On Sunday, September 29, Pokémon TCG player Ryuki Okada won the weekend’s Dortmund Regionals tournament with an interesting and unusual deck list that excited fans. Amidst a sea of Terapagos/Dusknoir and Charizard/Pidgeot decks, he was one of the only players relying on the might of ghostly dragon Dragapult.
Dragapult ex is a powerful Pokémon card, whose Phantom Dive attack can do great work taking out weak benched Pokémon. However, while Dragapult dominated from day 1 in Japan and is an established part of the meta in the TPC Japan circuit, where Okada also plays, it’s not so popular on the international scene.
As a result, this major regional tournament only featured 10 decks running Dragapult, and almost all paired the card with a Pidgeot engine, relying on that card’s incredible ability to search up anything you need. The winning competitor, meanwhile, was one of only two Dragapult/Dusknoir lists.
Of course, Dusknoir is a super ubiquitous Pokémon in the meta right now – to the point that some people are even calling for it to be banned. Its Cursed Blast ability is extremely disruptive, and super hard to play around. Combined with Dragapult, you can really put an opponent’s bench in a dire situation.
It’s really the lack of Pidgeot that’s most surprising here. Instead, Okada relied on two Rotom, a Tatsugiri and a Lumineon for support. One big advantage is you don’t have to worry about basic Pokémon getting picked off before you can evolve them.
Pokémon superfans were endeavoring to piece together Okada’s decklist before it was officially revealed, in videos like the one above. As you can see, the deck makes it work with a very low number of energy cards.
For more Pokémon TCG content you can check out our guide to the most expensive rare Pokémon cards – you should also learn how to spot fake Pokémon cards.
Source: Wargamer
