Gust & Mill Venusaur

As someone introduced to Pokemon at the start, with Gen 1 (and Pokemon Red on the OG Gameboy), I am particularly excited about the upcoming 151 card set. However, after seeing some of the cards and the less than spectacular cards for the fully evolved starting trio of Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur, a bit of that excitement faded. Of course, this is nothing new. The Sword & Shield era gave us mostly forgettable cards for these 3 Pokemon, with Radiant Charizard arguably being the best of

As someone introduced to Pokemon at the start, with Gen 1 (and Pokemon Red on the OG Gameboy), I am particularly excited about the upcoming 151 card set. However, after seeing some of the cards and the less than spectacular cards for the fully evolved starting trio of Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur, a bit of that excitement faded. Of course, this is nothing new. The Sword & Shield era gave us mostly forgettable cards for these 3 Pokemon, with Radiant Charizard arguably being the best of the lot. Every new set release creates new combinations with the potential to elevate previously unused cards, though, so I challenged myself to build the best possible standard decks around Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur cards from SW&SH era. Since Venusaur gets the least love, I started there. I ended up with 3 different decks: one including Venusaur VMAX and two around Venusaur from Pokemon Go (one attacking and one mill/control).

This is my Venusaur mill/control deck featuring Wugtrio. Though I rarely play this style, Venusaur's Loopy Lasso ability (which allows you to gust up a Pokémon from your opponents bench, poison it, and then put it to sleep with the condition that you have to flip heads) has "control" written all over it. Usually I play just one Venusaur, but when the opportunity presents itself, I do sometimes play a pair to give a second coin flip and chance to guat each turn. Wugtrio from Scarlet & Violet is a Stage 1 Pokemon with an attack for 3 colorless energy that flips 3 coins and discards 3 cards off the top of your opponents deck for each heads (so, your average should trend toward 4-5 cards milled per attack). Needless to say, that's a lot of coin flipping, which obviously means luck plays a bigger role than normal in this, but if one strategy isn't working, you can usually pivot into another.

Bibarel and Skwovet are included to let you draw through your deck with minimal discarding (as there aren't many cards in the deck that you really want in the discard pile). One copy each of Miltank and Snorlax (from Pokemon Go) were added to provide mill alternatives. Both have the potential to be good early game options while you're getting Bibarel, Wugtrio, and Venusaur set up. Pigeot V  is one of the most cuttable cards and is here exclusively because it allows use of Forest Seal Stone and can then get itself off the bench.

As for supporters, I ended up preferring having a single copy of many with 3 Pal Pads to recycle important cards for a given match rather than many copies of just a few supporters. Notably absent are Boss's Orders (since Venusaur takes care of gusting)

Double turbo energy is the primary power up option. Since Wugtrio's mill attack costs 3 energy, 4 copies of grass energy were also included. Grass was chosen simply because it could be used to power up a Venusaur in the unlikely case that was needed and no other basic energy types conferred any other advantage.