Electrifying Old Archetypes With Surging Sparks
Hey PokeBeach readers! Our Stellar Crown format is coming to a close, and we have seen a plethora of decks see success in the format. I think it is awesome that there are almost ten decks that I could see taking down a major event any weekend! The other PokeBeach writers and I have done a great job breaking down those decks in the Stellar Crown format, and I think that analysis will stay pretty relevant to our new Surging Sparks format. Today I thought I’d look ahead to that Surging Sparks format and show you what I’ve been cooking!
Surging Sparks is now released, and we are about to get a plethora of cards to help shake up the meta! Similar to Stellar Crown, I don’t think the set is going to make a new Tier S deck, but I think there are a lot of cards that can bolster current meta decks or can make up completely new decks that can challenge some of the current mainstays of our format. I’ve been playing around with a lot of different deck ideas, and there are two cards I have mainly been focusing on, Pikachu ex and Magneton.
Pikachu ex and Magneton
While Pikachu ex has a paltry 200 HP, it compensates for that with its Resolute Heart Ability. The Pokemon TCG has evolved to the point where most decks in the format have a way to take a one-hit Knock Out, and having built-in protection from that is fantastic. Pikachu ex’s Ability is even featured on an ACE SPEC (Survival Brace), which goes to show its potential. While there are cards such as Canceling Cologne that shut off Pikachu ex’s Ability and you can play around it by preemptively placing damage counters onto it using something like Hawluchaor Dusknoir, not every deck will have those options. Another use case for Pikachu ex is in decks that want to take advantage of Area Zero Underdepths but didn’t have a good Tera Pokemon to use to enable it. Often you would have to resort to using Terapagos ex or Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon ex so you could use the Stadium, but that was putting juicy two-Prize Boss's Orders targets on your Bench for your opponent to take advantage of. While Pikachu ex can still be taken out for two Prizes, it is a much safer Pokemon to have chilling on the Bench!
Outside of Pikachu ex’s stellar Ability, its Topaz Bolt attack does an impressive 300 damage! This is enough to Knock Out every meta-relevant VSTAR and Basic ex Pokemon in the format. With the help of damage modifiers such as Defiance Band or the new Gravity Mountain Stadium, you can do enough damage to take out Stage 2 Pokemon such as Charizard ex and Dragapult ex. It does have difficulty fulfilling the Energy cost, using three different types of Energy, but cards that help with that such as Mirage Gate, Joltik, Magneton, and Sparkling Crystal to name a few. Pikachu ex having the ability to Knock Out almost every Pokemon in the game combined with its amazing defensive Ability positions makes it poised to see success.
Let’s move on to looking at Magneton! Similar to Dusknoir, Magneton’s Overvolt Discharge requires you to Knock Out your own Magneton and give your opponent a Prize card. In exchange, you get the crazy powerful effect of accelerating three Energy of any type from your discard pile to your Lightning Pokemon. This obviously synergies well with Pikachu ex, but can also help to power up other powerful Lightning Pokemon such as Iron Hands ex and Raichu V. Giving your opponent a Prize can also help you activate powerful play from behind cards such as Iono, Counter Catcher, and Counter Gain. You can also offset the downside of Magneton by using it in a deck that focuses on two-Prize Pokemon. With a deck like that your opponent can take three Knock Outs to win so giving them one with Magneton doesn’t accelerate the game for them.
Magneton is also a great Pokemon to act as a soft disruption counter — a common strategy in the TCG is to play Iono and then Knock Out your opponent’s attacking threat. If you have a Magneton chilling on your Bench then you can power up your next attacker super easily. If your opponent targets Magneton instead of your attacker then you just get to keep your attacking threat and your opponent only takes a single Prize card.
Pikachu ex and Magneton seem like a perfect pair together, but from my testing, they haven’t worked that great as a duo. The problem is you need to pop multiple Magneton a game to consistently power up the Pikachu ex, but then you are giving your opponent two to three free Prize cards a game. Even with Pikachu ex’s Ability your opponent normally has enough time to out-pace you in the Prize trade. Instead of pairing them together, I have a couple of decks that I think take advantage of the cards much better!
This concludes the public portion of this article.
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