A Budding Broken Deck — Terapagos Loves Budew!

Since the new Prismatic Evolutions set is mostly full of reprints, the only new card people care about is Budew. Budew is a broken and annoying card that I think would have been better off left in the drafts, but now we have to suffer turn 1 Item lock. It’s been nice having freedom from turn 1 Item lock for so long, I had forgotten what it felt like.

At the very least, each player will have one turn to play Items before Budew can start attacking, so it’s unlikely to make you brick completely. Slower decks that can easily pivot Budew into the Active Spot on turn 1 are the most obvious benefactors. Now that Budew becomes a widespread threat, I expect non-Item setup methods, such as Technical Machine: Evolution, to become more popular. Interestingly, decks like Gardevoir ex and Dragapult ex like to utilize both Budew and Technical Machine: Evolution, but as they are both early-game attacks, you cannot use both of them at the same time. In general, aggressive decks like Raging Bolt ex will not opt to play Budew. Although they could use Budew on turn 1 consistently, these decks want to speed up the game and would rather attack for a KO. However, there is one aggressive deck that does happen to get stronger with the addition of Budew: Terapagos ex.

Make no mistake, I am not talking about the Noctowl deck. I am here to discuss the deck that some people mistakenly refer to as “Klawf.” The Noctowl builds would like to use Budew, but they have no way to consistently access it on turn 1. However, the faster build of Terapagos plays Latias ex and can certainly make use of the turn 1 Budew. Of course, we still play a copy of Klawf for those situations where you’d rather dish out some big damage on turn 1. In fact, my initial reaction was that of skepticism. Why play Budew at all when you can just nuke something with Klawf on turn 1 instead? There are definitely situations where the turn 1 Klawf is better than the turn 1 Budew, such as when you’re able to take a two-Prize KO. However, there are two big reasons why the Budew option is valuable, and these are the cases where it’s better to go with Budew on turn 1 instead.

First is against decks with low-HP Pokemon. For example, if your opponent has a Ralts or Dreepy in their Active Spot, you would rather take the KO with Budew to lock out their Items. Binding Mochi and Radiant Hisuian Sneasler allow Budew to apply pressure and Item lock at the same time! This seems completely broken to me. Budew’s base damage of 10 is a clear indication that it was not meant to be applying fast pressure.

The second main use of Budew is to fix the Prize trade. It is somewhat difficult for this deck to get a Boss's Orders plus Klawf KO on turn 1, and Terapagos ex cannot even attack on turn 1. This leads to many instances where you may take a single-Prize KO with Klawf on turn 1, and then the opponent can respond with a gust-KO on one of your two-Prize Pokemon, putting you behind in the Prize trade. With Budew slowing things down, it is much less likely for decks like Regidrago VSTAR, Raging Bolt, or any deck that uses Rare Candy to get that KO. Although you’re not getting a KO yourself on turn 1, you can set up and get a gust-KO for two Prizes on turn 2 instead. This results in you being the one who’s ahead in the Prize trade.

As a general rule of thumb, choose to go second when given the opportunity. If you can take a two-Prize KO on turn 1 with Klawf, do it. Otherwise use Budew on turn 1 instead.

What about going first? Going second is becoming increasingly trendy, so it’s likely that you’ll only get to go second close to half the time. As such, you don’t want a deck that is put at a disadvantage by going first. The best case scenario would be a deck that is powerful when going first or second, and there is no deck with more upside to going first than the Terapagos Poison deck.

Pecharunt is notorious for being the only Pokemon in the game that enables a turn 1 donk going first, and nothing changes with regards to that. In fact, I’d argue that Pecharunt gets even better in the new format. Not only are more people choosing to go second, but there’s a high presence of Budew, which very vulnerable to being donked (of course, you can still donk Budew with just Brute Bonnet and Radiant Hisuian Sneasler). My main concern was if Pecharunt was worth playing. After all, you can’t play a Supporter when you go first, so it may be difficult to find the entire combo needed for a donk. If Pecharunt wasn’t able to consistently do its thing on turn 1, then what’s the point?

In order to determine this, I went ahead and played 100 opening hands going first with the sole purpose of seeing how often you could do 80 damage on turn 1. If my opponent makes me go first and they start with something with 80 HP or less, is it worth going for that donk? Another question I had was the necessity of Pecharunt ex. Pecharunt ex is a decent utility card, and theoretically should increase the odds of getting the Pecharunt donk. If it was not needed for the turn 1 combo, then I would happily cut it from the deck.

The results of my little experiment were more promising (or scarier, depending on how you look at it) than I had expected. Out of 100 test hands, the deck was able to achieve the turn 1 80-damage 61 times. It would be reasonable to add one or two to that number to account for misplays or sequencing errors. While most first turns aren’t too difficult, and I do think I’m proficient at it, there were a few odd spots where a different decision had the possibility of yielding a better result. The deck does give you a complicated first turn every once in awhile.

Of those 61 successes, Pecharunt ex was instrumental in 17 of them, so the success rate would be down to 44% from 61% without Pecharunt ex. That said, I am inclined to slightly increase that 44% by one or two, as there were a few instances where I could have continued drawing cards or played the turn in a different way (if Pecharunt ex wasn’t in the list), and therefore had a chance of getting the donk even without Pecharunt ex. I think these stats are decent enough to keep Pecharunt around, and it also has some utility outside of just the first turn donk, so I’m keeping it in the list for now. However, I could see an argument for cutting it in the future. Also, my list was somewhat attuned for pulling off such a play. Let’s talk about it.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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