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.