Palkia VSTAR Retooled Expanded (March 2025)

**Overview**

Palkia VSTAR was once a top-tier deck in late 2022 and even into 2023 when it won the 200+ player Christmas tournament. But a deeper dive into its performance history suggests one thing: it was always overrated. Why did it perform so well? Well, it's because people never settled on a specific archetype of the deck which made it very unpredictable. But none of these archetypes lasted for very long and at some point, even with the endless possibilities of Expanded, no more new unpredictable

**Overview**

Palkia VSTAR was once a top-tier deck in late 2022 and even into 2023 when it won the 200+ player Christmas tournament. But a deeper dive into its performance history suggests one thing: it was always overrated. Why did it perform so well? Well, it's because people never settled on a specific archetype of the deck which made it very unpredictable. But none of these archetypes lasted for very long and at some point, even with the endless possibilities of Expanded, no more new unpredictable archetypes could carry it into relevancy. But with the release of many unique and interesting cards in recent Scarlet & Violet era sets, Palkia has gained an abundance of tools to not just bring it back into relevancy, but we can finally and truly declare that it has a consistent, viable archetype. So don't worry players, you don't need to keep emptying your wallets every time someone comes out with a new Palkia variant. This IS the premier archetype. 

How to Play

Important to note, as with all decks in Expanded, don't follow such a linear gameplan. What I mean is that I will explain how to play the deck in general, but it is best to adapt to the game situations as you see fit, rather than following what I say here every time since it will lead to very predictable outcomes for your opponent to exploit.

Lillie's Clefairy ex: Note that Cresselia-EX is the placeholder for Lillie's Clefairy ex since at the time of this publishing, it has not been released or coded into the website yet. Lillie's Clefairy ex is arguably one of the greatest cards to ever grace expanded. Why? Because for years, Dragon Pokémon have been utterly dominating the format. While early 2020 to pre-Silver Tempest Dragon decks were beatable, Regidrago came onto the scene and broke the format alongside Lugia VSTAR with Tinachomp. And for the last two years, those two decks have been running rampant and turning away players from the format with how toxic and broken they were. While Lugia was the most beatable out of the two, Regidrago was seemingly impossible. Until Lillie's Clefairy came along. With its ability to allow all Psychic Pokémon to deal Weakness damage, Regidrago has finally been equalized. This was always the solution to making Regidrago fair because for whatever reason, Dragon Pokémon in the SWSH era never got Weakness. But that has changed and this is precisely the card that Palkia needed to find its way back into relevancy. Palkia itself was a strong attacker but it was heavily hurt by Sudowoodo in Regidrago and had mediocre attackers. Though it gained many options like Black Kyurem ex since its 2023 Championship win, none of them were enough to help it beat the best of the best. But Lillie's Clefairy ex doesn't care about Sudo against Dragon decks running it because having 4 Benched Pokémon on your end equals 200 damage to the Active Dragon Pokémon already. Even if Parallel City is facing your side, you're still  dealing 160 damage not factoring in their Benched Pokémon. So in essence, you're essentially OHKOing the Active Dragon Pokémon most of the time. Knowing this, this opens up a massive window of opportunity for offensive pressure that Palkia has never had before and don't have to rely so heavily on it. In addition, in the past you also had to lean heavily on gust options, ideally 2 Guzma and a Prime Catcher. While this isn't bad, the problem is that against Regidrago specifically, it wasn't always guaranteed that they'd have a vulnerable 2 Prize Pokemon and even if they did, its very difficult to have to keep gusting per turn just to play around Regidrago. But Lillie's Clefairy ex makes it so that you don't have to anymore, and that is extremely massive for this deck. You can actually attack directly into Regidrago now and take KOs which is how you beat that deck.

While Lillie's Clefairy ex is exceptional, that doesn't mean there aren't Weaknesses. Your opponent can easily turn off Fairy Zone with any form of Ability lock like Path, Lab, Garb, Muk, etc. But Path and Lab can be countered with your own Stadium (if you run good counts) or Marshadow, Garb can be countered with Field Blower/Megaton Blower or Faba, and unfortunately Muk has fewer counters, but is also practically nonexistent in most decks now so it's not a concern. Specifically against Regidrago, some variants might run a combination of Path + Garb and then Item lock or Stadium lock you. This can be difficult as if you are Item locked, you have an out to Path but Garb is still in play with no real way of dealing with it. Stadium lock is easier to overcome with Field Blower or Faba. But the thing is, you don't necessarily need to be attacking with Clefairy 100% of the time against Regidrago. At the point in the game they have Garb + Path in play, you will have likely taken out 1 and maybe even two Drago's. Because Drago does not attack with anything but itself, you will have so much early game momentum that perhaps them going for Path + Garb and likely an Item lock attack is unlikely because they are going to be down in prizes and need to start taking KOs. This means that hopefully, you'll have a bunch of attackers lined up where even if Clefairy's Ability is turned off and you only deal 80-100 damage, you're still going to be able to clean up the KO with another attacker. In theory, it sounds like Clefairy ex is hard countered by these things but in actual practice, it's not as much of a counter as it sounds. Those are certainly counterplays, but they are not counterplays that make Lillie's Clefairy ex pointless. 

Crispin: One variant of Palkia that came out in 2023 was Tsareena V + Palkia. But it didn't last long in viability because Energy acceleration was really awkward and you typically ran it with Tapu Koko, so having Grass + Water + Lightning Energy made for a clunky, awkward deck. But the release of Crispin has made multi-energy strategies a lot more viable now, making it one of the best Energy acceleration supporters in the game. Now, you wouldn't be running Tsareena V with Palkia still, even with Crispin. But the point is that Crispin enables a wide variety of multi-energy combinations as long as the cards complement each other well and Palkia + Lillie's Clefairy meets this criteria. They both like big bench space with Sky Field and Lillie's Clefairy ex's attack cost is a Psychic and Colorless, so you can attach a Water energy from your hand to it without it being awkward. Palkia itself doesn't need manual attachment always because of Star Portal. So this opens the way up for Crispin because both Energies are usable on Lillie's Clefairy ex, and it only needs 1 Crispin play to be charged up. You might think that using your Supporter for the turn to charge up an attacker is bad potentially, but only needing two Energies and being able to attach any of the Energies used in the deck onto it is very good. So, you get a whole host of Energy accelerating options with Crispin. Not to mention, you can potentially go for a Crispin play onto Radiant Greninja, followed by Star Portal meaning you now have two attackers charged up potentially. So the synergy between all the cards here is exceptional and Crispin is a phenomenal addition to the format. 

Other cards: Budew is the perfect successor to Cryogonal in this deck and helps stall out a few turns to get to a better board state. Giratina helps ping some damage and potentially sets you up for a Sudo + Garb double KO if the play is there with Radiant Greninja. Marshadow is good for stadium bump. Manaphy gives you some bench protection against the likes of Alolan Raichu or possibly Regidrago decks more focused on bench sniping.