Discussion The Guardian Rising decks you want to play/don't want to play against

Kietharr

Aspiring Trainer
Member
#1 - Trevenant BREAK/Vileplume

The new grass type Trevenant is an ideal platform for Trev BREAK since it can be evolved on turn 1 via forest of giant plants. Poltergeist is also a great single target attack in an item lock deck, giving him a less consistent but potentially much more threatening attack against your opponent's active. Grass type Phantump also allows you to include a FOGP enhanced Nervous Seed Trevenant which heavily punishes Volcanion decks in particular, which are currently the go-to counters to the new wave of grass item lock decks. I think this is a deck that people are going to struggle to deal with in standard. While Hex Maniac stops Decidueye dead for a turn and Volcanion's a headache for that deck, there's no easy solution to Trevenant.

#2 - Lurantis-GX/Lurantis/Tapu Bulu-GX

When Lurantis-GX first came out, a lot of people said that it was one good grass attacker partner away from blowing open the meta. Tapu Bulu is that card. With a confusing lack of weakness rendering Volcanion impotent and an attack that can hit 180 in exchange for discarding all energy, Bulu is the ideal energy acceleration target for Lurantis. Lurantis-GX and Lurantis share a basic card which is very good for consistency considerations. The numerous ways that Bulu's damage can be boosted (baby lurantis, choice band, kukui, his attack's secondary effect) give you a lot of paths to hit whatever magic number you're chasing in a particular game.

#3 - Volcanion-EX/Turntonator-GX

Turntonator is basically made for Volcanion-EX. For 1 R, you can attach 5 R from discard. While you'll still want a babyvolc or two for playing the 7 prize game, I can easily see this card being played in every Volcanion deck due to the Tauros-like board space it creates and the acceleration factor it can provide. It's especially scary in expanded, where compressor still exists.

#4 - Aquabox 2.0

Though this is not a new deck, and the core cards it plays aren't going to be much different than they are now, I think that Aqua Patch being added to Lapras-GX will move the deck up at least a full tier. I don't see Primarina gaining traction in this style of deck due to the large space investment it needs, but Lapras/Glaceon are certainly good enough on their own to mount a formidable threat with all of this support despite Lapras-GX's unfortunate grass weakness.

#5 - Koko's Lightning Box (or Thunderdome?)

Lightning is in kind of an odd place as it stands, despite being fast in the games, the staple cards of lightning decks in standard are quite slow. Raikou is tanky for a single prize card but needs 3 energy to attack (the only acceleration option being Electrode, which effectively makes Raikou a 2 prize attacker when attached). Jolteon wins via applying Chinese water torture, dripping 70 damage a turn onto basic heavy decks that lack ways to get around the flash ray lock. Tapu Koko ironically plays right in to this sort of slow slugfest of a game by letting you take resources (the extra valuable Electrodes, in particular) off of wounded Raikous or Jolteons to keep up with the slow and steady pressure while also having a GX move that allows him to blow open a game against decks that pile on energy in longer games like Mega Mewtwo and Darkrai-EX.

#6 - Garbodor/Trevenant

I'm very interested to see where people take this archetype. The synergy between these cards is obvious, Trevenant pressures the opponent to dump items out of their hand, Garbodor punishes them for using or discarding items. The big question mark for me is what else is included here? Do you go the FOGP/Vileplume route? Do you include tech DCE attackers? AOR eevees? Which do you prioritize, Garb or Trev? It'll be hard to answer these questions until we can playtest these cards, but this might just be the most interesting 1 prize evolution attacker deck since Vespiquen.

#7 Mega Mawile-EX/Sylveon-GX

This may be reaching, but Mawile gains a couple of key new toys that bring it up from an annoying joke deck to something that might be seriously considered. Sylveon's a card that allows you to both find cards in your deck like a super-talonflame and gives you more disruptive stall pressure with Prayer-GX's ability to slow down any opposing attempt to build a bench (except against FOGP decks, sadly) while you're building up your Mawile. It also opens up the chance to use Team Skull Grunt if you knocked more energies into their hand than they can attach the next turn. But the real helper here is Victini, which makes it highly likely that you will get at least 1 energy discard on every attack. Combined with the classic 4 crushing hammers, Mawile will have a much better chance of keeping energy off the field.

#8 Goodra/Solgaleo

If Mawile was reaching, this is truly going long, it's more of a joke than a serious deck but one I'm really looking forward to messing around with. While this is a double stage 2 deck, Sligoo's Water Duplicates style attack will help build early momentum, and the lack of a color requirement on both Division and Power Whip allows you to easily fit in enough metal energy to also utilize Solgaleo if the situation calls for it. Under ideal conditions, Solgaleo can boost up a Goodra to hit the 200 mark in one turn, and Goodra can pick its target at will. Field Blowers make Lysandre stalling more powerful which will be a boon for this deck, since you can just leave something with a big retreat cost in active while you snipe away at their bench.
 

Epist

Captain Clamps
Advanced Member
Member
I love the idea of playing an aquabox deck, but how do you tech against the mindless mob of deciplume decks? I want to believe it can be relevant in the meta, but unless Volc/Turtonator greatly reduce the # of deciplumes & lurplumes, I don't see how...help me get over my cynicism please :)
 

Kietharr

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Glaceon and Hex Maniac are generally how you (slowly) deal with grasslock, but I agree the answers are not good, and Glaceon does nothing against Lurantis/Bulu. It will still be a better deck than Greninja in the format but I get the sense that weakness is quickly making the FWG decks into a game of rock paper scissors, while Dark and now Lightning are strong types that are generally weak to a gimpy type that only has like two viable decks.
 

BlueMaster21

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hey guys could someone help me in this crisis situation, By the time guardians rising comes out I would have saved enough for an elite trainer box but I'm not sure if I should get the new one or just a regular SUM box because If I buy a SUM box I have a chance of getting decidueye(s) But I'm just to scared that buy the time Guardians rising is out, DeciPlume will be dead, please someone help me decide which box I can get
 

Kietharr

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Decidueye will not be dead until rotation hits and gets rid of FOGP and even then it's not certain (though item lock will certainly die in standard unless they print a new obnoxious item lock card in SM3). IIRC Decidueye is getting reprinted in GUR anyways with FA/UR art, and there's also going to be a Decidueye GX box in the US.

But you really shouldn't be buying boxes for the chance to pull individual rare cards to use for playing, things like ETBs are more of a collector's item. The play peripherals are nice but you can get those practically for free, all you really need are a few dice.

Just for the sake of demonstration: There are about 80 rare or higher cards in the set. 27 of these are GX prints, and there is only 1 Decidueye print in the set. If GXes are about 1 in 12 like EX cards were you have about a 0.1% chance of getting a Decidueye in any given non-mapped pack. The real chance is slightly higher since I'm not adjusting for the extra rarity of SR/UR cards but you get the general picture. For a reasonable chance at pulling a Decidueye, much less a playset you'd have to crack hundreds of packs. Or you could just buy a playset of Decidueye as singles for about $40 which is about the price of an ETB. It reminds me of the people who buy ROS booster boxes to get Shaymins, when one booster box costs about what a pair of Shaymin-EX as singles does.
 

BlueMaster21

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Decidueye will not be dead until rotation hits and gets rid of FOGP and even then it's not certain (though item lock will certainly die in standard unless they print a new obnoxious item lock card in SM3). IIRC Decidueye is getting reprinted in GUR anyways with FA/UR art, and there's also going to be a Decidueye GX box in the US.

But you really shouldn't be buying boxes for the chance to pull individual rare cards to use for playing, things like ETBs are more of a collector's item. The play peripherals are nice but you can get those practically for free, all you really need are a few dice.

Just for the sake of demonstration: There are about 80 rare or higher cards in the set. 27 of these are GX prints, and there is only 1 Decidueye print in the set. If GXes are about 1 in 12 like EX cards were you have about a 0.1% chance of getting a Decidueye in any given non-mapped pack. The real chance is slightly higher since I'm not adjusting for the extra rarity of SR/UR cards but you get the general picture. For a reasonable chance at pulling a Decidueye, much less a playset you'd have to crack hundreds of packs. Or you could just buy a playset of Decidueye as singles for about $40 which is about the price of an ETB. It reminds me of the people who buy ROS booster boxes to get Shaymins, when one booster box costs about what a pair of Shaymin-EX as singles does.
Thanks for your response. I thought buying an ETB would be good because I have never opened a SUM pack because of the whole scam thing and what not. Ever since I found that they were no longer a scam I was contemplating If I should buy an ETB just to get those staple commons/uncommons. But I think you're right I'm going to wait for GUR to drop and see what deck is popular and I will use my money to get it, Thanks for changing my mind. P.S. Will the UK be getting a decidueye GX box? Because I'm not in the US and a box of that sort sounds like a good way to spend some money.
 

Jay Sal

PTCGO IGN:Tangelatamer
Member
Decidueye will not be dead until rotation hits and gets rid of FOGP and even then it's not certain (though item lock will certainly die in standard unless they print a new obnoxious item lock card in SM3). IIRC Decidueye is getting reprinted in GUR anyways with FA/UR art, and there's also going to be a Decidueye GX box in the US.

But you really shouldn't be buying boxes for the chance to pull individual rare cards to use for playing, things like ETBs are more of a collector's item. The play peripherals are nice but you can get those practically for free, all you really need are a few dice.

Just for the sake of demonstration: There are about 80 rare or higher cards in the set. 27 of these are GX prints, and there is only 1 Decidueye print in the set. If GXes are about 1 in 12 like EX cards were you have about a 0.1% chance of getting a Decidueye in any given non-mapped pack. The real chance is slightly higher since I'm not adjusting for the extra rarity of SR/UR cards but you get the general picture. For a reasonable chance at pulling a Decidueye, much less a playset you'd have to crack hundreds of packs. Or you could just buy a playset of Decidueye as singles for about $40 which is about the price of an ETB. It reminds me of the people who buy ROS booster boxes to get Shaymins, when one booster box costs about what a pair of Shaymin-EX as singles does.


When did they release that we would be getting full arts and secret rares of the starters? I thought those were coming in box sets after the GUR set drops?
 

Jay Sal

PTCGO IGN:Tangelatamer
Member
Hey guys could someone help me in this crisis situation, By the time guardians rising comes out I would have saved enough for an elite trainer box but I'm not sure if I should get the new one or just a regular SUM box because If I buy a SUM box I have a chance of getting decidueye(s) But I'm just to scared that buy the time Guardians rising is out, DeciPlume will be dead, please someone help me decide which box I can get


And as Kietharr said if your looking for specific cards its way more economic to buy them in singles especially if your looking to create a deck with the cards. Yes, We all like opening packs but once you get your deck compiled and start playing with it, Im sure you will win some packs. Also you can save yourself some money if you have an early idea of what you want to play. For example, I plan on playing the trevenant break deck and ive been successfully picking up the breaks for $1.50(shipped), of course when GUR releases and the deck is made and proves to work the price will go up. Just something to also consider. If you feel like you may play it and the card is selling for cheap you may want to invest in it.
 

BlueMaster21

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hey Jay Sal, I appreciate your response, I was planning to make a DeciPlume but Its to expensive (shaymin EX) I have heard many good things about a new trevenant deck coming soon but I also heard this is only in expanded, Is this true? If its in standard I would make, please care to leave a list of a trevenant deck. Many thanks- Blue.
 

Jay Sal

PTCGO IGN:Tangelatamer
Member
Hey Jay Sal, I appreciate your response, I was planning to make a DeciPlume but Its to expensive (shaymin EX) I have heard many good things about a new trevenant deck coming soon but I also heard this is only in expanded, Is this true? If its in standard I would make, please care to leave a list of a trevenant deck. Many thanks- Blue.

There are two versions of the trevenant break deck, the one that everyone has been playing forever in expanded which essentially is an item lock deck but the second which is what we are talking about is based on the new cards. So when we say trevenant deck we arent talking about the normal one that is already made we are talking ,in theory, of a deck using the new GUR phantrump and trevenant along with using the old (breakpoint) trevenant break. The reason We are even including the old one is because with Forest of the giant plants you will be able to evolve him all the way to the break turn one. Once evolved he not only is a grass type but also psychic so he is hitting for two weaknesses. Furthermore, he now has the ability to apply damage counters around the board with the break attack and he gets an hp boost. So he gains all the positive without much negativity plus it helps to hit number for things like mewtwos since you will be hitting for weakness. As far as deck builds there are probably some "in theory" builds but since the card is not out its hard to play test and weed out what is needed or not needed in the deck. I would say all you need to really think about is the main components and those seem to be not too expensive atm but remember that may change once the set drops and if the deck shows that its a contender. (vileplume+ its evolutions and trevenant break)
 

Jay Sal

PTCGO IGN:Tangelatamer
Member
Hey Jay Sal, I appreciate your response, I was planning to make a DeciPlume but Its to expensive (shaymin EX) I have heard many good things about a new trevenant deck coming soon but I also heard this is only in expanded, Is this true? If its in standard I would make, please care to leave a list of a trevenant deck. Many thanks- Blue.

Im sorry i forgot to acknowledge it but as for the shaymin, every deck for the time being is going to have shaymin in it. I mean its pretty clear but its one of best draw supports in the game atm and doesnt take up too much room. Although if you dont have shaymin, you can always put in oranguru(sun and moon) or just simply put in more draw supporters/trainers. with vileplume being in your deck i would go oranguru and still be putting in cards that allow you to dig through your deck. i.e level balls, acro bikes, ultra balls stuff like that.
 

Ninjabot 215

Beep Boop
Member
Hey guys could someone help me in this crisis situation, By the time guardians rising comes out I would have saved enough for an elite trainer box but I'm not sure if I should get the new one or just a regular SUM box because If I buy a SUM box I have a chance of getting decidueye(s) But I'm just to scared that buy the time Guardians rising is out, DeciPlume will be dead, please someone help me decide which box I can get
It depends on what deck you're trying to build, honestly. If you want to build the dreaded DeciPlume, I suggest either buying the box or buying the cards individualy on an online store. But, if you want cards from the newest set (I'm buying a booster box 'cuz I want Lele and rainbow A. Ninetales reeealy bad but...) I suggest the Guardians Rising box.
 

Latte1504

Aspiring Trainer
Member
There are two versions of the trevenant break deck, the one that everyone has been playing forever in expanded which essentially is an item lock deck but the second which is what we are talking about is based on the new cards. So when we say trevenant deck we arent talking about the normal one that is already made we are talking ,in theory, of a deck using the new GUR phantrump and trevenant along with using the old (breakpoint) trevenant break. The reason We are even including the old one is because with Forest of the giant plants you will be able to evolve him all the way to the break turn one. Once evolved he not only is a grass type but also psychic so he is hitting for two weaknesses. Furthermore, he now has the ability to apply damage counters around the board with the break attack and he gets an hp boost. So he gains all the positive without much negativity plus it helps to hit number for things like mewtwos since you will be hitting for weakness. As far as deck builds there are probably some "in theory" builds but since the card is not out its hard to play test and weed out what is needed or not needed in the deck. I would say all you need to really think about is the main components and those seem to be not too expensive atm but remember that may change once the set drops and if the deck shows that its a contender. (vileplume+ its evolutions and trevenant break)
I do not believe the new Trevenant will be strong in Standard because its damage output is to low. 30x means your opponent needs, likely 6-8 items for an OHKO, and most won't due to N/Sycamore.
 

pokesage101

Is WishiWashi GX the new Darkrai EX?
Member
I do not believe the new Trevenant will be strong in Standard because its damage output is to low. 30x means your opponent needs, likely 6-8 items for an OHKO, and most won't due to N/Sycamore.
Correct me if i am wrong, but doesn,t the new trevenant need Trainer cards not item cards?
 

Jay Sal

PTCGO IGN:Tangelatamer
Member
I do not believe the new Trevenant will be strong in Standard because its damage output is to low. 30x means your opponent needs, likely 6-8 items for an OHKO, and most won't due to N/Sycamore.

I had to delete my initial response because i misread your reply but now ill answer your concerns.

The new trevenant hits for big numbers, the card reads "Your opponent reveals his or her hand. This attack does 30 damage times the number of Trainer cards in your opponent’s hand.". With that it hits for both trainers and supporters and in most decks thats 30 cards. It OHKO m mewtwo, lapras and any psychic/grass weakness card with only 4 TRAINER cards which is not hard at all. If the opponent decides to sycamore thats even better because they are getting rid of their resources. For things like volcanion you can easily run a salamence since all need is one fire and a dce. Trevenant hits numbers its a 1-2 shot and since trevenant is only one prize the prize trade is great. You hurt their deck set up because of the lock and while they are locked you are still hitting for damage. Of course this is all in thoery and we wont know the correct mix of cards until playtesting is done but this deck shows promise especially with waterbox decks becoming popular because of the aqua patch.
 

Jay Sal

PTCGO IGN:Tangelatamer
Member
Correct me if i am wrong, but doesn,t the new trevenant need Trainer cards not item cards?

You are correct. The translation as per the pokebeach article does say trainers and not item cards which would imply that supporters would be counted towards its attack.
 

Latte1504

Aspiring Trainer
Member
The new trevenant hits for big numbers, the card reads "Your opponent reveals his or her hand. This attack does 30 damage times the number of Trainer cards in your opponent’s hand.". With that it hits for both trainers and supporters and in most decks thats 30 cards. It OHKO m mewtwo, lapras and any psychic/grass weakness card with only 4 TRAINER cards which is not hard at all. If the opponent decides to sycamore thats even better because they are getting rid of their resources. For things like volcanion you can easily run a salamence since all need is one fire and a dce. Trevenant hits numbers its a 1-2 shot and since trevenant is only one prize the prize trade is great. You hurt their deck set up because of the lock and while they are locked you are still hitting for damage. Of course this is all in thoery and we wont know the correct mix of cards until playtesting is done but this deck shows promise especially with waterbox decks becoming popular because of the aqua patch.
Are you playing this with with Item Lock? Also remember that the Trev has weakness to fire. What is your plan against Decidueye?
 

Jay Sal

PTCGO IGN:Tangelatamer
Member
Are you playing this with with Item Lock? Also remember that the Trev has weakness to fire. What is your plan against Decidueye?


yes the trevenant would be played with the vileplume only way to ensure your opponent has a good amount of trainers in hand. and if you turn one the owls then you slow them down a bit. You know owls run a ton of trainers, so that hurts them and also hurts them in the long game as they cant get them back as soon as you get kod. And for the fire weakness ive been think salamence ex (helps against volcanion match up and any ex heavy deck) but of course more playtesting will be needed and for us to see the meta that will shape out. Everything is in speculations.
 
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