Priming the Lost Zone with Absol and Mew

Hey guys! Peter Bae here once again to bring you an article that you might find interesting! Today I’m here to talk about the almighty Absol Prime and Mew Prime from the new set Triumphant.

Triumphant has been getting a lot of hype recently thanks to many good cards like Twins, Seeker, Rescue Energy, Gengar Prime, Machamp Prime, and more. Regardless, we were immediately ‘depressed’ to find out that Lost World wasn’t in the set; however, without Lost World in the set, a light bulb lit up deep down in my head and gave me a crazy deck idea that might just work. Yes, if you guessed Absol Prime/Mew Prime, you are right. So let’s get down to business!

Absol Prime

pokegym.netLet’s take a look at Absol Prime first: a basic Pokémon with 80 HP, which is great considering it is not an Pokémon SP. The Dark type is great as you will be hitting Gengar for their weakness. One Retreat Cost is a bit saddening, but better than two. His x2 weakness to Fighting is whatever as he will get 1HKO’d by Donphan’s “Earthquake” or Machamp SF’s “Take Out”. His -20 resistance to Psychic is good because of Gengar also.

He has a Poké-Body named “Eye of Disaster” that, when your Absol Prime is active, puts 2 damage counters on your opponent’s basic Pokémon when they put it down. This is a great Poké-Body as all of your opponent’s Pokémon will have 20 HP less unless it was put down on the bench by a Poké-Power, Poké-Body, or Trainer/Supporter/Stadium.

Let’s get to his attack. His attack is what combos him so well with Mew Prime; so well in fact that I call them the perfect couple. Absol Prime, for 1 D Energy and 1 C Energy does 70 damage to the active if you Lost Zone a Pokémon from your hand with the attack “Vicious Claw”. If you don’t, the attack does 0. Potential to do 80 damage with special dark, which is the magic number to 1HKOing most Pokémon SP, which is great. However, there are a few flaws, such as if you can’t Lost Zone a Pokémon you will do nothing. Also, Absol Prime is non-SP, which means it can’t use TGI Energy Gain so you need at least 2 turns to start attacking with Absol Prime.

Mew Prime

pokegym.netMew Prime is also another Basic Pokémon but with a less desirable stat than Absol Prime. Its 60 HP is average for most Basics, but not good for the deck your about to witness. Mew Prime is Psychic typed with a x2 weakness to Psychic. Sure, Gengar is hitting you for weakness but they will 1HKO you regardless with “Poltergeist”, and “Shadow Room” is not affected by weakness. Having no resistance sucks as it won’t be helping your Mew Prime live longer.

So remember how I said Absol Prime’s attack “Vicious Claw” was the perfect match with Mew Prime? Well, here is why: Mew Prime’s Poké-Body “Lost Link” lets it use any attack from any Pokémon in the Lost Zone! WHAT?! Yes, that is right, Mew Prime will be able to use any LV.X, Stage 1, Stage 2, or Basic Pokémon’s attack as long as you match the energy requirement. Sure, Mew Prime has the attack “See Off”, which let’s you Lost Zone a Pokémon from your deck for 1 P Energy, but leaving your Mew Prime active is giving your opponent a easy prize to pick off with cards like Uxie. That is why you attack with Absol Prime to Lost Zone Pokémon from your hand, then drop your Mew Prime to attack heavy with little to no energy!

Decklist

Pokémon – 22 3 Sableye SF 3 Absol Prime 3 Mew Prime 4 Magikarp SF 3 Gyarados SF 1 Regice LA 2-1 Uxie LV.X 1 Azelf 1 Unown Q 1 Garchomp LV.X

T/S/S – 26 4 Pokémon Collector 4 Seeker (Hunter) 3 Bebe’s Search 2 Professor Oak’s New Theory 3 Cynthia’s Feeling 4 Pokémon Rescue 2 Expert Belt 2 Junk Arm 1 Luxury Ball

Energy – 12 4 Special D 2 Basic Dark 2 P 2 Warp 2 Rescue

As you can see, this deck is based on using Gyarados’s “Tail Revenge” attack with Mew Prime. With Mew Prime, you can easily ditch all four of your Magikarps to deal 120 damage for no energy. As recovery, Garchomp LV.X’s attack is used to “Restore” my Pokémon from the discard pile. “Restore” lets me put any Pokémon from my discard pile, excluding LV.Xs, as basic Pokémon and attach 3 energies to them. This is great for recovering my Absol Prime, or just Gyarados, which can start hitting for 120 and has a much safer 130 HP to tank with.

Why were these cards chosen?

Sableye
Sableye is the ideal starter, and with 2 great attacks. His first attack, “Impersonate”, lets you search your deck for a Supporter card and use the Supporter card’s effect as the attack. This is great as you will have to go first with Sableye’s “Overeager” Poké-Body. Also, his second attack, “Overconfident”, is a great way to pick off easy prizes. “Overconfident” only does 10 damage for 1 D Energy, but if Sableye has more remaining HP than the opponent’s active Pokémon, it will do 40 damage, or 50 with a Special D Energy. This is a great way to donk your opponent too. However, you would most likely want to use Sableye to fetch your Regice and Magikarp; that way you may start discarding right away while setting up Absol Prime and Mew Prime to Lost Zone stuff.

Regice
Regice is a great card from Legends Awakened. It is a basic Pokémon with 90 HP, an attack you will never use, and a disgusting Retreat Cost of 3. So why is this card so great? Well, here is why: his Poké-Power, “Regi-Move”, lets you discard two cards, which you will want to be Pokémon, and then your opponent has to switch their active Pokémon with a benched Pokémon if it is a Basic. This is great as you will be discarding your Magikarp and switching out their active, which is especially great if their active is Spiritomb. Also, you can utilize this to discard any useless Supporters and Trainers to take less damage from “Poltergeist”.

4-3 Gyarados
Some say to run 4-1 because discarding four Magikarp and Lost Zoning that one Gyarados will do the job. However, 4-3 is definitely better as you will not have to worry about your Gyarados being prized, it can be discarded to abuse “Restore” from Garchomp LV.X, and you can just straight up evolve from Magikarp to do 90 damage for the times you start with Magikarp.

Garchomp LV.X
In the intro and the Gyarados section above I talked about this card briefly. Well, yes, that is the only reason why this card is in the deck. His attack, “Restore”, for no energy, lets you put any Pokémon from your discard pile (excluding LV.Xs) as Basic Pokémon and put it on your bench with 3 energies from the discard pile. However, you won’t be using it by leveling up a Garchomp, rather Lost Zoning it and then using Mew Prime to “Restore”. Yes, you are potentially giving up a prize, but at the price of you having a 130 HP tank doing 120 or 140 damage for no energy.

Pokémon Collector
This is probably the most important Supporter card in the deck. It lets you fish out 3 basic Pokémon from your deck, which is great. You can basically search out every single Pokémon from the deck, other than Gyarados, Garchomp LV.X, and Uxie LV.X.

Seeker
Seeker is a great card that was released with the Triumphant set. When you play Seeker, you and your opponent picks up a benched Pokémon. This lets you potentially get a donk, reuse Uxie, heal your damaged Pokémon, free your bench space, or just disrupt your opponent when they have nothing going on but just one attacker and one benched Pokémon.

Bebe’s Search
This is your primary search card that will fish out your Gyarados for either discarding or Lost Zoning.

Professor Oak’s New Theory
Possibly the best hand refresher in the game right now. You can easily get out of bad hands with this one Supporter or simply recover from a bad fall. However, depending on the player’s preference, Looker’s Investigation, Judge, and/or Copycat are also good choices

Cynthia’s Feeling
You will most likely find yourself getting Knocked Out left and right using this deck (of course while Knocking Out their Pokémon too). Therefore, you play Cynthia’s Feeling. It lets you shuffle your hand into the deck and draw 4 cards, unless one of your Pokémon was Knocked Out the turn before, in which case you draw 8!

Pokémon Rescue
This is your primary source of recovery. It lets you pick up a Pokémon from the discard pile. Since your main attackers are Basics, you can instantly recover with this one card, unless it’s Absol Prime and you have to wait a turn to attack.

Expert Belt
The trusty Expert Belt. When attached to your Pokémon, their HP goes up by 20, and their damage output before weakness and resistance also goes up by 20. However, when the Pokémon is Knocked Out, the opponent takes 2 Prizes. This is a double edged sword for the deck. Preemptively putting it on your Mew Prime will give your opponent 2 easy prizes with 1 attack, for example, from Garchomp C LV.X’s “Dragon Rush”, and attaching it too late might cost you the game.

Junk Arm
This card is still in testing and it is another new card from the set Triumphant. It lets you discard 2 cards from your hand to pick up any Trainer, save Junk Arm, from your discard pile. The deck lacks usable Trainers, like Pokémon Communication, early game making Junk Arm a dead card. However, during the late game, you can reuse your Expert Belts and Pokémon Rescues to claw your way back into the game.

Special D Energy
Special D Energy provides 1 Darkness energy to the attached Pokémon. When it is attached to a Dark type Pokémon, they do 10 damage more. This is great as Absol Prime will now hit for 80, 1HKOing most of the basic forms of Pokémon SP and greatly increasing the chance for a donk with Sableye.

P Energy
At least 1 P Energy is mandatory for the deck. I did state that using “See Off” from Mew is a risky tactic as you are giving your opponent an easy prize. However, there are situations where you have to Lost Zone your Gyarados or Garchomp LV.X and your only way is Mew Prime because you cannot fish it out from the deck to Lost Zone it with Absol Prime.

Warp Energy
Warp Energy acts as the card Switch when attached to your active Pokémon. This is necessary when you are trying to retreat your active to start attacking and you cannot fish out your Unown Q, or your Regice is pulled up active.

Rescue Energy
Another great card from the set Triumphant. When a Pokémon with Rescue Energy attached is Knocked Out by damage from an attack, the Pokémon is sent to the hand rather than the discard pile (all other cards are discarded). This is great as you will instantly bring back your Pokémon when they are Knocked Out to just reuse it. Also, it can save you a turn as some SP players will be using Ambipom G’s “Tail Code” attack to move the Rescue Energy to a different Pokémon so they do not have to deal with your attacker coming back to life next turn.

Other choices of cards you can use

This is my version of the Absol Prime/Mew Prime deck. I found this to be the best choice as you won’t have to start running different types of energy cards, meaning now you have to run energy exchanger to fish out the right kind of energy. However, the others are still great cards to run with Mew Prime.

Machamp SF
Machamp gives the deck a great edge against SP decks. Machamp’s attack, “Take Out”, does 40 damage for 1 Fighting energy; however, if the opponent’s Pokémon is a basic Pokémon, it is automatically Knocked Out. This is great as all SP Pokémons are basics. However, it requires you to start running Fighting energy.

Jumpluff
Yes, Jumpluff is back! Jumpluff has two great attacks for just 1 grass energy. First attack, “Mass Attack”, does 10 for every Pokémon in play on both sides of the board. That means you can hit for 120 or 140 with expert belt for just 1 grass energy. Jumpluff’s second attack, “Leaf Guard”, only does a measly 30 damage but reduces any incoming damage by 30 after weakness and resistance. This means that your Mew Prime will be up for (maybe) another turn to hit hard for a Knock Out. Like Machamp, it also requires you to run Grass energy alongside Psychic energy.

Gengar SF
Gengar SF is probably one of the better choices out of most of the cards, depending on your decklist. Since Gengar uses Psychic energy already, you have no reason to run different types of energy. Also, Gengar has great attacks. His first attack, “Shadow Room”, places 3 damage counters to any Pokémon or 6 to any Pokémon with a Poké-Power. This is great as now your deck has sniping options. His second attack, “Poltergeist”, does 30 times the number of Trainers/Supporters/Stadiums in your opponent’s hand. However, this will require you to run a much slower Trainer lock deck like VileGar, so if your going to do that there is really no point in running a Mew Prime-based deck with Spiritomb and Vileplume.

Blaziken FB and Blaziken FB LV.X
This is a tech line and not a Pokémon you want to place in the Lost Zone. Absol Prime and Mew Prime are non-SP, which means their Poké-Bodies will be shut off as soon as Dialga G LV.X hits the field. In order to counter this, you can go about it 2 ways: if you know you are playing DialgaChomp or a deck with Dialga G LV.X, immediately set up Gyarados in any way possible before Dialga G LV.X hits the field, or tech in a 1-1 Blaziken FB LV.X to 1HKO any Dialga G LV.X with the attack “Jet Shoot”. However, with this, your list might be less consistent, but it gives you a much higher chance to win against the ever popular DialgaChomp.

Conclusion

We have finally come to a conclusion. I did make a section for decks that will counter this, but it will mainly be DialgaChomp. And since your Pokémon all have low HP, it will most likely be a 50/50 match up with all other decks since both players will probably take prize after prize. So, for the real conclusion, Absol Prime/Mew Prime seems to have very good synergy between them, and I hope that my first rogue deck gives me some success in Cities and Provincials. :)

Now, fellow Pokémoners, make your Absol Prime/Mew Prime decks!