Standard Underground (Excadrill / Diancie Prism / Dunsparce)

[Dark Espeon]

UNDERGROUND

Pokémon (14):

• 1 Diancie Prism Star (beatdown)
• 1 Ditto Prism Star (evolution)
• 4 Excadrill SM11b (beatdown)
• 4 Drilbur SM11 (evolution)
• 4 Dunsparce SM6 (search)

Trainer (38):

• 4 Pokémaniac (search)
• 2 Hapu (search)
• 2 Rosa (search)
  
• 4 Clay (draw)
• 2 Energy Recycle System (retrieval)
• 4 Lana's Fishing Rod (retrieval)
• 2 Lillie´s Clefairy Doll (enable)
• 2 Buff Padding (protection)
• 2 Great Catcher (control)
  
• 4 Judge's Whistle (draw)
• 4 PokeGear 3.0 (search)
• 4 Acro Bike (draw)
• 2 Material Arts Dojo (beatdown)

Energy (08):

• 8 Fighting Energy

STRATEGY:

Start with Dunsparce and search out two Drilbur and Ditto Prism Star turn one. Use Pokémaniac to search for three Excadrill to evolve the benched Pokémon. Focus on Drill Bazooka and mill your own deck with Clay and the draw items. This thins the deck and provides access to valued resources since this deck runs a total of 24 item cards. Once the deck has been thinned down to three or fewer cards switch to Eleventh Hour Tackle. Use Lillie’s Clefairy Doll to prevent decking out and extent the number of turns Eleventh Hour Tackle can be used. Diancie Prism Star and Material Arts Dojo ensure that Excadrill is able to hit numbers.

SPOILER:

Excadrill
Stage 1 Fighting Pokémon - evolves from Drilbur
HP: 140
[F] Eleventh Hour Tackle: 30+
If you have 3 or fewer cards in your deck, this attack does 150 more damage.
[F] Drill Bazooka: 120
Discard 4 cards from the top of your deck.
Retreat Cost: CCCC
Weakness: G

Rosa
Trainer - Supporter
You can play this card only if 1 of your Pokémon was knocked out during your opponent’s last turn. Search your deck for a Pok#emon, a Trainer, and a Basic Energy, reveal them, and put them into your hand. Then, shuffle your deck.

Clay
Trainer - Supporter
Discard the top 7 cards of your deck. Reveal all item cards discarded in this way to your opponent, and put them into your hand.

Lana's Fishing Rod
Trainer - Item
Shuffle 1 Pokémon and 1 Pokémon Tool from your discard pile into your deck.

Lillie's Clefairy Doll
Trainer - Item
Play this card as if it were a 30 HP [C] Basic Pokémon. At any time during your turn (before your attack), you may put this card on the bottom of your deck. Discard all cards attached to it. This card can’t retreat. If this card is knocked out, your opponent can’t take any prize cards for it.

Great Catcher
Trainer - Item
Discard 2 cards from your hand to use this card. Switch 1 of your opponent’s benched Pokèmon GX or Pokémon EX with their active Pokémon.

 

[FourteenAlmonds]

Something I've been considering for this deck is Zebstrika LOT, which can help speed up the thinning of the deck at the expense of the cards in your hand.

Also to be considered is Brock's Grit, since you're going to need more than what the Fishing Rods will get back, especially since you most likely have access to all four over the course of a game. Fishing Rod isn't as good early game, and with all the discarding going on, it's fairly likely that you'll be down to only 2, maybe 3 by the time you actually need them; you generally will only need 1 or 2 Brock's Grit over the course of the game... just an alternative to think about.

Maybe another option for the deck is even Whitney -- if you're able to discard a couple, then it turns into a really strong supporter towards the middle game. Admittedly, it might not be necessary with all the Hapus and Clays you're running, but again, it shouldn't be ignored.

This is personally my favourite archetype coming up next format, so I'm really excited to see how it'll work out!

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi FourteenAlmonds,

Thanks for the review. I also like the deck a lot and run a version of it in the current standard format which works rather well. I am not that sold on Zebstrika since it cannot be searched and needs four to three additional deck slots at least. Excadrill decks over here seem to run three different engines. One engine is focused on Clay. The other one uses a combination of Zebstrika and direct draw and search cards while the third one uses Zebstrika combined with Hapu. In the current format I tend to favor the Clay engine since it is the easiest to use provided that you run heavy on the items.

I can see the need to run a copy of Brock's Grid to recover lost Pokémon and may check it out. In theory this deck should attempt to thin out the Pokémon prior to the mass draw and discard with Clay due to Pokémaniac, Rosa and Dunsparce. Have not tested the post rotation version thus far. I would expect it to be a little slower because you are to a certain extent reliant on a turn one attack with Dunsparce to thin the deck and search out the Basic Pokémon in combination with Pokémaniac to search out Excadrill.