Gholdengo ex | October 2024

Hrrrrrmmmm...

I don't think Palkia's a great fit here. it attaches those 3 water energies from your discard pile to your Pokémon rather than putting them into your hand, and unless they bring back energy reset, I don't see this as useful in a gholdengo deck. You could use Ceruledge ex, but that's not out yet. Darkrai VSTAR (Astral Radiance) lets you put two items from the discard into your hand. This could let you use an additional 2 superior energy retrievals in one turn. I think this would be better, and its attack lets you do damae for all dark energy attached to everything, so it can be used later on if you wanted to. Water is a good choice though cuz it lets greninja attack if it must needs be. Either way, I've never played a Gholdengo/Palkia deck, so I could be flat-out wrong about its usefulness.

Skippa I mean, you aren't "flat-out" wrong, bc you are making sense, but idt you fully thought the plan through.

Palkia is typically in a Gholdengo deck for a couple reasons, and there's steps to that reasoning... 

1. realize they are running Arven just for retrieval.

2. start using Irida instead bc you can also search for Greninja.

3. Greninja seems very useful so they add water energy since Ghouldengo can discard it too.

4. They add Palkia to accelerate Greninja's attack as well as being a secondary striker. 

Personally I wouldn't run Palkia bc I run Dudunsparce to go full Gouldengo, but I certainly get why you would. Also ppl over in Japan are starting to use 1 energy of every type so they can turn energy search pro into searching for 9 energies which is crazy.

Skippa The point of Palkia here is for if I need to pivot into a secondary attacker or a bench wipe with Greninja. You use VStar ability to give Greninja energy for Moonlight Shuriken and then those energies are immediately back in discard for me to recur with and energy retrieval type card. Greninja also acts as a backup card draw engine and synergizes very well with Ciphermaniacs.

It also helps with midrange evo matchups that have weaker Pokemon on the bench early like Charizard or Gardevoir. (It's also pretty easy to cheese a turn 2 win if your opponent draws dead but thats besides the point.)