Two new decks have risen to the top in the first week since the new Pokémon Pocket set Triumphant Light released. One is stuffed with Legendary Ex Pokémon, the other has no Exs at all.
Both decks performed exceptionally well in Ursiiday’s Pocket Weekly, the game’s largest regular tournament, which took place on March 1. The competition saw 1,500 decks battling it out, and these two new strategies took every single spot in the top 10, bar one.
First and second place were both won by a new Fighting type deck featuring Lucario and Rampardos. We earmarked Lucario early on as one of the best Pokémon cards in the last set Space-Time Smackdown, but it never quite contributed to an A-tier deck up to now.
But paired with Lucario, Rampardos becomes an absolute menace, able to deal 150 damage with a single, one energy attack. These two take up most Pokémon slots in the deck, but players also run the new card Sudowoodo, which can cheaply deal good damage to opposing Exs.
The other deck features Arceus and Dialga, and while it couldn’t win the top spots, it did claim third place, fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, so you could say it’s quite consistent. This deck features a bunch of mythical and legendary Pokémon, but Arceus is the key.
We spotted that Arceus Ex has loads of support in the Triumphant Light set, but we missed how good a chase card from the past set, Dialga, is with it.
The deck puts Dialga Ex up front at first to tank while pouring energy onto Arceus, powering up its Ultimate Force move. Then you swap Dialga out using Leaf, and devastate whatever’s in the opponent’s active spot.
Dialga decks saw some play in the past set’s meta, but what we really lacked was a good Pokémon to pair with it. Arceus has filled that void nicely, and since it’s a basic Pokémon, that leaves plenty of room for support cards.
These come in form of supporters, Poketools, and also the Pokémon Shaymin. Both versions of Shaymin see some play in this archetype, the sky forme helpfully reducing retreat costs, and the land forme providing invaluable healing.
While this deck is powerful, my suspicion is it’s a very poor matchup for the successful Fighting type deck, which may ultimately prove to be the main thing that keeps it in check. Not only is Arceus weak to Fighting attacks, Lucario decks can also start chipping in for high damage very early on, which is anathema to Dialga/Arceus, which needs some time to set up.
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Source: Wargamer
