as soon as possible. So in the process of powering up Gardevoir—make sure to double up on that effort—and attach the energy from your hand onto Gardevoir while you use Xerneas' [Geomancy] to do the same.

You don't want to overload her with energies though. This is one of the most important aspects involved with using Mega Gardevoir properly. Resources can get thin here, so even though the power of [Bright Arrow] is linked to the number of energies you have on the board—once you get three energy on Gardevoir—stop there. Every single energy can be significant, so don't get excessive, because you might need those energies later to rebound—and keep your offense or defense up.

Carbink: The wedding ring. Because of course, when you find a woman as amazingly beautiful as Mega Gardevoir—you've gotta put a huge rock on that. Carbink is mostly our backup starter for Xerneas. For one energy, you can bling on your opponent with the power of [Crystal Barrier] to potentially stall for any number of turns while you get your cards all geared up. This is a really great way to buy time when you need a turn or two to get things in place—and works really well in the middle of a heated game.

[Wonder Blast] can be a really great follow-up attack as well. It deals 100 damage stand-alone, which is enough to One-Hit KO troublesome cards like {Safeguard} Sigilyph & Suicune. For best results however, try to keep Carbink on the defensive and stick with [Crystal Barrier] as best you can. Another copy of Xerneas (with its high HP) is almost always going to be a better offensive card than Carbink, because the low HP of Carbink makes it too much of a liability as an offensive card. Especially given the fact that losing Carbink to a cheap 70 damage attack is going to drop the power of Mega Gardevoir's [Brilliant Arrow] by at least 90 damage afterwards.

Audino: The bridesmaids. They're here to back up the bride on her big day. Audino is a really amazing card in so many ways—and it finds a really special here in this deck. {Busybody} is a really powerful ability, that you can use at anytime to heal 10 damage and remove 1 Special Condition from your Active Pokémon. This works wonders against conditions like Paralyzed and Asleep—but you won't be able to use this ability once you've placed Audino on the bench—so try to keep Audino in your hand as often as possible to reserve the power of {Busybody} for yourself.

One the other end, Audino doubles up our potential to stall time if we need to—via its [Hip Bump] attack. This is a really great way to stall for time and get some damage in while you cover odd ends and get your cards in place. However, since [Hip Bump] is two energy, it might be in your best interests to put your first copy of Audino onto the bench in your opening turn—and then split your energy between it and Gardevoir to reserve Audino as strong backup attacker. The tactical prowess of [Hip Bump] can work wonders to stall for time while you put together another Mega Gardevoir.

Master Ball: Because when you first saw that ass, you was like, "Go, Master Ball." This deck desperately needed as much direct retrieval support as I could spare, and it's from that notion I decided Master Ball would be the best selection for this deck among other ACE SPEC cards. And this, opposed to what some say, where Scramble Switch or Computer Search is a better option.

First off—those don't match the theme at all—but to elaborate further; there are a few major demands in this deck that have to met in hopes of keeping pace with the game. And Master Ball's potential to meet these demands at no cost makes it the best selection for this deck. The first urgency is getting Gardevoir onto the bench as soon as possible—so that you can begin powering her up for [Bright Arrow]. And the second urgency—is evolving her to Mega Gardevoir as soon as possible so that you can begin a quick offensive movement.

Now, there are only three copies of Mega Gardevoir in this deck, and this is done in order to help prevent any redundancy issues from blocking up the flow of the cards in this deck. I use this technique to sharpen the structure of every deck I create that involves evolution lines featuring Pokémon that don't offer any immediate offensive or defensive potential. It promotes a better fluency in the flow of the cards, but you can also expect to experience a little latency here and there when it comes to availability. For this reason, I try to always include some form of direct retrieval to help further improve the flow of the cards and bring everything full circle.

And that's what Master Ball is here for. If any distance develops between your copies of Gardevoir or Mega Gardevoir—Master Ball is here to help tie the knot. You see—this is a very concentrated deck—one that can't afford discarding masses of cards in exchange for a single card. That is why you don't see Ultra Ball in here—and that is also why Master Ball makes a better option over Computer Search. Another perk to this is—even though there's only one copy of Master Ball in the deck—there are various other cards in the deck (such as Trainer's Mail and Skyla) that can cascade into Master Ball so you can use it right away at no additional expense.

And whenever the flow of the cards in your favor (where your copies of Gardevoir and Mega Gardevoir come to you naturally), you can always use Master Ball to fetch yourself a copy of Audino—and reserve the power of {Busybody} for yourself to be used at a later time.

Trainers' Mail: Our golden wedding invitations. Unfortunately, this might not be as exciting for everyone despite our cheer about it. Even so, I think glamour that we put into it is good effort to say the least. Striving to lift their spirits and reach out for what's important—which is exactly what this card is all about here. Trainers' Mail makes an amazing retrieval card—contrasting the erratic card advantage of our wheel Supporters in this deck. Trainers' Mail makes an excellent catalyst in a concentrated deck like this, quickly getting us to copies of important cards like Supporters, Fairy Garden—and maybe most importantly—Gardevoir Spirit Link.

Trainers' Mail can be a make or break card here—so don't use it carelessly. Shuffle them back into your deck for later if the need for a specific card is not eminent. Wasting this card is likely to lose you the game in a climactic match—so don't just throw it out there early in the game—every game. This deck in specifically does not benefit from Trainers' Mail that dynamically. The content here is concentrated—and most of it is condition-based content. Meaning, that you can only make good use of it when certain other conditions are present. And if they're not—those cards sit around and go to waste.

For this deck, Trainers' Mail has the most potential later in the game—after a majority the content have been thinned out, and the remaining gems come closer together.

From a neutral ground, that's when you're going to get the most out of your Trainers' Mail, so unless the need for a specific card has you in dire straits—save them for later in the game.

Colress & N: Gathered here we have the priest and the best man. These two are here to see us through on our big day and together make up the majority of our card advantage potential.

Colress resides on the lesser end of the split—to help prevent the liability generally involved with such a conditional card advantage Supporter like himself. Although we have a slightly elevated number of Pokémon in this deck (at 19)—we can't account for at least six of them; because three of them are evolution cards. And for good measure, we want to displace at least three copies of Audino, in order to cover the potential need for its {Busybody} ability.

This gives us a decent enough number to make use of Colress—but not likely until later in the game. So just like with Professor Juniper in some decks, the structure of this deck requires a light touch in order to tap into the full potential of Colress—where Colress is also our best option overall.

That would be the case here—and the major reason for this is due to the concentration of this deck structure. You see—we don't have a diversity of pieces in this deck—and this creates an importance for each unique piece that we do have. In the sense that, each piece is so important that we really can't afford throwing any of them away—and that is a big reason why I chose wheel effect Supporters for this deck.

However, it also compliments the aspect deck thinning effects like Xerneas' [Geomancy]—which brings the contents of our deck closer together, and increases the potency of cards like Trainer's Mail in addition to other copies of our wheel Supporters.

The closest competitor to Colress was Professor Birch's Observations, but I came to the conclusion that Colress ultimately trumps him. And the reason for this is because Colress holds a higher range of potential over Professor Birch's Observations (especially in the mid-to-late game scenarios) where board position is at a climax—and there might be a strict need to either keep your card advantage one-sided—or reach far into your deck exceeding 7 cards. Since every ounce of potential is significant when it comes to making our decks the best they can be, I had not other choice but to go with Colress.

On the higher end of the split, our best man N makes up the majority of our card advantage potential—and I have to say that it was a nightmare deliberating the effectiveness of N over other card advantage Supporters here. N is just both a very technical and conditional card. I went over a number of matches that played out like a roller coaster ride. N's technicality a few times over seemed to hold me back, where I had captured too many prize cards, and wasn't able to draw cards with N in the depth that I needed to succeed.

Yet in the end, I had seen more than enough games that I need to see (where a late game N had totally saved the day and ensured victory)—to decide that no other Supporter card could have provided this for me. And therefore, the tactical edge of N must be crucial to the potency of this deck structure in specific.

Since N is our main outlet to card advantage, it really does leave us with many options in regards to the techniques that we can use to play him. It pretty much equates to spam N for best results. With the only exception being—events where there's a lot of Pokémon in play—and you can play Colress to a greater benefit (while also keeping the card advantage one-sided).

Other than that—the only other advice that I can give—is that sometimes your best move is actually to not play him. Seriously, the power of this deck is very low maintenance. You should be able to get everything you need rather quickly (and by simple means). So be cautious of times where you might be low on cards, but more importantly your opponent is low on cards, and your best move actually becomes to starve your opponent's hand—and prevent them from obtaining anything that can build up their advantage against you—or even win them the game. Apply some discernment. N is a double-edged sword after all, which can be turn against you.

Lysandre & Skyla:

Priest: "Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife...to have and to hold...through sickness and through health...till death do you part?"

Lysandre: "I do..."

Priest: "And do you, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband...to have and to hold?"

Skyla: "Aww yeah...you already know."

The bride and the groom—in their most dynamic form. What we have here between these two Supporter cards is a tactical pair. One of which adds to our direct retrieval power, and the other which adds some tactical edge to our combat potential. An aspect that would otherwise be a weakness for us. And in these spare numbers, they accent the power of this deck with the flexibility needed to prevent them from disrupting the flow of the cards so we can actually make good use of them.

Lysandre can be used at any time to flash out bench warmers which might pose a threat to us. Such as aspiring Pokémon EX for example—or more technical bench warmers, like {Fairy Transfer} Aromatisse and {Deluge} Blastoise cards. As a neat combat trick, Lysandre can also be used to flash out a Pokémon with the intentions to stall your opponent for a few turns. This in-turn can not only buy you a few times, but also force your opponent to waste a few energy if they're desperate enough to retreat the Pokémon so they can spare it from being Knocked Out.

Skyla's can be used at any time to net us a copy of Fairy Garden (or more prominently Gardevoir Spirit Link) when no other card can. Skyla can also get us a copy of Lysandre late in the game, where we a turn to spare, and a tactical move like that's separating us from victory. Skyla is also a direct ticket to Master Ball (if-or-when you need it that badly).

She really opens up a lot of options, and strongly reinforces what could otherwise be some rather insignificant potential from Trainers' Mail (what with only four copies to carry the whole deck). This is another great example of doubling up on something that you want to do successfully. So I hope the extra potential Skyla that provides here helps to make this concept as a whole more prevalent for you to understand.

Energy Base: As a bonus, I'd like to explain the energy base here—because it does hold some significance in regard to the structure of this deck—and I can imagine there are a number of people who might be questioning why there are only three copies of Wonder Energy opposed to four.

The reason for this—is to maximize the potential of [Geomancy]—and cut back on the liability posed by facing off against excessive numbers of cards like Enhanced Hammer. Even at sixteen large, [Geomancy] can still consistently run your deck out of Fairy energy. I've learned this to be true for nearly every energy retrieval-styled deck that I've built, so I've learned to build such decks on a large energy base in order to fully support that dynamic potential.

Wonder Energy does have some amazing potential, and that's why it's in here to begin with. But even the potential benefit of Wonder Energy comes second place to the possible consequence of prematurely running dry on energies with Xerneas & [Geomancy]. And therein, a high number of basic energy aims to support (rather than suffocate) the full potential of this deck structure in specific.

Nara Deer Park

Pokémon [18]

1 — Xerneas EX — XY Base Set (97/146)
1 — Xerneas EX — XY Base Set (146/146)
1 — Xerneas EX — Legends of Kalos Tin (XY07)

4 — Xerneas — XY Base Set (96/146)
4 — Kangaskhan — Plasma Blast (71/101)

4 — Spritzee — XY Base Set (92/146)
3 — Aromatisse — XY Base Set (93/146)

Trainers [24]

1 — Computer Search — Boundaries Crossed (129/135)
3 — Max Potion — Emerging Powers (94/98)
3 — Ultra Ball — Dark Explorers (102/108)
4 — Random Receiver — Dark Explorers (99/108)

2 — Professor Juniper — Plasma Freeze (116/116)
3 — Professor Birch's Observations — Primal Clash (159/160)
4 — Cheren — Boundaries Crossed (148/149)

4 — Fairy Garden — XY Base Set (117/146)

Energy [18]

3 — Double Colorless Energy
15 — Fairy Energy

MAIN STRATEGY

Kangaskhan & Xerneas: "Hey honey...come look at the deer!" Kangaskhan here in this deck represents your loved ones that you go to Nara Park with. Xerneas of course are the deer, and both play an equal role in this deck are your primary starter resources. This deck revolves around a setup style of play, where you would want to use either Kangaskhan or Xerneas as your starter Pokémon to begin setting up your board advantage, until you've built up enough to where you can begin making an offensive. Whenever your deck is incorporating this setup style of play, you'll always want to have to have at least two options to wing on. Just one is almost never going to be enough. And that is why, although Xerneas is our primary starter, that Kangaskhan is there to reinforce the potency of our opening turn potential.

The strategy between them is fairly simple. If you get Kangaskhan in your opening turn, then you're going to want to spam [Call for Family] in order to thin out your deck, and fill up your bench with whatever pieces you might be missing to complete the puzzle here. This deck thrives on concentration, so in just a single turn, you might be able to fill up your bench with everything you need. If you don't have a Xerneas, that's definitely going to be the first card you want to call for—alongside something like Spritzee, so that you can evolve that to Aromatisse as quickly as possible—and begin transferring Fairy energies as soon as you might need to do that.

I would generally always place Xerneas EX at the end of the line here, simply because there are three of them to begin with—making it rather abundant, and thus easy to fish out naturally with your card advantage Supporters. In addition to that, as a stand-alone Pokémon EX, the nature of the card is very simple (opposed to the complexity of Stage 1/Stage 2 cards). You can just play Xerneas EX from your hand, and then power it up right away with {Fairy Transfer} and begin attacking.

For this reason, you're going to want to make it your last priority with [Call for Family] unless your board position distinctly suggests otherwise. You might run into special case scenarios, where you have Xerneas on the bench to begin with, and you can begin double powering Xerneas EX with [Geomancy]. Another scenario would be if you're somehow running behind, and you need to make up for time and power real fast. Then you would want to put Xerneas EX into play as fast as possible and power it up with [Geomancy], from which you can put your other pieces together in the time afterwards.

Xerneas EX: Xerneas EX represents the bucks I guess. They tend to be all over the place in Nara Park, and also have a bad habit of being the most stubborn and pushy of them all. Not a bad thing here though, since these qualities make Xerneas EX our primary powerhouse. And in this deck, Xerneas EX takes those qualities to a whole new extreme—stubborn and pushy. Between {Fairy Transfer}, Fairy Garden, and Max Potion—Xerneas EX is going to be almost impossible to get rid of—while it continuously barrels out damage on your opponent's Pokémon. And that's just one—you have three—acting like two additional life lines between them and {Fairy Transfer}.

On the offensive, Xerneas has one power attack and one tactical move. You're going to want veer between these two attacks based on the current game state, and how your offensives move forward. If your opponent's Pokémon has a lot of HP left, hit it with an [X Blast] first to knock it's HP down to almost nothing—then finish it off with a [Break Through]—which will punch through to your opponent's bench for 30 damage, which could possibly amount to being a setup for a one-hit KO with [X-Blast] the next time you attack.

These two attacks have a harmonious relationship with each other in this way, and that's the attack pattern you're going to want to follow unless you have the opportunity to keep using [Break Through] to stack up double damage, because that's always going to put you farther ahead of the game than any straightforward attack pattern will here. So if that opportunity presents itself, trample on their benched Pokémon as much as possible to set up as many future KO's as you can.

Spritzee & Aromatisse: These two represent all the happy visitors of Nara Park, who enjoy the beautiful scenery and love feeding the deer. Despite their importance to the deck, there isn't much to the strategy here. You'll just need to evolve Spritzee as fast as possible so that {Fairy Transfer} can be used to power your offensive and defensive force. Transfer abilities like this are very powerful, because they can be used to power up all of your Pokémon with the energy of just one. You can also use abilities like this with Max Potion, to heal all of the damage from your most powerful Pokémon (like Xerneas EX) without losing all of your energy—simply by transferring all of your energy to another Pokémon first, then transferring it back after you've played Max Potion. This is a really strong move—one that's sure to be a game winner for you.

Random Receiver & Computer Search: These two of cards represent your cell phone and the internet—where you can share all of the beautiful pictures you took of Nara Park. The deck structure here involves a two primary functions in the flow of the cards. The first function filters through the deck's contents and thins it out (via cards like Kangaskhan and Xerneas), then the other function seeks to draw out the concentrated portion of what's left directly. Random Receiver acts as a catalyst to this, bridging the gap between any empty space that might develop and disrupt your ability to keep drawing out contents from the deck.

In heated matches this is very important, because getting multiple copies of specific cards (like Fairy Garden and Max Potion) can mean the difference between victory and defeat. Since the contents of this deck are so simple, the ability to keep those cards in hand (or on the board) is essential to your success—and therein lies the importance of Random Receiver in this deck. It strives to ensure that you can keep the flow of the cards consistent, so that from the little you have here, you're able to keep your most important cards in hand or on the board.

Computer Search is the tactical backup to this—much like Random Receiver (but more along the lines of Ultra Ball)—it seeks to patch over vulnerability here of traditionally having no control over what you draw. So that in the event there's a card you need right away (from the little that this deck uses) you can get it in an instant rather than trying to wing it on a hope and a prayer with one of your Supporters. This tactical balance is called contrast, in the sense that it contrasts the concentrated deck engine which focuses on filtering the deck out, then drawing from the concentrated contents.

Concentration is core-essential to every successful deck engine, because it's concentration that ensures consistency—and it's consistency that ensures your deck operates as a well-oiled machine. Doing a single something simply isn't enough, and trying to cover all bases by implementing a diversity of different things is only sure to stretch your potential too thin and leave you stranded most of the time. If you want to do something successful (no matter what it is), then you're going to want to double up on that as best you can. And in doing so, adding a little contrast to your concentrated strategy can help to cover just one base for you—but does it well—and without disrupting your potential or stretching your deck's contents too thin.

Ultra Ball & Company: Ultra Ball symbolizes the bait—and our band of Supporters together represent the friendly and knowledgeable park staff. The spread is designed to coincide with tactic of the rest of the deck. Cheren makes up the majority of your card advantage here, because it's a clean three cards, that stacks powerfully alongside the two cards that you're going to be thinning from your deck each turn with Kangaskhan or Xerneas. Professor Birch's Observations picks up the tactical end of your card advantage, giving you a strong seven cards half the time—as well as the ability to shuffle any extra energies that you've collected in your hand back into your deck, so that you can fetch them directly with Xerneas.

And on the far end, two copies of Professor Juniper provide the power draw. Professor Juniper is a very powerful card, boasting a definite seven cards every time—potential that is immense for a deck as concentrated as this one. However, that power can be dangerous here, because this deck filters itself out too well. It needs a light touch, and that is what the two copies of Professor Juniper is intended to provide. In general, I find that a light touch works best with Professor Juniper. The card can be a drawback, but a light touch will put the best of her potential at the tips of your fingers—without getting your hands burned by any overexposure.