What is a Good Budget Deck That Will Survive the Rotation?

Cobaccc

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hey,

Just getting into the game for the first time and Ill soon be looking to build a competitive deck. So far I have ordered the Battle Arena Decks, so I will have those cards at my disposal. I'm happy to even stray away from these decks, though I have read that Yveltal is a pretty strong deck. I know that $50 budget lists for Fairy type and Dark type exist, but I'm looking to put a little more money into the deck than that. I have an $80 ($100aud) budget (including shipping), what is something that is quite competitive for around this price? I'd like it to mostly survive rotation, as Pokemon will likely be a secondary game that I'll be playing.

It's pretty overwhelming trying to look for a deck, coming from YUGIOH where you pick a deck based around an archetype. I'm excited to see what you guys recommend.

Also, where would the best place to order from Australia be?

Thanks for your help.
 
Hey, welcome to PokéBeach! :D

It all depends on what kind of deck you're willing to use. If you want a Fairy or an Yveltal deck, 80$ might be a bit tight considering the shipping will most likely be overseas, but it all depends on where you buy from.
With 80$, you can build most decks (assuming you have all the staples, but since you have the Battle Arena thing I'd say you'll need max 10$ on staples, 15$ if you're like me and want at least one RH/FA version of each card in your deck :v) so that leaves you 65-70$ to work with.
From where I buy my stuff, that's still enough for pretty much anything not named Seismitoad-EX or M Rayquaza, which is (imo) one of the selling points Pokémon has over YGO, you can grab 80$ and buy a deck instead of a single card.

Baaaaack on subject, I really don't know anything about site for AUS, but TCGplayer.com should be an option to consider. The prices are low (comparing with the irl stores that are around here), you can choose from a variety of sellers, AND YOU DON'T PAY TAXES!

About the shipping, if you choose to buy from TCGplayer.com, there's the USPS International option that costs ~8$ and the Global Express option that costs ~77$ (don't :p) However those are the numbers for an US>Canada order, I'm not sure about an AUS order. I'd say an extra 5-10$.

In YGO, what decks did you play and why? Perhaps that will help finding a deck for you. I used to play YGO too, and am up-to-date with everything, so no need to explain what certain cards do or what decks are meta.
 
Um, Australia... tbh, as an Australian I did not have much luck finding good Aussie PTCG sites. When buying cards, I had to resort to Ebay, Gumtree and fellow PokeBeachers in the PB Marketplace.

If you're looking for budget, budget decks (~$50) then I suggest Team Aqua Muk Decks, Team Magma decks and Nightmarch (w/o Mew-EX) are all viable options. Some decks, however, can fit the $80 budget reasonably well, such as Bronzong (I think) and Aromatisse toolboxes (depending). You could also try a Bats variant, that can work quite well with a number of different cards (there's a good article on PB's front page about a Wobbuffet/Bats deck).

I also suggest checking out the Metagame Discussion for highly competitive decks and Deck Garage for decent rogues.
 
Hey, welcome to PokéBeach! :D

It all depends on what kind of deck you're willing to use. If you want a Fairy or an Yveltal deck, 80$ might be a bit tight considering the shipping will most likely be overseas, but it all depends on where you buy from.
With 80$, you can build most decks (assuming you have all the staples, but since you have the Battle Arena thing I'd say you'll need max 10$ on staples, 15$ if you're like me and want at least one RH/FA version of each card in your deck :v) so that leaves you 65-70$ to work with.
From where I buy my stuff, that's still enough for pretty much anything not named Seismitoad-EX or M Rayquaza, which is (imo) one of the selling points Pokémon has over YGO, you can grab 80$ and buy a deck instead of a single card.

Baaaaack on subject, I really don't know anything about site for AUS, but TCGplayer.com should be an option to consider. The prices are low (comparing with the irl stores that are around here), you can choose from a variety of sellers, AND YOU DON'T PAY TAXES!

About the shipping, if you choose to buy from TCGplayer.com, there's the USPS International option that costs ~8$ and the Global Express option that costs ~77$ (don't :p) However those are the numbers for an US>Canada order, I'm not sure about an AUS order. I'd say an extra 5-10$.

In YGO, what decks did you play and why? Perhaps that will help finding a deck for you. I used to play YGO too, and am up-to-date with everything, so no need to explain what certain cards do or what decks are meta.

Well today I went out and bought a Burning Wings theme deck (mostly for something to mess around with for the timebeing) and some boosters. I feel like I have a fairly decent pool of trainers, though I still need a few more.

As for decks I play in YGO, I play Heroes, Ritual Beasts and Lightsworn (because Judgment Dragon). Though, for Pokemon I like Pokemon with OHKO potential.

How are Yveltal based decks going in the meta at the moment? In comparison how well is Xerneas playing? What is the major differences between the two decks?

As for places in Australia, I figured that'd be the case. When ordering from TCGPLAYER, do you pay each Vendor shipping, and does everything come in seperate packages, or all in one?
 
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As for decks I play in YGO, I play Heroes, Ritual Beasts and Lightsworn (because Judgment Dragon). Though, for Pokemon I like Pokemon with OHKO potential.

How are Yveltal based decks going in the Mets at the moment? Is it even a thing? What does a sample deck list look like?

As for places in Australia, I figured that'd be the case. When ordering for TCGPLAYER, do you pay each Vendor shipping, and does everything come in seperate packages, or all in one?

Good OHKO Pokemon at the moment would be the Primals, Yveltal and Nightmarch, off the top of my head.

Yveltal is most definitely a thing; here's a link. However, I'm not too sure how well it's going atm... Looking at the Regionals results here, Yveltal is yet to have a place in the tops. Personally I find that very weird, as the deck normally does well...

TCGPLAYER? What's that?
 
Good OHKO Pokemon at the moment would be the Primals, Yveltal and Nightmarch, off the top of my head.

Yveltal is most definitely a thing; here's a link. However, I'm not too sure how well it's going atm... Looking at the Regionals results here, Yveltal is yet to have a place in the tops. Personally I find that very weird, as the deck normally does well...

TCGPLAYER? What's that?

Thanks for that list, I'll take a look. Looking into Fairy type deck too, they seem quite fun, but not as powerful (from what I gathered anyways).

I think im probably going to decide on either Yveltal or Fairy types, because I will already have a few cards for them from the Battle Arena pack.

I'm assuming you're making a joke about the capitals? You'll have to ask my phone :p
 
Hey guys. I have spoken to someone who is willing to help me out by selling me basically any deck I want. I have semi-narrowed down the list to Yveltal, Nightmarch, and Lugia Turbo. Which do you think is the better choice? So far I'm leaning towards Lugia, but let me know what you think.
 
Well today I went out and bought a Burning Wings theme deck (mostly for something to mess around with for the timebeing) and some boosters. I feel like I have a fairly decent pool of trainers, though I still need a few more.

As for decks I play in YGO, I play Heroes, Ritual Beasts and Lightsworn (because Judgment Dragon). Though, for Pokemon I like Pokemon with OHKO potential.
Hmmmm a fellow Lightsworn lover ^.^ Then I highly recommend you try out Primal Groudon variants. It might not fit in a 80$ budget though, so I'd try it out online before buying any part of the deck. A perfect place to start would be on PokéBeach's TCG simulator, TCGone, which can be found in the TCG tab at the top.
Primal Groudon is pretty much unstoppable once it's get going (sound familiar?), as P Groudon EX can OHKO pretty much anything with Strong Energy and Fighting Stadium. Besides, Roaring Skies introduced Mega Turbo which helps it out immensely by giving it more speed. P Groudon variants imo will be Tier 1-2 next format, especially with VirGen gone.


How are Yveltal based decks going in the meta at the moment? In comparison how well is Xerneas playing? What is the major differences between the two decks?
As the info about Yveltal has already been provided, I'll talk about Xerneas :p Xerneas EX itself doesn't see play competitively (not even in Aromatisse decks) but Fairy decks are pretty powerful (M Gardevoir EX variants, Aromatisse Toolbox is seeing less and less success) If Gardevoir gets going, the opponent is in for a hard time if they can't OHKO. However, with only 210HP (not to mention the weakness the deck has against bats) a lot of things will be OHKOing (P Groudon EX included), and getting 3 Energy back into play isn't that easy in this deck; so a OHKO is pretty devastating should the player not have any reliable way to get Energy into play.

As for places in Australia, I figured that'd be the case. When ordering from TCGPLAYER, do you pay each Vendor shipping, and does everything come in seperate packages, or all in one?
You pay each vendor's shipping, but Idk if it comes in separate packages. I assume it does because you buy from different people though.
Bolded.
 
Hey guys. I have spoken to someone who is willing to help me out by selling me basically any deck I want. I have semi-narrowed down the list to Yveltal, Nightmarch, and Lugia Turbo. Which do you think is the better choice? So far I'm leaning towards Lugia, but let me know what you think.

Lugia Turbo WILL NOT survive the rotation. So I basically recommend not buying it. I think Yveltal variants is going to stay one of the strongest of all the decks you mentioned above despite its lack of recent successes, especially after the rotation, when it'd likely will only lose Darkrai. Night March is a bit risky, especially as it has bad matchups against Eggs, Toad and any Partners/Bats deck, which are all extremely common atm. Then again, you can normally get all the Night March stuff minus Mew-EX for extremely cheap, so you could get one of those for the moment and then choose on a more reliable deck after the rotation.

As Vom said above, Primal Groudon would certainly be a good stomping deck.
 
How did I miss these 2 posts? *derp*
TCGPLAYER? What's that?
It's an online store that lets you buy cards from a lot of stores in the US, and like I said somewhere above, the prices are great.

Hey guys. I have spoken to someone who is willing to help me out by selling me basically any deck I want. I have semi-narrowed down the list to Yveltal, Nightmarch, and Lugia Turbo. Which do you think is the better choice? So far I'm leaning towards Lugia, but let me know what you think.
Like bbninjas said, Lugia isn't really a good choice for after the rotation (or atm really.) Actually, chances are it's rotated out, so I wouldn't really get it. Yveltal variants will probably lose some/a lot of effectiveness because the rise of M Man/M Ray/P Groudon decks, all of which give it trouble, not to mention it loses LaserBank.
Night March is the one deck that will be almost untouched by the rotation, maybe losing Mew-EX. However, it is very very cheap, so I'd get another deck from that person and then get Night March on my own.
 
This guy has basically anything that I'm going to need. I've been convinced to stray away from my budget. I'm now happy to spend whatever as long as I know the deck is strong and long lasting. I'm stuck between 3 choices, Yveltal, Primal Groudon or Rayquaza. Competitively which is my best choice?
 
This guy has basically anything that I'm going to need. I've been convinced to stray away from my budget. I'm now happy to spend whatever as long as I know the deck is strong and long lasting. I'm stuck between 3 choices, Yveltal, Primal Groudon or Rayquaza. Competitively which is my best choice?

Out of those, Rayquaza.
 
This guy has basically anything that I'm going to need. I've been convinced to stray away from my budget. I'm now happy to spend whatever as long as I know the deck is strong and long lasting. I'm stuck between 3 choices, Yveltal, Primal Groudon or Rayquaza. Competitively which is my best choice?

Pros:
  • Has a pretty good damage output
  • Cheap attacks
  • Energy Acceleration
  • Can use Toad
  • Consistent
  • That's about it.
Cons:
  • Despite a decent damage output (2HKOs most things, can occasionally manage to get a OHKO) 2HKOs aren't that good anymore.
  • If the rotation is XY-on, it won't last very long.
  • Weak to Electric, which will likely increase drastically in use due to M Ray decks. No, Shadow Circle doesn't solve this.
  • Bad/Unfavorable Toad/M Ray/P Groudon/Manetric match-ups, and considering these will likely be the dominating decks, this is really bad. Especially with Darkrai gone.
Pros:
  • Has a very good damage output
  • Is [F], so plenty of damage modifiers, support, and good [L] match-up.
  • Above-average amount of Energy acceleration.
  • Is immune to opposing Items/Supporters once evolved, which makes hammers and Lysandre useless against this. Keep in mind Flare tools and Stadiums still affect it though.
  • Is very powerful when it gets going.
  • Consistent, can get fully loaded T1 with the introduction of Mega Turbo.
  • Pretty good/decent M Ray match-up.
Cons:
  • Takes 4 Energy to attack, so if you get too reckless a surprise Evil Ball could ruin your day.
  • Being OHKOed back sucks for this deck.
  • Can have trouble if out-sped. Huge trouble.
  • Like Lightsworn, a couple of misplays can cost you the game.
Pros:
  • Has an insanely good damage output.
  • Shaymin-EX in big numbers.
  • Energy Acceleration.
  • Cheap Attack.
  • Is very consistent, you can hit for 240 T1.
  • Has good match-ups all across the board.
  • Bench of 8.
  • Being OHKOed isn't a big deal.
Cons:
  • Weak to [L], but this can be solved by using Altaria ROS.
  • The P Groudon mtach-up can be tricky if you're not skilled enough/you make a misplay or two/your opponent is skilled.
  • Is dependent on a Stadium.

TL;DR: Pick Rayquaza.
 
Wow, that was insanely helpful and I didn't expect such a detailed answer. Thankyou very much for that! Looks like it's the latter two. I will let you guys know what decision I make later on.
 
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I actually wasn't expecting to write such a detailed reply, but I thought it would be helpful. You're welcome! :D
If you need any help, we're always here.
 
Well I decided to go with Primal Groudon. I've already pushed how much I wanted to spend to the extreme. Besides, I prefer the play-style over Ray.

Here is a list:


3x Groudon EX
2x Primal Groudon EX
2x Hawlucha
3x Landorus

4x Professor Juniper
2x N
4x Korrina
1x Colress
2x Lysandre
1x Pokemon Centre Lady
1x Lysandres Trump Card

4x VS Seeker
3x Mega Turbo
2x Switch
1x Max Potion
1x Professors Letter
1x Battle Compressor
1x Scramble Switch
2x Silent Lab
3x Fighting Stadium
2x Focus Sash
2x Groudon Spirit Link
1x Float Stone
1x Tool Retreiver

4x Strong Energy
7x Fighting Energy
 
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You'll still need a couple Ultra Ball in the deck despite the Korrina. I'd take out a Float Stone and Max Potion/or VS Seeker
 
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