Hi everyone!
I'm introducing a new type of article that is going to come out on the last Friday of every month - Fun Deck Friday! This will be all about talking about a deck that isn't necessarily all that competitive but is a lot of fun because it's a bit quirky / annoying / has a strange strategy.
Today I'll be talking about a personal favourite fun deck - Noivern. I have personally played this deck against friends and I can assure you, it really annoys people playing the top tier decks. As you can probably guess, the main card in this deck is noivern from furious fists (see below), who you use to attack and also stop attacks coming through because of its Echolocation ability.
The point of this deck is to use boom burst to spread damage all over the board and then move it around to knock out a bunch of things at once using Meowstic from Flashfire (also comes in the Mystic Typhoon theme deck), as it has an attack that allows you to move around damage counters on your opponents pokemon (and since you'll already be running psychic energies for noivern, it's a perfect fit in this deck).
You can also run a couple of noivern break to get those one hit KOs on pesky EXs. If you're going to go down this route, I'd advise running a few judge cards, or a mix of draw supporters (Shauna, sycamore, birch etc) and red card (then use cards until you only have 4 cards left), so you can make sure you have the same amount of cards in your hand as your opponent, for the extra damage. The great thing about noivern break is it uses the same energy as the noivern in this deck, so you don't have to attach any extra energy to use its attack.
Noivern is extra annoying because there's a 50% chance your opponents attack won't go through, so even if they are much more powerful than you, you can get extremely lucky and stop their attacks for turns on end!
You'll need to be able to power this thing up though, and you need to do it fast. Noivern doesn't do a lot of damage at once (only 30 to each pokemon) so it's important you get it going as fast as possible. Run plenty of search cards (evo soda and/or ultra ball) to get it evolved on turn 2 as much as possible. You'll need to run both dark and psychic energies as well as double dragon energies. I'll explain why. The psychic energies are needed for the Meowstic, but you'll also need some dark energies because running a couple of yveltal can help you set up early. As yveltal only requires one energy to attack and helps to power up your other pokemon, he's perfect to start with. The double dragon energy just help to accelerate energies if it's evolved into a noivern already, which can be essential sometimes. You could also try something like max elixir to help power up the noibats before they evolve, but since it can't be used to attach to a noivern, I'd limit how many of these you put in your deck to around 2.
What's good about this deck?
- You're not running EXs, so it takes your opponent a long time to knock out 6 pokemon
- Your noivern can get really lucky and survive heaps of turns by continuously flipping heads, meaning you'll be able to knock out big EXs without losing a single prize
- Spreading damage means players are less likely to bench things like Shaymin EX, as it will get knocked out too easily, meaning they may be slower to set up
- With Noivern BREAK, you can still do a lot of damage at once, so you still have the option of knocking out EXs with one hit
Why is it bad?
- It's slow. There's no avoiding the fact that evolutions take much longer to set up. You also have to spend AT LEAST 2 turns powering up a single noivern
- Mr Mime stops the damage spreading, which means if your opponent runs one of these, your strategy is pretty much ruined
- Hex maniac stops the ecolocation ability, meaning your noiverns would be really easy to knock out
- Setting up 2 evolutions (noivern and meowstic) takes a long time and sometimes the deck feels a bit clunky
Other cards I recommend running with this deck are things like professors letter, so you can be sure you always get the right energies at the right time. Also a couple of super rod, as it's inevitable you'll have to throw away some pokemon when using sycamores or ultra balls, so you'll need to be able to get them back. Shaymin EX, if you can afford it, always helps as you can set up much faster. Also you could run a couple of muscle band, it helps just to get some extra damage on the board (but remember the extra only applies to your opponents active) and also helps noivern BREAK get the one-hit-KOs.
Just remember, this is a fun deck. It's not meant to win every game, but when you do get it working well, it's a lot of fun watching your friends getting frustrated that they're getting beaten by such a silly deck.
Want to build this deck? A lot of the cards come from furious fists, so that would be the best set to start with. The rest of the trainers etc are pretty generic, so you should have most of them lying around already.
Definitely give this deck a go and let us know what you think in the comments below!
Don't know what some of these terms mean? Check out our glossary here.
