When John Donne wrote “send not to know for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee” was he making a tragic statement about the nature of loss and our collective humanity, or was he bragging about pulling off a sweet combo with his Pokémon TCG deck? Scholars may never know, but what we can be certain of is that the cards Dark Bell and Mega Darkrai ex were clearly designed to work together. and they make a fun (if not entirely practical) pair.
Mega Darkrai ex, the mascot of the brand new Pokémon TCG Pitch Black expansion, possesses an attack, Abyss Eye, which instantly KOs the opponent’s active Pokémon if they are suffering from a special condition. Dark Bell inflicts both active Pokémon with confusion, but doesn’t affect darkness types. Because of this, you can queue up a one two punch by using the bell to confuse the opponent’s active Pokemon, and then using Darkrai to take them out.
So is this strategy viable, or is it mostly a meme? Honestly, the odds aren’t entirely in its favor. The best Pokémon cards work unconditionally against any kind of opposition, and there are just too many ways for the opponent to skirt around this.
Naturally, if the opponent has a darkness type of their own in the active slot, like the currently popular N’s Zoroark ex, the bell won’t affect them. There are also a variety of cards, like Bubbly Energy, that prevent you from inflicting special conditions at all. Since Darkrai isn’t able to inflict special conditions itself, the need to use the bell to set them up is also a weakness, as you’ll only be able to run four Dark Bells at most, meaning you’ll need a variety of other ways of assailing the opponent to make the most out of Darkrai’s Abyss Eye attack.
My current view is that, just like 1 hit KO attacks in digital Pokémon games, this combo sounds cool, but often doesn’t pan out in practice. If you can put together a build that makes it work, though, make sure you tell us all about it in the Wargamer Discord server.
Source: Wargamer
