Time for another Fun Deck Friday!
With Fates Collide coming out in a little under a week, I thought I'd take a look at a fun deck that could come out of this set. I've had a look through all the cards in the set and I think an interesting card could be Delphox. Remember, this deck is just for fun, it's not going to be the most competitive, but it should be relatively cheap and heaps of fun.
So the idea behind this deck is to punish your opponent for having lots of energy. There are a couple of ways you can play this deck; fire, steel, or dark and I will go briefly through both so you can decide which one you like better.
How does the deck work?
Basically you just get as much energy on the board as possible and then hit with Delphox for massive amounts of damage. It will take a while to set up a Delphox, so having something that can attack with low energy cost at the start may be a good idea. You'll want to run DCE's so you can power up a Delphox quickly, so running a Seismitoad EX is an option for this.
This deck can do a bunch of damage and can one-hit EX's and Megas. If we assume your opponent has at least 3 energy on the field, this means you only need 5 energy on your field + a muscle band in order to one-hit an EX. With the 3 needed on Delphox to attack, this means you only need 2 energy on your other Pokemon in order to knock out an EX.
There are other decks that use a similar strategy (Mega Mewtwo, for example), I just thought Delphox had an interesting little twist to it because it can be used in a lot of different decks.
Since Delphox is not an EX, it has the advantage of having to have 6 pokemon knocked out. So the extra time this deck takes to set up may be offset by the time it takes for your opponent to have to knock out 6 Pokemon.
Fire Build
This is the build that people may think is the most obvious, but it may not necessarily be the best. You can use cards like Fiery Torch and Blacksmith to power up your Delphox and running fire energies means you can use Delphox's first attack if you'd like. These cards can be hard to find as Flashfire is getting a bit older now. Also there are not too many fire pokemon that can attack early game. I'd recommend trying one of the other builds unless you already run a fire deck.
The one saving grace for this build is the new Delphox BREAK coming out which has an ability which allows you to attach energies from your deck. If you can get a couple of these out, you'll be hitting hard very quickly!
Steel Build
This build is to be run with Bronzong and steel energies. Basically you use cards like Battle Compressor to discard steel energies and then put them on your Pokemon using Bronzong. Bronzong already takes a while to set up as it's a stage 1, so running a stage 1 and a stage 2 may be too clunky and slow. Again, there aren't a lot of early-game attackers for steel, you'd need to consider something like Seismitoad EX in this deck too. The advantage of this deck is that it has huge come-back potential. You can go from being in a pretty bad position to a very dominant one in one turn. So for those that aren't all about explosive power and are more about playing a long game, this may be the build for you.
Dark Build
To make this deck, you should run cards like Yveltal, Yveltal EX and possibly Malamar EX. This deck would be all about having massive amounts of energy on the board and being able to attack with any of them to do massive damage. This deck would only use Delphox as a finishing Pokemon and doesn't revolve around it as much as the other two. Yveltal EX is an incredibly strong pokemon on its own and Delpohox would only really be needed to take down pesky Mega Pokemon late in the game. This deck has the advantage of running Yveltal, so you can get your attacks going straight from turn 1 (if you go second) so it gets a much earlier start than the other decks. The disadvantage of this build is it doesn't have the come-back potential that steel does and it also runs a lot of EX's, so your opponent only has to knock out 3 to win. Many people who run a dark deck at the moment run Darkrai EX, who is similar. Delphox would just add an opportunity to change up the deck and to do more damage if your opponent is powered up!
Conclusions
So with 3 different builds to try, Delphox is definitely a fun deck that you should give a go. The cards should all also be relatively cheap and easy to find because there's no EXs in the steel and fire builds, unless you decide to run Seismitoad EX. Remember to run plenty of energies in these decks and make sure you have ways to recycle them as you'll need as many as you can get.
I would also advise running Max Elixir in both the Fire ad Dark builds of this deck to help get the energy on faster. Be careful though because this only works to basics so make sure you have something it can be used on!
The other great thing about this deck is that it can be added into decks you already run (Steel, Fire, Dark or Mega Mewtwo) so if you do this, it won't cost much to give these decks an exciting new twist!
Delphox is available in Fates Collide, which is out next week. Make sure you order yours! You can get it here.
Let us know if you give the deck a try and how it goes for you!
Don't understand some of the words in this article? Check out our glossary here.
