Stellar Tera Pokémon ex make their debut in the Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown expansion, and their attacks are as colorful as their Tera Jewel crowns, each requiring three different types of Energy. There have been plenty of Pokémon with challenging attack costs over the years, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. For this Triple Play, we’ve rounded up Natalie Millar, Stéphane Ivanoff, and Ross Cawthon to give us the lowdown on Cinderace ex, Lapras ex, and Galvantula ex and how you can best support their powerful attacks.

The new Cinderace ex has a ton going for it: Its Flare Strike attack does 280 damage for three Energy, enough to one-hit KO most opposing Pokémon other than Stage 2 Pokémon ex. It also has the Garnet Volley attack, which does 180 damage to any Pokémon on your opponent’s board, giving you a ton of options for approaching the game. When I thought about building a deck with Cinderace ex, I ended up leaning very heavily on the Arven and Pidgeot ex engine that has seen so much success this past year in Charizard ex decks, so let’s take a look!

The Setup Engine

While including the extra Evolution lines of Pidgeot ex and Bibarel may seem as though we are just clunking up the deck, these Pokémon are what help us play the game. Pidgeot ex’s Quick Search is one of the strongest Abilities in the game right now, letting you search your deck for any card once per turn. Since Cinderace ex is a Stage 2 Pokémon, you’re certainly already playing Rare Candy in your deck, so sacrificing one Rare Candy to search your deck for any card every turn for the rest of the game is an easy trade-off.

However, Pidgeot ex only gets you a single card every turn. This is where Bibarel and Fezandipiti ex come in. Both of these are very important to help with giving you lots of cards every turn, letting you use Quick Search to find whichever card you are missing.

Getting the Right Energy

Cinderace ex does have very demanding Energy costs, but the rewards are certainly worth it. While Flare Strike only costs one Fire and two Colorless Energy, Garnet Volley costs a Fire Energy, a Fighting Energy, and a Darkness Energy. This cost is very difficult to fulfill, and I chose to include two copies of Crispin to assist you in getting the three different Energy onto your Cinderace ex. I also chose to play Neo Upper Energy as my ACE SPEC card in this deck, as it helps get your first Garnet Volley together.

Once I do power up Garnet Volley, I often try to use Counter Catcher to bring up opposing Pokémon, then use Garnet Volley to attack an opposing Pokémon without taking the Knock Out. After this, you can use Radiant Alakazam’s Painful Spoons Ability to move damage around and take KOs during your turn without attacking. This plan is mainly to play around an opposing Fezandipiti ex’s Flip the Script Ability, so you are making meaningful attacks while not picking up Knock Outs and thus not activating Flip the Script. If your opponent is heavily reliant on Tera Pokémon such as Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, you can always attack the Fezandipiti ex on the Bench, then use Hawlucha’s Flying Entry Ability to assist you with removing it from play quickly.

One neat bonus of Cinderace ex is that it has free retreat. This is already nice just to pivot between your multiple Cinderace ex in play, but it also gives this deck multiple great targets to grab with Feather Ball. In this deck, Feather Ball can grab Cinderace ex, Pidgeot ex, and even Cleffa for an early Grasping Draw! This deck can sometimes struggle to use Ultra Ball, as you have a ton of resources that you cannot discard from your hand, so being able to use Feather Ball to just grab your Stage 2 Pokémon is significantly more efficient.

Finishing the Game

When you play this deck, you will often spend the early game drawing a bunch of cards and setting up your Energy. However, once you have managed to set up your board and have a powered-up Cinderace ex, you can use Counter Catcher to bring up an opposing Pokémon with a high Retreat Cost, make it even more difficult to move that Pokémon by attaching a Gravity Gemstone, then start using Garnet Volley to set up opposing Pokémon on your opponent’s Bench for a massive sweep turn and take a bunch of Prize cards at once. If your opponent has Manaphy, this line of play does get tougher—you’ll have to use Flare Strike to chain Knock Outs on opposing Pokémon. Radiant Alakazam can assist with this, as it lets you KO opposing Pokémon that have more than 280 HP by moving damage counters with Painful Spoons.

I also included a Briar in this deck to assist with ending the game. If your opponent has exactly two Prize cards left, Briar lets your Tera Pokémon take an extra Prize card with a Knock Out. Briar isn’t as strong in this deck as it is in others, as you have no way to directly force your opponent to take Prize cards. However, it gives you a way to take an extra Prize card without having to play the Dusknoir line in your deck, effectively saving you a significant amount of deck space.

Be prepared for a lot of long games where you will be making dramatic comebacks when playing this deck. This can be very appealing to many players since it can make for interesting games! The biggest thing I would advise you to do when playing Cinderace ex is to try your best to avoid taking a Knock Out for as long as possible so you always have access to your Counter Catcher, can Iono yourself to six, and can prevent your opponent from drawing cards with Fezandipiti ex’s Flip the Script. You can also use Professor Turo’s Scenario to force your opponent to go through a Cinderace ex to end the game by picking up your Lumineon V or your Fezandipiti ex.

Cinderace ex is a super-interesting card, and I’m excited to see how players decide to use it when Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown becomes part of the Standard format.

Stéphane Says: I like what Natalie has done with Cinderace ex. I think the Arven engine is the best way to build the deck, especially with Feather Ball, which fits so well, and I like the addition of Gravity Gemstone. I also enjoy the Neo Upper Energy addition, which seems to be the best ACE SPEC card to play in this kind of deck.

My only criticism is about the inclusion of Radiant Alakazam and Hawlucha. I like the idea of not taking KOs for most of the game in order to play around Fezandipiti ex, but I believe there’s a better way to do this: by using the combination of Magma Basin and Munkidori. Given Cinderace ex’s demanding Energy costs, Magma Basin can help a lot by accelerating Fire Energy to it. Its downside is that it puts damage on the Pokémon it powers up, but since the deck already plays Darkness Energy, we can include Munkidori and use Adrena-Brain to move this damage to an opponent’s Pokémon! Munkidori is also useful, even without Magma Basin, against decks that can’t KO Cinderace ex in one hit (Dragapult ex, Charizard ex, etc.), as they’ll have to damage Cinderace ex, and this damage can then be thrown back at them.

Munkidori does require a Darkness Energy to be useful, and that means we need to dedicate one turn of Energy attachment to it. That being said, by including it instead of Radiant Alakazam, we also free up the Radiant Pokémon slot in the deck, allowing us to use the powerful Radiant Charizard as a late-game attacker, so I think this trade-off is worth it.

Ross Says: I’m really impressed with the creativity in Natalie’s Cinderace ex deck. I had completely forgotten about the seldom-played Neo Upper Energy and how much easier it makes Cinderace ex’s attack costs.

The overall “finesse” game plan of setting up damage for Knock Outs later is very cool. I probably would have focused on Cinderace ex’s Flare Strike attack for big one-hit KOs, but Natalie’s deck certainly has far more options. Counter Catcher plus Gravity Gemstone is a nice combination. I also think Feather Ball grabbing both Stage 2 Pokémon in this deck is a perhaps underrated feature. Ultra Ball discards can be so costly—you frequently simply can’t play two Ultra Balls together that you may have in hand. A simple one-for-one card grab of a Stage 2 is a really appealing feature of the deck.

Lapras ex is a card with a unique attack: Larimar Rain allows you to look at the top twenty cards of your deck and attach all the Energy you find to your Pokémon. It is, in theory, the strongest Energy acceleration that the game has ever seen! However, there are several obstacles to its effectiveness. First of all, the attack costs three Energy, and as with all Stellar Tera Pokémon, these are Energy of three different types. Also, to get the best effect out of Larimar Rain, you need to play a lot of Energy cards in your deck, more than decks would usually play. Filling your deck with Energy cards is typically a bad idea, because you can’t attach more than one per turn, so any extra Energy you have in hand are dead cards.

Nevertheless, I will attempt to get the most out of Lapras ex! To do this, we need answers to two questions.

How are we powering up Lapras ex? Larimar Rain is a setup attack, so we want to use it as soon as possible; we can’t simply attack on Turn 3 by attaching one Energy per turn. That would be two lost turns! We also need a way to make sure we get the right types of Energy.

What are we using Larimar Rain for? Putting a bunch of Energy in play is all well and good, but there needs to be a payoff. Sure, Power Splash does more damage for each Energy on Lapras ex, so we could put all our Energy on a Lapras ex in order to do great damage, but is that really the best use? We’ll lose our hard work when Lapras ex is Knocked Out, and there are, after all, easier ways to power up a Pokémon to KO anything. (For example, Roaring Moon ex literally has an attack that one-hit-KOs anything, and it has good Energy acceleration with Dark Patch and Professor Sada’s Vitality! It’s much easier to use these cards to power up Roaring Moon ex than to take a turn using Larimar Rain to set up future attacks.)

The best answer to the first question is likely Crispin, the new Supporter card from Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown, as it can both search and accelerate Energy. If you attach an Energy to Lapras ex on Turn 1, you can play Crispin on Turn 2 to get the two other Energy you need and make sure you can use Larimar Rain.

Of course, that prompts another question: How do we make sure we can use Crispin on Turn 2? We could play Lumineon V or Pokégear 3.0, but there is a cooler option. Since Lapras ex is a Tera Pokémon, we can use the latest Noctowl to search for Crispin. This also allows us to search for a second Trainer card we might need, such as Switch. Setting up Noctowl is not too hard thanks to Fan Rotom! If we can get Fan Rotom out on Turn 1, we can use its Ability to search for two Hoothoot and a Noctowl and make sure we can use Noctowl’s Jewel Seeker Ability on Turn 2.

As for the second question, I believe the best payoff we can find for Larimar Rain is Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR! This is a card that’s famously powerful but difficult to power up, and Larimar Rain is one way to patch that. By putting many Energy on Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR, we can use Star Chronos to take a Knock Out on one of the many two-Prize Pokémon with 220 HP or less that are popular in Standard (Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, Fezandipiti ex, Miraidon ex, Mew ex, any Basic form of a Pokémon VSTAR, etc.), and follow that up with another KO with Metal Blast without giving the opponent a turn.

This brings me to the following deck list:

The amount of Energy in the deck is colossal, but there are ways to benefit from that. Both Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR and Lapras ex have an attack that does damage that scales with the amount of Energy on them, so extra Energy from Larimar Rain can always be used as a damage modifier. Radiant Greninja can also turn your leftover Energy cards into draw power, and with more than a third of the deck dedicated to Energy cards, you shouldn’t run out of them!

The only Pokémon I haven’t mentioned yet are Fezandipiti ex and Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex. The former is there for consistency and will let you draw cards whenever your opponent takes a KO. As for the latter, it can be used in the late game in scenarios where you don’t have Energy left. For example, consider the following scenario: You use Larimar Rain on Turn 2, attaching Energy to Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR and a couple to Lapras ex, but your Lapras ex gets KO’d. You then use Star Chronos followed by Metal Blast for four Prizes in total, but your Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR then gets KO’d and you don’t have a powered-up attacker. In this situation, you can use Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex to finish the game, as it will do 240 damage for only one Energy.

As for the Trainer cards, they’re fairly straightforward. Crispin has the added benefit of being able to accelerate Energy to Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR, so it’s useful beyond Turn 2. Nest Ball and Ultra Ball are obvious choices to search for the Pokémon we need, and Prime Catcher is the most reliable ACE SPEC card. It’s important to be able to bring whichever Pokémon we want into the Active Spot; otherwise, the opponent could simply give up an unneeded one-Prize Pokémon on the turn after Star Chronos!

Lapras ex is not the easiest Pokémon to use, but I appreciate that it has a unique attack. I hope you’ll have fun with it!

Natalie Says: I really like the inclusion of Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex in this deck, as it allows you to easily close out any game. Stéphane clearly set out his three- (technically four-) turn goal for this deck: start with Larimar Rain, then use Star Chronos and Metal Blast for four Prize cards, and clean up with Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex! I think including an extra Water Energy could be an interesting option too, as you can threaten a Moonlight Shuriken the turn after a Larimar Rain. However, maximizing your Larimar Rain makes sense to hit enough from those 20 cards as often as possible!

Ross Says: It’s always nice to see new ways to play older decks like Stéphane’s Lapras ex / Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR deck. The cost of using Lapras ex’s Larimar Rain is high, but it does have potential when you realize it provides the equivalent of five uses of the commonly played Metang’s Metal Maker Ability at once. I think Stéphane has put together a consistent strategy for a Turn 2 Larimar Rain with Crispin and Noctowl. I do wonder if there could be a list trying to get a Turn 1 Larimar Rain, perhaps with high counts of Sparkling Crystal, Town Store, and Crispin. Stéphane’s list is certainly more consistent, though, and will punish any slow-setup decks.

“Item-lock” cards, which prevent your opponent from playing Item cards, have been a powerful presence throughout the history of the Pokémon TCG, from cards like Vileplume in HeartGold & SoulSilver—Undaunted and XY—Ancient Origins to Gothitelle, Seismitoad-EX, and Trevenant from the XY expansion. The new Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown expansion brings us a new Item-locker, Galvantula ex. It has one of the most powerful Item-lock attacks the game has ever seen in its Fulgurite attack. The 180 damage done in addition to Item-locking is an incredible amount compared to cards like Seismitoad-EX and Banette ex. With a high amount of damage done and the powerful Item-locking effect comes a significant cost: three separate Energy types need to be attached, and you have to discard all of them when you use the attack. I believe Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown also adds a few cards to help Galvantula ex meet these significant costs, though. Here is the list I came up with:

First, I want to highlight a new ACE SPEC card from Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown: Sparkling Crystal. When attached to a Tera Pokémon (like Galvantula ex), this Pokémon Tool reduces the cost of attacks by one Energy of any type. This card gives much more flexibility to powering up the Fulgurite attack, as now it just needs two Energy. Moreover, Sparkling Crystal acts like an Energy you don’t have to discard when you use Fulgurite, making your next attack easier to accomplish. A similar but slightly less powerful Pokémon Tool for the deck is Powerglass from Scarlet & Violet—Shrouded Fable. Getting one Energy back to Galvantula ex also can make your next attack possible.

The card that really makes this deck work, though, is Blissey ex from Scarlet & Violet—Twilight Masquerade. There are few ways of attaching two or three Energy to Galvantula ex directly in one turn. But there are many ways of attaching extra Energy to other Pokémon, and Blissey ex enables all of those ways to power up Galvantula ex with Blissey ex’s Happy Switch Ability, moving one Basic Energy from one of your Pokémon to another. When we don’t have Sparkling Crystal in play, we may need to use two Blissey ex in one turn. Generally, if your goal is to have two of a certain Pokémon in play at once, you want at least three copies in your deck, so I have three Chansey and three Blissey ex.

To combo with Blissey ex, I have Sandy Shocks ex and a new Item card from Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown, Glass Trumpet. This card attaches two Basic Energy cards from your discard pile to your Benched Pokémon. This is like two Dark Patches, one of the best Item cards ever printed, in one! However, you can only attach to Colorless-type Pokémon with Glass Trumpet, and you can only play Glass Trumpet if you have a Tera Pokémon in play. With Galvantula ex and Blissey ex, though, we already meet both of these requirements quite easily. Blissey ex plus Glass Trumpet has the potential to be a powerful engine in many decks, as you can power up any Energy types with this combo.

I’ve described the components of your strategy each turn with this deck: attack with Fulgurite every turn using Sparkling Crystal or Powerglass, Blissey ex, Glass Trumpet, and Sandy Shocks ex. Next, how do we get all of these cards out? Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown presents some interesting new options for draw and search power. I first tried out the new Noctowl with the incredible Jewel Seeker Ability, which lets you search for any two Trainer cards when you evolve it while you have a Tera Pokémon in play. I believe this card will be one of the most powerful in this expansion, but playing it in this deck felt awkward at times. Drawing hands where you have a Noctowl but not a Galvantula ex felt very bad, making Noctowl a useless card. I think Noctowl will be far stronger in decks that play multiple Basic Tera Pokémon. Instead, I’ve decided to focus on familiar draw options like Radiant Greninja, Squawkabilly ex, Rotom V, and Lumineon V and use the extra deck space for Supporter and Energy cards.

One benefit of Noctowl, though, was being able to quickly find Sparkling Crystal. I tried playing Arven, but I found that I needed to draw more cards to pull off the combos in the deck. In the end, I settled on adding two copies of Town Store to make finding Sparkling Crystal easier, as well as Powerglass and Forest Seal Stone. I decided to play one other Stadium card: the new Area Zero Underdepths. This card allows any player with a Tera Pokémon in play to have eight Benched Pokémon! Older players may have flashbacks to the Sky Field card from XY—Roaring Skies. Area Zero Underdepths will undoubtedly be another highly played card in upcoming formats, as having more spots to play Pokémon will create numerous new strategies. While I decided to focus on Town Store as the main Stadium for this deck, I think creating the extra Bench space even once during a game is still valuable here. Even if opponents counter the Area Zero Underdepths, you can “clean your board” of now-useless early-game Pokémon like Squawkabilly ex and Rotom V.

Lastly, I want to mention the new Joltik. It has an incredible attack, Jolting Charge, which allows you to attach up to four Energy to your Pokémon! This is a great attack if you go second and can use it on your first turn of the game. It’s rare and cool to see such a powerful attack on a small, unevolved Basic Pokémon like this. Traditionally, Evolution-based decks are at a big disadvantage when going second, as they usually can’t attack on the first turn in any practical way, but cards like Joltik could shift that trend. I’ll be excited to see if more cards like this are printed in future expansions.

Galvantula ex is a powerful, though tricky to use, new card from Scarlet & Violet—Stellar Crown. When this deck gets set up, 180 damage and Item lock will often devastate opponents. Give this list a shot or see if you can find improvements. With all these new cards I’ve mentioned, there are many options to try!

Natalie Says: Item lock in the Pokémon TCG is almost always strong; however, these cards have always been held back by their damage output. I think the engine Ross has created of Sparkling Crystal, Blissey ex, Sandy Shocks ex, and Glass Trumpet is incredibly robust and looks like you would be able to chain Fulgurite attacks for several turns! I’m a bit surprised to see no Counter Catcher in this deck, as you would expect to fall behind in Prize cards; however, Galvantula ex seems like such a demanding attacker that it makes sense to focus on chaining Fulgurite!

Stéphane Says: Blissey ex is a very interesting and promising card that hasn’t really found its way to shine yet, so I’m glad people are still finding ways to use it—in this case, in combination with new cards. The combination of Happy Switch and Glass Trumpet looks great for a Galvantula ex deck, and it seems to be the best way to use Fulgurite every turn.

While I love Ross’s take on the deck, there are two cards that I would try to fit in the deck list. The first is Bibarel, which would add a little bit of draw power to the deck, but it’s also a Colorless-type Pokémon, so it can be a target for Glass Trumpet if necessary. Even a 1-1 Bibarel line could, I think, add a bit of consistency to the deck.

The second is a Basic Tera Pokémon, in order to use Glass Trumpet (and Area Zero Underdepths) even in cases when we don’t have a Galvantula ex in play (for example, on Turn 2 or after it’s Knocked Out by the opponent). Teal Mask Ogerpon ex, which would add a little situational Energy acceleration and draw power to the deck, is one possible candidate, but I believe the best option is Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon ex. Not only is it great against some decks, like Charizard ex, which have few ways to go through its Cornerstone Stance Ability, but its Demolish attack also goes through any effect on the opposing Pokémon. That makes it a good solution to deal with Pokémon like Mimikyu, which would otherwise be hard to KO with this deck.

For more Pokémon TCG strategy and analysis, visit Pokemon.co.uk/Strategy.