Iron Thorns ex is a meta call deck, heavily dependent on how the meta looks like and which decks you’ll likely go up against. This deck only has one Pokemon, Iron Thorns, so we rely on it as our damage dealer.
This deck revolves around Iron Thorns, trying to get the most out of him. The main game plan is to slow down the opponent’s strategy, buying us enough time to deal damage and knock out their Pokemon.
Decklist
Pokémon: 4
4 Iron Thorns ex TWM 77
Trainer: 45
4 Arven OBF 186
3 Professor's Research SVI 189
3 Judge SVI 176
3 Boss's Orders PAL 172
2 Colress's Tenacity SFA 57
1 Iono PAL 185
1 Penny SVI 183
1 Giovanni's Charisma MEW 161
4 Pokégear 3.0 SVI 186
4 Crushing Hammer SVI 168
4 Pokémon Catcher SVI 187
2 Techno Radar PAR 180
2 Canceling Cologne ASR 136
1 Prime Catcher TEF 157
1 Earthen Vessel PAR 163
1 Energy Loto ASR 140
1 Lost Vacuum LOR 162
3 Future Booster Energy Capsule TEF 149
1 Technical Machine: Turbo Energize PAR 179
3 Lost City LOR 161
Energy: 11
7 Lightning Energy SVE 4
4 Double Turbo Energy BRS 151How to Play
Iron Thorns ex is the only Pokemon we run in the list, so the whole game plan revolves around it. With his Initialization ability, you can shut down Pokemon with a Rule Box in play will have no Abilities, except for Future Pokemon.
This can be a complete shutdown for many decks that heavily rely on their Pokemon’s Abilities as part of their game plan. So decks like Raging Bolt ex Ogerpon and Charizard ex will have a rough time accessing their Basic Energy, which slows down their damage dealers.
This is buying you tons of time for Iron Thorns to start damaging and Knocking out their Pokemon with Volt Cyclone.
You need to attach 1 Basic Electric Energy and a Double Turbo Energy to activate Volt Cyclone. So it won’t take you long before you start dealing damage, in most cases, you’ll need two attacks to Knock Out high-health Pokemon. The Double Turbo Energy will weaken our attack by 20 damage, but it’s still worth it, to activate our attack on earlier turns.
If you have an Iron Thorns on the bench, you have to move one of your Energy to a benched Pokemon. We usually want to move the Electric Energy since it’s easier for us to attach another one on the Active Pokemon on our upcoming turn. This lets us avoid the need to retreat our Pokemon, since discarding 4 Energy isn’t optimal for our gameplan.
There will be situations where we won’t have the Energy to attack with an Active Pokemon, but we have a Benched Iron Thorns that has the Energy to attack. This is where Future Booster Energy Capsule is an important piece for our game plan, attaching it to a Future Pokemon allows you to remove the Retreat cost from Iron Thorns, letting you switch it with another Iron Thorns that can attack.
Additionally, Future Booster Energy Capsule boosts your attack by 20 damage, so we’re not necessarily attaching it to a Pokemon purely for the Retreat option, but to also deal the extra 20 damage. The 20 damage can be enough to Knock Out a Pokemon or set you up to Knock it out with two attacks.
All four of these cards are valuable to find Energy cards. Earthern Vessel and Technical Machine: Turbo Energize can only draw you Basic Electric Energy. To find Double Turbo Energy, we’ll be using Colress’ Tenacity and Energy Loto.
This deck plays out a lot of cards and you’ll find yourself running out of resources. So we use Judge, Iono, and Professor’s Research to replenish our hand. Since we’re either shuffling or discarding our hand, we need to make sure we play the cards we need before playing our draw cards.
We have two cards that can disrupt the opponent’s plans by removing one of their Energy cards. We’re already being annoying with Iron Thorn’s Initialization, so opponents will value each attached Energy on their Pokemon. Giovanni’s Charisma lets you remove an Energy attached to your opponent’s Active Pokemon and then you can attach an Energy to your Active Pokemon, setting up an attack.
As for Crushing Hammer, it’s a coin flip, if you get heads, you can discard an Energy from 1 of your opponent’s Pokemon.
We have three cards to switch 1 one of the opponents Benched Poekemon to the Active Spot. This lets us snipe one of their key Pokemon that the opponent is relying on to win the game or if we need 1 Prize card, we can Knock Out one of their low-health Pokemon to close out the game.
Penny is great if you need to remove an Iron Throns ex from play and get those attached Energy to use on another Iron Thorns. This comes in handy if you’re Active Iron Thorns is damaged and you don’t have Future Booster Energy Capsule attached to it.