GiraGon (Dragons exalted deck I made)

flojoetheteddiursa

Well, I opened a booster box of dragons exalted like I thought about doing. I, unfortunately did not pull enough Garchomps to make a chainchomp deck, so here is what I DID do.

Pokemon-18
Giratina EX-2
Mewtwo EX-1
Hydreigon DR 97/124-2
Zweilous DR 96/124-1
Deino DR 94/124-2
Drifblim DR-2
Drifloon DR-2
Altaria DR-3
Swablu DR 104/124-3

Energy-19
Psychic-5
Darkness-7
Blend Energy PFGD-4
Double colorless energy-3

Trainers-23
Hooligans Jim and Cas-1
Professor Juniper-2
Cheren-4
Rescue Scarf-4
Eviolite-3
Tool Scrapper-4
Rare Candy-1
Dark Patch-3
Random Receiver-1

Essentially, I do a ton of damage to Opponents with Hydreigon and Giratina, and the zweilous can get darness energy back on to itself to prepare the second Hydreigon. Special energy cards, especially Prism energy are very common due to their abuse with Pokemon EX. Once Pokemon with special energy have tried to deal damage but be DENIED! I can use drifblim to deal massive damage. If people use nothing but special energy, which I have seen in some very meta decks, the drifblim can be game ending. Altaria is a support card. Dark patch gets back any lost Darness enegy, Eviolite Keeps Giratina and mewtwo alive, and tool scrapper gets rid of enemy Rescue Scarf and Eviolite. All in all, in a metagame where any DECENT deck relies on special energy and pokemon tools, this deck counters any main strategy and counters with powerful blows.
Also: This deck HAS been tested against the common Darkrai, Mewtwo, Tornadus, Ho-oh, and Mew decks and it HAS won. However, I am always looking for advice, and what cards should I add and remove?
 
You don't have anything to patch energies to, not even Deinos...

Good players will find some way to avoid putting special energy in the discard, especially Hydreigon players (you don't even run any Enhanced Hammer), so Drifblim isn't going to be particularly useful imo

I feel like Giratina doesn't pose enough of an immediate threat like Darkrai does...whereas T2 Darkrai can be like 'lol Dark Patch' and start smacking and sniping, Giratina requires a minimum of three turns to get anything done. Garchomp decks can OHKO your Giratina and Hydreigon without too much trouble (even if you have Eviolite), whereas Eviolited Darkrai needs to be hit by Pluspower/Tool Scrapper Retaliate, which is much harder to put into a deck

Your T/S/S is pretty patchy: supporter line isn't anything near enough - you don't run Sableye or max out any supporter lines, yet you have Random Receiver? 4 Tool Scrappers? 4 Rescue Scarf? Only one Rare Candy? zero Catcher or search balls? you don't seem to be testing against very good decks, imo

Put in Catcher, more Candy, more supporters, cut down Tool Scrapper/Rescue Scarf lines, cut down energy somehow, Drifblim/Altaria not really needed, bunch more little fixes - but if you want a good deck, you should just get the cards you need, rather than working with what you have
 
That's not necessarily true. You could always drop the drifloon basic later on in the game, where there is literally nothing the opponent can do to recover special energy cards.

I agree that Giratina feels really underwhelming against anything dragon. It gets hit too hard by dragons.
 
You don't really need to run psychic energies at all since you got the blend energies which you can move with dark trance since they're part dark when you need to attack, I'd rather put more dark energies in there instead. Also when you're playing with stage 2 pokemon you should always have at least one rare candy for every stage 2 in the line.
Also you should pick between the drifblim or altaria lines because having 3 different evolution lines is going to make this deck really slow (specially since, as mentioned above, you don't run any kind of search cards like ultra ball).
Hooligans is a bad card, period, You should be putting either N or Bianca instead. Also you don't need rescue scarf since you could simply run 4 max potion instead as hydreigon's dark trance allows you to move dark energies away while you heal and then move the energies back and keep attacking which in my opinion is better than waiting for your pokemon to be KO'd or tool scrapped.
 
If you're set on using Giratina... then I'd say try something like this out:

Crawdaunt's on-the-spot decklist said:
Pokemon: 18

2 Giratina EX
1 Darkrai EX (Gives free retreat, your out to running 4 Switch)
3-0-3 Leavanny NVI 3
3 Deino NVI (Not donked by Rayquaza)
1 Zweilous DRX (Searchable by Heavy Ball)
3 Hydreigon DRX (The good one obviously)
2 Sableye DEX

Trainers: 30

4 N
4 Juniper
3 Bianca
2 Random Receiver

4 Rare Candy

3 Pokemon Communication
2 Heavy Ball

4 Max Potion
3 Pokemon Catcher
1 Super Rod

Energy: 12

4 Blend GFPD
4 Prism Energy
4 Basic Dark
Click to expand...

The list is really tight on space since you need Leavanny to remove Giratina's crippling weakness, and you need it consistently. Deino is the NVI type to make him non-donkable by Rayquaza DRX. The Zweilous is the DRX one mainly for Heavy Ball. Even if you use the DRX one, it's never going to successfully restore energy, since it dies the turn right after you use it's attack.

I would love to drop Leavanny to 3-0-2 since it's a teched bench-sitter, but the fact is you need it every game, and you'll likely need 2 over the course of a game. That means you have to watch out for prizes, and thus you'll need 3-0-3 at the minimum. Thankfully, you can still run Sableye, and this guy is your preferred starter.

One of the problems I had with this list is that you really have no room for Dark Patch whatsoever. Not only that, but Giratina needs both Grass and Psychic energy for his attack costs, so you want to be sure you can use them ASAP. Thus, 4 Prism and 4 Blend. I'd watch out with Hydreigon because you can't move Prism to an evolved Pokemon, since it then only provide colourless energy, and can't be moved away afterward.

The mindset behind this deck shouldn't be viewed the same as that of Darkrai/Hydreigon. it's more similar to Klinklang + EX's. Except, Giratina is your "One attacker fits all" EX, thanks to Leavanny offering protection from weakness. Mewtwo still needs 6 energies on itself to OHKO Giratina, and Giratina can 2HKO Mewtwo, or any other EX your opponent throws at you, with Shred (regardless of Eviolite). If you wanted to add Eviolite to increase Giratina's bulk (not a terrible idea) then you could:

-1 Dark Energy
-1 Pokemon Catcher
+2 Eviolite

Both of those cards are more for consistency. The extra dark says you have an easier time drawing into energy, and you also will have energy available after an attacker dies. Catcher makes it so you can attack preferentially to avoid taking more damage than you need.

2 Eviolite says "Nuts to that, I'll never die" and just opts to tank as hard as possible. The difference between getting 6 and 7 energy on a Mewtwo is actually pretty big. You can also use Sableye to get your Catchers back, so it's not the worst thing to drop down. Max Potion however, is the crutch of this tanky deck, and you should never mess with the 4-of line.

You could also drop that 4th Dark Energy for a 2nd Darkrai to make sure your Darkrai isn't prized. But keep in mind if you have an energy attached to Darkrai and Leavanny out, then even a Terrakion Retaliate or Terrakion EX Pump Smash won't OHKO, so Darkrai will make a pretty good backup attacker (dear god... Darkrai is playing second fiddle to Giratina EX in this deck).

That's all the advice I'd have, hope it works well!

p.s. Don't make a deck without at least 13 draw supporters/random receivers in this new format. If you run the numbers, 13 supporters gives you an 84.3% chance of starting with one in hand. If you drop it to 12, that becomes an 81.6% chance (almost 1 in 5 games will be a dead start). I find my comfort zone at 14 supporters (86.7% chance), but probably wouldn't bump it to 15 (88.8% chance). The only reason to run 15 is if you're scared of N or discarding supporters early via Juniper or something.
 
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