Pokémon TCG Pocket, best deck for the Blastoise event

Pokémon TCG Pocket has a new solo battle event to celebrate the new year, this time focusing on Blastoise and other Water-type cards. Water-type cards aren’t particularly threatening most of the time – they’re a little too dependent on Misty to be reliable and frustrating – but a lucky coin flip could ruin a deck that wasn’t set up for it.

Luckily, there are some obvious answers for tackling Blastoise’s Pokémon TCG Pocket event, and while no deck will be perfect for taking down Blastoise and his bubble buddies, we have a few options. In this guide we’ll look at the best decks for the Blastoise event in Pokémon TCG Pocket, including the best deck for all event difficulty levels and the best low-rarity deck for quests.

Pokémon TCG Pocket Blastoise Event: The best Lightning deck —

The best Lightning deck for the Blastoise event in TCG Pocket is also one of the best meta decks in TCG Pocket right now: the Pikachu ex deck. Here is the complete deck list:

• 2x Pikachu ex
• 2x Blitzle
• 1x Zebstrika
• 2x Voltorb
• 1x Electrode
• 2x Zapdos ex
• 2x Poké Balls
• 2x Professor’s Research
• 1x Sabrina
• 1x John
• 2x Speed
• 2x Potion

This deck is all about moving in, dealing damage, and winning before your opponent can properly prepare. Pikachu ex is certainly not the strongest in the game, but it is a basic card with a low energy cost that does more damage based on the amount of Lightning-type cards on the bench. Preparing this card takes a maximum of two turns and deals 90 damage – 110 with the weakness boost – which is enough to double hit any boss card in all decks in this event. The rest of the cards are backup, in case your opponent has a lucky Misty that results in a one-shot for your Pikachu ex.

The downside to this deck is twofold: the first is that Lightning-type cards are generally quite fragile, and the second is that the autobattle AI is terrible. The fragility of Lightning cards means that Pikachu ex and Zapdos ex are not suited to the long game. If you stay on the field long enough for your opponent to prepare more than one boss card, you have probably already lost and should get a scoop. Autobattle’s AI is a more frustrating drawback, as this deck in particular needs energy in specific places, and the AI ​​seems to want to distribute it evenly for some reason. Most of the time you will still win an auto battle, but we recommend that you look away while it does its thing, or keep an eye on it and intervene if you see a win condition.

Pokémon TCG Pocket Blastoise Event: The best low-rarity Lightning deck —

Like other bonus events, the Blastoise event has Advanced and Expert level quests that reward those who defeat their decks using only cards of rarity ♢♢♢ or lower. This means excluding ex cards from your deck, which can be devastating, especially when Misty rewards the opponent with a heavy series of casts.

Depending on how you want to play, you have several options. The first is to use the Lt. Surge deck from the Supreme Geniuses set. It’s not a phenomenal deck, but Autobattle’s AI knows how to use it mostly effectively, and as long as you don’t face Misty’s wrath, you should be able to scrape out a victory.

The other option is to use a Raichu deck, for which we have put together a deck list:

• 2x Pikachu (Mysterious Island)
• 2x Raichu (Supreme Geniuses)
• 2x Magnemite
• 2x Magneton
• 2x Poké Balls
• 2x Professor’s Research
• 2x Lt. Surge
• 1x Sabrina
• 1x John
• 2x Speed
• 2x Potion

This deck essentially uses Supreme Genius Raichu as a pseudo-ex card, as it is capable of dealing 140 damage in a single hit, at the cost of discarding all the energy on the card. This deck features two Magnetons on the bench, each capable of generating an energy for itself each turn. With Raichu in the active position and with enough energy, you can cast a large Thunderbolt to knock out any boss card, which will discard all of the Raichu’s energy. From there, you can launch an energy wave to shift the energy from the Magneton to the Raichu, allowing you to land another big blow, which should be more than enough to win the match.

It’s worth noting that this is the Supreme Genius version of Raichu rather than the Mysterious Island version, which is much less powerful. We also chose the Mysterious Island version of Pikachu, which is a little more useful and can deal a little more damage early in the game.

Written by Oliver Brandt for GLHF