At the Regional Championships around a month ago, I stunned everyone by not playing Steel (the deck I've been playing for around a year). I got quite a few questions of why I chose to change, and it was basically because I wanted to try something new. I was doing relatively well in the tournament until I came up against a couple of grass decks and a steel deck that was faster than me. So while I ended up dropping from the tournament, I still think the deck has a lot of merit and I would definitely play it again in the future.
How does it work?
Ideally, you want to start with either a Landorus or Hawlucha and a couple of Gible on the bench. Hawlucha has free retreat, so even if they're not playing EXs, it can still be useful to start with. Landorus helps you get a few more energy on as fast as possible, so is also a solid starter. You then want to try and set yourself up to get out a Garchomp as fast as possible, because you want to use these to help power up your other Garchomps as well as then use them to hit EXs for a massive amount of damage with the second attack.
There are 2 ways for you to get out your Garchomps, either try to Rare Candy a Gible on turn 2, or try to get a Garchomp in the discard and only have a Maxies Hidden Ball Trick in hand, and use that to put the Garchomp straight on your bench. Either way works fine and you'll probably have to do both, just look at your hand and decide what is going to be the faster way.
If your opponent is playing low HP Pokemon, you can use Garchomp's first attack to knock them out and get the added bonus of powering up your other Pokemon, making it a hugely versatile Pokemon.
Just keep adding on bonuses to one-hit anything your opponent puts out, more info on all the cards that increase your attack below.
One thing to note is that while both Garchomp and Landorus attach energies to the bench, Garchomp can attach any energy whereas Landorus can only attach basic energies.
Why is it good?
- Everything has a very low attack cost. This means you can power up very quickly. This also means you can run slightly less energy to save room for other cards
- There's a lot of support for fighting. With strong energy and fighting stadium (and muscle band), you can just keep adding on damage to knock out pretty much any pokemon. You can also add in some Giovannis Scheme so you can use those in a pinch as well.
- Garchomp can do a massive amount of damage. You can knock out pretty much anything.
- Garchomp can also help power up other Pokemon while still doing quite a lot of damage.
- Playing no (or few) EXs means your opponent has to knock out 6 of your Pokemon
- Garchomp and Hawlucha both have free retreat, so you can easily move around your Pokemon
- You can start powering up your pokemon and attacking from your first turn (assuming you go second, your second move if you start the match) with either Hawlucha or Landorus, so you can get a fast start
- You can keep recycling your energy, meaning you can run less and keep some room for other cards.
What are the weaknesses?
- Garchomp has weakness to grass and a lot of the people at regionals were quite concerned about Greninja, so there were a few Vespiquen and Sceptile decks, which unfortunately worked against me as well.
- If you can't get the Maxies off quickly, it slows you down a lot, you need to get a few energies as well as the Garchomp in the discard early so you can Maxies as fast as possible and just rely on Landorus to power everything up while you're trying to do this.
- Gible's can be sniped out on the bench pretty easily as they only have 60HP, so any deck that spreads damage on the bench can pick them off pretty quickly.
- Since you're running a stage 2 deck, you need a lot of Pokemon in your deck (around 14-16), which means you lose space for other cards
- Parallel City can work against you if they turn it so you can only have 3 benched Pokemon. Usually you'll have a few Gibble out to try and get out a Garchomp as well as a Hawlucha or Landorus from early in the game, so Parallel City can stop you from using Maxies to get a Garchomp.
- Dead hands are a huge problem. If you're not getting out your Pokemon fast enough, your opponent will be able to knock them out faster than you can get them out. Run plenty of draw cards like Trainers Mail and Acro Bike (especially if you're using Maxies Hidden Ball Trick)
- This deck takes quite a long time to play a game. This means you'll be playing to the clock quite often. You'll need to do a lot of testing so you get used to the deck and don't run into issues with time as often.
What other options are there?
I also ran 1 Lucario EX. This was really just so I had some options if I couldn't get out a Garchomp. It gives you another relatively strong attacker because sometimes you just don't draw the cards you need to get a Garchomp, so running 1 Lucario does give you some options.
Make sure you also run a couple of Sacred Ash or Super Rod, as you may need to get back Gibles and other Pokemon later in the game.
Where can I get the cards?
Garchomp is in Breakpoint, you can get Hawlucha as a promo in this blister pack and most of the other fighting cards come from Furious Fists.
Give the deck a go and let us know what you think!
Not sure what some of the words in this article mean? Check out our glossary here! If you're not sure what a card does, the first time it is mentioned, there is a link to a copy of the card, so just click the name in orange to see what the card does!
