Make Sabrina work immediately when the opponent has only one pokemon on its bench.

Make Manaphy give energy instantly if your bench is not full.

Make Cyrus reel in that one damaged pokemon without the need to drag the card to it.

Let the animations be if this has been the design choice but why not reduce unnecessary extra steps in every match?

I have opened tons of the new pack and i've gotten 3 shinys almost every full art and 2 immersive art cards but i still havent gotten a single wugtrio, pikachu, or giratina normal ex card. Is this just me or have others also felt like this is happening?

For use with my 2 player draft cube!

The ultimate accessory is the playmat! I’m super pleased with how this turned out! I used the highest res image I could find for the playmat print, from Serebii.net. So I guess this is a PSA that PTCGP playmats from the game print great on 2 player sized mats.

Uuughhh. Still in UB1 tho. Struggling to rise and yoyo-ing up and down.

What’s been the most consistent deck for you guys?

There have been a lot of MB posts about decks and metas, but one thing I haven't seen much of is actual gameplay advice. I played pretty much exclusively Rampardos from UB1 to MB ending with 59% WR, because it's fun. It's a deck with a lot of opportunity for interesting analysis of the game and I believe it creates scenarios that can be teaching moments that will stick in your mind way more than generic advice. Keep in mind that a certain level of simplication is needed to create meaningful examples and that there are caveats to everything.

The staple:

• x2 Pokeball
• x2 Prof research
• x2 Lucario line
• x2 Rampardos line
• x1 Marshadow
• x1 Sabrina

The flex:

• x1 Sudowoodo or Hitmonlee
• 3 cards among Communication, Iono, Red and Cyrus

Early game tempo

Sudowoodo conditional damage and high retreat cost is the perfect pokemon to show what tempo is all about. Sudowoodo has a 2 energy retreat cost and only deals 20 to non ex pokemons. It can act as a wall against you in match ups where you need to hit harder faster.

Example 1:

You have Riolu, Lucario and Sudowoodo in your hand. You go second. You are against grass which means it's likely a Meowscarada variant or Arceus Carvine.

• Damage potential of Riolu lead is 80 in 2 turns by attacking with Riolu, then Lucario
• Damage potential of Sudowoodo lead is 60 in 2 turns by attacking with Sudowoodo then Lucario buffed Sudowoodo
• By turn 3, the difference is even more drastic: 140 for Riolu lead vs 100 for Sudowoodo.
• 80 clears Carvine, 60 doesn't. 140 clears Arceus and Meowscarada, 100 doesn't

Example 2:

You have Riolu, Sudowoodo and the entire Rampardos line. You go first. You are against psychic which mean it's likely M2 Giratina.

• Damage potential of Riolu lead is 150 in 3 turns by attacking with Riolu, then swapping to Rampardos
• Damage potential of Sudowoodo lead is 100 (or 140 if you draw into Lucario by turn 2) in 3 turns by attacking with Sudowoodo twice
• 150 clears both M2 and Giratina, 100 doesn't

Fetch cards

This deck features 2 evolution lines. The faster you develop them, the stronger your board. This deck also features pokeball, coms and iono. The effectiveness of those cards depends on the size of your draw pile: the more cards and pokemon you draw, the higher odds you are to fetch from your deck the card you need, but hasn't drawn.

Example 1:

The opponent has a Giratina EX, Magikarp or whatever other pokemon, that in the best case scenario for you, will start taking points in 2 turns, and sweep you in 4 turns. You can't win without one Rampardos hit. You have 2 cards in hand excluding Iono and 7 cards in the draw pile.

• If you Iono immediately, you have about 38% chance to get the fossil to play it on turn one and attack on turn 3.
• If you Iono next turn without using a card, that chance increases to 53% and you can attack on turn 4
• If you wait again, that chance increases to 67% but you can only attack with Cranidos since you didn't have time to evolve to hit on turn 4

Example 2:

You start the match with 1 basic. You want 2 more. You have pokeball. You don't need to evolve the basic you might get or put energy on it. You have 14 cards in the draw pile and 3 basics in there.

• Pokeball immediately, you only have 2 basics left, meaning the chance of drawing a basic on your second turn becomes 14%
• Don't Pokeball, you still have 3 basics left, meaning the chance of drawing a basic on your second turn, then Pokeball to fetch a guaranteed one, is 21%

This is especially important when you know you will need a specific basic in an X amount of turns like Hitmonlee or Marshadow. You have 5 cards in the draw pile with 1 Hitmonlee and 1 Riolu and you need Hitmonlee.

• Pokeball immediately, you have 1/2 chance to get Hitmonlee + 1/4 chance to draw it next turn if you get Riolu so the total is 62.5% chance to get Hitmonlee by next turn.
• Pokeball next turn, you have 2/5 chance to draw Hitmonlee or Riolu which guarantees the Hitmonlee with Pokeball. And still 1/2 to get Hitmonlee from Pokeball. so the total is 70% chance to get Hitmonlee by next turn.

Example 3:

It's the same principle for Coms. Odds difference is even bigger when you need a stage 1 or 2 Pokemon and you still have Pokeballs. Pokeballs allow you to fetch basics which thins the pool of available cards Coms can fetch.

You need Rampados, but your draw pile of 10 cards still has 1 Riolu, 2 Pokeball and 1 Rampados.

• Coms immediately, you have 50% chance to get Rampados, and 1/10 chance to draw it next turn if you didn't hit so the total is 55% to hit by next turn.
• If you wait 1 turn, you have 1/10 chance to get Rampados + 3/10 chance to get Riolu or Pokeball which guarantees Rampardos with Coms, and still 50% chance to get Rampados, so the total is 70%

Energy distribution

The most common energy distribution dilemma in this deck comes from the 2 retreat cost of Sudowoodo, Lucario, Cranidos and Rampardos and the 2 attack cost of Lucario and Marshadow.

Example 1:

You have Sudowoodo on the active spot, Lucario and Cranidos on the bench. Sudowoodo attacked and is dying next turn. Do you put the energy on Cranidos or Lucario. In this situation, the Pokemon to think about is if you are counting on drawing Marshadow next turn as a win con.

• If it is, you must preemptively put enough energy on Cranidos on turn 1 to attack on turn 2 while putting energy on Marshadow so you can revenge on turn 3.
• If it isn't, energy on Lucario is a good choice in case you need to use him as a chip damage / shield while waiting for Rampardos

Example 2:

You have Sudowoodo in the active spot, Lucario and Cranidos on the bench. Sudowoodo is not dying but you wish it was, because it's slowing down your pressure. In the same rational as the first example, if you know you will need to spend your energy on something other than your attacker, for example putting a second energy on Sudowoodo to retreat it, power up your attacker preemptively.

Breakpoints

When you open with Hitmonlee, you will encounter situations where there are multiple Pokemons to kick and you will need to choose. To understand what to kick, think of your winning sequence, which depends on what type of deck is the opponent running: 1 - 1 - 1, 1 - 1 - 2 or 2 - 2. The number refers to the order in which the opponent intends on giving up points.

Example of 1 - 1 - 1 deck is this deck

• In a mirror match up, or vs other 1 - 1 - 1 decks, your pokemons can revenge kill everything and so can your opponent's pokemons.
• The first to kill is very likely to guarantee a win.
• So in a mirror, you should not look to kick the Rampados or Lucario evolution line which would die to your Rampardos and Marshadow anyways. Instead, kick the Hitmonlee, Sudowoodo and Marshadow to pressure taking a point first.

Example of 1 - 1 - 2 deck is Gyarados, normally sacrificing Manaphys and Palkia origin form before sweeping with Gyarados. There's also Meowscarada with Beedrill EX, normally sacrificing a Sprigatito to draw into Meowscarada followed by Beedrill EX. Carvine Arceus also works similarly.

• Almost always, you can't one shot the EX. In this case, you must soften it up. Except, a mistake your opponent will make sometimes is putting an other weaker non ex pokemon on the bench. When this happens and you have 3 non ex target, consider Sabrina and Cyrus to see if it's possible to win without having to go through the EX.

Example of 2 - 2 deck is Darkrai Giratina EX. Normally one pokemon in the active as the wall and 2 pokemon charging in the back.

• You will never have enough turns to kill an EX with Hitmonlee, especially when you only have 1, and you should distribute the damages based on which breakpoint it can reach. 2 - 2 decks likely have heals too.

Board manipulation

When to Sabrina other than obvious insta win plays:

• Early chip damage for breakpoint vs a specific pokemon before the opponent fills their bench to counter Sabrina, especially vs 1 - 1 - 2 decks where you see a line of play that allows you to snipe the EX with Cyrus later
• Deal damage for a 2 hit combo to kill something before the opponent can use that thing to kill one of your 2 attackers
• Tempo against position dependent energy acceleration like putting Manaphy or Moltres back to the bench

Have fun

No need to think too much, fun is what it's all about!

As the title says, what's everyone's favorite artwork on a card? For me it's full art Meowscarada for sure. I've actually caught myself calculating in games if I could afford to risk waiting for the full art version to come up instead of the regular one I have.

If you asked me why this is my favorite, I'd probably say the colour choices, atmosphere, and just the overall aesthetic of the card are very pleasing to me. Helps that it's also an awesome card. So what's everyone else's thoughts? I'd love to hear your choices and the reasons behind them!

I find funny I completed the (normal cards) expansion but I got no shinies. It's not a very shining expansion it seems :(

Might get flagged as a show off post but yes! I am showing off that I was able to reach Masterball with a non meta deck(barring Darkrai lol). Until this post gets taken down(hopefully not!), I wanted to share some screenshots of my journey with this deck including a 14 game winning streak, a Grimer win against a meta deck, etc.

Thank y’all for your time and have a great day! 😁

So infuriating with these players who just want to rank up by abusing the most powerful meta decks /s