By Ross Cawthon, Contributing Writer
If you like fast and powerful decks, you’re going to love this one! Coming from the new Pokémon TCG: Scarlet & Violet—Twilight Masquerade expansion, Teal Mask Ogerpon ex is paired with Raging Bolt ex from Scarlet & Violet—Temporal Forces. Raging Bolt ex is the star of the show thanks to an attack that can Knock Out any Pokémon, but its true potential is unlocked by its newest partner Teal Mask Ogerpon ex.
Teal Mask Ogerpon ex has one of the best Abilities in the game in Teal Dance, which lets you attach 1 Basic Grass Energy from your hand to Teal Mask Ogerpon ex per turn and draw a card too. Most competitive Pokémon TCG decks have a method of attaching more Energy than the typical one per turn. Sometimes this is done with a Pokémon like Gardevoir ex, and sometimes this is done with a Trainer card like Dark Patch or Magma Basin.
Teal Mask Ogerpon ex offers the easiest method in the Standard format to put more Energy into play, though. It is a Basic Pokémon, which is the easiest stage of Pokémon to play and the easiest stage of Pokémon to find with cards like Nest Ball. It is really the only Basic Pokémon in the current format with an Ability that makes attaching extra Energy easy. Some Basic Pokémon can do this for an attack, but if you can do something with an Ability and then attack with whatever you want, it’s almost always better! And while both Trainer cards like Dark Patch and Pokémon like Teal Mask Ogerpon ex are limited to four copies per deck, with Nest Ball and Ultra Ball, you have many more ways to find Teal Mask Ogerpon ex than a card like Dark Patch.
The second Pokémon in this combination is Raging Bolt ex, the main attacker in this deck. Its Bellowing Thunder attack does 70 damage for each Basic Energy you discard from your Pokémon in play. The potential here is obvious—it can do enough damage to Knock Out any amount of HP you will see on a Pokémon. Few cards can do this.
Finding the Right Energy
So, we have a card with a powerful Ability and a card with a powerful attack. That may be good enough for them to earn spots at the front of your binder, but it’s not a guarantee that they can work together in a deck! At first glance, it would seem like these two cards have absolutely no business being in the same deck since Teal Mask Ogerpon ex attaches Grass Energy. Raging Bolt ex not only doesn’t use Grass Energy, but it also needs TWO other Energy types—Lightning and Fighting.
We occasionally see Pokémon TCG decks that use multiple Energy types, but they typically work for one of two reasons: they either use cards that provide multiple types of Energy (like Luminous Energy) or they use attacks with Colorless Energy requirements that can be provided by Energy cards of different types (the popular “Lost Box” decks use this latter strategy). However, these strategies will not work with the Teal Mask Ogerpon ex and Raging Bolt ex combination—neither Pokémon has Colorless Energy requirements in their attack costs, and both have attributes (Ability or attack) that specifically only work with Basic Energy cards. So how does this deck work?
The glue that binds these seemingly disparate Pokémon are three Trainer cards: Earthen Vessel, Professor Sada’s Vitality, and Energy Retrieval. All of them get multiple Basic Energy cards, which can be of any type. This allows a lot of flexibility in your game play, allowing you to get Fighting and Lightning Energy on Raging Bolt ex, and use Teal Mask Ogerpon ex’s Teal Dance Ability with Grass Energy to do more damage with Bellowing Thunder. Without these Trainer cards, it simply wouldn’t be possible to make this deck—you would need several Grass, Fighting, and Lightning Energy cards, which would eliminate the space needed to make an effective 60-card deck.
Now that I’ve explained why this odd pair works, let’s get to the deck list:
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Raging Bolt ex / Teal Mask Ogerpon ex
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6Grass Energy
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3Fighting Energy
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3Lightning Energy
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4Professor Sada’s Vitality
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2Boss’s Orders (Ghetsis)
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2Iono
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2PokéStop
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4Earthen Vessel
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4Nest Ball
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4Pokégear 3.0
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3Energy Retrieval
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3Ultra Ball
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2Bravery Charm
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2Switch Cart
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1Lost Vacuum
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1Pal Pad
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1Prime Catcher
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1Super Rod
Supporting Pokémon
Raging Bolt ex and Teal Mask Ogerpon ex are your main deck components, so I’ve maximized both of their counts at four. You typically want at least two of each in play, if not three. I’ve added just a few other Support Pokémon. This deck is all about speed—if you go second with this deck, your goal is to not just attack but to get a Knock Out! Again, you can get a Knock Out no matter how much HP your opponent’s Active Pokémon has. Given that need for speed, Squawkabilly ex is a natural inclusion for its Squawk and Seize Ability. A slower deck won’t always want to discard its hand on the first turn, but our goal is to play a lot of cards on turn one.
Radiant Greninja is another very strong card in the Standard format with its Concealed Cards Ability. Trading one Energy card for two cards is a good deal, and we need Energy in the discard pile for Professor Sada’s Vitality anyway.
Sandy Shocks is your 1-Prize attacker. It’s always nice for a deck that focuses on attacking with 2-Prize Pokémon ex or Pokémon V to have a 1-Prize attacker for certain situations. If the opponent Knocked Out a 1-Prize Pokémon, it wouldn’t really help them at all: they would still need to Knock Out three of the 2-Prize Pokémon that would typically be in your Active Spot. Sandy Shocks is particularly nice for this deck as you can do 90 damage with it on your first turn even if you don’t have a Professor Sada’s Vitality: you can just attach a Fighting Energy to Sandy Shocks and have two Teal Mask Ogerpon ex use Teal Dance.
The last Pokémon is Iron Bundle, one of my favorite cards in the Standard format. It is here just for its Hyper Blower Ability, which makes your opponent switch their Active Pokémon. While not as strong as cards like Boss’s Orders or Prime Catcher, which let you choose which Pokémon your opponent puts in the Active Spot, the chance to use Hyper Blower at any time with just a Nest Ball or Ultra Ball is a great tool to have when your opponent’s Active Pokémon isn’t as big of a threat as the Pokémon on their Bench.
Trainer Cards
Next are the Trainer Cards. Something to love about Basic Pokémon decks is how much more room is available for Trainer cards compared to your typical Evolution decks. The most important Trainer card here is Professor Sada’s Vitality. Attaching 2 extra Energy cards to your Pokémon and drawing 3 cards makes it one of the best cards in the Standard format. Because this Supporter is so important, we also have four Pokégear 3.0 to try to find it. You will want to play Professor Sada’s Vitality almost every turn of the game, so we include just four other Supporters: two Iono for some draw and disruption, and two Boss’s Orders to target the opponent’s Benched Pokémon.
Most of the Item cards help the deck’s main strategy flow. We have four Nest Ball and three Ultra Ball to find our Pokémon, and we have four Earthen Vessel and three Energy Retrieval to find the Energy we need. Having two Switch Carts lets us put the Pokémon we need (typically Raging Bolt ex) in the Active Spot, and having two PokéStop gives us access to the Stadium we need to find these key Item cards. PokéStop is a great inclusion in any deck that not only wants Item cards in hand but also benefits from discarding other types of cards. In our case, we need Energy in the discard pile to use Professor Sada’s Vitality. Super Rod allows us to recover Pokémon and Energy as needed—I particularly like the opportunity to use Iron Bundle a second time. Pal Pad gives us recovery of our Supporter cards. These last two cards in particular make it “safer” to use PokéStop in case we accidentally discard Pokémon or Supporter cards instead of the intended Item or Energy cards.
The last four cards I consider to be tech cards, which don’t further your main attack combination but do help against certain situations or decks. My ACE SPEC is Prime Catcher. The goal of fast decks is not just to take Prize cards quickly but also to Knock Out Pokémon before an opponent can execute their own strategy. An Item card providing a “gust” effect where you can pick which Pokémon you Knock Out is super powerful for a fast deck and is the clear choice here. The two Bravery Charm are defensive cards, giving any of your Basic Pokémon +50 HP. These will typically be placed on Raging Bolt ex, but they can be placed anywhere in this deck depending on the situation. Finally, Lost Vacuum gets rid of our opponent’s Pokémon Tool cards (or, less often, their Stadium cards). I’ll discuss these tech cards more as I talk about the matchups for this deck.
For the Energy, we have three Lightning, three Fighting, and six Grass. This may seem like a small number of each, but with Professor Sada’s Vitality, Energy Retrieval, and Super Rod all getting Energy back from the discard pile, and Earthen Vessel to find the Energy out of the deck in the first place, these 12 Energy are enough.
Playing the Deck
The goal of this deck is rather simple: take a Knock Out every single turn you’re allowed to attack—such is the power of Raging Bolt ex’s Bellowing Thunder. You almost always want to go second with this deck, simply because that means we get to attack earlier in the game. With two Ancient Pokémon, two Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, and one Professor Sada’s Vitality, it is relatively easy to attach a total of five Energy and do up to 350 damage on the first turn!
Be mindful of getting Energy in the discard pile. If you don’t have Earthen Vessel or Ultra Ball to help with this, you probably want to use Nest Ball to find Radiant Greninja or Squawkabilly ex. You never know when your opponent will disrupt your hand with an Iono or Judge, so it’s a good idea to always have some Energy in the discard pile, particularly Fighting and Lightning Energy. Don’t forget that if your hand is really lacking, you can also use Raging Bolt ex’s Burst Roar attack!
Matchups
Let’s look now at this deck’s matchups in a broader sense. This deck is amazing against any other decks that rely on 2- or 3-Prize attackers (i.e. Pokémon ex or Pokémon V). As previously mentioned, the attack power of this deck is unparalleled. It can Knock Out any Pokémon in the game in one attack with little trouble. No other 2-Prize Pokémon deck can match this. When this deck takes a Knock Out every turn against such decks, it wins, and it does that quite often.
Be forewarned: this deck can struggle against 1-Prize decks. Some 1-Prize Pokémon can trade with Raging Bolt ex, and this deck loses if it only takes one Prize card a turn but gives up two Prize cards when Knocked Out. The most popular 1-Prize Pokémon that is good versus this deck is Radiant Charizard, which can Knock Out Raging Bolt ex in one Combustion Blast attack. The other popular 1-Prize Pokémon that can Knock Out Raging Bolt ex are Drifloon and Scream Tail (with Bravery Charm), which are commonly found in Gardevoir ex decks. Those combinations can produce 1-Prize attackers that can take down Raging Bolt ex in one attack as well.
This is where some of those tech Trainer cards come in. Bravery Charm allows Raging Bolt ex to survive a Combustion Blast from Radiant Charizard. The Lost Vacuum counters the Gardevoir ex deck, which will try to put eight damage counters on a Drifloon with Bravery Charm, or 12 damage counters on a Scream Tail with Bravery Charm. Either combination Knocks Out Raging Bolt ex. The major weakness of those Gardevoir ex combinations, though, is that a Lost Vacuum on the Bravery Charm immediately Knocks Out the Pokémon, without even attacking! With your attack that turn, you have the potential to take your own two Prize cards in one go.
Overall, Raging Bolt ex and Teal Mask Ogerpon ex is one of the fastest, most powerful, and most fun decks to play right now. It has a relatively straightforward strategy, making it a good choice for both beginners and veterans in the Pokémon TCG. Give it a shot and see what you think!
For more Pokémon TCG analysis, visit Pokemon.co.uk/Strategy.
Ross Cawthon is a longtime player, starting to play tournaments in 2000. He is the only player to compete in all 20 Pokémon TCG World Championships, finishing as a finalist in 2005 and 2011, and a semifinalist in 2016. He is known for creating many new “rogue” decks over the years. Ross has a Ph.D. in astrophysics and studies dark energy (not to be confused with Darkness Energy cards).
