Intellectual Brutality – Noctowl’s Impact on Standard

What’s up guys! It’s Charlie and I’m happy to be back with another article. Last time, I wrote about my top three choices for Worlds; I inevitably ended up playing Regidrago VSTAR alongside fellow writer Isaiah Cheville, Ian Robb, Vance Kelley, Jake Lazzari, and Aaron Friedman. Unfortunately, I lost my win-and-in to Day 2 at 5-3 to an unlikely draw from my opponent. While that was heartbreaking, I was happy to see Ian make it to Top 8 and win his match there as well, which was strong validation that our deck choice was good. I wasn’t satisfied with just seeing him succeed though; I needed a good finish myself. So last week, I decided to take Regidrago VSTAR to Baltimore Regionals for a chance at redemption and finished 16th! Of course, this still wasn’t my goal of first place, but I’ll gladly take it given I bubbled into Top 16. I went 10-2-1, losing to two Ancient box decks and tying a Charizard ex when I had game in hand the next turn. I think Regidrago VSTAR was a great play; it was far and away the BDIF in the Shrouded Fable format as nothing else had anywhere near the power and flexibility that Regidrago VSTAR offered.

Enough talk about the Shrouded Fable format though, let’s get into the new format! Stellar Crown brings us a lot of interesting new cards, including headliner Terapagos ex and crazy new Trainer cards like Area Zero Underdepths. One card stuck out to me as a new favorite though – Noctowl! Reminiscent of Inteleon and Drizzile from Sword and Shield, Noctowl’s Jewel Hunt lets you search for two Trainer cards upon evolution, which is quite a ridiculous Ability. It’s even more insane in some ways than Inteleon since the more powerful effect is on the Stage 1, meaning it’s relatively easy to use Noctowl as early as turn two. Cards like Fan Rotom are also here to support Noctowl and Bouffalant can even help to defend against attacks from the likes of Radiant Greninja or Kyurem. Its other downside of course is requiring a Tera Pokemon in play to use Jewel Hunt, but with so many good Tera Pokemon in the format, I don’t think this will be an issue. Overall, I think this card is absolutely insane and I’ve already started thinking about what decks I can play it in.

In this article, we’ll look at two different decks, each of which use Noctowl in a different way. One uses it as its main consistency engine and a way to reliably set up more consistency, and the other uses it to pull off a strong combo turn at any point in the game. I hope this helps to highlight how versatile this card is and that it isn’t necessary to go all-in on Noctowl to get value from it.

Heavy Noctowl Reliance: Terapagos ex / Pidgeot ex

This new Terapagos ex / Pidgeot ex deck has been making the rounds online recently, highlighting Stellar Crown‘s new tailor-made combo with Terapagos ex, Noctowl, Bouffalant, and Fan Rotom. You can use Fan Rotom to grab a bunch of Basics on turn one, including Hoothoot, Bouffalant, and Pidgey. Then, with the power of Noctowl, you can set up a Pidgeot ex for more sustainable search, fill your Bench, and do up to 220 damage efficiently with Terapagos ex.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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