Have your CaKE and beat it too.

Welcome back to FutureSight. Today I’m going to be covering another successful deck that was brought to us fresh from Noble Victories, namely CaKE (or CoKE or just plain CKE).

Overview

pokemon-paradijs.comThis deck has a simple plan in mind, but still offers a lot of versatility. If you’re looking for a direct attacker, that’s given to you in the form of Cobalion NVI; a Basic, 120 HP Metal type with a Retreat Cost of 2 and two attacks. If you want to spread your damage across the field and claim multiple prizes, then you have Kyurem NVI; a Basic, 130 HP Water type with a Retreat Cost of 2 and two attacks.

As you can see the two attackers in this deck are pretty easy to relate to each other with their similar HP, identical Retreat Costs and both having 2 attacks, but their play-styles are completely different. As mentioned Cobalion is only capable of attacking the opponent’s current active. His attacks do offer some variation with ‘Energy Press’ delivering 20 damage plus 20 more for each Energy attached to the defending Pokémon.

This doesn’t seem like a lot, but against an opposing Kyurem or Vanilluxe NVI, each of the 20’s are doubled to 40, so when fully charged Kyurem and Vanilluxe will take 160 and 120 damage respectively, meaning that even with Eviolite attached Kyurem will be a 1HKO (1HKO) and Vanilluxe can’t afford to have any damage on prior to Energy Press being used.

Next there’s ‘Iron Breaker’ which for the cost of 2 Metal Energy and 1 Colourless Energy delivers 80 damage and stops the Defending Pokémon from being able to attack next turn. This is the main reason that Cobalion caught a lot of people’s attention; with an ability identical to Beartic EPO 30’s ‘Sheer Cold’, but delivering more damage and being present on a Basic made the attack much more appealing and much more viable as a decks main attacker.

pokemon-paradijs.comWith that we move onto Cobalion’s partner in crime, Kyurem. Kyurem was released to complete the dragon trio and as such carries the same ‘Outrage’ attack, which for Double Colourless delivers 20 damage plus 10 more damage for every damage counter on Kyurem. With that said, Kyurem did step away from Reshiram and Zekrom by not having an attack for 120 damage.

Instead he has Glaciate an attack that for 2 Water Energy and 1 Colourless Energy does 30 damage to every Pokémon that your opponent has in play, which can allow you to claim multiple Prizes across the board after a few repetitions, or toward the end of a long game where your opponent may have retreated injured Pokémon to the Bench.

Some people may have noticed something else that Kyurem and Cobalion have in common; the format of their second attack. With both them carrying a cost of two Energy of their type plus 1 Colourless Energy, it may seem less than desirable to run them both. Manually attaching to each one requires an investment of 3 turns, but we do have a way around that problem in the form of a universal energy accelerator, namely Electrode Prime.

Electrode is the Pokémon that provides the E in CaKE as well as providing it with a way to charge your three-Energy attackers. Electrode is included for his Poké-Power ‘Energymite’ which allows you to Knock Out Electrode then look at the top 7 cards of your deck you can then attach any Energy you find there to your Pokémon in any way you like.

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The major drawback of this is that you have to discard any cards that aren’t Energy. Put simply, you don’t want to run any 1-of support cards in this deck unless you can be sure to recover them.

So what other advantages can Electrode offer us? Well firstly I’ll cover the fact that Energymite can grab Special Energies as well as Basics; with that said it also allows for an interesting play with Rainbow Energy. Rainbow Energy usual deals 10 damage to the Pokémon its attached to when it’s played from hand, but Energymite only has you look at the top 7 cards it doesn’t add them to your hand before attaching or discarding.

This in short means that any Rainbow Energy attached via Energymite will not deal 10 damage allowing it to act as any energy type with no cost.

Another advantage that Electrode grants oddly enough comes from the fact that Knocking himself Out gives your opponent a Prize. Now usually this would be bad for obvious reasons but it does offer you a controllable trigger for Twins which can be used to grab key cards such as Eviolite or a Special M Energy that Electrode might not have grabbed.

My final advantage for Electrode has to be the fact that he can’t be used as Catcher bait. While most other techs carry this problem Electrode doesn’t have to be Benched to use Energymite, and as such can remove itself from the Active Spot without worry while still providing Energy for your attackers.

pokemon-paradijs.comOf course Electrode isn’t all advantage with no drawback; as covered before, any cards that aren’t Energy get discarded instead of reshuffled, which while providing an excellent way to thin your deck means that crucial cards can easily be discarded.

The easiest fix I can see for this is Super Rod, which can recover discarded Pokémon and place them back into your deck. Another idea which while less universal can take advantage of losing Cobalions and Kyurems to the discard is Revive which will place them straight onto your bench and help you prepare your back-up attackers.

Another disadvantage of Electrode is the Hit Points of himself and Voltorb TM. Voltorb only has 40 HP which means if you see any Megazone in your area then an early Yanmega can leave you relying on manual attachments. Luckily Yanmega has seen a dip in popularity recently as more and more decks have started to focus on high HP Basics which tend to give Yanmega a much harder time than the old Stage 1 rush deck.

On top of Voltorb only having 40 HP, Electrode has 90 which while not being too bad for a Stage 1 can be easily taken out in 1 turn by most decks in format by the mid-game. As a counter point to this I will mention that Electrode is most likely going to explode the turn it comes into play, but there’s always a chance that may not be the case.

Techs

pokemon-paradijs.comSo that pretty much covers the Pokémon that make CaKE what it is, but what techs can this deck include? And why include them? Most of the techs I can consider being effective tend to effect the current metagame and without a definite list for the next set its hard to predict how the game might change after Next Destinies is released.

With that in mind, my first tech is mostly for the mirror match and is solely here to try and sway the game in your favor, so without further delay I give you Victini NVI 15.

Normally something as small and frail as Victini would usually end up as a quick prize for your opponent, but having a 2 Energy attack that can hit Cobalion for 200 damage isn’t going to go to waste. Of course whatever your opponent chooses to promote is bound to KO Victini meaning your exchange goes 1 for 1, so why use it?

Mostly because of its 1 shot factor it can kill an imposing Cobalion then you wait to see what your opponent promotes allowing you a turn to weigh your options; if they retaliate with Kyurem then you have a quick KO there by bring out another Cobalion, and if you’ve used Glaciate earlier in the game, then you can score the KO with 1 hit for either of Cobalions attacks.

If conversely they promote a Cobalion then after Victini is Knocked Out you promote your own Cobalion and use Iron Breaker to place the attack lock in your favor. As mentioned above the use of Victini isn’t to win the game for you but to sway it in your favor either giving you an advantage in the prize exchange or placing the attack lock in your favor while you build your bench.

pokemon-paradijs.comAnother use for Victini is his Durant matchup, just like Cobalion ants are weak to Fire and at most should only need to do 100 damage to KO a Durant even with Eviolite and a Special M Energy attached. Of course we get Heatmor soon and people have talked about using Ditto TM to freeze out Victini’s attack, but overall Victini should be a worthwhile play.

The next tech I’m going to cover is Terrakion from Noble Victories. The main reason to run Terrakion NVI is as a counter to the one of the most popular decks in format right now, namely EelZone. Magnezone Prime has the ability to 1 shot anything it opposes, Terrakion can make a powerful counter by taking advantage of Magnezone’s Weakness as well as have to methods to output 90 damage for either 2 or 3 Energy.

Another advantage of Terrakion is his 130 HP this means that if your opponent wants to deliver a revenge Knock Out then they will have to Lost Burn 3 energies and with most of the decks attackers having in excess of 100 HP its most likely they already Lost Burned 3 Energy the prior turn, meaning that they need to have 6 Energies on the field over 2 turns and even if they manage this, they run the risk of running out of energy the following turn, and being unable to attack.

My next tech is Absol Prime from Triumphant. I heard of people teching Absol to handle the Chandelure NVI matchup as being unable to attack doesn’t hinder the decks strategy and using Kyurem to spread damage could provide futile against lists that run Blissey Prime.

I’ll be honest this is all I can really say about Absol, it’s there for a specific matchup and to be honest after the release of EX’s I don’t see the matchup remaining in the format as the damage range for a knockout will be far to high, but for the moment it may be worth having just 1 Absol in your deck just in-case.

The Future

BulbapediaAnother card I would like to talk about is the unreleased Prism Energy;

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Prism Energy – Special Energy

This card provides 1 C Energy.

If it’s attached to a Basic Pokémon, it provides 1 unit of every Type of Energy.

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Prism Energy is less of a tech and more of an intelligent addition, as covered above Rainbow Energy can be a powerful card in a deck like this as it acts as any Energy. Prism Energy is essentially more of that without the 10 damage, but with the drawback that the target Pokémon has to be a Basic. Oddly enough this doesn’t cause a problem in CaKE as all of your attacking Pokémon and techs are basic meaning effectively CaKE can carry 8 Rainbow Energy in the place of 4.

Put simply if you have energy in hand then more than likely you can attach it to who-ever you need to instead of having to attach to a given Pokémon because of the type they require.

Conclusion

To close I’d like to say that I think that CaKE is a good deck and at the moment its future seems good, so if your unsure on what to run for any future tournaments at least consider a slice or 2-of CaKE, you may find it’s not the deck for you, but at least you’ll know the matchup and what makes the deck struggle.

If you’d like to suggest any future articles feel free to drop me a line here or on Facebook.

Signing off for now,

RattataJoey