COMPETITIVE Hydreigon Control

CountyGibbon798 CountyGibbon798 Expanded 1,461 views Mar 04, 2025 Updated Mar 05, 2025
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Deck Primer

DESTROY EVERYTHING!!!

Anyways, I'm a big fan of Hydreigon, so of course I wanted to make a fun deck with it. Tera Hydreigon ex has a good attack which deals a respectable 200 damage to the active, and mills 3 cards from your opponent's deck. That alone, while kind of annoying, isn't a huge threat. To improve it, we have more cards like Vileplume and Pidgeot ex which can aid in your consistency and disrupt your opponent even more! And if you feel spicy, you have plenty of rainbow

...

DESTROY EVERYTHING!!!

Anyways, I'm a big fan of Hydreigon, so of course I wanted to make a fun deck with it. Tera Hydreigon ex has a good attack which deals a respectable 200 damage to the active, and mills 3 cards from your opponent's deck. That alone, while kind of annoying, isn't a huge threat. To improve it, we have more cards like Vileplume and Pidgeot ex which can aid in your consistency and disrupt your opponent even more! And if you feel spicy, you have plenty of rainbow energy effects through Neo Upper Energy, Counter Energy, and Super Boost Energy to fuel your Obsidian attack and inflict a huge 130 damage spread to 3 of your opponent's Pokemon! If you are able to land 2 of those successfully, that can often eough close out games or greatly shift the balance in your favour. Of course, silly spread isnt really what you're planning to do all the time, but having the option available is always nice. And to top it off, Black Market Prism also annoys your opponent by slowing down the prize race.

This deck is your average Bunnelby spam deck, where you want to get all of your basic out on turn 1 by hard digging for Guzma & Hala to get Artazon, Capture Energy, and Technical Machine: Evolution to evolve your entire bench to get a Hydreigon ex, Vileplume, or Pidgeot ex. Which ones you want to get greatly depend on the matchup, since you can only get 2 stage 2's from scratch. This unfortunately comes at the cost of your opening first turns being incredibly predicatble, so be prepared from your opponent taking advantage of your extremely passive first turn.

As for your basic matchups, Regidrago can be difficult with its easy access to both spread and Garbotoxin, which can make your benchwarmers easy pickings for them. to counter this, I have Stealthy Hood to attach to either your bench barrier or Vileplume, as it will counter the effects of Garbotoxin. Karen will also slow them down considerably.

This deck eats Calyrex-Shadow for breakfast from my tests. You can blow up whatever they play with your default attack thanks to weakness, allowing you to easily take 6 prizes. I considered even running Wide Lens (Roaring Skies) to shift the matchup from "heavily in your favour" to "auto-win," as it lets you Obsidian-snipe their bench for weakness, allowing you to OHKO their Latias ex, Basic Shadow Riders, and HARD punishes anyone who still runs GenKyu. Often enough you could take all 6 prizes in one go! However, it serves next to no purpose in literally every other matchup, so only keep it as a potential tech-in option depending on the meta around you. UPDATE: I added a Basic Darkness Energy to the list to help against Shadow Mist and Temple of Sinnoh. 

Alolan Riachu can be annoying, but you should have enough tools to work around it. Hydreigon is immume to damage while it's on the bench, so if you can get that before their "fun turn," there's a very small chance that they'll be able to recover. You also have a banch barrier which can help if they don't have Alolan Muk, but it's still good to have to further slow them down. Vileplume will also pose a problem since they love their items.

Lugia is TBA for the most part, since I haven't tested it against that deck yet. Going off of assumptions, there's a good chance that it will end up as your worst matchup due to it being able to outpace you in the early game if they go second and/or destroy your setup. I'll fill this in if I can get a test done for it.

Good luck!

Card Types

Trainer 28
Pokémon 23
Energy 9

Energy Types

Colorless 11
Darkness 7
Grass 6
Psychic 1

Energy Curve

Distribution of attack energy costs in your deck

1 Energy 15 attacks
15
42.9% of attacks
2 Energy 14 attacks
14
40.0% of attacks
3 Energy 4 attacks
4
11.4% of attacks
4 Energy 2 attacks
5.7% of attacks

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Comments

WafflzInTheHouse avatar

I don't know 100% if I'm right, but I see a few pinpoint errors in this.

 

-You don't need Counter Energy, because it does not work on Hydreigon. (which frankly you said DID in the description.) This is what you said: And if you feel spicy, you have plenty of rainbow energy effects through Neo Upper Energy, Counter Energy, and Super Boost Energy to fuel your Obsidian attack. Unless those EXs don't count as exs? Also Bunnelby is for early-game, and you won't exactly be down in the prize race on your first turn. Maybe a Jet Energy or even a basic energy for decks that play cards like Temple of Sinnoh or the Spectral Breach Dusknoir.

- This deck is basically Vileplume Control with a Hydreigon line. (This isn't really an error, I just wanted to point it out.)

-There's no Buddy-Buddy, and there is only 1 basic pokemon in this deck with more than 70 HP. I suggest switching all four vips for Buddy-Buddy Poffins.

-Lastly, you should be playing 4 Bunnelbys. There are a lot of stage 2s with good middle evolutions, and that's why you need it. Maybe swap them for a Lusamine and a Muscle Band.

 

That is it.

CountyGibbon798 avatar

WafflzInTheHouse EX cards and ex cards are considered different by the rules. And yes, this deck is designed to work as a more aggressive version of Vileplume control, as it is able to lock your opponent out of playing the game at full capacity without taking 5,000 business years for games to complete. You also don't plan on using Items past the first turn anyways, and getting Squawk is quite important to getting a first turn Bunnelby attack. From the way the deck is built, G&H will get you 2 basics from the card (Capture Energy and Artazon), as well as Fan Rotom, thus reducing the need for extra copies of Bunnelby. You actually debunked your own point with Bunnelby by saying that it's only used in the early game, so locking myself of even more late-game tools would be stupid. If anything, I could use Jet Energy to make switching more effective on the first turn if Float Stone is unavailable. The same could be said about a basic Darkness, so that pointer is appreciated.

 

To further the point on Counter Energy, you need to work more than one turn ahead. Bunnelby is a sitting duck the moment you use its attack, which realistically means that your opponent can and often will KO it, activating Counter Energy. Since Crushing Headbutt rarely OHKO's, it can give you several turns of it while you build the rest of your setup through one energy attachment. Once the game really gets going, you won't need Counter Energy anymore and will realistically transition into Super Boost or Neo Upper. 

 

Expanded is different from Standard in a way that the gameplan isn't as cut-and-dry as what the decklist suggests. People can (and have!) written ginormous guides on the top-tier decks like Regidrago and Lugia to maximize their gameplay. You... can't exactly do that for 90% of Raging Bolt lists in Standard outside of some basic alternate plans lol. This is tracing back to what I told you earlier about looking at all of the different card interactions and how things can play out. Because please, don't embarrass yourself by confidently quoting me and incorrectly relaying a game rule, as I was in the EXACT same boat as you before.

 

I love your passion for deckbuilding, as well as the Expanded format in general, but the format is a lot richer than Standard with extra cards! I hope you can find this somewhat insightful lol, because I'm sure I rambled about some pointless stuff here and there. I will make a couple adjustments to the deck regarding the Energy spread though. Thanks!

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