Metallica (PAR Budget Steelix)

Paisley Park, After Dark Paisley Park, After Dark Expanded 5,264 views Nov 04, 2023 Updated Nov 13, 2023
Budget
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Deck Primer

Iron Valiant? Nah, Iron Snake.

//The Deck//

Dodrio is a Pokemon that has the potential to up to 280 damage, which is pretty great for a single prizer, but with the tradeoff of having to get 9 damage counters onto it. Previously this was difficult, you would either have to dedicate yourself to Pokemon with hard to pay attack costs that could hit your bench like Gastrodon (Lost Origin) or run some inconsistent set up with something like Gapejaw Bog and Damage Pump - and then you would of course run

...

Iron Valiant? Nah, Iron Snake.

//The Deck//

Dodrio is a Pokemon that has the potential to up to 280 damage, which is pretty great for a single prizer, but with the tradeoff of having to get 9 damage counters onto it. Previously this was difficult, you would either have to dedicate yourself to Pokemon with hard to pay attack costs that could hit your bench like Gastrodon (Lost Origin) or run some inconsistent set up with something like Gapejaw Bog and Damage Pump - and then you would of course run the risk of having Sableye (Lost Origin) clean your entire board of damaged birds. Paradox Rift gives us solutions to both of those issues, Steelix who can deal significant damage (2HKOing evolving ex-es like Gholdengo ex, and hitting Chien-Pao ex and Iron Valiant ex for weakness for the OHKO) while hitting your bench and Jirachi who can protect you from damage counter placement. Onix's 120 HP also means it can live an attack from Cramorant (Lost Origin) - which is really nice in the LB matchup.

Everything else is there for the reasons you expect, Damage Pump allows you to move damage counters around, allowing you to quickly power up a Dodrio in the late game if you didn't start amazingly. Comeback stuff. You can also use them to move damage off of your frailer Pokemon to swing again with Steelix, or to use Zooming Draw again if you need to. Heavy Path count to stop annoying abilities like those from Radiant Alakazam, Meowscarada ex, Inteleon VMAX, and potentially Iron Valiant (though you might just need to bite the bullet and accept the L there - I personally don't think that card is particularly amazing right now anyway but I've been wrong before).

The deck does very well against decks that run plenty of little two prizers (i.e. Lost Box, Miraidon, Chien-Pao, etc) and doesn't do too bad against evolivng decks like Gardevoir so long as you're lucky. It's a budget deck so it's not going to be flawless or anything, but it's a lot of fun regardless.

//Potential Changes//

Radiant Charizard with Luminous Energy could also be funny as a late game attacker, you could maybe run one with Lost Vacuum so that you don't end up with a completely useless card if you're forced to Path - though the draw from Greninja is probably needed more.

I've been toying with Capturing Aroma - you could potentially replace it with something like Pokégear 3.0 or Trekking Shoes. It seems like whenever I run a list without Aroma I get a handful of useless trainers and when I run it I get handfuls of useless Pokemon.

Counter Catcher is back in Standard now, but I didn't think it was useful enought to warrant running it over Boss - maybe a 1/1 setup would work?

Finally if you're genuninely actually insane and want to lose you could consider running Steelix (Fusion Strike) as a backup attacker. But don't do that.

//Edit// - Added Lost Vacuum to take out Ancient Booster Energy Capsule, allowing you to OHKO Roaring Moon ex, and a second Hisuian Heavy Ball to prevent being unable to find Jirachi and Manaphy versus Lost Box.

Card Types

Trainer 34
Pokémon 17
Energy 9

Energy Types

Colorless 8
Metal 4
Fighting 3
Water 2

Energy Curve

Distribution of attack energy costs in your deck

1 Energy 16 attacks
16
69.6% of attacks
3 Energy 4 attacks
4
17.4% of attacks
5 Energy 3 attacks
3
13.0% of attacks

Opening Hand Probability Calculator

Calculate the probability of drawing specific cards in your opening hand

%
Probability of drawing at least of in your opening hand

Comments

NoGoodNames avatar

Bit to be salty, but I hope this doesn't go very far just because I like to run Scream Tail Gardevoir. Basically the same idea, but you can make Sream tougher, and you get to pick which pokemon to damage. It's also insanely weak to Jirachi. Besides that, it looks like a pretty solid Rouge.

Paisley Park, After Dark avatar

NoGoodNames Yeah, Scream Tail looks like fun (maybe with Iron Valiant hard retreating to KO Manaphy? >:] ). To be honest I played so much Gardy at the start of Scarlet and Violet that if I have to see that card again I think I'm going to start taking actual damage in real life though lol

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