Today I will be taking a look at the Vespiquen deck from Ancient Origins. I'll take a look at it's strengths, as well as where it may struggle a bit.

Vespiquen is a deck that in a way is similar to Night March because it relies on having Pokemon in your discard pile. Vespiquen relies much more heavily on setting up your field and hitting for weakness and also has more HP than the Night Marchers. However, since Vespiquen is a stage 1 (as are most of the support Pokemon), it does take a little longer to get going.

How does this deck work?

You use Vespiquen to attack using Bee Revenge (mostly) and hit your opponent for weakness using the Eeveelutions (Vaporeon, Flareon and Jolteon). Also if you attach a Muscle Band, you can hit for even more damage. Run cards like Battle Compressor to get Pokemon in the discard that will not be useful for the match and also run Unown to help you draw cards and also to get more Pokemon in the discard.

 You'll want to run lots of Pokemon in this deck so feel free to run Pokemon who have useful effects, such as Mr Mime, because if it will not be useful in a match, you can always discard it with an Ultra Ball or Battle Compressor.

Why is this deck good?

• You can run a bunch of Pokemon that can be quite good against specific decks and if you're not playing against that deck, you can just discard it, meaning you can have a lot of options
• You can essentially do as much damage as you need, just keep discarding Pokemon
• The ability to hit anything for weakness that is weak to fire, grass or water can be a huge help
• Vespiquen's first attack is also useful in the early game
• If you wanted, you could try running it with Vileplume to slow down your opponent, this would mean you'd have to get Pokemon in your discard very early.
• You don't run many EXs, so your opponent has to knock out 6 pokemon, which takes a long time
• It's cheap! Even the deck base we have on the website is under $25 so this is an affordable deck for most players.

What are the weaknesses?

• As with all set-up decks (decks with evolution Pokemon), it can be quite slow. Also because you need to run a lot of Pokemon, it does cut down how many trainers / supporters you can run which might slow it down
• It's very similar to Night March, and night march has the advantage of not needing much set up, meaning it could be a better play for some people
• Low HP pokemon are very easy to knock out, so once your opponent is ready to start attacking, it's likely they'll be taking down 1 a turn

What other cards will I need in this deck?

As always, I won't give a full deck list, as I believe it's important that you run cards that suit you and the people you play, but here are some suggestions for cards you may want to run:

• Double Colourless Energy: This will mean you only have to attach once in order to be able to attack with Bee Revenge
• Forest of Giant Plants: This will help you be able to evolve your vespiquen faster
• Shaymin EX: As always, if you can afford it, Shaymin is a great card to play to get the deck going faster
• VS Seeker: Since you're running so many Pokemon, you may need to run less supporters. Use VS Seekers so you can use whatever supporter you need at the time from your discard.
• Sacred Ash or Super Rod: Even though you want Pokemon in the discard, sometimes you may want some back. Make sure you have a way to get back your Vespiquen lines once they've been knocked out

Want this deck?

Most of the cards come from Ancient Origins, but we also have a deck base which you can buy so you don't have to search for each individual card! This comes with the base cards you need for the deck, just add your own trainers and energies and you're good to go! You can look at the deck base here.

Not your kind of deck? Check out other deck profiles here!

Cards have been linked to a copy of the card so you can click the link to see what the card does, if you're unsure. Let us know what you think of the deck in the comments section below!

Not sure what some of these words mean? Check out our glossary here.