A Crazy Good Deck with Crazy Claws — A Look At Sableye V / Inteleon

Hello everyone! In my last article, I took a look at Inteleon VMAX / Inteleon, a neat new deck that used the extra damage from Quick Shooting to set up 2HKOs. In this article, I’ll be looking at yet another deck that takes advantage of Quick Shooting, except this time, we’ll be aiming for OHKOs! As you might have guessed from the article title, the deck is Sableye V / Inteleon. This deck was one of my favorite ones to play during the Evolving Skies format that it emerged in, and it’s still a great deck in today’s Fusion Strike format. 

A Look at the Deck

This deck works by taking advantage of how Sableye V takes a little bit of damage and turns it into a lot of damage. This makes Sableye V an incredible card to pair with the Inteleon engine, as you can easily use Quick Shooting to set up OHKOs. That’s the main idea: use Quick Shooting to place damage on the board, then clean up with Crazy Claws. It’s a pretty solid strategy, which gets even better thanks to a few other key cards.

The first card is Raihan, a card that when it came out in Evolving Skies turned Sableye V / Inteleon from a fun concept to a legitimate top-tier deck. What makes Raihan so good is that it gives you an easy way to power up Sableye V in a single turn so that you can go from a board without a Sableye V, to KOing your opponent in the same turn. The extra consistency is an added bonus so that if you need any particular card at that time, you don’t have to choose between using Raihan vs. digging for that card with a draw Supporter.

The Raihan strategy also means that you don’t have to put any of your Vs down until you need to, so your opponent will never be able to gain a Prize advantage by gusting them up. Previously, this was a pretty big problem for Sableye V decks to deal with, but Raihan solves it completely.

The other Pokemon that makes this deck so strong is Galarian Weezing. Galarian Weezing has always been a card with a ton of potential thanks to its ridiculously good Ability, but it hasn’t been until recently that consistency-focused Abilities have been prevalent enough for it to live up to that potential. Now though, with more and more decks using the Drizzile / Inteleon engine, the shut off from Neutralizing Gas has become better and better. Right now, an estimated 40% of Standard decks use Drizzile and Inteleon — and that’s just that Ability. Add in the benefits of shutting down other vital Pokemon with Abilities — Crobat V, Octillery, Zacian V, Houndoom, to name a few — and you get to the point that Neutralizing Gas actually affects the vast majority of the format. Now, it is worth noting that Sableye V is not a control deck, so despite affecting many other decks, Galarian Weezing is unlikely to win you games on its own.

Why it’s so good in this deck is that by setting up Weezing and slowing down your opponent, you can give yourself plenty of time to establish your Inteleon so that you can start taking OHKOs. Importantly, this means that you’re unlikely to find yourself at a large Prize disadvantage once you start attacking. Sableye V will almost certainly win a Prize race against VMAXs, so by slowing them down, you can take away their one possible path to victory (them getting too far ahead early). Sometimes, yes, you will brick your opponent and be able to win solely by using Galarian Weezing, but for the most part, that isn’t necessary for this Pokemon to make a huge impact on the game.

Now that you know the main concept, let me share with you my current Sableye V / Inteleon / Galarian Weezing list:

The Sableye V List

Pokemon

The only thing I’ve changed with this list from the Evolving Skies days is the addition of the second Galarian Moltres V, which I’ve added to help with the Mew VMAX matchup. Other than that, everything is as it was pre-Fusion Strike. In addition to the Galarian Weezing and Inteleon lines, we also have those Galarian Moltres V, as well as one copy of Galarian Zigzagoon. Galarian Zigzagoon helps to ensure that we can get the damage we need, as it makes it much easier to get an opposing VMAX to five damage counters. With Scoop Up Net, you can also use it multiple times, so it gives you a way to get stuff done even if you’re having trouble establishing your Inteleon.

Galarian Moltres V acts as our secondary attacker and is particularly good early in games and against non-VMAX decks. If the matchup calls for a more aggressive style of play, it’s easy to set up an attacking Galarian Moltres V by turn two, so that you can either take Knock Outs or at least set them up to be Knocked Out by Quick Shooting on the following turn. Galarian Moltres V is also a must-have against anything Fusion Strike, since Fusion Strike Energy prevents any damage from Quick Shooting or Headbutt Tantrum, and thus turns Sableye V into a much weaker attacker. You’ll use Galarian Moltres V often enough to where the two copies are nice to have. With two, you’re both far less likely to be unable to find it due to prizes, and it’s definitely easier to use it again when you don’t have to recover it with Ordinary Rod first. 

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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