Flower Power — Florges Control Decks in Standard

Three Florges Control, aka “Doll Stall”, decks made Day 2 at the Latin American International Championship. These decks use Florges to Wondrous Gift and its fifty-fifty shot to recover an Item from the discard pile to the top of your deck. With this you can stream Lillie's Poké Doll and feed your opponent an infinite supply of zero-Prize Pokemon. Eventually, with help from Bellelba and Brycen-Man, you will run your opponent out of cards and win the game. Currently there are two solid ways to play this deck and both have merit. First, there’s the straightforward version without any frills. The second plays Sawsbuck to Bounce to the Bench, deal 60 damage, and the Stage 1 Pokemon adds a crafty Ability to the mix to draw you an additional card each turn. Let’s take a look at both of these lists and talk about the cards…

Straight Florges

Four Jirachi

Any of these decks wants to be playing four Jirachi, you want to start with it and you use it early to serve as a meat shield while you find cards to set up. An early Steven's Resolve really speeds things along and the extra Stellar Wish reach to find it can do a lot to increase your odds of finding that very Supporter. Almost every Stellar Wish will hit something decent, it’s just a bonus card that helps you get going faster. You can afford to give up at least three Prizes each game, sometimes five if you’re against something that either doesn’t target the Bench or play Custom Catcher, so sacrificing Jirachi and the Prizes they award is well worth it.

Four Flabebe and Four Florges

Obviously Florges is a Stage 2 which is unfortunate because it’s more difficult than other things to set up, but the one plus side is that you have ample space to play as thick of a line as you want so you can reliably get it going. Against decks that have Custom Catcher you might want to set up as many as three so that you can still use Wondrous Gift whenever you want. You want to have a full line if possible so you can have a piece in reserve if one gets Knocked Out. Also, with limited Item-based Pokemon search in Pokémon Communication you will want to have the maximum copies of both so you can draw into them and save a card off Steven’s Resolve if possible.

Two Munchlax

Since this deck doesn’t attack you might as well do something with your turn and that’s where Munchlax comes in. Another flip, very similar to Florges itself, you can put any card from your discard pile onto the top of your deck. So if you want to recover a Florges, for example, now’s your chance. Keep in mind that this will go on top of your Wondrous Gift card, so you should be ready to Stellar Wish for the latter of the two so you can get both of your recovered cards into your hand on your following turn if it works out that way. This is a nice inclusion for a deck that would otherwise just pass the turn when it’s over, so you might as well play it — and of course, with a heads it’s quite good, too!

Two Mew

Venom Shot is the biggest threat when it comes to snipe damage. That said, these are mainly a tech for Mewtwo and Mew-GX decks. Pikachu and Zekrom-GX has fallen off a great deal but a boosted Tag Bolt GX is nice to be protected against as well. A Mewtwo and Mew-GX player will push for Espeon and Deoxys-GX‘s Cross Division GX to Knock Out your first Mew, so that’s why there’s two. With the nature of this deck being to avoid giving up Prizes, you’ll want to have as many ways to deny them as possible and having two Mew does just that — it’s extra insurance against a rough situation otherwise. You could opt for Shrine of Punishment in place of Sky Pillar and then Mimikyu in place of Mew to stop potential snipe attacks with Perfection but that’s less effective as you have to find both pieces at once instead of just one Mew.

One Spiritomb

Here’s your one-trick pony to Knock Out a Cryogonal. Frozen Lock can stop you from playing the game temporarily and you can put an end to that by taking it out with Spiritomb‘s Anguish Cry. You can do up to 160 damage, so this has some other application too if there’s a different Pokemon you’re having trouble with and just want to get it out of the way for good (unless your opponent has some way of recovering it.)

One Latios-GX

Clear Vision GX is to stop Cross Division GX or any other detrimental GX attack. You won’t always use it every game, but the option is very good in case you must. That’s about it, you can’t Tag Purge with this list, it’s just a way to stop some nasty attacks.

Four Steven’s Resolve and Four Professor Elm’s Lecture

Flabébé you need to get started and then the Rare Candy and Florges to complete the job after that. Steven’s Resolve speeds up your finding of Lillie’s Poke Doll as well, it’s just a nice fit for a deck that doesn’t have much going on until you’re set up — where and when you’ll start using Snack Search to lap up some useful cards at the end of your turn on a flip.

One Faba

Faba shouldn’t be in the deck, to be frank. I feel like it was a way to “have a chance” against a Pidgeotto Control deck, but it won’t be much of a chance. Sure, you can get rid of their Recycle Energy but then what? They still just get back cards via Resource Management and win the game, not much to it. I would take this out for a second Rainbow Energy.

Four Stealthy Hood

These are for Ninetales and its Nine Temptations. You have no way of beating any Fire-type deck playing it without them, you need to limit your Bench accordingly (nothing that awards Prizes should be on the Bench that doesn’t have a Stealthy Hood attached) to something like three Florges, all with Stealthy Hood, and then always have a Lillie’s Poke Doll in reserve on the Bench to have another to promote after your Active one is Knocked Out. This should work perfectly unless you start flipping a bunch of tails.

Two Sky Pillar

These are defense against a random Mew and Malamar and/or Mewtwo and Mew-GX utilizing Espeon and Deoxys-GX. While it probably won’t do much against the latter because they will save their counter Stadium for when they choose to use Cross Division GX, it saves you from certain failure against a Mew. Thirty damage is manageable and you can eventually win the Stadium war by using Lusamine to recover an “infinite” number of Sky Pillar until you’ve got it locked.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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