Better Together – A Guide for Regigigas / Pikachu ex

What’s up readers! It’s Charlie and I’m happy to be back with another article. At the Sacramento Regional Championships a few weeks ago, I went 7-1-4 with one of my favorite new archetypes; Regigigas with Pikachu ex!

While the “Regis” were originally designed to work together as your only six Pokemon in play, Area Zero Underdepths now enables you to have more than just the Regis in play, enabling Ancient Wisdom as a tool to power up more than just other Regis.

Attaching three Energy cards from your discard pile to one of your Pokemon is a ridiculous Ability, which is why pairing it with two of the game’s most ridiculous attackers — Pikachu ex and Radiant Greninja — is such a strong combo.

With access to a 300 damage attack on a Pokemon with a built-in Focus Sash and the power to snipe 90 damage twice with Moonlight Shuriken, taking two Prize cards on the first turn of the game isn’t merely possible, it’s reasonably likely.

My List from Sacramento

Let’s get right into the list I played in Sacramento:

As you might notice, this engine is far from what you might expect. Ciphermaniac's Codebreaking  is rarely featured as the highest-count Supporter in a deck, with that title usually going to the likes of Professor's Research, Iono, or Arven, however, it plays a huge role in helping this deck hit the turn-one combo more often than not.

Turn One Attacking Combo: The Holy Trinity

What I liked to call “the Holy Trinity” in my testing are the trio of cards required to set up a full Bench with maximum efficiency; Pikachu ex, Area Zero Underdepths, and Precious Trolley.

More specifically, the first two need to be in play before you play Precious Trolley to fill your Bench to the max. When building this deck, I bounced back and forth between playing Precious Trolley or Legacy Energy as my ACE SPEC. Legacy Energy is extremely powerful and offers you so much (even when utilized as nothing more than a Rainbow-type Energy), but I knew from the start that Precious Trolley would be better if you could use it to its full potential.

Maximizing its value then became the goal of the deck, but I struggled to do this with early lists based on Professor’s Research and Carmine. That led me to instead trying Arven and Irida-based lists, but I was still feeling unsatisfied as there’s no Bench space for anything besides your Regis, Pikachu ex, Radiant Greninja, and Squawkabilly ex. Since Arven and Irida both demanded Lumineon V to be viable, I had to rule those options out — that eventually led me to Ciphermaniac’s Codebreaking. Since you play lots of ways to find Pikachu ex and four Area Zero Underdepths, having one of those two cards in your hand is a somewhat reasonable expectation, however, finding the other two is the big challenge. Arven and Irida can only guarantee you one each without Forest Seal Stone, so I needed something that could find you both. Luckily, Ciphermaniac’s Codebreaking checked that box perfectly, and the deck has many built-in ways to draw the cards, including Radiant Greninja, Regidrago, Trekking Shoes, and Squawkabilly ex. Ciphermaniac’s Codebreaking was the missing piece that turned the turn-one combo from a pipe dream into a relatively normal occurrence.

Deck List Breakdown

With that said, let’s take a more specific look at each of my card choices:

Two Regigigas

As the most powerful Regi, Regigigas is the heart and soul of this deck. Ancient Wisdom can attach any three Energy cards from your discard pile to one of your Pokemon, provided you have one of each remaining Regi in play. This used to be limited to attaching to other Regis before Area Zero Underdepths, but now you can load up some of the game’s best attackers with this Ability. I chose to include two of each Regi, but Regigigas is the only one where I considered a third copy — with two in play, Ancient Wisdom can be used twice in the same turn!

This is a game-changing effect that can let you attach a whopping six Energy cards to a Pikachu ex in the same turn. Since Pikachu ex doesn’t discard all Energy attached when it uses Topaz Bolt, and instead discards three, you can attack with Topaz Bolt, leave your Pikachu ex fully powered up, and likely survive an opponent’s attack with Resolute Heart. Ancient Wisdom is such an awesome Ability; it has one of the most powerful effects ever, but a huge qualification by requiring five specific Pokemon in play to use it. This deck takes full advantage of its unique power to load up two of the best attackers we’ve ever seen.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

If you'd like to continue reading, consider purchasing a PokeBeach premium membership! If you're not completely satisfied with your membership, you can request a full refund within 30 days.

Each week we post high-quality content from some of the game's top players. Our article program isn't a corporate operation, advertising front, or for-profit business. We set our prices so that we can pay the game's top players to write the best content for our subscribers. Each article topic is carefully selected, goes through multiple drafts, and is touched up by our editors. We take great pride in our program!