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Standard Raichu(UNB) & Alolan Raichu(UNM) NOT Tag Team

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
****** Pokémon Trading Card Game Deck List ******

##Pokémon - 19

* 1 Ditto {*} LOT 154
* 3 Blitzle TEU 44
* 4 Pikachu CIN UNM
* 2 Alolan Raichu UNM
* 2 Raichu UNB 55
* 3 Zebstrika LOT 82
* 4 Honedge FLI 46

##Trainer Cards - 12

* 4 Sightseer LOT 189
* 4 Ingo & Emmet TEU 144
* 4 Hapu UNM

##Energy - 29

* 29 Lightning Energy 4

Total Cards - 60

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

A deck I've been playing around with (using sophocles, pika-draw pikachu and a-raichu BUS as placeholders). It's a very odd looking deck, for good reason.
How it works:
1. Put honedges in the active as often as possible, to place 3 damage counters (gets around mew and sky pillar) when they get KOed. KO a mew if you have to using these counters.
2. Set up 2 zebstrikas on the bench along with 1 of each raichu and a-raichu.
3. Delete your deck while your opponent takes 3 prizes.
4. Attack with raichu's never give up, putting all the energy on a-raichu.
5. Attack with a-raichu's electric rain, wiping your opponent's bench entirely.

Strengths: you should have 20-25 energy attached and be able to take 6 prizes or wipe your opponent's board if you get a chance to attack with alolan raichu at all.
Weaknesses: decks that can recycle mew easily or play sky pillar, gust a lot, play mismagius to mess up the prize race, and decks that don't take prizes.

This is just a shell at the moment, but I think there are cards either out already or coming out that fix most of the weaknesses.
It's possible that mismagius can get you through your deck faster while also counteracting your opponent's mismagii and control decks that refuse to take prizes on their own.
Reset hole marshadow could help against sky pillar, which nobody is playing but just in case. It also deletes black market and wonder lab, even though those are minor inconveniences at best.
Gusting... I'm not sure what people will be playing, but custom catcher is only twice a game at most, usually once. A backup alolan raichu would fix that. Ninetales could be a thing, and if it is, a stealthy hood on a-raichu would solve it, unless they also play lysandre labs or faba. And if it's truly a problem, I could put in solrock and lunatone.
Mew is the worst problem, and honedge is probably already the best answer to it, but maybe attaching spell tags to the honedges would be even better. Possibly a mew of my own could use its attack to take out other mews. It's unfortunate you have to take a prize if you KO mew, but you can't win em all.
 

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I was thinking of that myself actually, and then I re-read then new set list and noticed Grimsley. You could do raichu's attack, play Grimsley, and then attack with mew, and still have a turn left to do electric rain.
 

jamashawalker

Ikouze!
Member
I've been waiting to comment on this since last night!! First off I LOVE this creative deck idea. It looks super weird but on paper looks like something that can actually work.
I showed this to a bunch of people at my league last night and they all laughed with amazement saying that it'll either break the game or be a big flop. I'm hoping for more of the former! lol

anyways let's definitely work on making this deck more consistent and doable.

-First problems I see is custom catcher. As soon as you do your UNB Raichu attack, you are putting a big target on your head to gust up the A-Raichu because they know what's going to come next once they see it. To solve this, I'd put in 4 Reset Stamps. Yes 4!! Reason is because you'll want to disrupt your opponent's hand as much as possible throughout the game so that you can mess up their custom catcher combo and any other combo they might want to do throughout the game. Also most people won't bench mew if they don't see a threat(pikarom) coming. So they may either Discard it early in the game(If that case yay) or hold on to it and use it for Pokémon Communication target. If they fill up their bench space early on and forgo the benching mew then that's even better

-Another problem is Clunkyness with the energy count. While I agree you need a large amount of energy in this deck, I do believe you need outs to get your draw supports. 4 Pokegears if you can find the room.

-Viridian forest is also a good stadium in case you come across a Wondrous Labyrinth/Black Market. Viridian allows you to discard more electric energy and add more to your hand to discard again with a supporter/Zebstrika line.

-I believe Mew is necessary for the deck because Pikarom will be common. And you don't want Pikarom to clear your board quickly. Mew attacking another mew is something that may happen but you would probably only get one shot with it

-Blitzle +Zebstrika is great!! Possibly adding a U-turn board so that you can retreat into a different Honedge if you don't have another on the field after an immediate knock out.

-You're entire deck is 60 HP or less(before evolutions)so Elm's lecture can come into play early-mid game that'll allow you to reload on honedge's and search for any other pokemon you might need.


There are a lot of different things I suggested but I wouldn't recommend them all in one deck. Just different things to test out with :) I do believe you should add Mew+ Pokegears though. Mew stopping Pikarom is crucial and Pokegear to get you out of brick city would also be huge. For a deck that looks like it has a lot of space it sure feels tight! Last night I bought some of the UNB Raichu to test it out later and see how it goes. It looks like a lot of fun so I'll see if it's worth a build :) Good luck and keep us updated on how it turns out
 

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I've done a little more testing, and I have a very different version I'm working with, with mismagius instead of zebras, shuckles instead of honedges, and elm and fan club as supporters, with 2 dedenne GX for burst draw/discard with a disruptive GX attack. There are a million different ways to try to build this, but losing prizes quickly helps contain their board state a bit I think, and searching out 9 or 12 energy really speeds up the process. I really wish ptcgo had a beta test for the next format, where you can try out any combo without even owning all the cards. I'm nowhere near any leagues unfortunately, so I'd have to test against my 8 year old with proxies and I haven't gotten around to that yet.
 

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
****** Pokémon Trading Card Game Deck List ******

##Pokémon - 22

* 4 Shuckle LOT 16
* 2 Dedenne-GX UNB 57
* 4 Pikachu CIN 30
* 2 Alolan Raichu CIN 31
* 2 Raichu UNB 55
* 4 Misdreavus UNB 77
* 4 Mismagius UNB 78

##Trainer Cards - 13

* 4 Electromagnetic Radar UNB 169
* 4 Professor Elm’s Lecture LOT 188
* 4 Mysterious Treasure FLI 113
* 1 Brock's Grit EVO 74

##Energy - 25

* 25 Lightning Energy 4

Total Cards - 60

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

Here is the shell I'm currently testing. I call it a shell because it doesn't have techs like mew that I expect will be in the final, but that depend on what other people are doing, or that I can't add yet like reset stamp etc.

I've tested a ton of things, from magnemite to draw 3 lightning energy, minun whose attack is a sightseer for one energy, dusk stone, lady, etc. I even tried green at one point, which I just noticed is why ditto isn't in, so stick it in for a misdreavus. However this collection of cards seems to have one of the best combinations of search and discard. With magnemite I found my hand got too big to blow up my mismagius even for a single card, dusk stone was nice but treasure thins the hand better and finds the evolution as well, even though I have to wait a turn longer. Minun was good but I had to run several to be relevant and then I wasn't finding the core pokes.

I seem to be able to get 17-20 energy discarded most games by turn 3 with 3 prizes gone, which is what I'm basically going for.
 

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
If anyone happens to still be following this, what are your thoughts on energy spinner? I don't know if it will be different post rotation, but right now going second is pretty easy to do most of the time, and that could mean you 1 or even 2 of these and get an extra 6 energy in hand to be dedenne'd away.

Also, it's probably impractical, but I tried jirachi and cyrus, just to make bench wiping even easier against something tough like alolan eggs. Worthwhile, or dead cards too often?
 

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I'm not sure why it took me about 50 tests to think of this, but Lt. Surge pushes this enticingly close to a viable archetype. The combination of mismagius, shuckle, dedenne, Lt. Surge and discard and draw supporters (I've switched back from elm to sightseer and ingo) just cuts through the deck like butter. All that remains to be seen is whether hapu is even better than ingo and emmett, whether duskull fits in here, and what tech cards we need.
 

Aaron McGlynn

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Still following it, I just built the deck myself using your first decklist. I'm going to playtest it a little bit at my league a few times and share the results. Are there any other pokemon better than honedge for the sacrificial lamb role? I was thinking about running some giant bombs w/ the honedge to potentially do 130 damage or at the very least get your opponent to opt out of attacking you for a turn or 2 to buy some more time to set up
 

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Depends on what you expect to face, I guess. I'm leaning back toward zebstrika again myself, but with mismagius and poke comms to swap between two stage 1s. Mismagius lets you go down in prizes and draw some cards against stall, but you can just sac it vs aggressive decks. I haven't done any real life testing, so maybe you'd want to play a wall in addition, or a bomb like sigilyph GX. At this point your feedback will be more valuable than my suggestions I would wager. I imagine giant bombs will eat too many slots, but I don't really know.

EDIT here is my current ptcgo dummy build:
****** Pokémon Trading Card Game Deck List ******

##Pokémon - 24

* 4 Blitzle TEU 44
* 4 Pikachu CIN 30
* 2 Alolan Raichu CIN 31
* 2 Raichu UNB 55
* 4 Zebstrika LOT 82
* 4 Misdreavus UNB 77
* 4 Mismagius UNB 78

##Trainer Cards - 11

* 3 Brock's Grit EVO 74
* 4 Sightseer LOT 189
* 4 Pokémon Communication BLW 99

##Energy - 25

* 25 Lightning Energy 4

Total Cards - 60

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

I've played the first three to five turns against bots too many times, and it's pretty smooth. However it's not teched at all, I imagine you'd for sure want a mew, honedge might still be the best counter to opposing mews (so maybe stick one or two back in) and you might also want a 3rd of each raichu. I have a feeling hapu will work better than sightseer when combined with mismagius, since you only draw 2 into hand so mismagius can fire off for a bunch. Grimsley/your own mew could be another mew counter, but only if you can find a way to put damage on their board (head bolt maybe?). And even then grimsley is going to eat deck slots since you'd need to make it redundant, although maybe you swap out one brock for a pal pad, and then you only need a couple grimsley. There may be a way to cut back on the mismagius line if you just discipline yourself to brock around halfway through the deck no matter what. Then you could have 2 pal pads, 2 grimsley, 2 brock.
 
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Aaron McGlynn

Aspiring Trainer
Member
My bad, I've been on vacation the past week so I havent been able to test it at all but I'm going to run it a little at my local league tonight. Where are you at with your current build?
 

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I keep having to do actual work instead of testing my crazy idea. I did pull 2 a. raichus, with Brock that's probably fine. I'll have to throw it up against actual ptcgo people when I get the chance, but unfortunately (timing wise) I'll be away on vacation all next week, so I'm hoping other people will be able to test their own takes on it and see if it has a chance.
 

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I'm finally back from vacation, and played a bunch of games with several different iterations. Just FYI it is a total riot when you get this off on ptcgo, I can't even imagine what some of these people are thinking when I take six prizes or wipe their board in one go after falling behind sometimes 5 prizes. Sometimes I even fall short, but have a mew on the bench that can finish, which is hilarious, I did that against a slowduck player today.

Here is the list I'm finding to be pretty solid right now. I've moved away completely from mismagius at the moment as it seems everyone on the ladder is willing to destroy my pokemon sequentially. Instead I'm using the really awesome and woefully underutilized ultra prism spiritomb combined with Lt. Surge to eat through deck ridiculously fast:

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

##Pokémon - 18

* 3 Blitzle LOT 81
* 4 Pikachu UNM 55
* 2 Alolan Raichu UNM 57
* 2 Raichu UNB 55
* 3 Zebstrika LOT 82
* 1 Mew UNB 76
* 3 Spiritomb UPR 53

##Trainer Cards - 18

* 2 Grimsley UNM 199
* 3 Lt. Surge’s Strategy UNB 178
* 2 Brock's Grit TEU 135
* 4 Sightseer LOT 189
* 3 Ingo & Emmet TEU 144
* 4 Pokémon Communication BLW 99

##Energy - 24

* 24 Lightning Energy SMEnergy 4

Total Cards - 60

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

Grimsley is a 2 of because it is possible to win a game by surge-grimsley-grimsley on a mew on the same turn you take the other five prizes with electro rain, but more importantly it often fixes math along with mew's attack and you just can't depend on a one-of with no gladion or rotom dex around.
Because spiritomb can hand me back two supporters, I can surge double sightseer to burn a pile of cards, or surge brock sightseer to try to draw back into what I put back.
Spiritomb also has the terrify attack, which can stall your opponent a few turns if all else fails (works great against an early giratina before mallys are up, etc).
I'd put another mew in if I had one at the moment, mostly so I could take out an enemy mew if needed. I'm still considering a spell tag as well, just to make mew hunting easier and more math fixing of course.
 
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rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I've been busy again, but I am still working on this and I think I might have an idea that will increase consistency dramatically, which is to go down to about 18 energy and add in 3-3 shedinja, to make it very possible to pull off the combo twice. I'm still working on the right 60 but plan to upload as soon as it is workable. Attacking twice means I need less energy each time, so search cards like shuckle can be more efficient than heavy discard. Its a very different approach so it may take a bit before I get it right but I think it's the way to go to avoid bricky starts and accidental deck outs.
 

Aaron McGlynn

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I've been toying with this recently and I'll add my updated decklist tonight but I added a zeraora gx, 2 baby zeraora UNB, and upped the raichu count to 3 & 3. I also made some other tweaks but cant remember if the top of my head.
 

Aaron McGlynn

Aspiring Trainer
Member
My thinking with the zeraoras are using the GX attack in the early game to power a baby zeraora which can kill almost any tag team with 5 energy.
 

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I got a bit stuck on it and had so many other ideas I have been trying out that I haven't really done much, but I like the zeraora idea... I actually just tried a build with electrode gx and dedenne gx with 4 radar, instead of my previous mismagius idea (because there still are decks out there not taking prizes) which got an early electric rain off to soften things up.
 

rewster1

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Arrrghhh, I just saw a video on youtube about alolan raichu being played with the nuzzle engine, to actually sweep six prizes like this deck! I desperately need 4 nuzzle pikachu on ptcgo to test this out. They didn't have never give up raichu in, so I think I can maybe combine the 2 ideas into something better than either. Anyone have a guess as to their pack value?
 
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