Spinning the Web — A First Look at Galvantula ex

By: Zakary Krekeler · Posted Posted onSep 11, 2024 at 2:21 PM · 8 Comments

Hello everyone! We’re into the beginning of the new season, and we now have our first new set of the season in Stellar Crown, a smaller set which is mostly made up of cards from Japan’s Stellar Miracle set. The release of Stellar Crown will put the Japanese and non-Japanese formats into roughly the same format, though as this has been the off-season in Japan, there are few serious events to base any results on.

It’s a new year and a relatively unexplored new set! While the set isn’t large, there are a few new cards which will find their way into existing decks, as well as a few new Pokemon which may make up brand-new archetypes. The “theme” of this set is Terapagos and stellar Pokemon, with a particular focus on Colorless Pokemon. Terapagos ex is itself a deck, thanks to the new Sky Field-like Stadium Area Zero Underdepths, and it can be played either on its own with some of the new powerful Colorless support Pokemon (like Noctowl and Bouffalant), or with Origin Forme Palkia VSTAR as a synergistic secondary attacker. The most notable new card for Colorless Pokemon is Glass Trumpet; an Item that can provide powerful Energy acceleration to Colorless Pokemon, such as Terapagos ex. All you need is a Tera Pokemon in play — which Terapagos ex is — and suddenly Colorless has among the best Energy acceleration in the game!

Here’s the thing though; Glass Trumpet’s usefulness isn’t limited to only Terapagos ex — in fact, it can work well in a variety of decks. Moreover, those decks don’t have to be Colorless-focused decks; instead, by combining Glass Trumpet with Blissey ex, you can effectively turn Glass Trumpet into Energy acceleration for any type! When Blissey ex came out in Twilight Masquerade, it seemed to be the kind of versatile card that should, at some point, find its way into the meta. Now, with Stellar Crown and the new Glass Trumpet, it should start to realize that potential. An extra couple of Energy per turn can be useful in a lot of different decks, but there is one particular new card that the new Glass Trumpet + Happy Switch combo works perfectly with, and that is Galvantula ex.

In this article, I’m going to take a look at Galvantula ex and explain how it works, why it combos so well with Glass Trumpet, and share my decklist for this new archetype.

Unlikely Friends — Galvantula ex & Blissey ex

First, let’s look a bit more at Galvantula ex. Charged Web is a rather efficient attack at two for 220, but what makes this card shine is Fulgurite. It’s been a bit since we had a strong Item lock deck in the format, and Fulgurite is one of the strongest Item-locking attacks ever. Not only does it lock your opponent out of Items on the following turn, but at 180 damage per attack, it doesn’t take long to Knock Out your opponent’s Pokemon either. Unlike something like Seismitoad-EX‘s Quaking Punch, which took a slow-and-steady approach to get KOs, Fulgurite can 2HKO just about anything in the format, including VSTARs and Stage 2 ex Pokemon. As such, you don’t need to play a ton of disrupting Trainers along with it to win — so long as you can keep using Fulgurite, you’ll be victorious before too long. Item lock is a tried and true strategy and one that has been missing from the current format for a bit now. As such, many decks are not built to withstand Item lock; on the contrary, quite a few of the top archetypes overwhelmingly rely on some Item or another. For a few examples, Regidrago VSTAR needs Energy Switch, Raging Bolt ex decks need Energy Retrieval and Earthen Vessel, Miraidon ex decks need Electric Generator, and Charizard ex decks need Rare Candy. Shut those decks off from their most important Items, and suddenly they become a lot weaker.

Of course, Fulgurite also comes with two big downsides; it takes three different Energy types to use, and you have to discard all of those Energy every time you use it. So, not only do you have to find a way to get it going in the first place, but to keep the Item lock live, you need to somehow reattach three different Energy every turn. This is where our Blissey ex combo comes in. Galvantula ex gives you the Tera Pokemon that you need to be able to use Glass Trumpet, so all you need to do to re-use Fulgurite is to attach an Energy, play a Glass Trumpet to get back the other two types, and move those Energy up with Happy Switch. This requires a little bit of setup to get to this point, but once you’re there, it’s rather easy to use Fulgurite turn after turn. In practice, it isn’t all that difficult to get to the first use of Fulgurite either, thanks to a few other tricks that this deck has up its sleeve. To explain those, let’s now take a look at the rest of the deck.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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View thread (8 replies)
Kookaburra Kong said:
Do NOT give that cad who refuses to believe that Pokémon Concierge is mid any ammunition.
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Who? You mean @Robin Aisaga ?
(Ever since I read this thread, I feel like I've been in the middle of a soap opera. You feel like a well-defined character who can bring a certain theatrical flair to any conversation, and am I now starting to notice a rivalry arc? Now that I think about it, I suppose the Profile Posts column would be a great subject for a soap opera. Speaking of soap operas, I have not seen Pokémon concierge and wouldn't know what to compare it to in terms of deciding whether or not it's mid.)
 
I've been trying Galvantula ex on the ladder, it's a fun deck but keeping the item lock going is no easy task. When you miss a beat it's well... bad news... The deck is still in its experimental phase but that's also what makes it interesting. I'm curious to see if it finds a place in the meta.

@Kookaburra Kong If mid stands for miraculously intriguing & delightful I can believe it. It has Psyduck as a main character FCOL
 
As much as I want to believe this is a fun deck, there's way too many consistency problems I've come across and have tried to remedy while playing today.

Hyper Aroma as an ACE SPEC was one of my first choices since Blissey ex and Galvantula ex are centerpieces and the former is quite bulky and supportive regardless if its attacking or on bench, but to maintain overall consistency you have to sacrifice any ultra ball slots to compensate. I thought about Hero's Cape to make up for Galvantula's squishy-ness compared to the top decks but one Lost Vacuum or Jamming Tower and it is over.

Fulgurite is insanely powerful for item locking but you have a next to zero chance to set that up on turn two, let alone get the energy even required for it to slow down decks like Regidrago, Charizard, and Lugia. Even then, after attacking you are still vulnerable and you need to have a glass trumpet on hand on your next turn and pray you don't get Iono'd or get caught by Unfair Stamp, should that use of Fulgurite KO anyway.

However, I have noticed in my testing that the Joltik is as I theorized, a primo accelerator for more niche Grass type decks and because of the added bonus from accelerating Lightning Energies, you can actually run Raikou V with minimal hassle alongside cards such as Serperior VSTAR of all things and could potentially be a tech for Miraidon ex.

EDIT (9/14/24): I should also add it was a gigantic mistake to make the Joltik 30 HP as it makes them extremely vulnerable to damage counter placing shenanigans, a perfect 30/30 split for Dragapult ex and any of the critically endangered Lost Box decks get to have a field day with Sableye if they can get a Lost Zone of 10.
 
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It's cool that there's now a control deck that deals decent damage, although the Stellar pokemon Energy costs seem a bit of a wall to casual players.
 
Steen said:
As much as I want to believe this is a fun deck, there's way too many consistency problems I've come across and have tried to remedy while playing today.

Hyper Aroma as an ACE SPEC was one of my first choices since Blissey ex and Galvantula ex are centerpieces and the former is quite bulky and supportive regardless if its attacking or on bench, but to maintain overall consistency you have to sacrifice any ultra ball slots to compensate. I thought about Hero's Cape to make up for Galvantula's squishy-ness compared to the top decks but one Lost Vacuum or Jamming Tower and it is over.

Fulgurite is insanely powerful for item locking but you have a next to zero chance to set that up on turn two, let alone get the energy even required for it to slow down decks like Regidrago, Charizard, and Lugia. Even then, after attacking you are still vulnerable and you need to have a glass trumpet on hand on your next turn and pray you don't get Iono'd or get caught by Unfair Stamp, should that use of Fulgurite KO anyway.

However, I have noticed in my testing that the Joltik is as I theorized, a primo accelerator for more niche Grass type decks and because of the added bonus from accelerating Lightning Energies, you can actually run Raikou V with minimal hassle alongside cards such as Serperior VSTAR of all things and could potentially be a tech for Miraidon ex.

EDIT (9/14/24): I should also add it was a gigantic mistake to make the Joltik 30 HP as it makes them extremely vulnerable to damage counter placing shenanigans, a perfect 30/30 split for Dragapult ex and any of the critically endangered Lost Box decks get to have a field day with Sableye if they can get a Lost Zone of 10.
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It's definitely a meme. In my limited testing I have always felt like I'm a turn late and a card short with this deck. Hyper Aroma is basically required, which is a shame because Sparkling Crystal is literally made for cards like Galvantula ex.

If Fulgurite kills them, they can't use Unfair Stamp - it's an Item :) The deck is still super weak to hand disruption without having something like Fez or Bibarel to back you up.

Giving Joltik 30 HP was definitely done on purpose and its weakness to Dragapult is exactly the reason why having a copy of the 40 HP one is needed, but if you don't go first with this deck against Dragapult you are gonna be in big trouble.
 
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