Is this thing on? Does anyone hear me?
Like everyone else, I was between two topics for this vlog, but with half a bottle of wine in my system and it already being 9pm on the due date of this post, let's just go with ol' reliable and get to post FOUR in the Pokemon TCG series.
To recap:
- Nathan's POKEMON TCG OVERVIEW (the only prerequisite)
- Lucas' MIRAIDON EX deck profile
- Nathan's ANCIENT BOX deck profile
- We're here now!!
Gardevoir Ex Deck Profile
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| My Gardevoir EX Deck List |
Deck Overview
This deck revolves around Gardevoir EX's ability, Psychic Embrace. It allows you to attach any number of basic Psychic energy cards from your discard pile to your Psychic Pokemon. The downside is that this puts 2 damage counters (20 damage) on that Pokemon. At first, one would think that hurting your Pokemon is bad, and most of the time it would be, but this deck uses that effect to its advantage. With Pokemon like Drifloon and Scream Tail, you can create one-prize attackers that can do up to 180 and 160 damage, respectively. These numbers can be increased to 300 and 240 with the tool Bravery Charm, which is used sparingly in fear of Lost Vacuum or Jamming Tower nullifying it and giving your opponent an easy prize card. The strength of this deck is similar to that of Nathan's Ancient Box. We can take two prize cards while only leaving one available for our opponent in the active Pokemon spot.
Everyone now understands two things--one-prize attackers are difficult to deal with and we want energies in our discard pile to power up our attackers. But to get energies into our discard, first they need to be in our hand.. and then either attached to a Pokemon who is knocked out, or discarded with another effect, like retreating. Quite a difficult process! This is where we can take advantage of Radiant Greninja's Concealed Cards ability. This ability alone could be fast enough to enable Nathan's Professor Sada's Vitality's, but we need 3, 4, even up to 6(!!) energies in the discard to fuel our attackers! That is where this deck's main draw engine comes into play: Kirlia. While Radiant Greninja is limited to discarding energies, Kirlia can discard ANY card from your hand to draw two new cards. Kirlia is also not bound by the Radiant Pokemon Rule, which states we cannot have more than 1 Radiant Pokemon in our deck.
I bet most of you fine readers can guess this deck's basic strategy at this point-- we get as many Kirlia's into play as possible, discard energies and other less-useful cards from our hand to dig for what we need in our turn, and obliterate our opponent because all of this is way stronger than the two other decks you've read about-- and that's pretty much correct! The downside of this deck is that Kirlia itself is a Stage 1 Pokemon and Gardevoir EX is a Stage 2, with evolution being something the previous two decks actively avoided. That avoidance comes with a very good reason. Despite this deck being extremely powerful once it gets going, evolving is a very slow process to get through naturally. To jumpstart our game, we use the Arven supporter to search for cards like Buddy-Buddy Poffin and Technical Machine: Evolution. The Buddy-Buddy Poffin is used to search for two basic Pokemon with less than 70HP, most often two Ralts. Due to our deck being slower, mostly from evolution, we don't rely on using aggressive attacks early. Instead, we try to use Technical Machine: Evolution to evolve multiple Ralts in Kirlia's without having to search them out. If we can pull off this attack on our first turn going second, we can evolve our Kirlia's into Gardevoir EX during our second turn. We are normally unable to have a Gardevoir EX on our second turn due to the evolution rule restricting the player from evolving the same Pokemon twice in one turn.
Because of the slow starts this deck is prone to, disrupting your opponent's hand is a Must. This is another aspect of the game not included in the Miraidon EX or Ancient Box decks. We can use cards like Iono and our ace-spec of choice, Unfair Stamp, to prevent our opponents from hoarding resources in their hands. This could be getting rid of a potentially game-winning Boss's Orders or just reducing their hand size to prevent multi-card combos.
I like to tell people I use my Miraidon EX deck when I don't want to think very hard and use my Gardevoir EX deck when I want to give myself a headache. I'm sure you can see why. Between balancing the different attacking options, your attacks often deal damage that doesn't result in a knockout, and hand disruption.. this deck requires a much higher skill level to pilot well than Miraidon EX.
The Double-Header
Challenge 1
As previously stated-- it's pretty late and I just played all of these games yesterday (03/08/25), so I wasn't able to get any fancy matchup pictures made this time. My apologies. I may do better and I may not in the future. Only all of our future selves will know.
Round 1 -- Raging Bolt EX
Only Quentin would know this, but Raging Bolt EX is Nathan's second deck that he has been working on in the background for months. The deck has a lot of trouble dealing with one-prize attackers in the active spot and I was able to set up well, making this not a very close game. 1-0.
Round 2 -- Lost Zone Box
I realized this week that I never actually specified the deck I played in round 3/top cut of my Miraidon EX post. Well, it was Lost Zone Box against this exact player. He has access to Iron Hands EX, but I can knock it out with Gardevoir EX herself and he misses a follow-up attack, allowing me to win in a very close game that I frankly don't have time to go into. If you want to know all of the gory details, feel free to ask and I can elaborate in a DM. 2-0.
Round 3 -- Some Stuff
In round 3 I play against a homegrown grass deck that uses Hydrapple EX, a neat card, but one that is ultimately not strong enough to be a contender in the modern meta. Despite my opponent's start being ideal and mine being slow, I entered my last turn with "game on board" (I did not need to play a single card from my hand to win). 3-0.
Results
There were only 4 players total at this challenge, including me. So, by going undefeated I am the champion! A better result than last time :) For winning, I get 4 Surging Sparks packs and Katie opened another Milotic EX full art, same as last week!
Challenge 2
This challenge has 6-players at it, still a small number, but fuck it. We ball. With 6-players, we will go for 3 rounds.
Round 1 -- Slowing
Despite being a "rogue deck", or a non-meta deck, it is a bit scary for any Gardevoir EX player to face. His Slowking copies the attack of the Pokemon on the top of his deck, which he can manipulate by using the stadium Academy at Night. The real fear is him copying the attack of Kyurem, which can be used to wipe out all of my available Kirlias. Just the threat of this attack being used requires me to play very conservatively, having no more than two Kirlias out at any given time.
My opponent set up a Kyurem attack and knocked out my two Kirlias, discarding his energies. In doing so, he fell into the trap I had set up. I can limit his counter play with an Unfair Stamp, reducing his hand to two cards. At the same time, I use my Scream Tail to attack his energy acceleration Pokemon, Xatu, on his bench and leave his energy-less Slowking trapped in the active spot. I don't recall if he could attach an energy on his next turn or not, but at this point he is stuck in a lost game-state. I clean up easily. 1-0 (4-0 on the day).
Round 2 -- Dragapult EX
The premier deck of this format. Dragapult EX has a wickedly strong attack, dealing 200 damage and allowing him to place 6 additional damage counters anywhere he wants to on my bench (one damage counter == 10 HP). Paired with his Stage 1 evolution of Drakloak, this deck is a slightly stronger version of Gardevoir EX in the current format. I can parry his attacks by using Munkidori to move damage counters back over to his side of the field, but if he can use Boss's Orders to move around attackers like Drifloon or Scream Tail, he can knock them out on the bench with just one or two damage counters while dealing 200 damage to a different Pokemon.
In this particular matchup, my opponent draws into a very early Dragapult EX attack, but majorly misplays his hand and misses the attack. He knocks out one of my Kirlias, leaving me with just one, but I can knock out his only Drakloak with an energy attached, and he limps through the rest of the game, taking no additional prize cards after the first. 2-0 (5-0 on the day).
Round 3 -- Raging Bolt EX.. Again
Different guy, same friend group. I started this game Terribly and my opponent drew 3 prize cards before I got my first Kirlia on the field. Throughout this game, I was never able to get a Gardevoir EX in play.
Nobody said SHIT about me being a quitter, though. One of those early prize cards was him knocking out my Mimikyu with his only non-EX Pokemon that can attack, Slither Wing. But, in the process, he knocks out his own Pokemon due to Burning Turbulence's 90-damage recoil. During his next turn, he fills his bench with another EX Pokemon, making my Mimikyu invincible. I use Night Stretcher to recover and play my Mimikyu back down while using both of my Professor Turo's Scenario to pick up my remaining Pokemon, leaving just the active Mimikyu. I am now in a board state where my opponent will eventually deck out and I will win. The rare undefeated doub---- BZZZZZZZ--- Time in the round is called.
I'm not sure if Nathan's initial post mentioned it, but we only have 30 minutes in each round. At the end of those 30 minutes, players are given 3 total extra turns to end the game. If the game cannot be ended in those turns, the game results in a tie. Because my opponent's deck still has ~10 cards in it, I am unable to win. Because of my Mimikyu, he isn't able to draw his final prize card. The game ends in a tie. 2-0-1 (5-0-1 on the day).
Results
I get first on paper by an RNG-based tie-breaker, but the tournament organizer decides to split his original 1st place prizing amongst the 1st and 2nd place finishers, the 2nd place prizing amongst the 3rd and 4th place finishers, and the 3rd place prizing amongst the 5th and 6th place finishers. He said he saw us as tied for 1st, tied for 2nd, and tied for 3rd, which is understandable with the really weird tie-breakers. I would have gotten more packs (in theory) for losing, but we are not mad, it's okay to give 0-2 players packs, we are here for fun! I'm not mad. Katie is a little bummed she didn't get more packs, though.
Something of note is that normally tie-breaks are based on Opponents' Win % and Opponents' Opponents' Win %, but every game in the 3rd round resulted in a tie, leaving us with a really narrow range of outcomes of record and, by some extra luck, the Exact Same tie breaks from 1st place to 6th. Just a little funzies thing I've actually never seen before.
I didn't get anything from the packs from this challenge, but both 1st place finishers got a little figurine for winning! It's pretty cute. Notes for next time: I have to get better at playing this game faster.
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