Alt. Format Tower of Water (Urshifu Vmax / Passimian / Falinks / Empoleon V / Octillery)

[Dark Espeon]

TOWER OF WATER

Pokémon (16):

• 1 Empoleon V S5 (beatdown)
  
• 3 Urshifu Vmax (beatdown)
• 4 Urshifu V S5 (beatdown)
• 2 Passimian S5a (enable)
  
• 1 Falinks S5 (beatdown)
  
• 2 Remoraid S5 (evolve)
• 2 Octillery S5 (search)
• 1 Crobat V S3 (draw)

Trainer (34):

• 3 Boss's Orders (control)
• 3 Korrina's Focus (draw)
  
• 3 Prof. Research (draw)
• 3 Marnie (draw)
  
• 3 Pokémon Communication (search)
• 3 Telescopic Sight (beatdown)
  
• 1 Scroll of Swirls (beatdown)
• 2 Echoing Horn (control)
  
• 3 Escape Rope (control)
  
• 4 Quick Ball (search)
• 3 Switch (retreat)
• 1 Material Art Dojo (beatdown)
  
• 2 Tower of Water (retreat)

Energy (10):

• 4 Rapid Strike Energy
• 6 Fighting Energy

STRATEGY:

The main idea of the deck is to overwhelm the opponent with fast attacks. Start with either Urshifu V or Empoleon V and search for Remoraid. Next turn evolve Remoraid into Octillery to search for Rapid Strike cards. Evolve Urshifu V into Urshifu Vmax and start to attack with Gale Thrust. Build another Urshifu Vmax on the bench at the same time with one Basic Energy attached. Empoleon V and Falinks are used to deal with Mew to enable Urshifu Vmax to reach out to the bench. Passimian and Telescopic Sight enhance the bench attack theme. The former one also works nice with Empoleon V and Scroll of Swirls who also serves as a tech for Fire decks.

SPOILER:

Passimian
Basic Fighting Pokémon (Rapid Strike card)
HP: 110
Ability: Throwing Coach
All of your Rapid Strike Pokémon’s attacks do 30 more damage to your opponent’s benched Pokémon V and Pokémon GX. You can’t use more than 1 Throwing Coach Ability at a time.
[F] Fling:
This attack does 20 damage to 1 of your opponent’s Pokemon.
Retreat Cost: C
Weakness: P

Echoing Horn
Trainer - Item (Rapid Strike card)
Put a Basic Pokémon from your opponent’s discard pile onto their bench.

POSSIBLE MODIFICATION:

+ 1 Fan of Waves
- 1 Echoing Horn

I considered this modification with mirror matches in mind. Fan of Waves is a dead card in Zacian matches but it is a nice means to slow down a number of other decks incl. Rapid Strike variants.

 

[kingK4RP]

The deck concept intrigues me. While I like the idea, I don’t feel the current list truly optimizes Urshifu’s potential. I’d opt for a Jirachi TEU build, to have more consistency finding Mustard for the turn 1 Gale Thrust plays. The Pokémon line would be pretty simple, at 4 Jirachi TEU, 3 Urshifu V, 4 Urshifu VMAX, 2 Dedenne GX, 1 Crobat V, 1 Oranguru SSH and 1 Mewtwo UNB. Your Trainer line would also reflect this principle of simplicity, you’d include 4 Mustard, 4 Scoop Up Net, 4 Switch, 4 Quick Ball, 4 Evolution Incense, 3 Electromagnetic Radar, 3 Great Ball, 3 Viridian Forest, 4 Judge Whistle, 1 Air Balloon, and 2 Boss’s Orders. Your Energy wouldn’t be too complicated either, just 3 Rapid Strike Energy and 5 basic Fightings. I need to test this build, but it’s how I imagine the deck working to pull off a turn 1 Mustard consistently.

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi kingK4RP,

Thanks for the review. I like the idea to run Jirachi but I would like to retain at least a few Prof. Research and Octillery as additional consistency measures. Need to test and see what works best in terms of consistency and flexibility because I feel that Rapid Strike Urshifu Vmax needs both qualities to succeed.

 

[kingK4RP]

Yeah, I agree that having 2 Research would probably help consistency out. From my slight testing of the archetype, I've realized that it seems necessary to have Bird Keeper as an additional way to pivot, I'd probably add that over Research, honestly. Another possibility would be to not run 4 Mustard. I know it sounds outrageous, because the deck is centered around a turn 1 Mustard play, however, you can actually improve overall consistency for more than just turn 1 by not having as many copies of Mustard, and using things like Pokegear 3.0 as fillers.

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi kingK4RP,

Modified the deck a little to ensure it has more options available throughout the entire match. I still like the turn one Urshifu Vmax option but half of the time the deck will not be able to start second due to the coinflip. Mustard still remains a good card since it makes the deck Reset Stamp proof and increases the overall speed and consistency. I inluded two copies of Galarian Meowth to combo with Mustard and weed out unneeded cards in hand and I also included Scoop Upo Net as an additional switch option in addition to the stadium and the physical switch cards.

In the limited number of matches I had with this deck it worked rather well as soon as the opponent used Pokémon V that cannot be evolved into Pokémon Vmax.

 

[kingK4RP]

In your total of 16 Pokémon, I noticed that you included 2 Octillery and 0 Remoraid. Did you mean to have a 1-1 line? The nature of the attack condition makes me feel that you’d benefit from 1-2 Air Balloon in place of a Vitality Band and maybe the Octillery slots, if you move away from that. I’d also play around with 1-3 Great Ball or maybe 1 Familiar Bell, to search your Pokémon. Ordinary Rod can be a worthwhile inclusion as well.

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi kingK4RP,

Thanks for the review. The exclusion of Remoraid was a typo on my part. The deck is intended to run a 2-2 Octillery line to search out any Rapid Strike cards from the deck. This also includes Tower of water which acts as an Air Balloon for Rapid Strike Pokémon. Octillery makes the deck incredibly consistent and I would therefore like to retain the Octillery line in this deck.

 

[kingK4RP]

Ah, fair point about Tower of Water helping with pivoting, that serves the purpose of Air Balloon well enough. I do think 2 Galarian Meowth is overkill, once you get 1 down, you should be fine. Despite the importance of getting your hand really small to pull off Mustard plays, I don’t think it’s necessary to have more than 1 Meowth, it’s unlikely that they’ll target it for any reason. Also, I noticed none of the cards in your list are from sets before SSH. Is this intended to be a post-rotation deck?

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi kingK4RP,

Thanks for the review. The second Galarian Meowth is mainly there in case one is prized. The deck was not intended to be post-rotation but the only other card I was considering was one Reset Stamp. Giant Bomb may also be an option instead of Vitality Charm but the latter one seemed to be more proactive to me. Nonetheless it is a first draft but Rapid Strike Urshifu Vmax seems to have potential to be viable and fun. What are your experiences with this deck thus far?

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi folks,

Since the cards are now available I modified the list. It no longer uses a Mustard tactic. the problem with Mustard was that the entire deck had to focus around it and the benefit was only there when you were allowed to go second which is on usual half of the time. Besides that it turned out to be difficult to manage the bench space to benefit from Mustard later on in the game.

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi folks,

Revised the deck a little to include cards from Matchless Fighters. After some initial test runs the deck seems to work fine. Would be interested in comments on how to improve the deck. The Meta at the moment seems to be similar to Japan. The main differences are the inclusion of Single Strike non-V decks and Salazzle. Since Rapid Strike received a lot of tools in the new set I assume that Mew will be a tech in several decks.

 

[ADP Big Rat]

Octillery has been tested, and every single player that has had any success with Urshi has cut the card. Octillery's Ability isn't bad by any means, but it's extremely limited in what it can do and quite frankly just too slow and inconsistent. There's no reason to set up Octo when you could have an actual draw engine like Stellar Wish or Make Do. When something is eating a bench spot that could be used on an attacker or a much better way to draw cards then the effect has to be worth it. In this case, Octillery simply isn't. Among the numerous issues the Octillery engine has, I also think this is not a very good list. You're running 3 of cards that should always be 4-ofs and using that space on inconsistent techs and given the format of the decklist it seems as if you haven't tested the deck at all. Especially when considering Japan only recently got a lot of these cards.

Tower of Water sucks. Balloon is outright better. Although Swell has died down some in play, it still sees enough to completely negate your Tower. This is on top of decks that run other stadiums run 3-4 like Hearth in Tini Max/Welder Mew3 and Plant in Etern/Pult. In fact the only decks that aren't really running more than 1-2 stadiums are Urshi and ADP right now. Tower only helps your opponent in the mirror and I guess it's fine vs ADP, but you'd always rather have Dojo out so you can 2 shot ADP with Rapid Flow after swinging with Gale Thrust. Telescopic Sight is okay enough with Passimian, but you're not Rapid Flowing enough in any game to warrant 3.

You absolutely need draw support mons. 1 Crobat is not enough for you to draw into pieces to win games. Honestly in any combination just run 3 draw support mons. 2 Dede 1 Bat, 1 Bat 1 Dede 1 Eldegoss, anything. Just more than 1 Bat lol.

This is complete opinion based on 0 testing, but I think if you're building for future formats you should be running 1-1 Blaziken, Phoebe and a Galarian Zapdos V. Zapdos is an auto-include in any deck that runs Fighting Energy for obvious reasons, and Blaziken/Phoebe OHKO any mon that walls you (Deci, Zama, Altaria, etc) and Blaziken on paper makes ADP a lot more manageable because you have a way to OHKO Zacs and is also the only Energy accel Urshi has access to.

I think comparing our meta to Japan's isn't really a fair assessment because we have Stellar Wish and Koko prism and they don't. There's also the fact that Japanese players have to build their decks for 1500 man tournaments with best of 1 matches, leading their decklists to be highrolly and full of techs while cutting consistency. Because every other place on the planet (or in online tournaments for that matter) does not get nearly as many players, nor have to worry about being knocked out of contention for top cut after a single loss, using Japanese decklists as a point of reference is not a very good idea.

TLDR; Octillery sucks, play an actual draw engine, stop thinking so far ahead when the meta for this format isn't even fully developed yet, cut Tower for Balloons, cut unnecessary cards like heavy Korrina and play 4 of actually important cards like Marnie/Research/Comm/Switch etc.

 

[Dark Espeon]

Octillery has been tested, and every single player that has had any success with Urshi has cut the card. Octillery's Ability isn't bad by any means, but it's extremely limited in what it can do and quite frankly just too slow and inconsistent. There's no reason to set up Octo when you could have an actual draw engine like Stellar Wish or Make Do. When something is eating a bench spot that could be used on an attacker or a much better way to draw cards then the effect has to be worth it. In this case, Octillery simply isn't. Among the numerous issues the Octillery engine has, I also think this is not a very good list. You're running 3 of cards that should always be 4-ofs and using that space on inconsistent techs and given the format of the decklist it seems as if you haven't tested the deck at all. Especially when considering Japan only recently got a lot of these cards.

Tower of Water sucks. Balloon is outright better. Although Swell has died down some in play, it still sees enough to completely negate your Tower. This is on top of decks that run other stadiums run 3-4 like Hearth in Tini Max/Welder Mew3 and Plant in Etern/Pult. In fact the only decks that aren't really running more than 1-2 stadiums are Urshi and ADP right now. Tower only helps your opponent in the mirror and I guess it's fine vs ADP, but you'd always rather have Dojo out so you can 2 shot ADP with Rapid Flow after swinging with Gale Thrust. Telescopic Sight is okay enough with Passimian, but you're not Rapid Flowing enough in any game to warrant 3.

You absolutely need draw support mons. 1 Crobat is not enough for you to draw into pieces to win games. Honestly in any combination just run 3 draw support mons. 2 Dede 1 Bat, 1 Bat 1 Dede 1 Eldegoss, anything. Just more than 1 Bat lol.

This is complete opinion based on 0 testing, but I think if you're building for future formats you should be running 1-1 Blaziken, Phoebe and a Galarian Zapdos V. Zapdos is an auto-include in any deck that runs Fighting Energy for obvious reasons, and Blaziken/Phoebe OHKO any mon that walls you (Deci, Zama, Altaria, etc) and Blaziken on paper makes ADP a lot more manageable because you have a way to OHKO Zacs and is also the only Energy accel Urshi has access to.

I think comparing our meta to Japan's isn't really a fair assessment because we have Stellar Wish and Koko prism and they don't. There's also the fact that Japanese players have to build their decks for 1500 man tournaments with best of 1 matches, leading their decklists to be highrolly and full of techs while cutting consistency. Because every other place on the planet (or in online tournaments for that matter) does not get nearly as many players, nor have to worry about being knocked out of contention for top cut after a single loss, using Japanese decklists as a point of reference is not a very good idea.

TLDR; Octillery sucks, play an actual draw engine, stop thinking so far ahead when the meta for this format isn't even fully developed yet, cut Tower for Balloons, cut unnecessary cards like heavy Korrina and play 4 of actually important cards like Marnie/Research/Comm/Switch etc.

Hi ADP Big Rat,

Thanks for the review. Jirachi would be better than Octillery but this is a japanese deck and Jirachi has been rotated along with all the prism star cards. I cannot think of any other card that truely matter other than the ones already listed. I am not a fan of Amazing Rare Jirachi at all. It is far worse than both Octillery and Jirachi Staellar Wish. This leaves me with Octillery.

I disagree that the japanese meta and the meta for the rest of the world are entiirely uncompareable. Consistency is a major issue in both format and I would like to make the deck as consistent as possible. Octillery has helped me a lot to get out most key cards other than Telescopic Sight. I would like to have it on the battlefield on the second turn to stabilize the deck by a lot. I am mainly looking for advice on the trainer selection to achieve this aim.

I tested the deck and it was rather stable but there is still room for improvement. Main issues are to have Octillery on the second turn in addition to two Urshifu and a means to take out Mew since it shuts down the main benefit of this deck which is bench damage. I also tried Galarian Zapdos V but he did not help me out much. Empoleon V seemed to do better especially versus Victini Vmax beatdown and control variants which are currently dominant in the meta.

As you can see I am not building too far ahead but since Matchless Fighter is only out for one week it is still rather early. I also like the Blaziken line but would like to keep the deck as steamlined as possible. I also believe that the upcoming Zeraora V may be a much better partner for Blaziken Vmax. I am not sold on Phoebe at all since these wall Pokémon are not that common at all to warrant its inclusion.