The Best Anti-Meta Deck – Inteleon Weakness Box
Hello everyone! It looks like the Fusion Strike meta has finally settled down. There’s a variety of decks being played, which is a good thing. However, Mew VMAX remains the clear frontrunner. Following closely behind are Jolteon VMAX, an inherently strong deck in its own right; Dark Toolbox, a deck designed to counter Mew; and Duraludon VMAX, spiking in popularity after I won an event with it and brought it into the limelight. As always, Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX and Single Strike Urshifu VMAX variants have middling popularity as well. I think it would be fair to put all of these decks in Tier 1, besides Mew, which belongs in Tier 0.
All this is to say that now is the time for anti-meta decks to shine. Although the diversity makes things a bit tricky, the predictability helps to even that out. Recently, I’ve been playing with various Galarian Moltres V decks, as that’s the obvious counter to Mew. However, Moltres isn’t that great against anything that isn’t weak to Dark. I saw an interesting toolbox deck in an online event that used Aurora Energy to power up attackers like Moltres, Galarian Zapdos V, Suicune V, and Celebi V. The list was unrefined, but the idea was inspired. In fact, a lot of interesting Suicune toolbox decks have been popping up recently, which I’m happy to see. It’s funny because Suicune is Water-type, which isn’t even a good type right now. But Suicune is also a low-maintenance beatstick that comes with its own draw power. You can easily use Suicune as an in-between or all-purpose attacker in toolbox decks.
After several hours of testing and refining, I’m here with my current toolbox deck. I don’t know if this is fully optimized yet, and it’s not completely broken, but it’s certainly a strong deck that fits nicely into the meta.
Drizzile and Inteleon.
The plan is to hit really hard with a situationally appropriate attacker. If the opponent has Weakness, it makes things easy. Occasionally, you go with a single-Prize attacker, so keep that in mind and limit the two-Prize Pokemon on your board when you could get punished for them. The Prize count and Prize trade are important in nearly every matchup, as we attack with a mix of one- and two-Prize Pokemon. And don’t forget, even though Shady Dealings is a broken support Ability, Inteleon is also a big attacker when it needs to be — Aqua Bullet is a legitimately good option in several situations.
Oftentimes we hold our two-Prize Pokemon until we’re about to insta-activate them with Raihan. That way, opponents can’t snipe them and get two free Prizes. Marnie is something of a foil to this strategy, though, which is why Drizzile and Inteleon are so important. With several open Shady Dealings on the Bench, you minimize the amount of luck you need to hit your combo, even after an opponent’s Marnie. Thanks to Shady Dealings, you need so little to do so much. Also, always look for Sobble‘s Keep Calling when you’re forced to go second. Going second is actually fine if you can use Keep Calling on that turn.
For several hours of tournament gameplay with variants of this deck, you can check out my VODs on twitch.tv/tricroar, where I stream every weekday!
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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