Roaring Moon ex

Although this latest and greatest version of Roaring Moon ex doesn’t use Radiant Greninja’s Moonlight Shuriken attack, it certainly takes advantage of its one-of-a-kind “Concealed Cards” ability. Once again, because this deck relies heavily on accelerating energies from your discard pile onto your Pokemon, you are going to want to get as many basic energies into your discard pile as possible. Concealed Cards lets you drop an energy to draw two cards. But first, you need to

Although this latest and greatest version of Roaring Moon ex doesn’t use Radiant Greninja’s Moonlight Shuriken attack, it certainly takes advantage of its one-of-a-kind “Concealed Cards” ability. Once again, because this deck relies heavily on accelerating energies from your discard pile onto your Pokemon, you are going to want to get as many basic energies into your discard pile as possible. Concealed Cards lets you drop an energy to draw two cards. But first, you need to get those energies into your hand.

Here’s where Earthen Vessel comes in handy. It’s an extraordinarily strong card for getting any kind of energy from your deck into your hand. And, because you have to discard a card in order to use it, you can use it to discard a darkness energy, and then pull extras from your deck.

Additionally, this deck runs one copy of Squawkabilly ex from Paldea Evolved. With Squawkabilly, you can discard your entire hand on your first turn and draw new cards. This can also be paired with Earthen Vessel to get several darkness energies into your discard straightaway that you can then later accelerate onto your Pokemon using a combo of Sada’s Vitality and Dark Patch

Sada’s Vitality helps get your Roaring Moon ex up and running much, much quicker than would otherwise be possible. With Dark Patch and this card, you can feasibly get Roaring Moon ex powered up to take knockouts in a single turn. Not only does this supporter function as one of the primary ways to accelerate energies, it’s also your primary draw support card, enabling you to draw three cards each time you play it.

You’ll be looking to play Sada’s for the first several turns which means that you won’t always be able to play a Boss’s Orders. Luckily you have five other cards to help you switch out Pokemon from the bench.

Pokemon Catcher and Prime Catcher

This player made the astute decision to play four Pokemon Catchers in his deck. This is actually more important than you’d think as it helps Roaring Moon ex take the most advantageous knockout possible which isn’t always which Pokemon happens to be in the active spot.

As mentioned, when you play Roaring Moon ex, most of your turns you will be playing a Sada’s Vitality supporter, meaning you won’t be able to pop a Boss’s Orders whenever you want, making Pokemon Catcher even more necessary. Because it is an item, it doesn’t take up your Supporter slot for the turn. The only problem? The 50/50 shot it will fail.

Lastly, Pecharunt ex adds a surprising level of mobility to this deck. One challenge about Roaring Moon ex is that you will often need to keep it on your bench in order to power it up with both Sada and Dark Patch. But how then do you ensure you get your Roaring Moon ex into the active spot so it can actually take that vital KO?

Instead of running a bunch of Jet Energies and/or Switch cards, this deck simply runs two copies of Pecharunt ex. Pecharunt Switches your Roaring Moon ex for you. All you have to do is have it benched to take advantage of this powerful effect.

But Pecharunt isn’t just here for the ability – it also has a strong attack that can save the game for you later on, swinging for as much as 300 damage if your opponent has taken enough prize cards

Roaring Moon ex is your primary attacker

Now that you know what your key cards are and how they function in your deck, let’s get into how your primary attackers fit into your strategy.

Roaring Moon ex is a one-stop-shop attacker, enabling you to take select knockouts against weaker one-prize Pokemon pretty easily – two prize basic Pokemon as well – with Calamity Storm or even take OHKOs against the bulkiest two-prize/three-prize Pokemon. 

Of course, the OHKO Frenzied Gouging attack does come with a glaring downside – it nearly KOs your Roaring Moon ex.

Is Roaring Moon ex a strong Pokemon TCG deck?

Yep. One of the strongest. Being a basic Pokemon and having the ability to OHKO anything out there as early as turn one is unparalleled in the format right now. In many ways, the cards that have come out in Shrouded Fable have only made Roaring Moon ex stronger, not weaker as many had feared after losing Galarian Moltres V. 

But there are some weaknesses other than the obvious being weak to grass types:

First of all, Roaring Moon ex benefits greatly from having a stadium in play. Without it, Roaring Moon ex has trouble taking knockouts against many Pokemon, especially against single prize decks. Without a stadium in play, Roaring Moon ex is forced to use its Frenzied Gouging attack, causing its HP to drop drastically low. Once that HP is low, you can quickly take it out. 

Lost Vacuum is a powerful card to use against this deck as it removes stadiums without having to replace it with another stadium. And because this deck list runs just three stadiums, getting rid of those three is a pretty powerful way to get Roaring Moon ex to start using its Frenzied Gouging on everything just to get a KO. 

The double-edged sword nature of Roaring Moon ex’s attack is its other main weakness. There aren’t a lot of great ways around this weakness, however giving Roaring Moon ex just a little more HP via one of the tool cards included in this deck can be quite helpful in letting it get taken out unnecessarily. 

Lastly, Roaring Moon ex takes a lot of energies to get its attacks off, and is heavily reliant on Professor Sada’s Vitality. While Sada’s Vitality is a really strong and versatile card, needing to play it frequently removes the opportunity to play other supporters that are strong, like Iono.

Similarly, a reliance on one supporter can also reduce consistency, meaning some games no matter how hard you try you just won’t be able to pull Sada’s Vitality when you need to.

Bad Regidrago matchup

Gouging Fire ex has solid matchups against most decks with one glaring weakness: it’s not good against Regidrago ex. How a Roaring Moon ex beat a field largely dominated by the deck it doesn’t do so great against is beyond me, but yeah. Regidrago VSTAR has a lot of tools at its disposal to set you back as a Roaring Moon ex player to say the least.

Bringing Roaring Moon ex to a tournament hyped over Regidrago was a gutsy move that absolutely panned out. Getting second at Worlds is a huge achievement and now the whole world is believing in the true power of Roaring Moon ex. Like the best decks out there, this one has only gotten stronger with age, and I doubt we’ve seen the last of it at the highest levels of Pokemon TCG competition.