It's Pika Time! | Expanded Concept

I'll get started on my own critique by bringing up a few cards that I feel are on the chopping block:

- Iron Hands

- Max Potion

- Penny

- (Maybe) Electropower

Yes, your hunches are correct get rid of everything but max potion. Its absolutely stellar here. Electropower is unnecessary. Maybe have 1 just in case. Penny is redundant. Hands is basically your ranger for Single prize decks who you are gonna lose to anyways. Magnezone should be the one on the chopping block, it's an evolution of smth you need to sac every turn, which isn't great. Even worse considering you don't have any draw supporters.

I mean ig it's cool but how is it "flexible" again? much less flexible than Lugia, Drago, and even Gouging fire for all I know.

The deck's biggest issue is not overall consistency but consistency of attack. You have to sac a Magneton EVERY TURN to maintain consistent attack, which is actually terrible. Also makes single prize matchups unwinnable. Yes you make an astonishing entrance combo, but that's just as if you're thinking of it like a Donk deck almost. 

The other concern is why you chose to make an expanded version instead of standard. Think of the things you lose... 

Wally - Not needed since standard is slower

Compressor - there are lots of decks that need this in standard but they work just fine

Mountain - not very helpful in the first place

Max potion - Replaceable by Bianca devotion or Turo Scenario

As you see, not much. You could very well make this standard, kind of a waste to make an expanded version unless it's, well, smth as gross as Mew Vmax. Which this isn't.

Even then this is just scratching the surface of what needs to be done to make this archetype great. I can tell you made this on a time crunch so honestly it's forgivable, but yeah, look forward to seeing what you can do with this in the future. 

Battle Compressor Yes, you're absolutely right. Also nice stellar pun with the Max Potion. I'll lean into a consistency build. Sparkling Crystal + Thunder Mountain allows Pikachu to attack for a single attachment if need be, which isn't terrible at the worst of times.

Battle Compressor I just made the edits now.

Looks better, GandH was a good catch, can't really run smoothly without it. 

Now the only obvious issue is that there's too much wally, espcially since it's not the end of the world if you can't attack first turn. (then again, you technically can fully set up a Pikachu with one GandH)

There are probably much more that you could do that I can't see at the moment, but there's still a bit less than a month until SSPs release so no rush.

Somehow I completely overlooked Magneton, this looks very well built even if the strategy is a little wonky by design.

Since you're running a magnet line anyway, would it make sense to tech a Magnezone (Plasma Storm)? It would let you play Wally and still have draw support, and if nothing else playing two Briar and taking 5 prizes from a Tag Team seems very funny. And Magneton gives you a little more control over your prizes, so would some disruption like Ace Trainer be okay?

Paisley Park, After Dark I actually did have that one in the earlier build of the deck, but since Magneton will be KO'ing itself, it's difficult to set up a Magnezone. The main way I could think of it working is to evolve into Magneton manually, and then play Wally to skip the next evo step, but then you can only play one Briar anyways in that turn. 

u can update to the new pikachu ex and magneton now that its come out