The Solgaleo ex is one of the strongest Pokémon released in Pokémon Pocket’s A3 Celestial Guardians expansion. This Pokémon can play fast, requiring only 2 Energy to start going for attacks and securing knockouts.
It’s a pretty straightforward Pokémon to play, using it as the main win condition with a supporting Pokémon to help you out in the early game. Players are currently favoring Skarmory as an early aggressor, but you can go for other Pokémon like Snorlax to tank early hits.
Solgaleo ex Decklist
How to Play
Starting the game, we want to find Cosmog as early as possible and have it, preferably, on the Bench. Solgaleo ex is a Stage 2 Pokémon, so we have two methods to get it in play. We can evolve Cosmog into Cosmoem, and then we can play Solgaleo ex. Or, we can skip the Cosmoem part and use a Rare Candy to evolve Cosmog into Solgaleo ex.
We usually prefer the Rare Candy route since it skips one turn, allowing us to have Solgaleo ex a turn earlier to start attacking the opponent’s Active Pokémon.
Solgaleo ex is a 180 HP Metal-type Pokémon, so it’s a tanky one with a weakness to Fire-type Pokémon. It needs only 2 Metal Energy to activate Sol Breaker attack, dealing 120 damage to the opponent’s Active Pokémon, but it will deal 10 damage back to itself. 10 damage isn’t the worst drawback, especially since you’re able to attack aggressively with Solgaleo ex and since it has high HP.
Solgaleo ex‘s Rising Road ability lets you switch it from the Bench and onto the Active spot without having to discard any Energy from your Active Pokémon. This makes it easier to get Solgaleo ex to the Active spot without having to worry about Energy attachment.
Skarmory is an early attacker, requiring just 1 Metal Energy to attack with Metal Arms and deal 20 damage. However, attaching a Tool to Skarmory will bump its damage to 50, making it easier to get a knock-out early in the game.
Draw Cards
Poke Ball can draw Cosmog, 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.
Tools
Giant Cape gives +20 HP to your Pokémon, which can be attached to your Pokémon to make them harder targets for the opponent to knock out.
Rocky Helmet deals 20 damage back to the opponent’s attacker, great for weakening the Active Pokémon to finish off with your upcoming attack.
Battle Cards
Sabrina forces opponents to switch out their Active Pokémon with one of their Benched Pokémon. This can allow you to knock out a more valuable Pokémon or slow the opponent’s strategy and force them to retreat and discard Energy to get their plan back on track.
On the other hand, Cyrus gives you more control over which Pokémon moves to the Active spot. If the opponent’s Pokémon is damaged, you can move it to the Active spot for your attacker to finish off.
Other Cards to Include
- Red adds to the damage of your attacks, boosting them by 20 damage if you’re targeting an ex-Pokemon.
- You could run Snorlax + Barry as an alternate win condition.
Weaknesses
- Both Cosmog and Cosmoem don’t deal any damage, so you won’t be able to damage a high HP Pokémon and help put it in range for Solgaleo ex to one-shot. You’ll want to evolve into Solgaleo ex as quickly as possible, so a Rare Candy is crucial.
- Although the 10 self-damage from Solgaleo ex isn’t massive, against Fire-type decks like Charizard, it can enable your opponent to one-shot Solgaleo ex.
