Altaria Beats (Almost) Everything — The Deck of Alternate Win Conditions

Hello everyone! Today I’ll be talking about an interesting rogue deck that recently did well in a large online event, and it features a card that’s only seen a little bit of play every once in awhile since its release in Champions Path: Altaria. Altaria has had a few decks made with it in the past, but none of them really took off. Altaria decks have traditionally been very meta-dependent and many decks can counter it if they choose to commit the space to do so.

I’ve been playing this deck recently and I’ve also played it a few formats ago, so it’s been fun picking up a deck that sometimes fits perfectly into the meta. And let me tell you, now is one of those times. Altaria’s Miraculous Charm Ability shuts down most of the attackers in the format right now, from Pokemon-GX to Pokemon V and Pokemon VMAX. Most decks have some weak and unreliable way around Altaria, but those can be teched against when building the Altaria deck. I’ll be sure to go over potential counters as well as Altaria’s methods of dealing with them. Let’s look at the list!

Altaria Deck List

This deck is built around using Altaria as a win condition. This means that your focus is going to be identifying and removing potential threats to Altaria, depending on a particular matchup. Once the opponent’s answers to Altaria have been dealt with, the game is over and they will slowly succumb to either Speed Dive or deck out.

This deck happens to work great in the current meta because most of the attackers are Pokemon that can’t normally hit through Altaria. This deck is somewhat simple yet its game plan varies greatly depending on the matchup. Cards I would like to add would be a second Kangaskhan and a fourth Powerful Colorless Energy. This list is extremely similar to the one that was used in the recent online event where it placed in the Top 4.

Card Choices

Four Altaria

Running the maximum amount of Altaria is common sense because many matchups require us setting up as many Altaria as possible. The idea is that the opponent may be able to get through a couple, but that defensive Ability will eventually stop them in their tracks. Altaria isn’t a horrible attacker considering its only counters are lower-HP Pokemon. It does 60 damage efficiently and that number can be boosted with Powerful Colorless Energy. This is usually enough to threaten a 2HKO against problematic opposing Pokemon. You’ll be using Speed Dive a lot.

Two Snorlax

The addition of Snorlax helps this deck set up and withstand early pressure. It does this by drawing cards and offering itself as a sacrifice. If the opponent wants to KO Swablu early, they will have to work for it, possibly expending cards like Boss's Orders that they’d want to use later. Snorlax’s HP also helps it withstand attacks from common threats like Volcanion and Tapu Koko Prism Star. Don’t forget that Snorlax can attack! You’ll hardly ever need to attack with it, but it’s an option. Thanks to Capture Energy and Quick Ball, Snorlax greatly increases this deck’s overall consistency.

One Mew

This card is a staple at this point. We all know why Mew so good right now. It blocks threats like Cramorant V and Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX. As usual, Psypower is occasionally useful too. Mew is especially good in a defensive deck like this one, and it usually hits the board in the early game to help this deck set up.

One Kangaskhan

Another a great partner for Altaria is Kangaskhan because it can do 120 damage for a Twin Energy. This is enough to take out a variety of threats in one shot, though it can be difficult to pull off because you need the Kangaskhan and a Twin Energy immediately after the opponent KO’s something. If you have Kangaskhan on the Bench preemptively, it will likely be a Boss’s Orders target to be KO’d. Because it’s situational and terrible to start with, only one copy is included.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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