BREAK Evolution is the latest mechanic in the Pokémon TCG, a new stage of Evolution that can give your Pokémon extra HP and an additional Ability or attack while maintaining its original traits. Greninja BREAK from the Pokémon TCG: XY—BREAKpoint expansion stands out as potentially powerful, and a lot of players are talking about it. Let’s look at how to put this intriguing Pokémon into action.
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Unleash the Giant Water Shuriken!
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9Water Energy
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4Professor Sycamore
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2Fisherman
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2Wally
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1AZ
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1Judge
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1Lysandre
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4Ultra Ball
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4VS Seeker
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3Trainers' Mail
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2Dive Ball
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2Float Stone
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2Muscle Band
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1Professor's Letter
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1Super Rod
Greninja BREAK boasts a robust 170 HP, which is a huge amount for a non-EX Pokémon. It also provides the Giant Water Shuriken Ability, which can put a whopping 6 damage counters on an opponent’s Pokémon (if Greninja BREAK is your Active Pokémon and you discard a Water Energy from your hand). To put that in perspective, Golbat and Crobat are used in a lot of successful strategies for their Sneaky Bite and Surprise Bite Abilities—but they only put 2 or 3 damage counters on the opponent’s Pokémon, and only when they come into play. Greninja BREAK can put 6 damage counters on a Pokémon every single turn as long as you have Water Energy to discard. That’s an Ability that’s powerful enough to build a deck around.
The most successful Pokémon BREAK tend to be the ones whose
previous Evolutions are already powerful, and Greninja BREAK is no exception.
The newest Greninja has two solid attacks that cost only one
Energy to use. Moonlight Slash is the more powerful attack, doing up to 80
damage, and Shadow Stitching can disrupt your opponent by shutting down all of
their Pokémon’s Abilities. Typically this is the Greninja that you want to
evolve into Greninja BREAK—it has strong attacks and no Retreat Cost, so you
can retreat for free after using Giant Water Shuriken.
An older Greninja, from the XY expansion, also complements this strategy quite well. Its Water Shuriken Ability puts 3 damage counters on an opponent’s Pokémon and can be used from the Bench. That means you can fire off a Giant Water Shuriken with an Active Greninja BREAK and then use Greninja’s Water Shuriken from the Bench to dish out even more damage counters. And after all that, you still get to attack! Damage will be flying everywhere if you can manage to get all of these Pokémon into play.
As great as Greninja BREAK is, it needs some backup every once in a while. Our example deck includes a couple of Miltank to fill the void. Its Powerful Friends attack does 80 damage for a single Energy if you have a Stage 2 Pokémon on your Bench. It’s a great Basic Pokémon to use so your Greninja and Greninja BREAK aren’t in harm’s way all the time. Just remember that Greninja BREAK doesn’t count as a Stage 2 Pokémon, so it won’t provide the bonus damage for Powerful Friends.
Challenges
In the current Pokémon TCG environment, Stage 2 Pokémon and
Pokémon BREAK haven’t been very successful because they’re too slow compared with
big Basic Pokémon-EX and fast hitters
such as Night March Pokémon. Our example deck has a few ways to
fix that issue, and the most important one is Frogadier. Usually
it’s a struggle to get multiple Stage 2 Pokémon into play because it takes so
many resources to evolve from Basic to Stage 1 to Stage 2. Frogadier’s Water
Duplicates can bypass the Basic step by searching up 3 other Frogadier from
your deck and putting them on your Bench. On your next turn, those Frogadier
are ready to evolve into Greninja, and Greninja BREAK isn’t far behind.
Wally is another way to speed things up. It allows you to search up an Evolution for your Pokémon, even on the turn it comes into play, so sometimes you can use it to “skip” a turn. For example, if you’re going second, you can use Wally to evolve Froakie into Frogadier, and then use Water Duplicates on your first turn. That means you’re getting all of those Frogadier into play one turn sooner, which is extremely important. You can also use Wally to evolve from Greninja to Greninja BREAK, so you can get that Giant Water Shuriken up and running one turn sooner. Sometimes Wally is the little boost you need to get an edge on your opponent.
Abilities are crucial for this deck’s strategy, so anything
that shuts them down is a serious obstacle. If your opponent plays a Hex Maniac, there isn’t really anything you can do to stop it, but it’s only
a one-turn effect. Garbodor’s Garbotoxin Ability is a much bigger
issue, since it works constantly. Our example deck includes a few copies of
Muscle Band to boost the damage of Miltank’s Powerful Friends or
Greninja’s Moonlight Slash to an even 100, so you can use Lysandre to pull Garbodor off the Bench and take it down in one hit. Another option
would be to throw in a Startling Megaphone or Xerosic to discard the Pokémon Tool card from Garbodor, but that might only buy
you one turn of using Abilities before your opponent finds another Pokémon Tool
card to reactivate Garbotoxin.
Water Energy is one of the most important resources for this deck. Without it, you can’t activate Giant Water Shuriken or Water Shuriken, so it’s important to have several ways to recover it. Super Rod is an Item card that can shuffle Energy cards back into your deck, but Fisherman can return 4 of them right to your hand. With VS Seeker, you can reuse Fisherman to make sure you won’t run out of Energy. Using your Supporter card for the turn to recover Energy means you can’t draw cards with Professor Sycamore, so Shaymin-EX and Octillery can use their Abilities to draw extra cards when necessary.
Greninja BREAK is just one of the many exciting new cards in the XY—BREAKpoint expansion. Plenty of other strategies are waiting to be discovered, and the next big deck could be out there. Be sure to check back at Pokemon.com/strategy for the latest Pokémon updates!
