Getting Back into the TCG

Should I go with a Reshiram or a Zekrom deck?

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S

Sorlin

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hey.

As I said in the title, I have not played the Pokemon TCG in nearly eleven years. I stopped playing when the Pokemon fad went away, only to come back to it when my little brother got Sapphire for his birthday. Due to the fact I was developing a taste in RPGs, I decided to play the game when my brother got sick of it. Been hooked to the Pokemon video games ever since.

Problem is, the current metagame in the video games is not interesting at all. Too dominated by weather and it's clear to me that Rain was superior to Sandstorm, hence it became completely uninteresting to me. Games dominated by chance do not interest me at all.

I still wanted a Pokemon fix so I decided to try Pokemon TCG Online with the Basic Red deck. Got pretty far, but I still desired to have a deck of my own even though very few people play this in person. I want to own a digital deck as I would find more players, but I don't see any way to purchase those singles. Maybe that particular store is only for those in the closed beta. Who knows?

I recently got into Magic: The Gathering but I noticed the metagame is incredibly volatile. I don't want to waste money on purchasing a deck that's going to be useless against threats when the new set comes out. Guess that makes me sort of a hypocrite...I want variety but I want a good deck that can stand against the latest threats.

I am wondering if I should go with a Zekrom or a Reshiram deck. I prefer speed, to quickly overwhelm the opponent before he can get his strategy up. In your opinion, what should I aim for? Part of me wants to go with Zekrom since I love that Pokemon, but I see a lot more Reshiram/Typhlosion or Emboar decks in the Garage. Does this mean it's superior? How much energy do I need? How many trainers should I use? Which trainers? Can anyone provide this nostalgic player some example deck lists?

Thank you for your time.
 
You can find a lot of these decks in the Deck Garage so nobody really should be providing you with more example lists unless they're a skeleton build. They're already in a lot of places lol.

dmaster out.
 
dmaster said:
You can find a lot of these decks in the Deck Garage so nobody really should be providing you with more example lists unless they're a skeleton build. They're already in a lot of places lol.

dmaster out.
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Understood. Sorry, wasn't aware of that. I'll try to look for something that looks good. So, why Reshiram over Zekrom?
 
Ignoring that horrendous spam, I'd actually choose Zekrom over Reshiram. Reason being that you don't need Rare Candies for ZPS. There are more cards that can search for basic Pokémon than there are Rare Candies. You are limited to four Candies per deck, but you can have 4 Collectors and 4 Dual Balls in a ZPS. Zekrom can donk, meaning that he is a lot more efficient.
 
And he has a much worse lategame unless you include something like yanmega, which is super expensive, on top of pachirisu being somewhat pricey, so if you aren't willing to pay a ton I'd say reshiphlosion is probably the way to go.
 
you also have to factor in card availability. It's alot cheaper/ easier to get a typhlosion prime than a shaymin or a pachirisu. With the price of collectors being about $7 each in some cases, I would get at least one trainer kit. The heartgold soulsilver one comes with 2 collector and some lightning energy which will help in the zekrom deck buld. And it comes with a booster pack too.

dual balls are fairly easy to come by, you might be able to get 2 or 3 for the raichu that comes in the hs trainer kit. The main trainer and supporter lines are easier to come by in a zekrom deck, so go with that.
 
I would recommend Reshiram with Typhlosion Prime. The main reason being that it's a great deck, with a quick setup and good late game, and it doesn't look like it'll go away for a while. It's also a really fun deck to play (anyone else gets that awesome feeling of power when you bench a Reshiram and attach 3 energies to it with 3 Afterburners?)

If your trying to get some new cards, the Reshiram and Typhlosion both come in collector tins so you can probably buy them and get some booster packs at the same time, although most people here won't recommend doing that. I think it's 2 HS packs in the Typhlosion tins, as well as 2 older packs, and 4 BW in the Reshiram tins. The other cards you might need though (Pokemon Collector, Rare Candy and Ninetales) you will probably have to trade with people or buy singles.

Zekrom is a good deck but the main problem is that after the initial Zekrom-Pachirisu-Shaymin combo, it slows down a lot after that and unless you can pull it off again, you will have to take 3 turns to set up each Zekrom while your opponent can probably knock it out in one or two hits. You will also need to include recovery or a secondary attacker, otherwise you'll lose the turn your opponent knocks out all your Zekroms (the same applies for Reshiram but Typhlosion can be a nice attacker on some occasions)
 
Thanks for the advice, guys.

I am having a hard time tracking down this Eviolite card. Anybody know where I can obtain it?

Thanks in advance.
 
Sorlin said:
Thanks for the advice, guys.

I am having a hard time tracking down this Eviolite card. Anybody know where I can obtain it?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Eviolite isn't released out of Japan yet.
 
Sorlin said:
I am wondering if I should go with a Zekrom or a Reshiram deck. I prefer speed, to quickly overwhelm the opponent before he can get his strategy up. In your opinion, what should I aim for? Part of me wants to go with Zekrom since I love that Pokemon, but I see a lot more Reshiram/Typhlosion or Emboar decks in the Garage. Does this mean it's superior? How much energy do I need? How many trainers should I use? Which trainers?
Click to expand...

Well, if you like speedy decks, I'd go with Zekrom. ZPS is the fastest deck in the format. Not only that, but its your favorite Pokemon. I'd say go with Zekrom. A good Zekrom deck is ZPS, which is Zekrom, Pachirisu (CoL), and Shaymin (UL). It oten gets out a Zekrom using Bolt Strike T1.



Also, evolite hasn't been released in English. It will most likely come in the Winter set.
 
glaceon said:
Also, evolite has been released in English. It will most likely come in the Winter set.
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What I meant was that you can't actually buy an English version of Eviolite yet.
 
Sorry about that, I can definitely explain why I chose Reshiram haha.

Zekrom's type coverage is horrible. It already OHKOs Yanmega even if Yanmega didn't have Electric weakness. Donphan is an issue at almost all times. Sure, it is a fast deck and got lucky at Canada and Mexico (most likely because those are smaller events), but Reshiram/Typhlosion and Reshiram/Emboar ruled the roost in the United States (I personally think Reshiram/Typhlosion is better and it's cheaper to boot). I can only see it increase in usage (along with Zekrom) after future sets, but I will still believe it has the better late game to win more.

dmaster out.
 
first off you'll need to check what's your budget on building a new deck. for example getting the key components for ZPS like pachirisu and shaymin will make you shell out $60-$80 (or more!) if you buy them online. On the other hand getting 3 ability emboar would only cost you $30-40.
 
Typhlosions can be got for $3-4 each I believe and Reshirams are also very cheap if you dont go for the full arts. I would recommend that you do a bit of research on the internet and deck garage and build them online and use them on playtcg.me where you can see which deck yuo are the most comfortable with. I personally recommend a Donphan deck paired with Sunflora, Vileplume and Serperior it is great for getting into the game. If you want a list to test with PM me. Hope I helped.
 
If you wants something cheep and fast, I reccomend Illumise/Volbeat. The most expensive card you really need is collector, and the people saying it is $7 are incorrect. You can buy them for $3-4 from trollandtoad. The deck has potential to deal 120 t1, which is equal to ZPS. Plus, it made a showing at Canada, so it is at least fairly viable.
 
If you're going to play competitive then Reshiram/Typhlosion is a good deck. It's pretty easy to play and you can build the entire deck for around $50. No matter what deck you build you're going to need at least 3 Collectors, which you can get for a total of around $15. Like it was said earlier, play test a little bit and then buy your singles off of Troll and Toad or ebay.
 
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