Thunderbirds (Base - Neo)

Base Neo format decklist. This deck was made in response to the difficulty my deck Crime Bats (Sneasel + Crobat lines) had when dealing with gruelling control lists like Metal Mewtwo. Expect changes to this primer as the decklist continues to be fine-tuned during the tournaments at my local game store.

This deck hopes to abuse the technicality of how Metal Energy and self inflicted damage work with Rocket's Zapdos's Electroburn by reducing it from 30 to 10, while keeping constant damage pressure

Base Neo format decklist. This deck was made in response to the difficulty my deck Crime Bats (Sneasel + Crobat lines) had when dealing with gruelling control lists like Metal Mewtwo. Expect changes to this primer as the decklist continues to be fine-tuned during the tournaments at my local game store.

This deck hopes to abuse the technicality of how Metal Energy and self inflicted damage work with Rocket's Zapdos's Electroburn by reducing it from 30 to 10, while keeping constant damage pressure and picking off baby Pokemon with Golbat/Crobat Powers. Thanks to Zapdos's Plasma this deck functions pretty well off of a single Lightning Energy, allowing you to survive an onslaught of Energy Removal effects and even discard extra energy for additional benefit. Combine this deck's Pokemon package with cards to help sustain HP on Zapdos, plenty of Energy Removal effects, and cards that recycle Zubat's evolution lines- and you've got one hell of a Crobat deck. Specifically one that stands to affectively deal with two of the archtype's biggest threats: Muk and Energy Removal. Since Muk has 70 HP, it can be easily dealt with by softening up grimer with bats, then coming in with Zapdos, Double Gust, and proper timing- to completely turn your deck back online.

The first strongsuit of this deck is it's ability to take out baby Pokemon like Cleffa very easily and very often. It packs the potential to take out an opponent's baby pokemon as early as turn 2 with Zapdos's Plasma followed by a Golbat ETB onto a benched Zubat. More often however, it can almost assuredly accomplish a baby KO by turns 3 and 4 at the absolute latest. Your opponents' baby Pokemon are so unsafe from this deck,  that pilots should be overjoyed to see an opponent benching too many easy prize cards. The obvious monsters in this deck are in fact the Zubat evolutions, who are capable of dealing over 400 damage alone thanks to trainers that allow them to be recycled into the deck. They are the bread and butter of this list, and as such should be seldomly or never discarded for Itemfinder, Computer Search, Oak, etc. There are obviously situational exceptions to this where some may HAVE to be discarded, but that is where Nightly Garbage Run comes in handy.

While the Crobat lines are, in my opinion, the coolest and best parts of the deck- that is not all this deck stands to offer. Rocket's Zapdos is an absolute monster when set up correctly. To unlock the full potential of Rocket's Zapdos, pilots should aim to set up the game to sustain her energy and HP needs early, as she takes some time to build up. Zapdos is able to build itself up to unleash massive damage with Electroburn thanks to Plasma, which deals 20 AND attaches a Lightning Energy from the discard pile to her for just a single energy! In order for this to take off however, energy cards need to be present in the discard pile to get the maximum advantage out of Plasma. To do this, simply pitch a couple of them to Itemfinder, Oak, Computer Search, or Super Energy Removal early on in the game- just make sure you don't discard TOO many! This will help set her up for when she is needed to deal with a large threat, while also advancing your boardstate at the same time! Since Zapdos can build itself up from a single energy, this deck is surprisingly unconcerned with opposing energy removal most of the time.

Make sure to save a Metal Energy for throwing on your Zapdos, as her Electroburn deals quite a bit of self-damage without one. With one Metal Energy, she will deal 10 damage to herself every Electroburn- and this is where Gold Berry comes in handy. Since we will be largely sustaining on only Gold Berry, we want to abuse Metal Energy to extend it's usefullness as long as possible.

An additional benefit to using Metal Energy is that Confusion is significantly less punishing. Normally a confused Pokemon would deal 20 damage to itself if it failed to successfully attack an opponent's Pokemon, but because of the technicality around Metal Energy- that damage is reduced instead to 0. So what that means in this deck is if your Pokemon becomes confused and it has a retreat cost (literally only Zapdos): it's better to slap a Metal Energy on it and keep trying to land damage until it is either KO'd or able to be switched out with a trainer like Double Gust.

More info will be coming to this primer as the deck continues to be play tested and tried in a tournament setting, but so far this list has been absolutely awesome. Do yourself a favor and sleeve up a copy of this list, as it is as fun to play as it is strong.