New year! New deck!
We are in the middle of City Championships and several decks are coming out from the woodwork thanks from the information gathered from the last month. Are you looking for a new deck that could surprise your opponent? Maybe one that has a strong backbone? Then look no further as we have something that you may like! It may be a little dark for most people but this deck sure can strike fast and hard.
This week on TCG Jump we are going to spotlight a deck that loves to swarm the field to give your opponent an eerie sense of dread. They may be left confused with the group of Pokemon in this deck and unsure of what is going on. That is going to be normal but you know what to expect from the dark depths of this deck. Before your opponent figures out what is going on, they will find themselves before the dark dragon that lives deep within this deck.
Get ready to command the numbers of Darkness as we are going to be taking a look at Dark Rayquaza. This Pokemon grows stronger with huge numbers which the Darkness will surely be glad to lend. As the darkness grows, so does the power of M Rayquaza EX.
Decklist
Pokémon – 19
3 Rayquaza-EX ROS 60
3 M Rayquaza-EX ROS 76
2 Shaymin-EX ROS 77
4 Yveltal XY 78
2 Yveltal-EX XY 79
2 Zorua BKT 90
2 Zoroark BKT 91
1 Hoopa-EX AOR 36Trainer Cards – 32
3 Professor Sycamore
3 Professor Birch’s Observations
2 Lysandre
1 AZ
4 Ultra Ball
4 VS Seeker
2 Battle Compressor Team Flare Gear
1 Sacred Ash
3 Mega Turbo
2 Float Stone
3 Rayquaza Spirit Link
2 Shadow Circle
2 Sky FieldEnergy – 9
4 Double Colorless Energy
5 Darkness Energy
Deck Breakdown
The main idea of this deck is to set up M Rayquaza EX as quickly as you can. That means getting M Rayquaza out with energy and a bench loaded with Pokemon. It works really similar to Speed Rayquaza except this deck has Darkness support. M Rayquaza is going to be channeling the forces of Darkness for this deck as you will be playing Zoroark, Yveltal EX and Yveltal in this deck.
This deck plays Hoopa EX to use Scoundrel Ring in order to help load the bench with EX Pokemon. You would want to grab at least another Rayquaza EX, Yveltal EX and Shaymin EX. Depending on your hand, if you have a Rayquaza Spirit Link then you may want to grab a M Rayquaza EX so you can Mega Evolve during your same turn and get a bigger hand with Shaymin EX. Hoopa EX will be a great help to just flood the bench with your Pokemon to power up M Rayquaza EX’s Emerald Break attack. You can easily draw into the rest of your Dark arsenal by using Shaymin EX and your draw support.
There are currently a few Rayquaza EX that you can choose from for this deck. Though this deck will be using the Dragon Rayquaza EX from Roaring Skies. This may be a strange choice concerning the that the Colorless Rayquaza EX is the much more popular choice. The reason why you want to use Dragon Rayquaza EX is to help with the Night March match up. Colorless Rayquaza EX has a Lightning weakness that Night March Joltik loves to chew through. This makes Colorless Rayquaza EX useless against the Night March deck. Though Dragon Rayquaza EX doesn’t mind this match up as it scares off Joltik thanks to it’s Dragon Claw attack. Nobody would dare send out a 30 HP Joltik against a Dragon Pokemon that can pick it clean. It will take a bit more work to get rid of this Rayquaza EX compare to the Colorless Rayquaza EX.
The match up against Night March becomes even better with the inclusion of four Yveltal in the deck. Yveltal can easily knock out any Joltik with it’s Oblivion Wing attack. Your opponent would be unsure to send out their Pumpkaboo to handle Yveltal because the dark bird can hit Pumpkaboo for weakness. One Oblivion Wing attack will bust this pumpkin’s dreams of marching into victory. Even better, you can use Yveltal to retrieve any lost Darkness energy from the discard to fuel your Rayquaza EX or M Rayquaza EX.
This deck also has several back up attackers in the form of Zoroark and Yveltal EX. The classic Darkness attacker, Yveltal EX, can always be used in case you need a secondary heavy attacker. Yveltal EX can be used to hit anything that gets in your way who loves to pile on the energy. Meanwhile, Zoroark loves to play with your opponent’s heavy bench by using Mind Jack. The more Pokemon on your opponent’s bench makes Zoroark’s Mind Jack attack hit hard and knock out any of your opponent’s non-EX attacking Pokemon without risking one of your EX Pokemon. Zoroark also has the Stand In ability which allows it to rush into the active position. Simply attach a Float Stone to Zoroark and you have free retreat into any of your Pokemon such as M Rayquaza EX to hit your opponent’s Pokemon hard!
This deck plays a low draw Supporter count but the four VS Seeker and two Battle Compressors can make up for that. You will want to discard a few Darkness Energy and a draw Supporter when you use Battle Compressor. That way you can use Mega Turbo or Yveltal to attach the Darkness energy from the discard to your M Rayquaza EX. Then you can use VS Seeker to regain one of your discard Supporters to dig deep into your deck for more resources.
Lastly, there are two Stadiums that this deck plays and the one you lay down will all depend on your situation.
The first Stadium in this deck is Sky Field. Those who are familiar with Colorless M Rayquaza EX knows that Sky Field is where Rayquaza loves to be in. Sky Field allows you to expand your bench to eight Pokemon which fuels up M Rayquaza EX’s Emerald Break attack to be powerful enough to knock out EX Pokemon and Mega EX Pokemon with a single hit. It also allows you to play late game Shaymin EX to dig into your deck for VS Seekers and Lysandre.
Your other Stadium of choice is Shadow Circle. This Stadium gives all Pokemon who have Darkness energy attached to them no weaknesses. That means you don’t have to worry about people shooting your M Rayquaza EX out of the sky with a bolt of lightning. This does weakens M Rayquaza’s Emerald Break but it also means that your opponent can’t enjoy a one hit KO on M Rayquaza EX. It also give awkward damage numbers for your opponent if they try attacking anything that has Lightning weakness like Yveltal. This little bird can attack quickly for one Darkness energy and can actually be used to soften things up like Manectric EX while also throwing energy onto Rayquaza EX. Your little bird may take a hit but it won’t be knocked out due to weakness thanks to Shadow Circle. Then during your next turn you can send out M Rayquaza EX to clean up. M Manectric EX will be stuck attacking all your Lightning weak Pokemon twice to get one knockout. By then you can set up your bench to knock out anything your opponent wants to throw at you.
One thing that I would like to mention about the Stadium situation in this deck is that you may want to up the count of Sky Field in this deck. Shadow Circle is a tech that is useful against M Manectric variants and Night March. You may want to drop the number of Shadow Circle down to one or take something out to have three Sky Field and two Shadow Circle. That way you will always have control of the Stadium war and put things more in your favor.
The best start that this deck wants is a Yveltal in the active with a Darkness energy to start softening things up for M Rayquaza EX to clean up. While you do this, speed up and fill up your bench so that M Rayquaza EX will just hit everything hard. If you do this then you can easily have the game in your favor by harnessing the powers of darkness.
Best of luck to those taking part in City Championships!
