With the recent success of Garchomp ex Rampardos in a 1000+ player tournament, finishing top 8, the deck has been gaining traction and showing up in more tournaments! This deck has two Stage 2 Pokémon, so having Rare Candy is a must to speed up its strategy and go for attacks as early as possible.
Each of your Pokémon can act as a win condition, Rampardos being your heavy hitter, while Garchomp ex is capable of sniping Benched Pokémon to win you games.
Garchomp ex Rampardos Decklist
How to Play Garchomp ex Rampardos
Since we run two Stage 2 Pokémon, Rare Candy is a core part of this deck, allowing us to skip the Stage 1 evolution and go straight to Stage 2. This adds more consistency to our game plan and a faster strategy, having our win condition in play and ready to attack.
Garchomp ex
We want Gible in play as early as possible, and from there, we can either evolve it into Gabite before playing Garchomp ex or use Rare Candy to go for Garchomp ex directly. Gabite isn’t an awful evolution; it’s an 80 HP Pokémon that deals 30 damage for just 1 Fighting-type Energy, so it can weaken a Pokémon for your next attacker to finish off.
As for Garchomp ex, it’s a 170 HP Pokémon with two attacks, both will come in handy depending on the state of the game. Linear Attack requires 1 Energy only, so you can attack with Garchomp ex early on. Liner Attack deals 50 damage but allows you to choose the target you want to deal the damage to. This means we can target Benched Pokémon and knock them out, perfect if there’s a low HP Pokémon to KO.
Dragon Claw is the heavier attack, dealing 100 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon. You’ll choose this if you’re trying to remove a higher HP Pokémon in the Active spot.
Rampardos
Rampardos is your other Stage 2 Pokémon, and although it’s not an ex-type Pokémon, it is the heavy hitter in this deck to knock out high HP Pokémon. You need to have Skull Fossil in play as early as possible, and since it’s not considered a Basic Pokémon while in your deck, you can’t draw it from a Poke Ball.
However, once it’s in play, it’s considered a Basic Pokémon, so you can use Rare Candy to evolve into Rampardos. Rampardos is a 150 HP Pokémon that requires only 1 Energy to go for the heavy Head Smash attack, dealing 130 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon. On the downside, activating Head Smash will deal 50 damage back to Rampardos, putting it in a vulnerable spot to getting KO’d on the upcoming turn.
Draw Cards
Poke Ball can draw Gible, making sure you can evolve your Pokémon as early as possible.
Professor’s Research is a Supporter card to draw 2 cards. Since it’s a Supporter card, you want to play it early in the game, since you’ll want to play your other Supporters in the late game.
Since we’re heavily reliant on finding Rare Candy, Iono makes sense to shuffle back the cards in our hand and draw that many cards, helping us fix our hand and find Rare Candy.
Defensive Cards
Lillie is a massive healer Support card, healing our Stage 2 Pokémon for 60 damage! This can keep our Garchomp ex in play for longer or make sure Rampardos doesn’t knock himself out with Head Smash. Lillie is limited to only Stage 2 Pokémon, so we can’t use her on our Basic or Stage 1 Pokémon, which shouldn’t be an issue for this deck anyway.
Giant Cape adds 20 HP to your Pokémon, making it harder for the opposing player to knock it out.
Switch
Cyrus is great to pull a damaged Pokémon to the Active spot, allowing you to attack it directly and knock it out.
