Can Yanmega ex Really Work? — Unlocking Its Full Potential

Hello PokeBeach readers! Gabriel Semedo here with another Pokemon TCG article — and today, I want to talk about Yanmega ex, one of the intriguing new Pokemon from Destined Rivals. While many players see promise in Yanmega ex, few have figured out how to unlock that potential in a real, competitive way. So, is it an eternal "maybe," or can Yanmega ex finally make waves in the meta?

I decided to put in the work — lots of it — to test as many combinations as possible and refine what I believe is the best way to build around Yanmega ex. You’ll find the results in this article.

As I write this, I’ve just received confirmation that I’ve qualified for the 2025 Pokemon World Championships in Anaheim, California. It’s something I was expecting now that NAIC is over and the season’s officially wrapped up.

Unfortunately, I didn’t attend NAIC this year. But it gave me the opportunity to begin prepping early for Worlds. I believe the path to success at the biggest Pokemon tournament in the world lies in one word: creativity. That’s what worked for me in the past — in Worlds 2014 and 2016, I made Top 64 with unique decks (Landorus-EX with Dusknoir, and M Audino-EX with Yveltal). But in 2013 and 2018, I played meta decks (Darkrai-EX and Rayquaza-GX)... and had terrible results.

Despite qualifying for Worlds every year since 2018, I haven’t actually attended. Some years, I felt I didn’t deserve it —like when I had an average season and qualifying was easier. Other times, I simply wasn’t motivated enough to justify the travel. But this year feels different. In addition to being more motivated than ever, the scoring system has changed and now Worlds is really only for the best players in the world. I realized that several good players who wanted to go to Worlds didn't qualify, and several others managed to qualify by the slimmest of margins. Now, not going to Worlds could literally mean taking away someone's dream of playing in that prestigious competition.

With that in mind, I decided to adopt an old-school deck-building and training process that I used to do, which was basically to test more ideas and Pokemon and get out of the metagame cycle a little. The good part about testing different things is that you gain repertoire and learn new things, but the bad part is the time. Whenever you're testing something new, you're missing out on learning a little more about the Dragapult ex vs Gardevoir ex matchup or something relevant to competitive play.

Throughout the season, it's difficult to test everything from all sets because the tournament schedule is tight — especially in the USA, where there's a Regional almost every weekend. But now, at the end of the season, everybody will have almost two months until the World Championships, which means there's time to cook up something surprising. And to do that, you need to find ingredients that are different from the usual.

Yanmega ex is the Pokemon in Destined Rivals that raises the most doubts in players' minds, as no one can say whether this Pokemon is actually good or bad. Everyone says it has potential, but there are no Yanmega ex deck lists that are successful out there. In the end, I realised that no one knows much about Yanmega, and those who went to NAIC preferred not to waste much time with this Pokemon. I decided to do some research on online tournaments and tournaments in Japan and found several ideas, but none that were unanimous. There is no defined list for the deck yet, so I decided to understand how Yanmega ex works and what is the best way to use it for this metagame. The fact that Yanmega is not popular in Japan already made me think that the chances of it having great hidden potential were low, but I still believed in its potential and needed to test it for myself.

The entire process of creating and testing Yanmega ex was very interesting, and there were many improvements in deck-building and gameplay. I believe I managed to come up with a very satisfactory list that is suitable for the metagame. I really liked the final result, and it completely cleared up my eternal doubt about Yanmega's real potential.

When I started testing two weeks ago, I was surprised by the deck's positioning due to the good matchups against Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex, Charizard ex, and Cynthia's Garchomp ex, as Yanmega ex hits for Weakness, and these were decks that I was constantly facing. Now, more recently, I've been facing a lot of Gardevoir ex and Dragapult ex again, which made me adapt the list for the post-NAIC metagame.

How Yanmega ex Works

When I test a new Pokemon that introduces a novel mechanic, I start with a consistency-first approach — maximum synergy, minimum distractions. So my initial list was built around just Yanmega ex and Teal Mask Ogerpon ex. It doesn't get any more consistent than that, and in fact, I have won games just by playing well and my opponent having a bad start.

In this first test, Yanmega ex worked well, but I realised that it requires a lot of work and therefore there wouldn't be many spaces for new ideas. I also realised that although the combination worked, it lacked a special seasoning to deal with the main decks of the format, Dragapult ex and Gardevoir ex. Just Yanmega and Teal Mask Ogerpon is not enough to deal with the metagame.

Then I decided to test the maximum versatility that Yanmega ex could provide, so I decided to make a list with Lillie's Clefairy ex and Regigigas to Knock Out Dragapult ex, Iron Hands ex to pick up two Prizes whenever it Knocks Out smaller Basic Pokemon, Munkidori to heal and add damage, and even Farigiraf ex to Knock Out Gardevoir ex via Weakness and protect itself from Raging Bolt ex. For this, I used Luminous Energy to provide the Energy I wanted. The list managed to perform well, but after testing, the only Pokemon that really did well was Iron Hands ex. Regigigas and Clefairy ex are usually Knocked Out before they get a chance to attack, Farigiraf ex is inconsistent and doesn't solve the Gardevoir problem. Munkidori helps, but really not by much.

I also tested some out-of-the-box Pokemon combinations with Yanmega ex, such as Vespiquen ex, Dudunsparce, and Crustle. Vespiquen ex has a good synergy with Yanmega's attack and, together with Lillie's Clefairy ex, it offers a good answer to Dragapult ex. But it is a Stage 1 Pokemon (difficult to get it out in this format), it takes up extra space in the deck, and is of no use for anything else besides that.

Dudunsparce offers consistency, it is a single-Prize Pokemon, leaves the field when it uses its Ability, and this can be considered as a free Retreat for Yanmega ex to activate its Ability too. Besides, leaving the field can be good because it doesn't become a Knock Out target. All of this in theory is good, but in practice, Dudunsparce doesn't work as expected. I believe that in the end, you end up losing a lot of space in the deck and having a lot of work to make Dudunsparce and receiving little benefit. If I'm going to use Dudunsparce, I prefer to use Drakloak or N's Zoroark ex, which offers me permanent draw power.

This concludes the public portion of this article.

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