Expanded Turbo Dark and Initial Thoughts on Sword & Shield

By: Grant Manley · Posted Posted onJan 25, 2020 at 8:19 PM · 0 Comments

Hello everybody! This is Grant Manley back with another article about Expanded. As I’m writing this, I just got back from the Dallas Regional Championship, so I haven’t gotten the chance to sink much time into Sword and Shield testing. That said, I like the new set and I will be covering it a little bit at the end. First I would like to talk about the Turbo Dark deck that I played at Dallas. I was very close to making Top 8 but ended just a bit short with a Top 16 finish instead. I think Turbo Dark was an excellent play because of the highly optimized list. I wasn’t seriously considering Turbo Dark as a play for the event until I landed in Dallas at 10 PM on Friday and was presented with Azul’s genius idea of Guzzlord-GX. I don’t see why Turbo Dark would be hurt by the new set or the Supporter rule change. It definitely doesn’t need a Supporter on the first turn of the game. Sometimes I wouldn’t even get a Supporter anyway and I was still fine thanks to Dedenne-GX and Shaymin-EX. I think the new set’s broken Trainer cards only help out Turbo Dark, and I don’t think any new archetypes will be bad for it, or at the very least I don’t think anything else will greatly hurt Turbo Dark’s viability.

In short, Turbo Dark will stick around in Expanded, so it’s still worth talking about. In fact, the next three Regionals in the US will be Expanded, though none of them are particularly close as far as dates go.

Decklist

 

Pokemon (16)

2x Darkrai-GX (BUS #88)2x Dedenne-GX (UNB #57)2x Shaymin-EX (RSK #77)2x Weavile-GX (UNM #132)2x Sneasel (CES #86)1x Greninja and Zoroark-GX (UNB #107)1x Darkrai-EX (DEX #63)1x Oranguru (SM #113)1x Guzzlord (COE #136)1x Guzzlord-GX (CRI #105)1x Marshadow-GX (BUS #80)

Trainers (33)

1x Colress (PLS #118)1x Guzma (BUS #115)1x N (DEX #96)3x Professor Sycamore (BKP #107)4x VS Seeker (PHF #109)4x Ultra Ball (FLF #99)4x Dark Patch (DEX #93)4x Max Elixir (BKP #102)2x Battle Compressor (PHF #92)2x Hypnotoxic Laser (PLS #123)1x Cherish Ball (UNM #191)1x Field Blower (GUR #125)1x Great Catcher (COE #192)1x Computer Search (BCR #137)1x Reverse Valley (BKP #110)2x Sky Field (RSK #89)

Energy (11)

11x Darkness Energy (XY #138)

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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