The Evolution of Big Basics

Hello SixPrizes! My name is Steve Lewis, and I’m a Pokémon Professor, Judge, League Leader, Tournament Organizer, and competitive Pokédad from Katy, Texas. In this article, I’ll be discussing a deck that’s been around for two years, Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor, sometimes known as Big Basics. The purpose of this article is two-fold: 1) to discuss a competitive deck before the US National Championship that hasn’t received much coverage and 2) to analyze a competitive deck over time to provide insight into deck construction.

As a League Leader and a regular player on Pokémon TCG Online, I get questioned all the time about how to build decks. I find it very difficult to answer this question in a simple, succinct way. On one hand, deck construction is remarkably easy. First, you get some Pokémon you want to use as attackers. Then, add in the right amount of Energy and Supporters to draw into the necessary cards to keep streaming attackers and Energy attachments. Finally, you include other support Pokémon or Trainer cards as necessary to be able to attach enough Energy to perform the desired attacks. This last part is termed “Energy acceleration” and often is a defining characteristic of competitive Pokémon Trading Card Game decks.

Sounds easy, right? Unfortunately, deck construction is not easy and often requires many hours of play-testing and fine-tuning to create that perfect 60-card list. It’s a delicate balancing act between including the amount of cards that you want and the final card counts that you need to actually make a concept work.

Given enough time, almost any deck can set up its attackers and do enough damage to Knock Out Pokémon and take Prizes. In a competitive setting like a tournament, it’s unlikely that your opponent is going to give you that time. So the trick to deck construction is creating a 60-card list that is consistent enough to set up your attackers quickly and efficiently. Thus, the main concepts that writers on this website and others stress repeatedly are a deck’s consistency, setting up your strategy quickly (usually within a handful of turns), and using Pokémon with efficient attacks.

An efficient attack does not always have a low Energy cost. A high-Energy-cost attack can be considered efficient if there is a way to power it up quickly and the amount of damage is significant. In the current metagame, examples of low-Energy and high-Energy efficient attacks include Miltank FLF’s Powerful Friends attack (80 damage for 1 Energy) and Black Kyurem-EX PLS’s Black Ballista attack (200 damage for 4 Energy; synergy with Blastoise BCR’s Deluge Ability), respectively.

Of course, there are other concepts that can be used to win Pokémon games, such as milling your opponent’s deck, or controlling the cards in your opponent’s hand to manage the pace of a game. But most decks focus on the traditional approach of doing damage and taking Prizes, and that’s what this article focuses on as well.

The Early 2012-2013 Season

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For me, the story of the Big Basics deck begins with the early part of the 2012-2013 season following the release of Dragons Exalted. The competitive scene was dealing with the rotation to Black & White-on, which meant I had lost my beloved CMT (Celebi Prime/Mewtwo-EX/Tornadus EPO) deck. In the aftermath, I had been playing a Zekrom-EX/Eelektrik NVI deck and having some success with several Top 4 finishes at Battle Roads tournaments. Other popular decks included Rayquaza-EX/Eelektrik NVI, Hydreigon DRX 97/Darkrai-EX, and Garchomp DRX 90/Altaria DRX. As you can see, all these competitive decks included Evolutions with low HP Basic Pokémon.

Around this time, I began to hear about players having success using a deck based around Ho-Oh-EX and its Rebirth Ability. I was intrigued because the deck did not use Evolutions, which reminded me of the CMT and ZPST (Zekrom BLW/Pachurisu CL/Shaymin UL/Tornadus EPO) decks I had played the previous year. I built my own version of a Ho-Oh-EX deck, got 2nd place at the final local Battle Roads tournament, and then did terrible (4-4) at the Fall Regional Championship in Houston, Texas.

Despite my Regionals results, I continued to play the Ho-Oh-EX deck throughout City Championships, even after the release of Blastoise BCR and Keldeo-EX. Although I didn’t have as much success as Kyle Sucevich did with his Ho-Oh-EX deck, I had four Top 8 finishes, with one 3rd place finish. Here is the decklist that I played by the end of City Championships:

The deck plays like a Mewtwo-EX/Terrakion NVI deck with Energy acceleration. Once Ho-Oh-EX and Basic Energies get discarded, you start flipping for Rebirth. Energy Switch allows you to power up a Mewtwo-EX or Terrakion NVI in one turn by putting the Energy in play with Rebirth and then using Energy Switch to move the Energy to the right attacker. But Rebirth is flippy, so you have to be very strategic with the Pokémon you bench and the Energy you attach manually.

From a deck construction perspective, there are a few things to note:

• 11 Basic Pokémon – This is a good number for helping to have a Basic in your first 7 cards and avoid mulligans. Any time you have less than 10 Basic Pokémon in your deck, you can expect to have mulligans.
• 14 Supporters – Through a lot of play-testing with this and other decks, I concluded that at least 14 draw Supporters were needed to ensure that I kept having draw Supporters each turn. With continued draw during a game, the deck was much more consistent. Occasionally any deck can have “dead-draw,” but this number of draw Supporters plus the Computer Search seemed to be the right amount for me.
• 4 Ultra Ball + 1 Computer Search – There are quite a few attackers that the deck only has of a single copy. This amount of search helped me get them into play. Ultra Ball is the best Pokémon search card in the game, so any deck that benefits from the discarding action can abuse this card. Ultra Ball helped get Ho-Oh-EX and basic Energies into the discard pile for Rebirth while searching out my attackers.
• 13 Energies + 1 Energy Search – At the time, most decks were playing between 12 and 14 Energies. Since Ho-Oh-EX needs Energy in the discard pile, this deck played a higher count to make sure I had Energy in my hand to discard with Ultra Ball, Computer Search, or Professor Juniper. I also played Energy Search since I could play Skyla to get a Basic Energy.

Post-Plasma Storm

Following the release of Plasma Storm, the Ho-Oh-EX deck wasn’t really viable anymore. Water attackers such as Keldeo-EX and Empoleon DEX were already putting pressure on the deck, but now we had to deal with Klinklang PLS and Hypnotoxic Laser. Klinklang PLS protected all Metal-type Pokémon from damage by Pokémon-EX with its Plasma Steel Ability.

Since most of the deck’s attackers were Pokémon-EX (Mewtwo-EX, Ho-Oh-EX, Landorus-EX, and Tornadus-EX DEX), this was bad. Hypnotoxic Laser became a widely used card in many decks, especially Darkrai-EX decks. Now my attackers were getting Knocked Out from Poison, meaning Terrakion’s Retaliate attack wouldn’t activate for extra damage.

So I began testing a different version of Big Basics. It was basically a Ho-Oh deck without Ho-Oh. Here’s the list I was testing heading into State Championships:

The idea behind the deck was to keep switching between good, low-Energy attackers using Switch, Energy Switch, and Scramble Switch. Then try to keep the Colorless Pokémon (Tornadus-EX DEX, Tornadus EPO, and Bouffalant DRX) alive longer with Eviolite and Aspertia City Gym. Although this deck was different from the Ho-Oh deck, there were several similarities. Here is a breakdown:

• 11 Basic Pokémon – I still had at least 10 Basics to reduce the number of mulligans. I increased the Landorus-EX and Tornadus-EX DEX counts since they were such good early attackers. I decreased Mewtwo-EX slightly since people weren’t playing this card as much, and I decreased the Terrakion NVI count since it was such a bad starter and more knockouts were happening due to Poison reducing the effectiveness of Retaliate.
• 14 Supporters – The Supporter count and makeup was the exact same as the previous deck. It seemed like the best draw engine to me.
• 2 Ultra Ball + 1 Heavy Ball – With Mewtwo-EX seeing less play, and Landorus-EX being so hard to Knock Out in one hit, I didn’t need to get out as many Pokémon as quickly. I also wasn’t trying to get things into the discard pile. As a result, I cut back on the Pokémon search cards. The Heavy Ball was nice because it would get Landorus-EX or Terrakion NVI without discarding resources I would need later in the game.
• 12 Energies + 1 Energy Search – I didn’t need as many Energies as in the Ho-Oh-EX deck, but I still played Energy Search since it increased the number of “outs” to an Energy because of the 3 Skyla in the deck. This was a great consistency booster because I didn’t have to always draw into the Energy cards. Even today, if I play 2-3 Skylas in a deck and some basic Energy, I run 1 Energy Search or, now, 1 Professor’s Letter.

I enjoyed playing this version of the deck, but it still felt like something was lacking and that it was too slow. I hadn’t yet caught on to the amazing synergy between Landorus-EX, Hypnotoxic Laser, and Virbank City Gym. During the first week of State Championships in 2013, I judged in Louisiana. A couple days later, Colin Moll of Celadon City Gym posted his 1st Place Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor decklist from the Nebraska State Championship:

This deck was similar to what I had been testing, except it ran the 4 Hypnotoxic Lasers and 2 Virbank City Gym that meshed so well with Landorus-EX’s Hammerhead attack. Being able to do 60 damage to the Active Pokémon and 30 more to a Benched Pokémon for just one Fighting Energy was very good. And since many people were running Rayquaza-EX/Victini NVI 15/Eelektrik NVI to counter the Klinklang PLS/BLW deck, Landorus-EX could just feast on Tynamo NVI all day.

To have success against the Klinklang PLS/BLW and Blastoise BCR/Keldeo-EX decks, this deck used Garbodor DRX whose Garbotoxin Ability shut off all other Abilities in play. Rescue Scarf was the Tool of choice, allowing Colin to run a very small 3-2 Garbodor DRX line. This strategy was successful because so few people were including Tool Scrapper in their decks.

Texas State Championship 2013

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Competing in State Championships on successive weeks is all about metagaming, trying to predict what decks people will play in large numbers and what deck you can play as a counter to increase the likelihood of having good matchups. Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor had quite a bit of success the first week, and I expected to see a lot of the deck at the Texas State Championship on the second week. I figured, along with many other people, that a Big Basics deck without Garbodor would have a good matchup because the Garbodor deck would have 9 cards (3-2 Garbodor line and 4 Rescue Scarf) that were essentially wasted space against a deck that didn’t rely on Abilities.

So I modified my Big Basics decklist, trying to end up with something that had a favorable matchup against the Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor deck while not having an auto-loss to Klinklang PLS and Blastoise BCR/Keldeo-EX. Here is what I ended up with:

As you might be able to tell, this decklist was a combination of my initial testing list and Colin’s Garbodor list. I kept the Supporter lineup the same, increased the Landorus-EX count, increased the Hypnotoxic Laser count to four and replaced the Aspertia City Gym with Virbank City Gym. I kept 4 Switch in the list to get out of Poison and other Status Conditions. I kept the 2 Energy Switch and 1 Scramble Switch, and then added 2 Max Potion to be able to keep Energy in play while healing away damage. Max Potion is so good with a single-Energy attacker like Landorus-EX.

I felt like I would have a good matchup versus Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor, enough non-EX attackers to deal with a Klinklang PLS/BLW deck, and enough early pressure followed up with big attacks (like Bouffalant DRX’s Gold Breaker attack) to deal with even Blastoise BCR/Keldeo-EX/Black Kyurem-EX PLS.

I ran this exact list at the Texas State Championship going 6-2 in Swiss and bubbling out of top cut at 19th place. My two losses on the day were to Michael Feller’s Klinklang PLS/BLW deck that would finish 2nd and to Michael Barnes’ Blastoise BCR/Keldeo-EX/Black Kyurem-EX PLS deck. I lost to Klinklang PLS due to a couple early misplays with Tornadus EPO and the fact that my Terrakion NVI was Prized. I lost to the Blastoise deck because Michael hit heads with Super Scoop Up two turns in a row to wipe away the hard work that my early Landorus-EX and then Bouffalant DRX had done to his Black Kyurem-EX PLS and Keldeo-EX.

My son competed with the exact same list in Juniors and managed to take 2nd place, losing the finals to a mirror match in which the opponent ran Eviolites. Since we didn’t have a Tool Scrapper in the deck, the Eviolites proved to be the deciding factor in the well-played final match.

Post-Plasma Freeze

Following the release of Plasma Freeze, neither Big Basics deck (with or without Garbodor DRX) was viable due to the onslaught of Team Plasma decks running Thundurus-EX, Deoxys-EX, and Kyurem PLF (also known as TDK). This deck hit Landorus-EX, Mewtwo-EX, and Tornadus-EX DEX for Weakness, had Energy acceleration with Colress Machine and Thundurus-EX’s Raiden Knuckle attack, and had increased damage output with Deoxys-EX’s Power Connect Ability and Hypnotoxic Lasers. The matchup was unfavorable to say the least.

It would be many months before anyone would try the combination of Landorus-EX, Mewtwo-EX, and Garbodor DRX at a major tournament.

State Championships 2014

Fast forward one year to State Championships in 2014. With the release of the first Pokémon XY card set, the metagame had shifted considerably with many people embracing the obvious strength of new cards like Yveltal-EX. In addition, Team Plasma decks had started to be played very differently during the preceding City Championships. The most popular build, nicknamed “Yeti,” revolved around using Thundurus-EX to power up Lugia-EX and Snorlax PLS on the Bench. Kyurem PLF was seeing much less play as many people had added Mr. Mime PLF to their lists to prevent the Bench damage from Kyurem’s Frost Spear attack.

The rule changes preventing the first player from attacking on the first turn of the game and adding a coin flip to Pokémon Catcher had slowed down the format overall. The opportunity was there for Big Basics to make a comeback.

During the first week of State Championships, Brandon Smiley finished in 2nd Place with this deck:

This decklist is remarkably similar to the original Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor deck from one year earlier. Let’s take a closer look:

• 12 Pokémon, 8 Basics – With only 8 Basics, this deck would probably be prone to a few mulligans from time to time. Unfortunately, the list was so tight, Brandon would have had to cut some of his tech cards (Max Potion and Enhanced Hammer) to have more Basics. Obviously, these tech cards served him well, helping him achieve a 2nd place finish. Also, he was now running two different Evolution lines, which was very important since Raichu XY was his counter for the very popular Yveltal-EX and Lugia-EX, meaning he had to run more Pokémon in general. As a result, he ran fewer Basic Pokémon.
• 14 Supporters – Still at 14 Supporters. The 4 Professor Juniper and 4 N haven’t changed, but Bianca has been replaced by a combination of Colress and Shauna. Obviously Brandon was trying to find a balance between Supporters that were good for the early game (Shauna) versus Supporters that were very good for the middle and late game (Colress).
• 3 Ultra Ball + 1 Level Ball – Brandon dropped the Heavy Ball, but kept the Level Ball as it could search out Trubbish LTR, Pikachu XY, and Raichu XY. Overall, the amount of Pokémon search remained roughly the same.
• 3 Float Stone + 3 Muscle Band – 6 Tools instead of 5, but a similar count to get Garbotoxin into play.
• 3 Muscle Band + 3 Hypnotoxic Laser + 2 Virbank City Gym – Damage enhancers and Landorus-EX have always been a match made in, well, wherever Pokémon go as a last resting place. When you can do extra damage for a single Energy and have 180 HP, life is good.
• 11 Energy + 1 Professor’s Letter – This list plays Skyla, so Brandon ran an Item that could get an Energy. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Andrew Zavala took 1st place at the Arizona State Championship with a similar Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor list, but he chose to run Zekrom LTR and Hard Charm as his Yveltal-EX counter. He also ran a Cobalion-EX, presumably to discard Special Energies in the Aromatisse XY and Team Plasma matchups. Here is the decklist Andrew used:

If you compare these two lists, you will see many similar card counts. The actual cards are slightly different, like with Andrew using Special Energies to accommodate the different Energy requirements of Landorus-EX, Cobalion-EX, and Zekrom LTR, but the overall construction of the decks are remarkably similar. It’s also interesting to note that two of Andrew’s techs were the same as Brandon’s: Max Potion and Enhanced Hammer.

Possibly as a result of these two successes from the first week of State Championships, TDK saw increases in play during the following two weeks of State Championships. In addition, Ability decks such as Blastoise BCR and Rayquaza-EX/Emboar LTR included Tool Scrapper in their lists as a staple. Personally, I don’t think the Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor deck can succeed when TDK has a large presence at a tournament. The matchup is just too difficult to overcome due to type Weakness.

Post-Flashfire

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Does the release of Flashfire offer this deck some hope? Pyroar FLF is an obvious counter to the Team Plasma decks that rely on Basic Pokémon, and Druddigon FLF gives decks an easy response to Black Kyurem-EX PLS and Rayquaza-EX. If TDK sees less play, then Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor has a chance to compete.

Going into National Championships, the consensus best deck in the format (BDIF) was Yveltal-EX/Garbodor LTR. Yveltal-EX is a great all around attacker, and Garbodor LTR eliminates pesky roadblocks such as Pyroar FLF, Suicune PLB, and Sigilyph LTR. However, similar to when Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor first saw success, many players have decided to counter the BDIF by playing Yveltal-EX without Garbodor LTR. As a result, Yveltal-EX/Raichu XY/Druddigon FLF decks and Virizion-EX/Genesect-EX/Raichu XY decks are seeing success with multiple top 8 finishes throughout the world.

With this metagame in mind, I’ve been testing a build that includes Landorus-EX, Mewtwo-EX, Raichu XY, and Druddigon FLF. Here is the list I’ve been testing:

As you can see, I’ve dropped the Max Potions, Enhanced Hammer, Dowsing Machine, Shauna, and third Ultra Ball. Instead I went with a build attempting to focus on consistency. I’m running a third Landorus-EX to improve my odds of starting with the big guy, a third Colress because the card is the second best draw Supporter in the game, a fourth Hypnotoxic Laser because the extra damage is so good, a Heavy Ball, Computer Search, and one Druddigon FLF. Druddigon is not only good against the Dragon-Weak EXs, the 90 damage from Revenge is very useful against an array of attackers.

But the real question remains, can it compete in the current meta? Furthermore, does the deck need the tech cards like Max Potion and Enhanced Hammer to succeed?

Recently, Luke Kirkham finished in 11th place in the United Kingdom National Championship with an extremely similar build. Here is his decklist which was published on the Victory Road blog:

Luke’s draw engine was slightly different running 1 Shauna and 2 Bicycle instead of the 3 Colress. He also chose to run 3 Ultra Ball and Computer Search. With all that discarding, Bicycle could be a decent draw card, allowing Luke to be more aggressive in the early turns of the game. He also decided to only run 2 Float Stone instead of the more standard 3 count. Finally, he didn’t include Max Potion, but he did make room for an Enhanced Hammer.

In my play-testing, I’ve found that playing any version of the deck requires a thorough knowledge for how particular matchups play out. With the lack of a simple, guaranteed Item-basedgust effect, and the return of the effect in the form of a Supporter with Lysandre, this deck cannot win by taking only cheap Prizes. Whereas Pokémon Catcher enabled matches to feel like checkers games where you made whatever plays you could and didn’t worry as much about the end of the game, Pokémon card games these days are grueling chess matches that require extensive planning and your complete attention to every detail.

Knowing when to thin the deck early in the match, versus conserving resources for later turns, are sometimes the most difficult decisions to make. Knowing when to get out two Pikachu XY and not worry about benching Trubbish LTR or when to play Professor Juniper and discard a Double Colorless Energy versus waiting a turn because you cannot afford to discard the Energy, these are the kinds of decisions that can decide wins and losses, and the only way to learn them is from extensive play-testing.

US National Championships 2014

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Can this deck be successful at the upcoming US National Championship? That remains to be seen and will be based on both the skill of the individual players using the deck and the overall metagame. If Kyurem PLF is played extensively at the tournament, it’s unlikely that Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor will succeed. If Pyroar FLF makes its presence felt and either scares off the TDK decks or forces them down to the lower tables, then perhaps Landorus-EX will have another day to shine.

I will say that in my opinion the matchup with Yveltal-EX is not easy at all, and the matches usually come down to what each player draws, Sleep flips from Hypnotoxic Laser, and how many switching cards each player has in their deck. Raichu XY does hit Yveltal-EX for Weakness, but the Landorus/Mewtwo/Garbodor deck sometimes struggles to fill its Bench. In that respect, I can see why Andrew Zavala elected to use Zekrom LTR instead of Raichu XY. However, I do find a great deal of utility in Raichu XY. The free retreat is a wonderful part of the card, and the ability to do 100 to 150 damage with a full Bench, Muscle Band, and Hypnotoxic Laser gives the deck answers to troublesome Pokémon such as Kyurem PLF, Reshiram LTR, Delphox XY, and Blastoise BCR.

I’m not sure the deck as constructed is consistent enough to get through a long tournament like the US National Championship, so I am of course testing other decks as well.

Conclusion

I hope this article has provided some information on a deck that hasn’t seen a lot of coverage leading up to National Championships. I hope I’ve also been able to give some insight into deck construction for a particular archetype and how lists have evolved and remained constant through several changing formats.

If you have an idea for a Pokémon deck, I encourage you to try creating a decklist either from scratch or from another deck that you already know. Then play-test and see how it does. Finally, keep adjusting the number of Pokémon, Trainer cards, and Energy, until the deck starts to have a consistent flow. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes the process leads to other ideas that do work.

The internet and websites like SixPrizes are great sources of information about the Pokémon TCG, but these sources should be used as a starting point for deck construction, not the finish line. Sometimes the winning decks come from unlikely places. Klinklang BLW won the US National Championship a couple years ago, and Michael Feller has won the Louisiana State Championship and the Texas State Championship in successive years with completely different builds of a Klinklang PLS deck. I doubt he found the decklist online before either tournament.

Good luck to everyone at their respective National Championships and at the World Championship in August. And thanks to all the Pokémon players who take the time to contribute their knowledge to this website and others. You are the reasons that the Pokémon community continues to grow and has such a great reputation for its friendly and welcoming environment. See you in Indy!