Hey everyone! I want to preface this post by noting that this is the FIRST decklist I have come up with since getting back into the Pokémon TCG. This season I only played in only 1 Fall Battle Road and 3 City Championships before using a borrowed Kingdra deck for Regionals. I was not able to make the trek to Nationals this year because my family was going on vacation at the same time. I have only ever so slightly followed what has been going on this season, so I apologize in advance if I am behind on anything. Jeremy has given me a debriefing on what he thinks is playable at the moment, but only after I get back into testing will I truly be up to date.
I decided to take an extensive look at the new sets that have come out since I have been out of the game, namely Platinum and Rising Rivals. One of the first Pokémon cards that caught my attention was holographic Flygon #5 from Rising Rivals. “Sand Wall” and “Power Swing” are both solid attacks. Sand Wall seems great to me because I know that Broken Time-Space is a popular stadium which many decks take advantage of. This works in our favor for two reasons:
- Your opponent may be vary of playing down Broken Time-Space because you could attack them with Sand Wall.
- If they do play it down, we can also use the stadium to set up quicker and then attack with Sand Wall to become invulnerable for one turn.
This then plays straight into Flygon’s second attack, Power Swing. Broken Time-Space along with Rare Candy are crucial for filling your bench with evolved Pokémon. Without further ado, here is the list I came up with:
- Pokémon-25
4 Pachirisu GE
4 Trapinch RR
2 Vibrava RR
3 Flygon RR
1 Flygon LV.X RR
4 Baltoy GE
4 Claydol GE
2 Unown G GE
1 Azelf LA
Trainers-21
4 Bebe’s Search
3 Roseanne’s Research
1 Luxury Ball
3 Cynthia’s Feelings
4 Rare Candy
4 Broken Time-Space
1 Premier Ball
1 Night Maintenance
Energy-14
12 Fighting
2 Warp
This list has not been tested as of the writing of the post, but I at least want to give my insights toward the structure of the list. Pachirisu seems like a better option over Call Energy because of Trapinch’s “Gather Sand” Pokémon Power. You can use Pachirisu’s “Call for Family” attack, retreat for Trapinch, and then get that energy back with Gather Sand, so you do not lose the energy drop. Flygon is also not a super fast attacking card, so Pachirisu could be good to stall a turn or two while you power it up.
I chose to go with a 4/4 Claydol line for a couple reasons. I want to maximize Flygon’s Power Swing attack, so this means we need to have as many evolved Pokémon in play as possible. I could have put a 3/3 Claydol line with 2 Uxie LA, but Uxie LA would take up a bench spot and cannot evolve, so it makes more sense to take them out and simply max out on Claydol. This should give us incredible consistency when coupled with the 4 Broken Time-Space in the list. Having multiple Claydols out also is nice for getting around the trainer card “Power Spray” used in SP decks. It will be difficult for them to stop multiple “Cosmic Powers”.
The rest of the list should be fairly self explanatory. I could ramble on much longer, but I will leave it at this. We will soon test this decklist out and let you know how things go. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please let us know by clicking to comment below. Thanks for reading!
Hmmm pretty good idea, I like that if your opponent counters your broken-time-space then you automatically are invincible for a turn using sand wall. The Lv. X is pretty good too, which you didn’t mention other than the list, as SP decks will be really popular. I’d only be a little afraid of Dialga Lv. X, as it can shut off Flygon’s body and you could get a Claydol stuck active by a Luxray or something similar.
Not bad for a first list ;)
Hey quaziko,
Thanks for the comment! If your opponent uses Dialga G Lv. X from Pokemon Platinum, you could always use Flygon Lv. X’s “Extreme Attack” to do 150 damage and knock it out, even if it is hiding on the bench. Then you will not have to worry about it shutting off “Rainbow Float” and your Claydol will not become stuck active.
Best Regards,
Adam
Wouldn’t Gengar easily snipe things? I was also going to ask about Miasma Valley, but I can’t remember if the card says from hand to bench or not…if so, Pachirisu works well.
Sounds like a solid list :) I wish I had more Claydols hahaha
Adam,
Have you thought about taking out a 1-1 Claydol for a 1-1 Blissey PT tech? You can discard the Fightings with Nurse Call to heal your Flygon, then bring your Trapinch active to get them out of the discard. Just an idea. Also, you could probably run just one SW Trapinch, the first attack, Sand Invite, can buy you some time by bringing up a Claydol or something with a high Retreat Cost. It also isn’t completely susceptible to Shadow Room.
BiskitFoo,
But doesn’t the Blissey also have a 2 retreat cost? I mean, it indeed might last longer than Claydol, but how often would you have 2 energies to retreat? Plus, you only have so much room for switches and warp points.
Qua, when would you have it active? It would stay benched, more times than not.
I guess that’s true, I mean a lot of people seem to run plenty of Warp Points, which seriously disrupts my game…and the RANDOM invite and strike Zangoose I’ve seen a few times grabbing a Claydol leaving me pretty helpless for a couple of turns.
Yeah you’ll try to keep it on the bench. If people in your area are playing Pokemon that can drag it out in the active position, then you could play a few Switch, Warp Point, or Warp Energy.
Also if you play Nidoqueen, just put a couple Psychic energy in and you’ll be able to retreat it for free with Flygon’s Pokemon Body. Unfortunately you can’t do that for Blissey. :(
BiskitFoo my man, I think I would first take out 1/1 Claydol for 1/1 Nidoqueen. That way you would be safe against damage spread decks and with Flygon’s free retreat, you can easily stow it away on the bench if it gets too damaged. 4/4 Claydol is probably overkill, this was just my first list I made since getting back into things and I wanted to make it consistent.
I think getting fighting energy in the discard won’t be a problem, as soon as one Flygon is KO’d you’re set for the rest of the game.
Nidoqueen is the KILLER of spread decks lol! Spread had a pretty bad wrap about how “bad” it is…but now its basically killed with queen…
Adam, also, I think you could afford to cut a couple of Fighting Energy for Upper Energy.
I agree, helpful in a pinch, adding 2 colorless could be pretty broken :P
Thanks for the suggestion Biskit. :) That is a great idea because 1. Flygon isn’t really fast and 2. It make FULL use of Upper Energy at any time because it only needs colorless energy.
We have so many decks on the table to test right now, but I promise as soon as we try this out we’ll report back on it.
Adam,
I built this deck, but changed a couple of things as noted in the posts by you and BiskitFoo (you guys know what you’re doing :P), removed a 1-1 Claydol put in 1-0-1 Nidoqueen, removed 4 fighting energy and replaced with 2 upper and 2 psychic.
I’ve been testing it so far, and its working fairly well. i might try to work in a weavile sw to make it faster, but i’d need to add darkness energy. nidoqueen helps a LOT, especially with the free retreating.
At my local leauge, i went 4-0 with this and 2 games I decked them because I kept Flygon x out and kept discarding their cards while they Uxie’d and Cosmic Powered to their death. I might try the Ariados idea, but Flygon seems to be popular and OU so that lock might not be the best idea.
and it doesn’t seem too slow, I started with Pachirisu every time, went first 3 times and CFF for Trapinch, NidoranF, and Baltoy, turn 2 retreat, gather sand, attach energy, rare candy Flygon – sand wall. This happened fairly frequently…or maybe I was just really lucky.
Nice man good to hear it performed well! What decks did you play against?
Yeah! I played against Lux/Ape (for the first time) I’m not sure how good Lux/Ape plays yet since I’ve only fought it once and I disrupted them because Flygon X discarded their premier balls and Bebe’s so they could only get out 1 Luxray X which I killed with sand wall to get rid of their snowpoint temple and then power swing for the ko.
match 2 fought against a blaztran – decked this one because he got locked getting Heatran X out and I discarded 1 swtich he used one eventually and one was in the prizes. But he cosmic powered too much and got decked.
match 3 was against mother Gengar – she started with a NidoranF and didn’t get anything else out and after I ko’d it I won.
match 4 was against a random Togekiss GE and Grumpig GE… – he got REALLY lucky unless most of his deck was energies… he rare candy Togekiss and rare candy Grumpig turn 2 and serene graced 8 energies… 160 damage rocked my Pachirisu lol then my turn I sent out Azelf to get killed and rare candied to Flygon and attached an energy. Then he played BTS and got Claydol and another Togekiss and got 6 more energy >_< but then I Sand Walled next turn and then ko'd the Grumpig and then he decked himself shortly after lol!
After re-looking at these matches, it doesn't seem to test well because I got REALLY lucky…
Yeah I don’t know how much credit you can appoint to those games. I don’t know if Blaze/Tran and Togekiss/Grumpig really count as decks haha.
I agree…I need more people to test with D: League people are ok but some don’t play good decks. And Joe is…Joe.
My neighbor plays a Mightyena/Skuntank/Muk deck but Flygon destroys it because he relies on stadiums.
I fought Kingdra with Flygon the other day…my friend used my Kingdra deck. I won, Nidoqueen saved me because he Floatzel GL X revived a lot of Kingdras…took me a while to kill the Floatzel because Flygon X AND Azelf were prized. I drew Azelf for a first prize and after that I came back.
I thought I read somewhere that Blaz/Tran is a tier 2 deck…? I thinkit was Gym…
4-3-3-1 flygon
3-3 claydol
2 unown g
1 azelf
10 fighting
2 cyclone
4 bebe
4 roseanne
1 luxury
1 premier
4 rare candy
4 BTS
2 night maintenance
2 warp point
4 super scoop up
here’s something i’d probably use. just drew it up
pachirisu? really?
Pachirisu isn’t all that bad, its Call for Family is really really good.
I like your list, but I’d be afraid of a Baltoy, Unown, or Azelf start…which happens to me fairly often. Since playing with the Flygon deck, I’ve played about 8 games…and not ONCE have I started with a Trapinch.
Cyclone energy sounds like a good idea.
Roseanne is your call for family.
You don’t need a “starter” pokemon.
I’m just saying it helps with set up, and you could use Roseanne’s for energies or a Bebe instead to search.
It’s always good to start with a set up for your main win condition.
Yeah I agree that decks do not necessarily need starters, I just thought Pachirisu would combo with Trapinch fairly well as far as getting an energy in the discard early game.
Some interesting comments about “starters” and their usefulness. I really think their usefulness is dependent on how much you want to trade off between speed of set-up and overall deck durability. Setting up with your main attacker from turn one might be the ideal speedwise, but it can’t always be achieved – so your deck may tend to have more bad starts and be more vulnerable to donks. On the other hand, using starters, because it generally increases the number of Basic Pokemon in your deck, increases your chances of starting with one or more viable Basic Pokemon – hence less chance of getting donked. It can be really unfortunate starting with a lone Baltoy or Unown G.
It might be an interesting topic for a poll. How useful do you think starters are?
Good idea Dave! I actually have a different poll lined up for this coming week, but next week I will make that the poll. :)
Not to get off topic but due to it’s poor performance at nationals do you guys think this deck will be viable next format for battle roads?
don’t know…but if the player is good, yes…
the flygon looks awesome now than in other series
u know felicity is a good combo with gather sand…
The beginning of awesomeness… the very first 6P article. :O