The New Turbo Dark — Pecharunt ex and the Loyal Three

Hello everyone! We’re a little over a month away from the World Championships, an event which will be both the culmination of the 2024 season and the introduction to the format of next year’s first Regional Championships. As Stellar Crown won’t come out in time for Baltimore, Shrouded Fable will be the most recent set there, as well as for a decent number of next season’s first-quarter League Cups.

There are several interesting cards from Shrouded Fable that will likely find their way into various decks, including Dusknoir, Night Stretcher, and Kyurem, among others. Natalie Millar recently wrote about many of the set’s cards (check out that article here), and while I don’t think there will necessarily be any giant meta shifts coming out of Shrouded Fable, it does contain a strong enough group of cards to at least change up your typical deck list.

When it comes to new deck archetypes, however, the mini-set is indeed mini, without much to add aside from the new Darkness deck. (As fun as Kingdra ex is, it isn’t exactly a competitive play.) Since Natalie already went over some of the more tech-y options, in this article, I’m going to be taking a closer look at the signature new deck from Shrouded Fable, Pecharunt ex and the Loyal Three. This deck involves four new Pokemon ex — Pecharunt ex, Okidogi ex, Munkidori ex, and Fezandipiti ex — all of which work together to create a hard-hitting and aggressive Darkness-type deck.

Each of the new Pokemon ex brings something different. Okidogi ex is the hard hitter, capable of hitting for 300 damage with Crazy Chain, so long as you are Poisoned and have Binding Mochi attached. It’s also fairly tanky for a Basic ex; even after the poison damage, it still can withstand any attack of 220 damage or less. Okidogi ex will be this deck’s main attacker against tankier Pokemon, such as Pokemon VSTAR or big Pokemon ex. Aside from Stage 2 Pokemon ex and some specific other scenarios (such as Regidrago VSTAR using Hisuian Goodra VSTAR’s Rolling Iron), Okidogi ex can OHKO anything you might run into — and there are some ways you can boost that damage even higher as well.

Against smaller Pokemon, however, Munkidori ex will be your attacker of choice. Munkidori ex doesn’t hit quite as hard, but it still can deal respectable damage (230 with Binding Mochi), enough to OHKO most Basic Pokemon ex or V. Its Ability is what makes it particularly strong, however. Munkidori ex functions as a single-Prize attacker so long as you have Pecharunt ex in play — which you will. At first glance, the Pecharunt ex deck may seem like just another hard-hitting Basic ex deck, but by weaving in attacks from Munkidori ex, you can force your opponent onto an odd number of Prizes, and thus require them to pull off an extra turn of attacks in order to win. This helps set the deck apart from similar attacking ex decks, and gives it a big advantage into anything that can be OHKO’d by Dirty Headbutt.

Fezandipiti ex isn’t going to be used for its attack most of the time, but it does earn a spot with its excellent Ability. Like Oricorio-GX before it, it adds a tremendous amount of consistency, particularly in the later part of the game when your deck is thinned out and you have to play around Iono or other hand disruption cards. Cruel Arrow also can be used if needed, and can be used either to finish high-HP Pokemon off, or in the early game to snipe your opponent’s evolving Basics. Fezandipiti ex doesn’t actually have any particular combo with Pecharunt ex like the other two do, but it’s still included because it’s just so good. It’s also likely to find its way into other decks, so long as those decks don’t mind having a Basic ex sit on the Bench.

Pecharunt ex is at the top of the “Chain of Command” — and it is the Ability of the same name that helps this deck flow together. Chain of Command not only gives the deck excellent mobility, but also provides the poison effect to activate your Binding Mochi and Crazy Chain bonus damage. Irritating Burst can also be a solid late-game option, especially if you can get your opponent onto an odd Prize map. Pecharunt ex unfortunately can’t target itself, which means it can’t take advantage of Binding Mochi, so the damage output is capped at 300, but it only takes two Energy to attack, which can come up a lot. If you play the Brute Bonnet package (which I’ll go over a bit below), then Pecharunt ex becomes a much larger attacking threat, capable of OHKOing pretty much anything if the opponent is down to one Prize.

Between these four, you have the core of a strong deck archetype, one that’s on par with the other meta decks of this format. I have two lists here, one which includes Brute Bonnet for extra damage, and one of which sets it aside in order to play with a bit more speed and consistency, as well as a few extra tech cards. Before I go into the numerous other Pokemon you can play in this deck, let me share my first list.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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