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.