Alt. Format Water Gate (Gyarados SM9 / Alolan Vulpix / Ditto Prism)

[Dark Espeon]

WATER GATE

Pokémon (12):

• 3 Alolan Vulpix SM2 (search)
  
• 4 Gyarados SM9 (beatdown)
• 4 Magikarp SM4 (evolve)
• 1 Ditto Prism (evolve)

Trainer (20):

• 4 Crasher Wake (search)
• 4 Cynthia (draw)
• 4 Rescue Stretcher (retrieval)
• 4 Ultra Ball (search)
• 4 Brooklet Hill (search)

Energy (28):

• 28 Water Energy

STRATEGY:

Start with Alolan Vulpix and search out the Gyarados line. Bench two to three Magikarp and evolve it into Gyarados next turn. Attach a Basic Water Energy and start to attack with Filter Out.

SPOILER:

Gyarados
Stage 1 Water Pokémon - evolves from Magikarp
HP: 150
[W] Filter Out: 30+
Reveal the top 7 cards from your deck. This attack does 30 more damage for each [W[ energy revealed. Shuffle those [W] energy back into your deck. Discard the remaining cards.
[W][W][W] Hyper Beam: 100
Discard an energy from your opponent’s active Pokémon.
Retreat Cost: CCCC
Weakness: L

 

[The_Poke_Bros]

I like the deck idea, but the main issue I'd have is stringing consistent ko's. It'd be hard to guarantee a certain damage output for instance because of the rng element of gyarados's attack (maybe magcargo since you're playing ditto or mallow?). I feel like you need energy recycle system or energy recycler in the deck so you can ultra ball energies out of your hand so you can shuffle them back in the deck to boost your attacks. Also I feel like you may need to up the ball card count to 4 ultra and 4 nest. Without brooklett hill in the deck, I feel like you'd have a high chance of relatively dead hands since the deck plays so much energy. For example, you could get a hand with a magikarp and a bunch of energy and just be stuck.

 

[John InCENAroar]

I agree with @The_Poke_Bros that you are definitely gonna get dead hands with this more often then you'd like thanks to the energy pile. In addition to adding some energy recovery at the bare minimum, I think that Crasher Wake could actually be a really great card in this deck, since you are probably gonna have a fair amount of energy in your hand, which you can turn into any two cards you may need, like say, for instance, a Gyarados and an escape board for Jirachi on an attacking turn. With the amount of energy you should be getting in hand, especially in the late game, Wake combined with S&M Base Oranguru just to make sure you have enough energy in hand to use it, would be super powerful.

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi The_Poke_Bros,

Thanks for the review. In the first few turns this sure is an issue but later on the likelihood to hit for a decent number should increase. Will consider to remove Muscle Pad for one Energy Retriever and two more Ball cards. Might also mess around with the supporter choices to include two copies of Wake Crusher to help me find the cards that I need more consistently.

Hi John InCENAroar,

Thanks for the review. Wake Crusher sounds like a nice idea with the number of Water Energy in this deck. Will be sure to check it out.

 

[JumpluffTCG]

Hi there! I'm actually very interested in this concept. I think it has potential considering how good Granbull is in the current format, although the Lightning weakness might drag it down with how popular Zapdos seems in the upcoming set. Honestly if Zapdos wasn't so good this deck would be an absolute monster I feel.

I might be more of a fan of an engine revolving around Apricorn Maker rather than the 4/4 Tate & Liza/Cynthia engine you have going. Typically, there's nothing wrong with T&L and Cynthia, but using these cards will leave more Nest Balls and Ultra Balls floating around in your deck, weakening your Filter Out in the early game. Playing an Apricorn Maker when you would have played a Cynthia directly thins out those ball cards and your Filter Out will have a greater success rate. Up to you to decide how you go about it, and without any reference to a similar deck in the past, I can't tell you for sure what the best count is. But my gut instinct tells me to try dropping the Tate and Lizas for 3 or even 4 Apricorn Makers to start with.

If you're considering taking this deck to a more serious scene, I would consider fitting in at least a couple of Weakness Policy, just so you have some fighting chance against Zapdos. Also as a general note, I can't tell what the average water energy hit rate is, but I feel like 5/7 is still difficult to achieve just to get a KO on a Tapu Lele, so I strongly encourage you to play at least 2 Choice Bands as well. If your deck is full of these tool cards, I might also consider Adventure Bag, because again, these search cards will help thin out your deck so you can hit more Water energies.

In the end I'm imagining the deck to look something like this? I cut a Guzma because I imagine this deck plays more like Granbull, where you're more focused on knocking out the thing that's in front of you and streaming your 150 HP non-GX tank that's hitting for like 200 damage each turn. And while Crasher Wake is nice, it necessitated the Energy Recycler and I figured you'd just end up with more deck space if you just get rid of it entirely and go with the tool cards that I talked about. 17 vs 18 energies shouldn't matter too much.

Pokémon (12):
4 Gyarados SM9
4 Magikarp SM4
3 Jirachi SM8a
1 Ditto Prism

Trainer (31):
4 Apricorn Maker
2 Guzma
4 Cynthia
2 Rescue stretcher
3 Escape Board
4 Ultra Ball
4 Nest Ball
3 Shrine of Punishment
2 Weakness Policy
2 Choice Band
1 Adventure Bag

Energy (17):
17 Water Energy

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi Jumpluff TCG,

Thanks for the detailed review. Will test out several of these ideas for sure.

Hi there! I'm actually very interested in this concept. I think it has potential considering how good Granbull is in the current format, although the Lightning weakness might drag it down with how popular Zapdos seems in the upcoming set. Honestly if Zapdos wasn't so good this deck would be an absolute monster I feel.

It comes down to the Electric deck we want to consider. Zapdos himself does not hit for weakness but the low attack cost and the resistance to Fighting turn him into a moster combined with Choice Band and Electro Ball. It is one of my favorit decks at the moment in addition to Ultra Malamar variants. The one variant that hit for weakness is Jolteon GX. Zeraora GX technically also hits for weakness but he would knock out Gyarados anyway so weakness does not matter much here.

I might be more of a fan of an engine revolving around Apricorn Maker rather than the 4/4 Tate & Liza/Cynthia engine you have going. Typically, there's nothing wrong with T&L and Cynthia, but using these cards will leave more Nest Balls and Ultra Balls floating around in your deck, weakening your Filter Out in the early game. Playing an Apricorn Maker when you would have played a Cynthia directly thins out those ball cards and your Filter Out will have a greater success rate. Up to you to decide how you go about it, and without any reference to a similar deck in the past, I can't tell you for sure what the best count is. But my gut instinct tells me to try dropping the Tate and Lizas for 3 or even 4 Apricorn Makers to start with.

Will look into Apricon Maker once our boxes arrive. Not really used to this card and I also want to check out Crusher Wake to fish out Gyarados and other needed cards to prevent them from being filtered out. Given that the deck uses Jirachi to filter out trainer cards and may end up with several water energies in hand this could be a viable approach too. Will have to test out both options to see which one works best and turns out to be more versatile in this deck. I also figured that one Brock's Grid could be decent in this deck to shuffle discarded water energies and Gyarados back into the deck to increase the damage output.

If you're considering taking this deck to a more serious scene, I would consider fitting in at least a couple of Weakness Policy, just so you have some fighting chance against Zapdos. Also as a general note, I can't tell what the average water energy hit rate is, but I feel like 5/7 is still difficult to achieve just to get a KO on a Tapu Lele, so I strongly encourage you to play at least 2 Choice Bands as well. If your deck is full of these tool cards, I might also consider Adventure Bag, because again, these search cards will help thin out your deck so you can hit more Water energies.

As mentioned above Zapdos does not hit for weakness. This leaves us with Jolteon GX as the one Electric attacker that is commonly used that actually benefits from hitting for weakness. For this reason I am not a fan of Weakness Policy but I do like to idea to include a couple of Choice Bands.

 

[Dante 21]

Might want to consider Dragonite as well. Jirachi is a super cool trainer search pokemon, however with this much water energy (1/3 or so of your deck) and need to be active every turn, it might not be as consistent as we like it to be. 4 Professor Elm Lecture or few Dunsparce from Celestial Storm will help if going this direction in turn 1, since you are missing 1 more basic for the standard 9-10 basic minimum.

For every turn supporter card, ....Apricon Maker, like JumpluffTCG suggested? Since my idea is heavily based on Granbull, unlike it, we are obviously wanted to thicken our deck, not hand. So maybe some pokeball or great ball or timer ball or Lure Ball. However, this would mean, no draw supporter, much like Granbull. Well, you can include maybe Looker Whistle to get 2 Looker, this benefit by -2 cards in your deck, and it is searchable by Crusher Wake that can further -2 cards again. Maybe 1 Lusamine from Ultra Prism to get back discarded supporter card for next turn and obviously Shrine, again this is searchable by Dragonite and Wake.

Wouldn't 1 Muscle Pad help against Granbull, Lost March and....baby White Kyurem. Yes, Choice Band is best, if you only managed to get 4 water energies, then 30+120+30= 180 dmg, but with Shrine, 190 total dmg, boom most basic GX now Koed. So maybe 1 or 2 Adventure Bag (Thicken the deck even further) to get them. Even 1 Professor Kukui may help to reach 210 dmg, or non-GX for 170 dmg, as this one is searchable with Dragonite.

 

[JumpluffTCG]

snip

lol yeah that's right Zapdos doesn't hit for weakness. I must have been really out of it last night typing this. Obviously then get rid of the Weakness Policy, since the other relevant Lightning attackers are GXs so you'll end up trading favorably.

So that leaves you with 2 more deck slots to work with. Never a bad thing.

I still do think that unless there's something even better, Apricorn Maker is the better way to go in building the deck just because Jirachi -> Apricorn Maker -> 2 Nest Balls -> 2 Magikarp thins out 5 cards from your deck in one go, and you're playing a max count of Nest Ball/Ultra Ball so you want a way to get those out that's not discarding them through Filter Out.

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi Dante 21,

Thanks for the review.

Might want to consider Dragonite as well. Jirachi is a super cool trainer search pokemon, however with this much water energy (1/3 or so of your deck) and need to be active every turn, it might not be as consistent as we like it to be. 4 Professor Elm Lecture or few Dunsparce from Celestial Storm will help if going this direction in turn 1, since you are missing 1 more basic for the standard 9-10 basic minimum.

While Jirachi is less effective in this deck than in other decks that run a larger count of trainers we still have 1/2 of the deck being trainer cards that can be searched with it. The idea is to start with Jirachi and promote it whenever a Gyarados is knocked out. In this manner Jirachi becomes more usefull throughout the entire match than Dunsparce and Tapu Lele GX. I do not feel that Dragonite has a place in this deck since it is a stage 2.

For every turn supporter card, ....Apricon Maker, like JumpluffTCG suggested? Since my idea is heavily based on Granbull, unlike it, we are obviously wanted to thicken our deck, not hand. So maybe some pokeball or great ball or timer ball or Lure Ball. However, this would mean, no draw supporter, much like Granbull. Well, you can include maybe Looker Whistle to get 2 Looker, this benefit by -2 cards in your deck, and it is searchable by Crusher Wake that can further -2 cards again. Maybe 1 Lusamine from Ultra Prism to get back discarded supporter card for next turn and obviously Shrine, again this is searchable by Dragonite and Wake.

Will try both Crusher Wake as listed above and Apricon Maker instead of it to see which one works best for me.

Wouldn't 1 Muscle Pad help against Granbull, Lost March and....baby White Kyurem. Yes, Choice Band is best, if you only managed to get 4 water energies, then 30+120+30= 180 dmg, but with Shrine, 190 total dmg, boom most basic GX now Koed. So maybe 1 or 2 Adventure Bag (Thicken the deck even further) to get them. Even 1 Professor Kukui may help to reach 210 dmg, or non-GX for 170 dmg, as this one is searchable with Dragonite.

Muscle Pad would indeed be an option and I will look into it once I am able to test this deck.

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi JumpluffTCG,

Thanks for the review. Will test both Crusher wake and Apricon Maker instead of it to see which card works best for me. Love the example but I am not sure whether I will need some Pokémon search cards to remain in the deck to search out and recover discarded and knocked out Gyarados cards.