INTRO
Have you ever really broken down a deck and examined what it actually does? Have you ever looked deep into its strategies and tactics? Do you even know what the different types of strategies are in Pokemon? If you don’t, this article is for you! I’m going to break down each strategy and their sub strategies for you, and I’ll give a current example of each. By the end of this, you will learn how and why certain decks win. I hope you enjoy!
SPREAD
Spread is my favorite strategy, although in the current metagame, it’s one of the worst. When you use a spread deck, you use cards that place damage counters on all of your opponent’s (and sometimes your own) Pokemon at once. This will eventually cause you to get multiple knock-outs at once. These decks work great, unless your opponent uses cards that can heal their own bench. That is why they are not good in the current metagame. There are a few popular cards that can heal all of your opponent’s Pokemon. They are Garchomp C LV.X, Nidoqueen (RR), and Bellossom (UD). You see Garchomp C LV.X in almost every SP variant, Nidoqueen in Flygon decks, and Bellossom in decks that include vileplume. You can try to counter these cards with Dialga G LV.X and Mesprit (LA), but that causes you to lose a lot of consistency in your deck. These are the reasons why this strategy simply can’t be used competitively.
For the sake of this article I’m going to give you some examples of good spread cards:
(Scan of Abomasnow SF)
(Scan of Tyranitar Prime)
(Scan of Spiritomb LA)
SNIPE
There are a few sniping decks that are doing fantastic right now. These include the World Championship winning deck Luxchomp and another great SP deck, Dialgachomp. Sniping is when you attack whichever one of your opponent’s Pokemon you want to with low to medium damage. Why are these decks so good? They allow you to knock-out your opponents main attackers before they are set up and take free prizes from weak bench sitters (such as Uxie [LA]).
This strategy has its flaws though. Because you are hitting from low to medium damage, its hard to knock-out main attackers and tankers. That means you will have a hard time getting prizes when your opponent’s only Pokemon out is a card like Steelix Prime. Unfortunatly, its hard to counter this flaw. The only thing you can do is add a heavy hitter to your deck, but that can occasionally cause you to have bad starts.
Here are some great examples of snipers:
(Scan of Garchomp C LV.X)
(Scan of Crobat G)
AGGRO
Aggro is the most basic of all of the strategies. All you do is hit the active Pokemon with a lot of damage until you’ve taken all of your prize cards. These decks are generally pretty fast and can sometimes cause you to get a first or second turn win. This is what we refer to as a donk. Some decks are even based around getting donks, which leads me to my first sub-strategy.
DONK
Donking is when you knock-out all of your opponent’s Pokemon on the first or second turn. This causes your opponent to not be able to send up an active Pokemon and lose. These decks are the fastest decks in the game, but that does come with two downsides:
1.Because these decks are fast, they require a lot of trainers. Unfortunately for these decks, a lot of popular cards now lock trainers. These include Dialga G, Ghastly (SF), Spiritomb (AR), and Vileplume (UD). These are cards are so popular now, that donk decks simply can not be used.
2. If you don’t get the donk, you are going to have a bad late game. You will not deal enough damage and you wont be able to take much.
Here is a decklist for the most popular donk deck:
And here are some examples of regular Aggro cards:
(Scan of Jumpluff)
(Scan of Machamp)
(Scan of Kingdra)
TANK
Tanking has not had good support for a while, but when Unleashed came out, it added two new tanking decks to the format. These decks are Steelix Prime and Torterra (UD). Both decks have been performing well. Torterra even won German Nationals!
Tanking is when you build up a huge main attacker, and keep it alive as long as possible. The main Pokemon in these decks always have a ton of HP and sometimes have their own healing attacks. They use a lot of trainer cards like Moo-Moo Milk and Poke Healer+ to keep these tankers alive. These decks only have one weakness: they are slow. Faster decks can sometimes ruin their set-up and cause them to eventually lose. If these decks aren’t run over early game, they usually win.
Here are examples of tanking cards:
(Scan of Steelix Prime)
(Scan of Torterra [UD])
(Scan of Moo-Moo Milk)
CONTROL
There are two types of control decks: Disruption and Lock. Both use cards to keep you in control of the game and ahead of your opponent. The only problem is that if you aren’t disrupting enough or if you don’t have the lock on, you don’t usually have that much damage output. Although that is not usually a problem. Control, in my opinion, is the best strategy. Now let’s breakdown each sub-strategy.
DISRUPT
Disrupting your opponent can mean a few different things. It can mean you are ruining their set-up, getting rid of your opponent’s hand resources, or getting rid of your opponent’s field resources. Some disrupting decks can even do more than one of these at the same time! Here are a couple examples of disrupting cards:
(Scan of Cyrus’s Initiative)
(Scan of Judge)
LOCK
Locking is when you keep your opponent from using their Trainers, Poke-bodies, Trainers, Stadiums, or Poke-Powers. That could totally destroy a deck that relies too much on one of these resources. Just like disruption decks, locking decks can use multiple locking cards in the same deck. Here are a few examples of locking cards:
(Scan of Dialga G LV.X)
(Scan of Mesprit)
(Scan of Dialga G)
Here is a decklist for the best control deck in the format. It uses both disruption and lock cards:
SABLELOCK
Pokemon
4x Sableye SF
2x Garchomp C
2x Garchomp C LvX
1x Toxicroak G (DP41)
1x Ambipom G
1x Honchkrow G
2x Crobat G
2x Uxie LA
1x Uxie LvX
1x Azelf LA
1x Eevee UD
1x Umbreon UD
1x Unown Q
1x Chatot G
Energies
4x Double Colorless
4x Special Dark
2x Basic Dark
1x Psychic
Trainers/Supporters/Stadiums
3x Cyrus's Conspiracy
4x TGI
oketurn
3x TGI:Energy Gain
4x TGIower Spray
2x TGI:SP Radar
1x Luxury Ball
2x Energy Exchanger
2x Cyrus's Initiative
2x Judge
1x Bebe's Search
3x Pokemon Collector
1x Aaron's Collection
MILL
Milling is definently the worst strategy you could use. It is when you send to the lost zone or discard cards from the top of your opponent’s deck until they can’t draw any cards from their deck. This causes an auto-loss. But what’s the problem with it? It simply does not have enough support. If there were trainers and supporters that help with the strategy, it would be doing better. Here are scans of every mill card in the format:
(Scan of Absol G LV.X)
(Scan of Flygon LV.X)
(Scan of KGL)
Tech Deck
Tech decks are decks that use different strategies to take down the main metagame decks. They only typically use cards that counter other cards.
MORE INFO
By now you have probably realized that a lot of popular decks use multiple strategies. Using multiple strategies causes decks to be more versatile and allows them to respond to more situations. That is what makes a lot of decks good. When making your own decks, don’t limit your self to just one strategy. Although using multiple strategies can help, don’t make you deck inconsistent by trying to use too many.
OUTRO
I hope you have learned a lot and enjoyed my article! Thanks for reading!
Have you ever really broken down a deck and examined what it actually does? Have you ever looked deep into its strategies and tactics? Do you even know what the different types of strategies are in Pokemon? If you don’t, this article is for you! I’m going to break down each strategy and their sub strategies for you, and I’ll give a current example of each. By the end of this, you will learn how and why certain decks win. I hope you enjoy!
SPREAD
Spread is my favorite strategy, although in the current metagame, it’s one of the worst. When you use a spread deck, you use cards that place damage counters on all of your opponent’s (and sometimes your own) Pokemon at once. This will eventually cause you to get multiple knock-outs at once. These decks work great, unless your opponent uses cards that can heal their own bench. That is why they are not good in the current metagame. There are a few popular cards that can heal all of your opponent’s Pokemon. They are Garchomp C LV.X, Nidoqueen (RR), and Bellossom (UD). You see Garchomp C LV.X in almost every SP variant, Nidoqueen in Flygon decks, and Bellossom in decks that include vileplume. You can try to counter these cards with Dialga G LV.X and Mesprit (LA), but that causes you to lose a lot of consistency in your deck. These are the reasons why this strategy simply can’t be used competitively.
For the sake of this article I’m going to give you some examples of good spread cards:
(Scan of Abomasnow SF)
(Scan of Tyranitar Prime)
(Scan of Spiritomb LA)
SNIPE
There are a few sniping decks that are doing fantastic right now. These include the World Championship winning deck Luxchomp and another great SP deck, Dialgachomp. Sniping is when you attack whichever one of your opponent’s Pokemon you want to with low to medium damage. Why are these decks so good? They allow you to knock-out your opponents main attackers before they are set up and take free prizes from weak bench sitters (such as Uxie [LA]).
This strategy has its flaws though. Because you are hitting from low to medium damage, its hard to knock-out main attackers and tankers. That means you will have a hard time getting prizes when your opponent’s only Pokemon out is a card like Steelix Prime. Unfortunatly, its hard to counter this flaw. The only thing you can do is add a heavy hitter to your deck, but that can occasionally cause you to have bad starts.
Here are some great examples of snipers:
(Scan of Garchomp C LV.X)
(Scan of Crobat G)
AGGRO
Aggro is the most basic of all of the strategies. All you do is hit the active Pokemon with a lot of damage until you’ve taken all of your prize cards. These decks are generally pretty fast and can sometimes cause you to get a first or second turn win. This is what we refer to as a donk. Some decks are even based around getting donks, which leads me to my first sub-strategy.
DONK
Donking is when you knock-out all of your opponent’s Pokemon on the first or second turn. This causes your opponent to not be able to send up an active Pokemon and lose. These decks are the fastest decks in the game, but that does come with two downsides:
1.Because these decks are fast, they require a lot of trainers. Unfortunately for these decks, a lot of popular cards now lock trainers. These include Dialga G, Ghastly (SF), Spiritomb (AR), and Vileplume (UD). These are cards are so popular now, that donk decks simply can not be used.
2. If you don’t get the donk, you are going to have a bad late game. You will not deal enough damage and you wont be able to take much.
Here is a decklist for the most popular donk deck:
And here are some examples of regular Aggro cards:
(Scan of Jumpluff)
(Scan of Machamp)
(Scan of Kingdra)
TANK
Tanking has not had good support for a while, but when Unleashed came out, it added two new tanking decks to the format. These decks are Steelix Prime and Torterra (UD). Both decks have been performing well. Torterra even won German Nationals!
Tanking is when you build up a huge main attacker, and keep it alive as long as possible. The main Pokemon in these decks always have a ton of HP and sometimes have their own healing attacks. They use a lot of trainer cards like Moo-Moo Milk and Poke Healer+ to keep these tankers alive. These decks only have one weakness: they are slow. Faster decks can sometimes ruin their set-up and cause them to eventually lose. If these decks aren’t run over early game, they usually win.
Here are examples of tanking cards:
(Scan of Steelix Prime)
(Scan of Torterra [UD])
(Scan of Moo-Moo Milk)
CONTROL
There are two types of control decks: Disruption and Lock. Both use cards to keep you in control of the game and ahead of your opponent. The only problem is that if you aren’t disrupting enough or if you don’t have the lock on, you don’t usually have that much damage output. Although that is not usually a problem. Control, in my opinion, is the best strategy. Now let’s breakdown each sub-strategy.
DISRUPT
Disrupting your opponent can mean a few different things. It can mean you are ruining their set-up, getting rid of your opponent’s hand resources, or getting rid of your opponent’s field resources. Some disrupting decks can even do more than one of these at the same time! Here are a couple examples of disrupting cards:
(Scan of Cyrus’s Initiative)
(Scan of Judge)
LOCK
Locking is when you keep your opponent from using their Trainers, Poke-bodies, Trainers, Stadiums, or Poke-Powers. That could totally destroy a deck that relies too much on one of these resources. Just like disruption decks, locking decks can use multiple locking cards in the same deck. Here are a few examples of locking cards:
(Scan of Dialga G LV.X)
(Scan of Mesprit)
(Scan of Dialga G)
Here is a decklist for the best control deck in the format. It uses both disruption and lock cards:
SABLELOCK
Pokemon
4x Sableye SF
2x Garchomp C
2x Garchomp C LvX
1x Toxicroak G (DP41)
1x Ambipom G
1x Honchkrow G
2x Crobat G
2x Uxie LA
1x Uxie LvX
1x Azelf LA
1x Eevee UD
1x Umbreon UD
1x Unown Q
1x Chatot G
Energies
4x Double Colorless
4x Special Dark
2x Basic Dark
1x Psychic
Trainers/Supporters/Stadiums
3x Cyrus's Conspiracy
4x TGI
oketurn3x TGI:Energy Gain
4x TGI
ower Spray2x TGI:SP Radar
1x Luxury Ball
2x Energy Exchanger
2x Cyrus's Initiative
2x Judge
1x Bebe's Search
3x Pokemon Collector
1x Aaron's Collection
MILL
Milling is definently the worst strategy you could use. It is when you send to the lost zone or discard cards from the top of your opponent’s deck until they can’t draw any cards from their deck. This causes an auto-loss. But what’s the problem with it? It simply does not have enough support. If there were trainers and supporters that help with the strategy, it would be doing better. Here are scans of every mill card in the format:
(Scan of Absol G LV.X)
(Scan of Flygon LV.X)
(Scan of KGL)
Tech Deck
Tech decks are decks that use different strategies to take down the main metagame decks. They only typically use cards that counter other cards.
MORE INFO
By now you have probably realized that a lot of popular decks use multiple strategies. Using multiple strategies causes decks to be more versatile and allows them to respond to more situations. That is what makes a lot of decks good. When making your own decks, don’t limit your self to just one strategy. Although using multiple strategies can help, don’t make you deck inconsistent by trying to use too many.
OUTRO
I hope you have learned a lot and enjoyed my article! Thanks for reading!
