Miraidon ex is making its comeback with the new cards to push it to the next level! Having Eelektrik and Zekrom ex as backup Pokémon in Black Bolt and White Flare meta has pushed more players to pick up and test around with the decklist.
Miraidon ex is one of the oldest competitive Pokémon in the game, and throughout various metas, the deck has evolved, trying to keep up with the top performers.
We’re going to discuss how this lightning deck works, the general game plan of the deck, and how each card synergizes with one another!
Miraidon ex Eelektrik Decklist
Pokémon: 16
2 Tynamo BLK 30
2 Eelektrik BLK 31
2 Iron Hands ex PAR 70
2 Miraidon ex SVI 81
1 Zekrom ex BLK 34
1 Fezandipiti ex SFA 38
1 Mew ex MEW 151
1 Squawkabilly ex PAL 169
1 Iron Bundle PAR 56
1 Tapu Koko ex PAR 68
1 Zeraora DRI 78
1 Latias ex SSP 76
Trainer: 29
4 Boss's Orders PAL 172
4 Arven OBF 186
4 Professor's Research JTG 155
1 Iono PAF 80
4 Electric Generator SVI 170
4 Nest Ball SVI 181
4 Ultra Ball SVI 196
1 Prime Catcher TEF 157
1 Super Rod PAL 188
1 Air Balloon BLK 79
1 Bravery Charm PAL 173
Energy: 15
15 Lightning Energy SVE 12How to Play
Damage Dealers
Miraidon ex is a 220 HP Pokémon with the ability Tandem Unit that searches your deck for 2 Basic Lightning Pokémon and puts them on the Bench. This helps you find the Pokémon you need to start setting up your strategy. The Photon Blaster attack deals 220 damage, capable of knocking out targets and netting your Prize Cards. However, when Photon Blaster is activated, you can’t attack with Miraidon on the upcoming turn, so it’s basically sitting there in the Active spot without a purpose.
You’ll have to retreat Miraidon ex and replace it with one of your other attackers so you continue posing a threat to the opponent with your attacks.
As for Zekrom ex, he’s a 230 HP Pokémon with a Slash attack that deals 50 damage. However, we’ll be mainly using Zekrom ex for his Voltage Burst as a finisher play. Voltage Burst deals 130 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon, but it deals 50 more damage for each prize card your opponent has taken. So, if your opponent took 4 Prize cards already, you can deal 330 damage with Zekrom ex, knocking out almost anything in your path. If you’re down to 1 Prize card, Voltage Burst deals 380 damage!
In most cases, this will act as a finisher play to remove a high HP Pokémon and net the win. Keep in mind that you’re dealing 30 damage to Zekrom ex by activating Voltage Burst, so if you’re not closing out the game, you’re putting it in a vulnerable spot to getting knocked on the upcoming turn.
Iron Hands‘ Arm Press deals 160 damage, which isn’t the strongest attack we have in the list, and for 3 Energy, it doesn’t feel worthwhile. However, Iron Hands is in the list for the Amp You Very Much attack. It’s an expensive attack that only deals 120 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon; however, if it gets a knockout, you’re securing an additional 1 Prize card. This gets you closer to winning the game, having to knock out fewer Pokémon to deal the final blow.
Tapu Koko ex deals 30 damage with its Vengeful Shock, but if any of your Pokémon was knocked out on the previous turn, Vengeful Shock deals an additional 90 damage and paralyzes the opponent’s Pokémon, preventing them from retreating or attacking, and buying you enough time to stabilize.
Zeraora is a consideration to play for its Thunder Raid attack. It requires 3 Lightning Energy to activate and you’ll have to discard all Energy on Zeraora, but you get to deal 210 damage to an opponent’s benched Pokémon ex. Perfect for securing 2 Prize Points without having it in the Active spot. You can hit Pokémon like Fezandipti ex and Squawkabilly.
Energy Acceleration
We want to have Tynamo in play to evolve it into Eelektrik. From there, we’ll use Dynamotor ability to ramp lightning Energy. Once per turn, you can attach a Basic Lightning Energy from your discard Pile to one of your Benched Pokémon.
A lot of our attacks can be expensive, so having a ramp card goes a long way to set them up to attack as early as possible. Your lightning Energy has to be in the discard pile for Eelektrik‘s Dynamotor to fetch them, so we’ll rely on discard like Professor’s Research, Squawkabilly, and Ultra Ball to discard Energy.
Since the list has 15 Lightning Energy, we have high odds of finding at least one through Electric Generator. Electric Generator lets you look at the top 5 cards of your deck and attach up to 2 Basic Lightning Energy cards you find to your Benched Lightning Pokemon.
This will help you accelerate your game plan and get your attacks ready as early as possible.
Easy Returns
Since we can attach Energy cards to our Benched Pokémon, we will need tools to get them to the Active spot and start attacking. The best method is through Latias ex‘s Skyliner ability. Skyliner removes the Retreat cost on your Basic Pokémon, letting you retreat them to the Bench without discarding any Energy. This saves you from attaching an Energy to retreat and is great for Iron Hands ex because of its high retreat cost.
Air Balloon serves a similar purpose; attaching it to one of our Pokémon will reduce its retreat cost by 2, making it easier to retreat without having to worry about discarding Energy. Since we can’t easily retreat Eelektrik and it doesn’t work with Latias ex‘s Skyliner ability, Air Balloon is perfect here if your opponent forced an Eelektrik to the Active spot.
Pokemon Draw Value
Squawkabilly’s Squawk and Seize is great for the early game, discarding your hand (which could discard Energy cards) and draws 6 cards.
Mew ex‘s Restart ability acts as a draw engine, drawing you cards until you have 3 cards in your hand. So if you have a Mew ex on your Bench, you can use up the cards in your hand, drop to below 3 cards, and then draw extra cards to find what you need. Mew ex can also become an attacker with Genome Hacking, copying the opponent’s Active Pokémon’s attack. So this will be dependent on what the Pokémon has in the Active spot, but copying a high-damage attack can knock them out.
Mew ex has no retreat cost, so you can retreat it to the Bench whenever you want and have another Pokémon take its place.
Fezandipti ex can sit on the bench and watch over your Active Pokémon, ready to use its Flip the Script ability when one of your Pokémon is knocked out. The three cards you draw will help find the resources you need to enable your strategy. Fezandipti ex doesn’t need to be on the bench when the knockout happens—you can play it from your hand afterward and still activate Flip the Script to draw cards.
Value Cards
Arven is a great resource card cause it allows you to search and draw an Item and a Pokémon tool card. So cards like Electric Generator and Air Balloon are options to draw.
Professor’s Research is great to replinish your hand, discarding everything and drawing 7 cards.
Gust Cards
You can use Boss’s Order to move a low-health Pokémon to the Active spot, making it easier for you to get a Knock Out over a high-Pokemon, or you can knock out a win condition hiding on the Bench.
Also, these cards can move a Pokémon with a high retreat cost to the Active spot, which doesn’t pose much of an offensive threat. This will slow down the opponent’s game plan and buy you enough time to have your win conditions ready. As for Iron Bundle, you can force opponents to switch out their Active Pokémon, moving their win condition out and slowing them down.
You can also move a less threatening Pokémon to the Active spot and slow down the opponent’s aggression, putting them in an awkward spot and forcing them to have an answer to get back their win condition in the Active spot.
Other Cards to Include
- Counter Catcher is another method to pull a Pokémon to the Active spot and put it in a vulnerable situation to your attacker.
- If you go first, Carmine can be great in this deck to replinish your hand. You get to discard everything to draw 5 cards. This works without strategy since we want Lightning Energy in our discard pile.
