Standard Pure Ultra Necrozma

[JumpluffTCG]

Hi all,

I just wanted to post a very rough draft of a concept I came up with less than half an hour ago, using Ultra Necrozma but without Malamar.

It's a little strange, but with access to both Max Elixirs and Beast Ring, it's very easy to accelerate energies onto Ultra Necrozma. I do realize this thing dumps a ton of energies after each attack, but dumping only 2 energies yields 180 damage, which is enough to score knock outs on a wide range of relevant EX/GXs with Choice Band.

Not sure just how viable this deck is because I don't own a playset of Ultra Necrozmas, but if anyone does and plays this deck for the heck of it please let me know how it goes!

List:

Spoiler

****** Pokémon Trading Card Game Deck List ******

##Pokémon - 9

* 4 Ultra Necrozma-GX FLI 95
* 1 Oricorio GRI 55
* 4 Tapu Lele-GX GRI 60

##Trainer Cards - 37

* 4 Max Elixir BKP 102
* 4 Beast Ring FLI 102
* 4 Professor Sycamore STS 114
* 4 Ultra Ball ROS 93
* 4 Mysterious Treasure FLI 113
* 4 Guzma BUS 115
* 2 N NVI 101
* 2 Cynthia UPR 119
* 1 Lillie SUM 147
* 3 Float Stone BKT 137
* 3 Choice Band GRI 121
* 2 Super Rod BKT 149

##Energy - 14

* 1 Beast Energy {*} FLI 117
* 9 Psychic Energy 5
* 4 Metal Energy 8

Total Cards - 60

****** Deck List Generated by the Pokémon TCG Online www.pokemon.com/TCGO ******

Quick overview of choices:

4 Ultra Necrozma GX: Simply because going any lower will cause you to mulligan way too often, and you'll be attacking almost exclusively with this thing so you might as well maximize your odds of starting it. Also, I envision the winning board state to be one with 2-3 Ultra Necrozmas powered up and ready to fire off a Photon Geyser, which would be easiest to accomplish if you have the full 4.

1 Vital Dance Oricorio: I believe this Oricorio is a better pick than Professor's Letter is, since you can search Oricorio through both Mysterious Treasure and Ultra Ball (giving you a total of 9 outs to searching your deck for energies when you need to, assuming none are prized). I don't think there's any reason to go above 1 though, and having only 1 means this thing is a free Pokemon since all your other Pokemon are 2 prizes and having Oricorio knocked out accomplishes absolutely nothing for your opponent.

4 Tapu Lele GX: I realized that this deck can't fit Octillery like Buzzwole can (imo the protection from Ns is what separates Buzzwole from so many other decks in the format), hence I decided to run the full playset of Tapu Leles to help you Wonder Tag you into a supporter late game. Also doesn't hurt that it's compatible with Mysterious Treasure.

2 Super Rod: Since you're dumping so many energies with Photon Geyser, I figured it would be helpful to have two Super Rods as opposed to a Super Rod/Rescue Stretcher split, just one or the other, or none at all. What people have been figuring out with Beast Ring is that you occasionally run into instances where you don't even have enough energies left in deck to Beast Ring, and the thicker Super Rod line will help prevent those scenarios.

Energies: 1 Beast Energy is absolutely mandatory. Beyond that, 4 Metals to cover the cost of Necrozma's attack while 9 Psychics to power it up. Here I could perhaps use some optimization. I think that perhaps I should use a couple of Unit Energies instead of the Metals in the event that you have a Necrozma with a Metal attached, have 1 Metal and 2 Psychic in the discard, and you would ideally want to Super Rod just the psychics in to maximize the odds of hitting Elixir on a psychic. Also, perhaps 3 Metal and 10 Psychics would be more optimal since 9 does edge on the lower end for Max Elixir.

Thoughts? It is late here as of posting this, but I also do like entertaining crazy ideas.

 

[PlatinumDude]

I don't think this is a viable variant since the Malamar are necessary for Ultra Necrozma to chain Photon Geysers on consecutive turns, while Dawn Wings + Float Stone is necessary to get a spent Ultra on to the bench for energy recharges. This deck is also hard-walled by Hoopa and baby Alolan Ninetales.

 

[JumpluffTCG]

I don't think this is a viable variant since the Malamar are necessary for Ultra Necrozma to chain Photon Geysers

Is it really? I challenge this assertion and I think that it is possible for U-Necrozma to function without Malamar. I mainly cite Dusk Mane Necrozma which has seen play without its obvious Magnezone pairing, running on Max Elixirs and Beast Rings, and that thing pitches 3 energies each time it attacks whereas you're usually only pitching 2 each time U-Necrozma attempts to take a KO. And how important is this set up for streaming Photon Geysers if either a.) you have a high likelihood of being OHKOd back in this standard format and 2.) you can close out a game with just 3-4 knock outs? If sustainability is what you're getting at then a copy of Lunala Prism could be added to make that better (a card which I admittedly forgot about last night). U-Necrozma GX by itself is a strong card, and I'm merely suggesting more ways to play it than with the obvious Malamar.

This deck is also hard-walled by Hoopa and baby Alolan Ninetales.

There are easy ways around that (Lunala Prism Star, Mew) and thus this deck concept is no weaker to Hoopa/Alolan Ninetales than a traditional U-Necrozma + Malamar deck is. And that's besides the point. Hoopa/Alolan Ninetales are basically obsolete in the standard meta due to baby Buzzwole.

And I think turning this from Pure U-Necrozma to U-Necrozma/Garbodor solves that problem entirely.