Cake Pop Shop — Building Blacephalon-GX for Brazil
Clowns are… scary, I’m not a big fan… I do like Blacephalon-GX though, it’s one of the best attacking Pokemon of all time. Three great attacks all with great purpose is a recipe for success. Bursting Burn is an insurance policy if you skip a beat and need to buy time, and I especially like it in the Expanded format to screw with Seismitoad-EX decks. That’s not why I’m here today though. Mind Blown is the highlight of this card, raking up to insane numbers if you have ample Fire Energy in play. Luckily for Blacephalon-GX, though, it’s an Ultra Beast, so Beast Ring will be potent in combination with it. Burst GX just nets you a Prize card. Never a bad thing, although it could discard a valuable resource. Nonetheless, it’s just icing on the cake at this point, completing a very sweet card.
The archetype is also built around a new Naganadel card, accelerating basic Energy from the discard pile. Charging Up, simply put, charges your Naganadel up so that you can send its Fire Energy flying to the Lost Zone.
The first issue with this deck that came to my mind was the sending of the Energy to the Lost Zone. This seems sketchy, like you could run out of them before you can win the game. Way back there was Magnezone Prime that saw some success with a similar attack, but one of its problems was weighing the game wrong and running out of Energy. This one should be different, as you can play a whopping seventeen Fire Energy, and Beast Energy Prism Star can make you sacrifice a little less to take some Knock Outs.
This deck looks really simple, and it is. You get out your Naganadel to serve as damage modifiers and you play a lot of consistency cards and Energy to make sure that you can execute your strategy. The oddity for my list are some spicy Stadium cards. I’ll get into each of their purposes in a bit, but be warned that they each deserve a spot in the deck and one in particular is an MVP candidate.
Card Explanations
Four Blacephalon-GX
This is your main attacker. You want to open with it so you can use Burst GX as soon as possible. You have about a 50% chance of starting with it naturally, and if not you can just retreat any of the other Basic Pokemon in the deck for a single Energy card. Naganadel can use its Ability to serve as a way to retreat for no cost as well. You cannot prize too many Blacephalon-GX, because you have no other decent attackers. Naganadel is okay, but Blacephalon-GX is the focus of this deck and any competitive Blacephelon-GX deck needs to play it in a number that is representative of such.
Four Naganadel
The firepower behind the deck. Charging Up keeps your Blacephalon-GX damage output at the brink. You want to set up as many as possible so you can get more Energy into play and use Mind Blown for more and more damage. Turning Point takes two turns to power up, but if you are successful in doing so, it can truly be the “turning point” of the game… Okay, one pun is enough.
Three Poipole from Forbidden Light and One Poipole from Lost Thunder
Forbidden Light's Poipole is “better” than the new one for its auto-Poison attack, but our new Lost Thunder Poipole has some merit with Eye Opener, which lets you look at your Prizes for one Energy. I like to play this split because they both have uses; you can pick the best one for the situation.
One Tapu Lele-GX
With four Ultra Ball and three Mysterious Treasure you still want a Tapu Lele-GX in this deck so you can Wonder Tag. Fetching a turn one Lillie is powerful and having a searchable Guzma is never a bad thing.
Playing only a single copy keeps your chances of starting with it down which is nice in a deck where you’re already attacking strictly with a Pokemon-GX. You want to make sure that you don’t give your opponent even easier targets for more fruitful Knock Outs.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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