Standard Gardevoir EX (Budget)

[swan]

Thanks for the somewhat rushed reply:
The wobbufet only exists for specific matchups e.g. decidueye/plume which is a 50-50 matchup. (Lurantis/plume is an autowin if anyone is still playing it). I started with 2 wobbs but realised that you don't need him in a lot of MUs and after testing those he helps out in, I dropped one. As I stated previously, there are a lot of mistakes you can make playing this deck and eventually I learned to stop decking myself through lysandred wobb
Jirachi also exists only for matchups like Mray and Mmewtwo as we have much trouble there (the attributes that make X break good are difficult to demonstrate in these MUs). Jirachi buys an attachment turn as a path to victory in the MUs is to dig for OHKOs. In Mm2 MU the 10 damage from stardust also means we require 1 less energy to OHKO. In Mray jirachi is more of a failsafe in that it cuts rayquaza's head off.
Things I don't understand about the list:
3 wobbufet - I've already explained how useless this cards is in all but 3-5 matchups. The simplest refutation being that I'd like to use geomancy.
4 DCE - This is overkill if the only card that attacks with it is shaymin.
4 max elixir - I don't see the purpose of the 4th one. This is because geomancy "harshly lowers" the special attack of max elixir. Culminative usage of max elixir already lowers your chance of hitting each consecutive one, so much so that a lot of players often choose to run 3 in decks that don't even have an energy acceleration equivilent of geomancy. In short the 4th elixir is barely worth anything in the deck.
2 float stone - why are you playing both garden and float in the same deck?!? It just doesn't make sense. If you want to switch outside of fairy garden, use hard switches like "switch" and "escape rope". They give you extra utility e.g. against decidueye/plume (where wobb does something) you can fairy garden switch into wobb and then use switch to get back to it. This let's us use items without the requirement of being KO'd last turn. It's niche but does come up. N.B. switch is better than escape rope in this deck.

No offense, but I feel like all you did was: add a load of random wobbs; bump ultra ball, max elixir, shaymin and dce up to more "regular feeling" counts; remove all 1-ofs (except for wobb ofc!); and add float stones...

 

[Fayld]

Thanks for the somewhat rushed reply:
The wobbufet only exists for specific matchups e.g. decidueye/plume which is a 50-50 matchup. (Lurantis/plume is an autowin if anyone is still playing it). I started with 2 wobbs but realised that you don't need him in a lot of MUs and after testing those he helps out in, I dropped one. As I stated previously, there are a lot of mistakes you can make playing this deck and eventually I learned to stop decking myself through lysandred wobb
Jirachi also exists only for matchups like Mray and Mmewtwo as we have much trouble there (the attributes that make X break good are difficult to demonstrate in these MUs). Jirachi buys an attachment turn as a path to victory in the MUs is to dig for OHKOs. In Mm2 MU the 10 damage from stardust also means we require 1 less energy to OHKO. In Mray jirachi is more of a failsafe in that it cuts rayquaza's head off.
Things I don't understand about the list:
3 wobbufet - I've already explained how useless this cards is in all but 3-5 matchups. The simplest refutation being that I'd like to use geomancy.
4 DCE - This is overkill if the only card that attacks with it is shaymin.
4 max elixir - I don't see the purpose of the 4th one. This is because geomancy "harshly lowers" the special attack of max elixir. Culminative usage of max elixir already lowers your chance of hitting each consecutive one, so much so that a lot of players often choose to run 3 in decks that don't even have an energy acceleration equivilent of geomancy. In short the 4th elixir is barely worth anything in the deck.
2 float stone - why are you playing both garden and float in the same deck?!? It just doesn't make sense. If you want to switch outside of fairy garden, use hard switches like "switch" and "escape rope". They give you extra utility e.g. against decidueye/plume (where wobb does something) you can fairy garden switch into wobb and then use switch to get back to it. This let's us use items without the requirement of being KO'd last turn. It's niche but does come up. N.B. switch is better than escape rope in this deck.

No offense, but I feel like all you did was: add a load of random wobbs; bump ultra ball, max elixir, shaymin and dce up to more "regular feeling" counts; remove all 1-ofs (except for wobb ofc!); and add float stones...

#sigh. I am not going for "regular feeling counts" of anything. I am going for counts that allow you to get energy on the board in similar quantities with similar speed that you could expect using Darkrai Dragons. But you don't have a big 180-220 HP Basic sitting up top. You have a 130-150 HP pokemon sitting up top. That's a lot smaller and easier to take down with a lot less effort meaning it probably drops in fewer turns. So...

I added the elixirs so you aren't forced to always use Geomancy. That also happens to be the reason I added the additional DCE. It isn't whether something attacks with it. It is to get energy on the board as fast as possible in order to boost XB's attack to a high enough level to take take OHKOs within 2-3 turns. DCE + Max Elixir allow you to do this while Wob is up top. Wob does a lot more than just stop Decidueye / Volcanion. It also stops set up for decks like Mega Ray, Mega Gardevoir, and anything else that relies on a T1 Shaymin to extend the first turn. Along those lines, I explained the float stones. They are there to make it so you can have Wob up top without needing an attachment / relying on having Fairy Garden up to easily retreat it. Without the free retreat, Wob's effectiveness is diminished. The Float Stone also stops you from decking yourself with a Lysandre'd Wob...

Anyway, it sounds like you have a deck you like and don't find my input particularly helpful, so I will just leave it there without going through my reasons for each choice in the deck line by line.

 

[swan]

Um, can we please not do the Darkrai/dragons --- Xerneas break comparisons, it takes far too long
Also you only added 1 elxir, I think perhaps you misread my original list. I understand why you've gone more to maximising dce and elixir; I meant to imply earlier that my reason for not playing the full 4 counts is because from playing/testing/building the deck extensively I found I didn't need those counts.

Furthermore, I used to play aerodactyl with 4 wobbufet over talonflame all the time so I really do understand where you are coming from, let me show you the numbers:
With 3 out of 9 mons in deck you have a 50% chance of getting a wobb start.
With 1 out of 8 mons in deck I have a 18% chance.
So your 2 wobbs and 2 float stones will demolish Mgardevoir 32% more of the time while going second. However, when going first you only have about a 17% better ability to find wobbufet and place it active than me. So you will get an active wobb about 25% more often by sacrificing 4 deck slots. So the wobbs are very useful in matchups like Mgardevoir which Xern B typically struggles with.

I myself just feel like using wobb to block shaymin-EXs is cheesey as I'm sacrificing 2 energy attachments for nothing if they draw a supporter. ( I know this isn't wobbs main or only function)

Apologies if my last post sounded obnoxious, I'm kind of multi-tasking here, sorry. Your input was actually very useful to have and I thank you for it.

 

[TCG_Destory]

So I decided to actually try out Brilliant Arrow at a tournament again, after months of playing Despair Ray. I have made the list pretty quickly and finished third with it, with my biggest win being against Solgaleo/Lurantis (despite looking like my autoloss) and my loss being the final round, where I faced Volcanion. I have not modified it so far as I did not find any improvements to make. This was not the first time I built Brilliant Arrow neither, as I played it at almost every tournament in mid-October - early December of last year. So, here is my decklist as it currently stands:

Pokémon - 14
1 Hoopa EX AOR
4 Gardevoir EX STS
2 M Gardevoir EX PCL
1 M Gardevoir EX STS
4 Xerneas XY
2 Shaymin EX ROS

Trainer - 35
3 Fairy Garden
1 Brock's Grit
1 Hex Maniac
1 Lysandre
3 N
4 Professor Sycamore
3 Escape Rope
4 Gardevoir Spirit Link
3 Mega Turbo
4 Trainer's Mail
4 Ultra Ball
4 VS Seeker

Energy - 11
11 Fairy Energy

There are a few things that could look odd in this list, so let me justify myself for these choices:
11 Energy: Works well with Mega Turbo, getting one or two in the discard early. Can get cloggy, but only on the first two turns, and the extra Energy are good to discard as I've said. Less that 11 will make it hard to get 8 in play to Knock Out Pokémon such as a belted Tauros-GX or a Decidueye-GX. After having used Geomancy, it does not feel like the deck has too many Energy anymore, as some have been taken out.
1 Lysandre: This deck is meant to Knock Out your opponent's Active Pokémon almost everytime. However, Lysandre is still necessary to get rid of a Benched threat or of a Shaymin-EX (for example) on the Bench to end the game or to make my opponent's chances of winning lower. There is only one due to the aforementioned reason and to the fact that the deck gets thinned out pretty fast with this deck, thanks to a combination of Hoopa-EX, Geomancy and Professor Sycamore.
No Max Elixir: A card I do not like that much in this kind of deck, because by using Geomancy, they become less and less reliable and essentially dead cards when drawn late game unless Energy has been shuffled. I prefer Mega Turbo, for that it provides both 100% reliable Energy acceleration onto Mega Gardevoir (which Max Elixir cannot accelerate onto) and Energy recovery once one goes down.
3 Escape Rope: This is to nearly guarantee a Geomancy as soon as it is possible, since half of the time I will not start with a Xerneas. It also allows to switch out when Fairy Garden is not there and can be used as a "you have to switch" kind of card to the opponent because with Fairy Garden in play, you can retreat back into the initial Active Pokémon. It also allows to get around Bursting Balloon and Fright Night (Yveltal BKT) that both see play.

The only thing I think this list truly lacks is Fairy Drop, but space is too tight it seems,
however if you want to suggest changes to be made to this list, feel free to do so.

 

[swan]

So I decided to actually try out Brilliant Arrow at a tournament again, after months of playing Despair Ray. I have made the list pretty quickly and finished third with it, with my biggest win being against Solgaleo/Lurantis (despite looking like my autoloss) and my loss being the final round, where I faced Volcanion. I have not modified it so far as I did not find any improvements to make. This was not the first time I built Brilliant Arrow neither, as I played it at almost every tournament in mid-October - early December of last year. So, here is my decklist as it currently stands:

Pokémon - 14
1 Hoopa EX AOR
4 Gardevoir EX STS
2 M Gardevoir EX PCL
1 M Gardevoir EX STS
4 Xerneas XY
2 Shaymin EX ROS

Trainer - 35
3 Fairy Garden
1 Brock's Grit
1 Hex Maniac
1 Lysandre
3 N
4 Professor Sycamore
3 Escape Rope
4 Gardevoir Spirit Link
3 Mega Turbo
4 Trainer's Mail
4 Ultra Ball
4 VS Seeker

Energy - 11
11 Fairy Energy

There are a few things that could look odd in this list, so let me justify myself for these choices:
11 Energy: Works well with Mega Turbo, getting one or two in the discard early. Can get cloggy, but only on the first two turns, and the extra Energy are good to discard as I've said. Less that 11 will make it hard to get 8 in play to Knock Out Pokémon such as a belted Tauros-GX or a Decidueye-GX. After having used Geomancy, it does not feel like the deck has too many Energy anymore, as some have been taken out.
1 Lysandre: This deck is meant to Knock Out your opponent's Active Pokémon almost everytime. However, Lysandre is still necessary to get rid of a Benched threat or of a Shaymin-EX (for example) on the Bench to end the game or to make my opponent's chances of winning lower. There is only one due to the aforementioned reason and to the fact that the deck gets thinned out pretty fast with this deck, thanks to a combination of Hoopa-EX, Geomancy and Professor Sycamore.
No Max Elixir: A card I do not like that much in this kind of deck, because by using Geomancy, they become less and less reliable and essentially dead cards when drawn late game unless Energy has been shuffled. I prefer Mega Turbo, for that it provides both 100% reliable Energy acceleration onto Mega Gardevoir (which Max Elixir cannot accelerate onto) and Energy recovery once one goes down.
3 Escape Rope: This is to nearly guarantee a Geomancy as soon as it is possible, since half of the time I will not start with a Xerneas. It also allows to switch out when Fairy Garden is not there and can be used as a "you have to switch" kind of card to the opponent because with Fairy Garden in play, you can retreat back into the initial Active Pokémon. It also allows to get around Bursting Balloon and Fright Night (Yveltal BKT) that both see play.

The only thing I think this list truly lacks is Fairy Drop, but space is too tight it seems,
however if you want to suggest changes to be made to this list, feel free to do so.

How do we deal with MUs like passimian? Surely it's a matchup where a 2nd lysandre would be crucial over Hex maniac or something. (Gardevoir-EX > giratina-EX)
Also, isn't exp. share very important into the lategame?

 

[Fayld]

How do we deal with MUs like passimian? Surely it's a matchup where a 2nd lysandre would be crucial over Hex maniac or something. (Gardevoir-EX > giratina-EX)
Also, isn't exp. share very important into the lategame?

I honestly think that Passimian deck gets way too much credit. It does great against Darkrai and M Mewtwo. Awesome. I rarely struggle against this deck. I haven't seen it in a tournament yet and I think that is telling. Great decks see tournament play. This doesn't.

Don't know how @tcg_destroy deals with it, but my variant just focuses on using DR gardevoir and heals through it. Different decks, but BA is going to take one shots with 4 or 5 energy on the board. That is nothing for this deck to hit.

Dunno, there are decks that I would work hard to beat. Passimian isn't one of them.

 

[swan]

would it help if I had said vespiquen??

 

[Fayld]

would it help if I had said vespiquen??

Sure would lol! Vespiquen can be a freaking nightmare lol! Without tool removal klefki can really turn it. I don't know about others, but that's a match where I try to spam hex just to stop klefki attachments. Guessing there are other ways to deal with it, but that's the one I like.

 

[TCG_Destory]

Passimian and Vespiquen I think are not that scary of matchups.

Passimian does not see much play because it has a harsh autoloss to Yveltal/Garbodor decks. But were I to face it, I would put on early pressure with Despair Ray and make sure my Energy count stays at 4 or more for Brilliant Arrow. To make sure they do not 1 shot my Pokémon, I would preserve and then play my Escape Rope at the right time to get around the Bursting Balloons. I would also keep at least a VS Seeker for a Lysandre play in the later game, to get the last two Prize cards on a Shaymin-EX.

Vespiquen is for sure a harder matchup than when playing Despair Ray but is quite beatable. The main attacker, Vespiquen, goes down to a Link Blast (one of my reasons to have chosen the Steam Siege Gardevoir-EX), since it has a DCE attached to it for its attack to be used and only has 90 HP. Zoroark is not a problem if Despair Ray comes in at the right time (also discarding easy Prize cards) to reduce my Benched Pokémon count to 3, which makes Mind Jack do 80 including the Resistance. Raichu cannot even two-shot Mega Gardevoir-EX if a Fairy Garden is in play, as its damage is limited to 100. Vespiquen has to have a lot of Pokémon discarded (nineteen) to one-shot a Mega Gardevoir-EX, and as I've said, if you have a Gardevoir-EX with two Energy on it, Klefki is not a problem. Passimian does up to 100 damage, which again is not even a two-hit Knock Out. This is the kind of deck against which you want to place a Despair Ray after the first Geomancy and make sure your Energy count stays at 4 or more on the field to be able to Knock Out anything in that deck.

I think Parallel City is a good tech to counter both of these decks and second Lysandre and Hex Maniac could help against Vespiquen (and somewhat help against Passimian). A Garbodor line would also help, as it would shut down Mew as well as Unown, Klefki, Zoroark's Ability and Set Up/Instruct. However, I do not recommend it in the Brilliant Arrow deck because I have tested a 2-2 Garbodor line in it and it just proves to kill the consistency, as it adds in one more evolution line to set up, in exchange for the slots for the Trainers' Mail, for the Hoopa-EX and for one of the Shaymin-EX.

I believe playing the hybrid variant of the deck I have posted a list of earlier (the one with two Despair Ray and one Brilliant Arrow Mega Gardevoir) is the way to get the better matchups against those decks, as it sets up faster and Despair Ray beats those decks more efficiently.

 

[TCG_Destory]

Um, can we please not do the Darkrai/dragons --- Xerneas break comparisons, it takes far too long
Also you only added 1 elxir, I think perhaps you misread my original list. I understand why you've gone more to maximising dce and elixir; I meant to imply earlier that my reason for not playing the full 4 counts is because from playing/testing/building the deck extensively I found I didn't need those counts.

Furthermore, I used to play aerodactyl with 4 wobbufet over talonflame all the time so I really do understand where you are coming from, let me show you the numbers:
With 3 out of 9 mons in deck you have a 50% chance of getting a wobb start.
With 1 out of 8 mons in deck I have a 18% chance.
So your 2 wobbs and 2 float stones will demolish Mgardevoir 32% more of the time while going second. However, when going first you only have about a 17% better ability to find wobbufet and place it active than me. So you will get an active wobb about 25% more often by sacrificing 4 deck slots. So the wobbs are very useful in matchups like Mgardevoir which Xern B typically struggles with.

I myself just feel like using wobb to block shaymin-EXs is cheesey as I'm sacrificing 2 energy attachments for nothing if they draw a supporter. ( I know this isn't wobbs main or only function)

Apologies if my last post sounded obnoxious, I'm kind of multi-tasking here, sorry. Your input was actually very useful to have and I thank you for it.

Wobbuffet typically does not affect the Brilliant Arrow Mega Gardevoir's setup that much. Hoopa is still usable and thus it still is easy to get two Gardevoir-EX and a Xerneas in play in time for the first Geomancy. However, if you are talking of the Despair Ray variant, this becomes very true. In fact I have played against Lunala-GX decks that had Wobbuffet in them, and they have proven to slow down my Despair Ray deck by, of course, preventing Set Up from working. But in this thread we are talking of Brilliant Arrow mainly, so I would say Wobbuffet, in this case, is more of a Psychic Assault user, since it can only do a little bit of damage to Mega Gardevoir's speed.

 

[acerizzo13]

I've been running this deck since it came out. The lose of Aromatise was hard at first but it actually isn't a big problem anymore. Here's how I run it:
Pokemon = 18
4 Xerneas
2 Xerneas Break (Don't shirk on this when you have 10+ energies out and sometimes the 150 HP makes a difference)
4 Gardevoir EX
3 M Gardevoir EX
2 Cottonee
2 Whimsicott (Both from Ancient Origins) Windy Mischief will win you games, look it up
1 Shaymin EX

12 Fairy Energies (This works if you run Energy Recycle and Exp Shares)
.....
Supporters = 11 (with consistency sake this amount of supporters has worked very well for me, any changes should aim for 10-12)
3 N
2 Professor Birch Observations
1 Skyla
1 Pokemon Center Lady (will be replaced with new Comfey)
1 Lysandre (Extra strong in this deck with easy OHKO potential, but good in all I suppose)
1 Pokemon Fan Club (Not a necessity, the Birch's and this can be replaced with Prof and more ultra balls if that's your style, I may simply have grown accustomed to it)
1 Hex Maniac
1 Steven (Lots of one of's because they are not essential to the play of the deck, when Guardian's come's out i will look back at Sycamore)
......
3 Fairy Gardens (Win them Stadium Wars)

Items= 16
3 Vs Seeker
3 Trainers Mail
3 Ultra Balls
3 Spirit Links
1 Prof Letter
2 Exp Shares
1 Energy Recycler

This deck is fairly resistant to item lock because of the strength of the supporter line imho. M Ray is a tough matchup but you can sit behind your Xerneas' and play for the late game and win the stadium war. Whimsicott will keep you alive if they run out of stadiums. As always retech during each expansion and buy some nice sleeves because if you are like me you'll be playing it for a while.

 

[jeremy macias]

This is my favorite deck to currently play