The Pokémon Pocket A3 Celestial Guardian expansion just launched, and we have tons of new cards to experiment with! The meta, as we know it, will change up a lot, especially with the introduction of Rare Candy, which will likely bring older archetypes that struggled to set up their Stage 2 Pokémon into the front of the meta.
Today, I’ll share a couple of new decks to try out in the early meta! We’re still in the experimental phase, so lists will likely change up in the upcoming weeks as they adapt to the best performer!
Wishiwashi Ex
Wishiwashi ex is a Basic Water-type Pokémon with 170 HP. It needs 3 Water-type Energy to activate its School Storm attack, dealing 30 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon. However, that attack increases by 40 damage for every Wishwashi and Wishiwashi ex Pokémon on your Bench. So if you have a full bench of Wishiwashi, you can deal up to 150 damage.
To make sure we can get the most out of School Storm, we’re running the non-ex Wishiwashi version for the added damage to help one-shot an opponent’s Pokémon. Manaphy is in the list to help us ramp Water Energy in the early turns and tank a hit or two.
The non-ex Wishiwashi can Call for Family, helping you find more copies of Wishiwashi and play them on the Bench.
Solgaleo ex
The Solgaleo ex is a Stage 2, 180 HP Pokémon. It’s a pretty tanky Pokémon that requires us to evolve Cosmog into Cosmoem before getting into play. We can, of course, skip the Cosmoem stage through Rare Candy, playing Solgaleo a turn earlier than usual. Cosmoem’s Stiffen reduces the opponent’s next attack by 50 damage, which can be useful in certain situations if you don’t want Cosmoem to get easily knocked out.
Solgaleo ex’s Rising Road lets you switch it into the Active spot without having to discard any energy from the Active Pokémon. This is great to save Energy, and it means we can use Drampa as an early tank without having to worry about its retreat cost.
Solgaleo ex’s Sol Breaker deals 120 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon, but it will deal 10 damage back to itself. It’s only 2 Metal Energy to activate, so we can play aggressively with this deck, and we’re not too worried about Solgaleo ex getting one-shot since it has a high HP and we can always back it up with Lille for healing.
Incineroar ex
Incineroar ex is the carry in this deck; it’s a Stage 2 Pokémon, which means we have to evolve Litten into Torracat before getting Incineroar ex into play. Rare Candy allows us to skip the Torracat part and get Incineroar ex in play a turn earlier.
Incineroar ex is a Fire-type 180 HP Pokémon having two attacks: Fire Fang and Scar-Charged Smash. Fire Fang deals 30 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon and gives them “Burned” to slowly deal additional damage. As for Scare-Charged Smash, it deals 80 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon, but if Incineroar ex is damaged, you get to deal an additional 60 damage, a total of 140 damage from one attack.
Charizard ex comes in as another Stage 2 carry, capable of ramping himself up with Stroke and dealing 150 damage with its Steam Artillery.
Giratina ex Lunala ex
This deck uses Girtaina ex’s Broken-Space Below to ramp Psychic Energy and start attacking with Chaotic Impact as early as possible. We can commit our Energy attachment to Giratina ex, and once we expect it might get knocked out on the upcoming turn, we can use Lunala ex to take over. Lunala ex’s Psychic Connect lets you move all Psychic Energy from one of your Benched Pokemon to your Active Pokemon, enabling us to get the three Energy on Lunala ex as early as possible and start going for the Lunar Blast attack to deal 100 damage.
Raichu ex
The lightning deck Alolan Raichu ex Oricorio deck! Oricorio’s Zzzap deals 50 damage, but he’s a tough Pokémon for the opposing player to remove. Safeguard prevents all damage done to Oricorio from your opponent’s Ex Pokemon, which means they have to use non-Ex Pokemon to knock it out or force it out of the Active spot to target something else.
Alolan Raichu ex is the carry in this deck, dealing 60 damage with its Psychic attack, but it gains 30 more damage for each Energy attached to the opponent’s Active Pokémon. So, depending on who you’re attacking, you can easily deal 90 or 120 damage to most targets.
Gengar Ex
Gengar ex always struggled to find its footing in the Pokémon Pocket meta, but players try their best to make Gengar ex work every set, and this set is no different. With the addition of Rare Candy, we can skip the Haunter evolution phase and go directly from Ghostly to Gengar ex, allowing us to have our win condition online earlier and more consistently.
We want Gengar ex in play and in the Active spot as early as possible to activate his Shadow Spellbind ability, preventing the opposing player from playing any of their Supporter cards. This can shut down their strategy, and slow them down, it will also mean they might hold onto more cards than usual, making Mars a great play to cut down on their hand size.
We’re also running Shuppet and Banette as supporting Pokémon. Once we evolve into Banette, we can activate Night Bind to deal 30 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon and shut them off from attaching an Energy on the upcoming turn. We’re making life miserable for the opponent with this deck.
Decidueye ex Lurantis
This deck relies on Lurantis in the early game, dealing 20 damage to each of the opponent’s Pokémon with its Petal Blizzard attack. You’ll then rely on Decidueye ex to carry the game. Decidueye ex’s Razor Leaf deals 80 damage to the opponent’s Pokémon. However, if there’s a damaged Pokémon in play, we can instead activate Pierce the Pain attack to deal 100 damage to it. We can target the opponent’s Bench with this attack, perfect for sniping a Pokémon and winning the game.
Araquanid Pyukumuku
Tsareena Meowscarada
