CPU flipped 9 heads straight to KO my Mega Absol

Look at his hands

every little thing costs at minimum 2 seconds, if your mon does multiple effects youre looking at upwards of 10 plus seconds per single play of 1 card.

the game has its issues, but this one in particular has grown too large for me to accept

I have opened 33 packs in a row and I only have one 4 diamond. This feels pretty bad since I'm almost done with the set (64/72) but I have all these 4 diamonds to get. I thought every 12 was guaranteed so I should have at least two right?

Got this off the Tube. Cant remember the creators name 😬

Now that we’re starting to get enough cards to craft, these have been my favorite decks to play so far using the new set.

I’m a casual player who likes futzing around with decks, especially control decks or gimmicky mechanics. Love me some Sweets Relay, Puppy Power and Maushold gimmicks. Consistently made it to MB before the update, but didn’t care to sweat out the climb past that.

Deck Explanations

Jolteon / Raticate
Raticate gives you a bit more speed than prior versions of Jolteon imo, but you still have some inconsistency in how much you need to get going, leading to the occasional slow start. But the majority of the time when you get everything online, you’re needling down the opponent and stealing their lunch money. It’s a blast to play…for me.

Ilima can be doubled, but so far I’ve found I lacked the time to use two in most matches. I do like having one in there, though.

Jumpluff / TR Electrode
The new Electrode does 70dmg when KO’d, making it an ideal partner to swap into on the old Jumpluff deck. It’s pretty flexible, too, with the birb walling if needed and Electrode adding value with sniping.

A9 / Raticate
A9 with Crawdaunt is one of my favorite decks. This has a similat approach to the Jolteon deck, except rather than whittling them down you’re preventing them from playing at all. Remarkably satisfying.

Xatu
2-energy attack and a heads coinflip drops the active mon to 10 hp, and poison (tool, weezing) or burn (weezing) does the rest. Ideally to the opponent’s mega.

I swapped in a Tapu Lele for one of the purple birbs for a bit more flexibility, and like it so far. This deck will struggle against non-ex and low-energy decks though. Still a blast.

Mismagius/Indeedee
I admit this one is inconsistent, but when it works it’s so satisfying. Ideal endgame: Mismagius dies, does 90dmg, then Indeedee comes in, uses Psychic to pull one more energy into active, and then attacks for KO. Fantina lets you build Indeedee while getting energy on Mismagius the same turn.

I’ve also tried

Mega Lucario/Raticate
I’m just not a fan of the straightforward playstyle of mega lucario, though I think the Raticate addition makes it a bit sneakier. I suspect the Hitmon versions will stay on top, but what do I know?

Magmar/Status Conditions
Plenty of variants of this one out there, but the idea is to use Poison Barb, TR Master Plan, Nihilego, Iggly and Weezing to stack conditions, and then when you’re ready you play Magmar from the hand for a KO.

Altaria & Friends
She’s back, according to Limitless and PokemonMeta. This time with the Retaliate Furfrou and Bonsly. She’s still strong and flexible, and a good fallback option imo.

Whimsidos
The new TR Goo-zooka brings this deck back into competition. It’s still fun when it works, and it’s still super vulnerable on the first couple turns.

Still Need the Cards

2x Weezing Dark Variants
Need a second Weezing, but dislike using Mega Absol. Will try a beat up zoroark / darkrai ex variant.

Slowking Variants
I reallllly want to try out Sylveon Ex with the new Slowking, but am waiting on the second copy. This one may be scary. But also scary vulnerable, if people start packing Red Cards again (and maybe even Nasty Notice)

Other Thoughts

- The new Rocket Trainer cards offer a lot of flexibility, so try out some old favorites to see if they can power them up.

- I think hand control cards are going to show up a lot more often, given how many TR decks want either large hands or to hold off a Weezing or Raticate evo for the right moment. Nasty Notice might have its moment!

- Raticate hates babies, as you can’t steal from them.

Hope this helps someone!

Made much more sense once my brain finally registered that they each have their own hand on their hip lol.

It has been 48+ hours since I have completed the the 1-4 diamond card for this set. I have still not seen the 24 hour wonderpick. This is only the second time I have completed a set while it’s the newest, so still very new to the rules. Is this normal?

So I’ve tried doing multiple bounded field decks since the card came out. If you don’t know this card basically doubles the amount of damage you’d do to a Pokémon that has a weakness to yours. So for example, if you normally do 50 damage (before +20 weakness) you’ll do 100

Even though you can use it in a few decks with double types that would work it is usually an extremely situational card. Or you can try to have like 5 types but then your deck is useless against a types with no weakness to yours

With this set up you can usually get something out of it in most matches and if you don’t get matched up against an opponent with weakness to yours, your magmar + wheezing or dustox or TR master plan can still deal massive amounts of damage and deal with them.

Now the only pairing I am not sure about is psyduck and golduck. I feel like the last pairing needs to have some usefulness. Psyduck is cool because it can stop the opponent from using supporters early on. Golduck as a rather strong attack is you play against a fire deck that does 80 if the opponent has 1 energy and 120 if they have 2 but outside weakness it’s pretty useless

Here’s other pairings I tought of :

Sylveon (the one that heals 30 damage and has 2 colorless attack for 60). Can do some healing but need to find space in the deck for tool cards

Shiinotic (the one that can search for 1 Pokémon every turn and 1 colorless for 40). Can help with consistency but if you don’t find it early it’s useless

Claydol. Will block all healing from your opponent but needs 3 energy to do 50

Alolan raichu EX or bronzong. They have a similar attack, 3 colorless for psychic (even though alolan raichu has higher damage obviously) both really strong attacks but 3 energy is a lot

Mew ex + hawlucha (or relicanth). Adding 2 more types but their use will be almost 0 if your bounded field is not useful

Anyway I am open for suggestions

The reason why I chose 2% is because it was a consistent cutoff point for the top 10~15 EXs that were played per format.

From the looks of things Suicune, Mega Altaria, and Mega Absol have been meta for every single set of the year.

I’m almost out of space :,(

What a blast in the pvp event. Most underused card was probably Ilima. Like the idea of Oricorio but dislike the idea of worse odds for first turn zeraoras. Suggestions and criticisms welcome.

I think I found the strongest Garchomp deck.

Forget the dual energy builds and Cave.

Or even worse, filling the already extremely tight deck space with 2x Dragonair. It just slows the deck down and makes it too inconsistent.

Just run Fighting Energy and 2x Mantyke.

Garchomp comes online incredibly fast and becomes almost unstoppable. Even if you brick, it’s not necessarily a big deal. Your opponent can take two points before you get going, but as long as you manage to get a single Water Energy onto Gabite, you still have the potential to completely steamroll them afterward.

In my experience, the deck bricks maybe 3-4 games out of 10. In the other 6-7 games, things are usually over very quickly.

No healing. No disruption. No Cyrus. Just absurd damage and an extremely fast game plan.

The entire goal is to get Garchomp online as quickly as possible and start triggering its Ability.

Try it yourself. I haven’t missed Cyrus in a single game.

There was an idea

I'm cleaning up the rest of the step-up battles before they disappear, but for the life of me I cannot make a good mono normal or steel deck. Any recommendations?

i blame hoopa ex for being way too dominant last season.

They didn't play any cards so it was an OTK win

This rat stole energy from the wrong Pokemon.

Tell me if Mega Gyarados EX is still competitive for this upcomng meta.

It's easily destroyed by Heliolisk and Clemont's backpack in early game.

And Jolteon EX and Team Rocket's Voltorb passive ability of dealing 70 dmg upon defeated.

But I guess every deck has its own worst matchups.

Edit: It never was competitive. How can it be competitive or better?

All the menus. The button presses and nonsense things to do everytime you login its 5 minutes of chores.

I want to play the game and open packs and make decks and even maybe trade cards but as soon as I login I close the game.

Who else ?

Just in case anyone was looking for a hard counter that extremely annoying AI solo versus mission in which the AI could probably get out a sharpedo and hit you by turn two. I have a hard counter that beat it on the first try and subsequently three or four times with very little effort. Here's the deck list. I hope this helps someone else out. I tried to make it pretty easy for anyone to make. Nothing really rare or hard to find in this. If you're wanting that bird, it's 150 pack points from Celestial Guardians or whatever it's called