TURBO KARP!.. Splish Splash

SPLISH SPLASH. 

Main Goal of the deck: 

The main goal of the deck is to quickly do damage with magikarp, while establishing a board state that lets you take prizes every turn. Drowning your opponent in an onslaught of spilshing & splashing. 

How to Play: 

Go second if possible.

This is because you want to attack immediately and some of your supporters help out a lot with that, particularly "Irida." 

Starting Magikarp.

- Be careful if thats the only mon you have since they

SPLISH SPLASH. 

Main Goal of the deck: 

The main goal of the deck is to quickly do damage with magikarp, while establishing a board state that lets you take prizes every turn. Drowning your opponent in an onslaught of spilshing & splashing. 

How to Play: 

Go second if possible.

This is because you want to attack immediately and some of your supporters help out a lot with that, particularly "Irida." 

Starting Magikarp.

- Be careful if thats the only mon you have since they are weak.
If Magikarp is your only mon on the field, prioritize getting other mons down, even if that means professor's researching your entire hand away. 

Get to "battle compressor" and get Gyarado's into the graveyard. 

 - Pro tip. Don't be so singularly focused on getting gyarados into the graveyard. Although most of the time (particularly early game) it is the right decision, there are a few cards in here that let you pull stuff from discard pile (vs seeker/rescue stretcher), so if you need a specific supporter for example, you can battle compressor that into the discard pile and vs seeker it back into your hand to play. 

You will want to consider this option when you are planning two turns out but your hand sucks, or you lack energy, etc. 

If you start with Ditto.

Use battle compressor to get 2 gyarados & 1 magikarp in the discard.

This is really important. Make sure you have/get a magikarp in the discard if you are using ditto, so that ditto can copy its attack "raging fin."

Irida is your quickest path to guaranteed battle compressor, but other draw support cards will help you get there too. 

Dont be shy early game about using professor's research, just be mindful of how many energies you are losing, because they cannot be retrieved. 

Once you have some Karp/Gyarados in the graveyard, your next priority is to get this combo in play. 

Old Cemetery/Hustle Belt.

This is the unique tech that makes this deck super fun and shocking to your opponents. 

First disclaimer/ Protip. 

Don't sacrfice a solid board state just to get hustle belt onto something. There are many times where I had to route my cards to ensure I had attackers/energy continually in play, since they all have low HP, you almost always want a back up attacker.

You can get old cemetery in play by
- drawing it (duhhh)

-using stadium nav

   - I put 1 stadium nav in this list instead of just another old cemetery because you can irida for it, and you can vs seeker for irida in your discard pile, so it increases your chances to getting to old cemetery a lot more then just adding a fourth copy.  

- Guzma & Hala

   - This card literally gets your full set up (Old Cemetery - Hustle Belt - Double Energy) assuming you already have a magikarp in play, but ended up being more niche then expected while testing, so I only play 1 in this list. 

I play 4 vs seeker anyway so its still available to you most of the time when needed. 

Old cemetery works wonders in two ways for your deck. 
- it widdles away your opponents pokemon HP (assuming they are not psychic), fairly quickly to get in KO range. fixes math a lot. 
- it does just enough to activate hustle belt on magikarp with a single double colorless energy. Magkarp only has 30 hp anyway so the goal is not to try and perserve them, but do continually KO and put damage pressure on. and hustle belt boosts attack by 60 which is a lot. 

- it can activate hustle belt on ditto with just 2 energies attached. 

You don't really need Old Cemetery to stay on the field too long, depending on the deck you are facing (control decks), it can become a liability, in those cases you'll want to focus on ditto's. 

Keeping your board state strong

You always want at least 1, ideally 2 back up attackers energized to keep the splishin pressure on.

The deck has solid draw and search and recovery so that you are always working towards that.

Here are the other tech cards that help you do that.

- 2 Miltank & 1 Floatstone: The miltanks & floatstone are there to stall+ pivot. I have only in one case, through multiple energies, old cemetery, etc got the hustle belt activated on miltank to win the game. It was pretty cool but a very messy way to win the game. There is only 1 floatstone in there so it can be inconsistent sometimes, but the deck is not built around pivoting, it assumes your mon's will be getting knocked out. Its just good to have sometimes while you prepare another splash. 
- 1 Manaphy: Manaphy is there so that your magikarp arent benched sniped. they are low hp and this can happen easily. So read your opponents pokemons attack and decide if you need to prioritze. Honestly though in expanded format, I still get bench damage often even with manaphy in play. So this slot I would consider trading out for something. But the new art work is so nice, and you can Irida for it so why not.  
- 2 Rainbow energy: there in the event that you dont have old cemetery in play and need to ding your own magikarp (who probably already has a double colorless energy on it) yourself in order to activate hustle belt. They are also there as fodder for radiant greninja's ability if you need to see more cards. They can be used to attach to radiant greninja in theory, but I have yet to pull that off. 

- 3 Random Reciever: these just extend your sight into the deck to find supporters. 

- 1 Energy loto: I believe this is better then playing a double turbo energy, because it also extends your sigh into the deck, and can get you ahead if you get an extra energy early, or if you do some smart thinning of the deck, can get the energy when you need it most. 

- 1 Town Map: because you do consistent damage, i like town map so that you can hand pick the cards you want next, really good for maintaining/building board state. 

- 1 Bruno: You're Magikarp will get knocked out, you can use that to your advantage and shuffle draw 7 cards when that happens. 
- 1 Teamates: Same as bruno, really really good in the later parts of the game and can save/win you the game. The only reason why I didnt play 2 of these over 1 bruno was because sometimes there are situations where you didnt get knocked out, but you still need to see more cards, and bruno can do that for you. 
4 VS seeker & 2 Rescue Stretcher: Imo access to your discard via items is one of the main benefits of playing in the expanded format, these cards let you play more aggressively in the opening turns. 

Other comments

You will rarely ever need to evolve to gyarados (I have only a handful of times), but here are examples of why you might want to do that. 
1. You need to knockout an eiscue (or card that stop basic pokemon from attacking)
2. If you cant attack with magikarp, and you know its about to get knocked out. You can evolve it so that both go into the discard instead of the gyarados being stuck in your hand. 

This list get bodied by control decks, decks that remove energy or add additional damage for certain actions, so just be prepared for that, although there arent that many in the expanded format right now. 

Conclusion

Once you have your foundation in place there is only two things left to do. 

SPLISH 

SPLASH

glhf

- Velocomander