The Heroes of Kitakami — The Best New Deck From Shrouded Fable
Hey PokeBeach readers, I hope you have been enjoying your summer and have been playing lots of Pokemon! It seems like we are headed towards a metagame centralized on Regidrago VSTAR and Charizard ex decks, but a lot of old favorites such as Gardevoir ex, Lugia VSTAR, and Raging Bolt ex are still decks to watch out for.
Most of the hype around Shrouded Fable is about how old archetypes will gain new tools such as Kyurem, Night Stretcher, Fezandipiti ex, and the Dusknoir line. But I think the pack art Legendary Pokemon have been flying a bit under the radar. I’ll admit when I was reading the translations, I didn’t think much of Okidogi ex and Munkidori ex. They just seemed like more big beat stick two-Prize Pokemon. I decided to put some time into exploring them and have been pleasantly surprised with the deck. While I don’t think it will compete for the top of Tier 1, the deck can take advantage of an unprepared metagame, while also hitting hard and fast.
The deck has a couple of major things going for it. The first thing is that it can very easily pull off an attack on the first turn. The deck has a new Supporter card tailor made for the archetype in Janine's Secret Art that can be paired with Dark Patch to get the deck up and running. You also don’t need to worry about finding a way to get your attacker into the Active Spot since Pecharunt ex can easily send our Darkness-type Pokemon in to the Active Spot. Against decks that run two-Prize Basic Pokemon such as Regidrago VSTAR or Raging Bolt ex you can use Okidogi ex to hit for as much as 300 damage turn 1! If our opponent has a weaker single-Prize Pokemon in the Active Spot, we can use Munkidori ex to effectively have a 210 HP (190 if you are poisoned) single-Prize attacker in the Active Spot. Most decks won’t be able to respond quickly to such powerful attacks and fold to the pressure.
The deck also scales well in to the late game since Pecharunt ex is an efficient attacker to close out games, needing only two Energy to attack. Once our opponent has taken multiple Prize cards, it is capable of hitting for big damage. You still have Okidogi ex to take big Knock Outs, but being able to attack for only a manual attachment and a Dark Patch is super nice. Pecharunt ex in general is just a fantastic Pokemon. Never needing to worry about a way to get our attackers in to the Active Spot and activating our Poison synergies. It also makes Block Snorlax an almost unlosable matchup!
Speaking of those Poison synergies, the deck gets Binding Mochi. Usually we see pretty strict conditions to add even 30 damage on cards such as Defiance Band or Choice Belt, but this deck can very easily utilize the 40 damage modifier from Binding Mochi by activating Pecharunt ex’s Subjugating Chains Ability or using Janine’s Secret Technique on our Active Spot Pokemon. This turns Okidogi ex’s Chain-Crazed attack into a whopping 300 damage. It also lets Munkidori ex hit for 230 damage, which is normally enough to Knock Out most Basic Pokemon V and Pokemon ex. You do have to be a bit careful when poisoning Munkidori ex since your opponent might be able to use the Poison to avoid triggering your Oh No You Don’t Ability (also can we just talk about how great the Ability names are in this set?).
I’ve talked a bit of what makes the deck strong, so let me show you my list I’ve been playing.
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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