#pokemon deck

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In HGSS-on, one of the most popular decks was ReshiBoar, a deck that used Emboar (BW) to accelerate energy via infinite fire energy attachments from the hand to Reshiram (BW), a big basic Pokémon with the potential to hit for 120 damage every turn (at the cost of discarding 2 energy attached to Reshiram).

Notice that these were considered high HP cards and there were no ex/EX/GX/etc cards in the format at the time. In other words, there were no "rule box" Pokémon.

ReshiPhlosion, a similar deck, was also widely being played -- Typhlosion had a PokéPower to attach 1 fire energy from the discard pile to a Pokémon for the price of placing 1 damage counter on it (and, interestingly, the power gets shut down if Typhlosion is affected with a special condition -- same with Electrode's power below).

Thus, the predominant decks were decks composed of fire Pokémon. I decided to build a rogue deck using a water-type Pokémon to play at my local league, since it would be a good counter to the meta. I ended up creating a deck using Samurott and Electrode Prime.

Electrode's Energymite PokéPower allowed me to trade a prize card (since it would be Knocked Out) for all of the energy cards in the top 7 cards of my deck, and attach them to my Pokémon in any way I like. I discard the other cards. I filled my deck with a relatively high percentage of water energy, which would hopefully get attached to Samurott.

Samurott only needed 3 energy to do 100 damage with no drawback (200 with weakness -- OHKO on every Pokémon in the game at the time), and it also had an ability that reduced all damage done to it by attacks by 20 (after applying weakness). PlusPower was ubiquitous in HGSS-on, allowing Reshiram to OHKO Pokémon with more than 120 HP. Normally a Reshiram player would have to PlusPower twice to OHKO Samurott, but with its ability you would have to play all 4 at once, making it very difficult to achieve and rendering PlusPower nearly useless.

This is an oversimplification, but if Samurott needs 3/7 of the deck to be water energies, that would be 26 energies. I probably ran a bit under that number because I get one attach from my hand. I don't remember or have the exact decklist I used, but here's a sketch of what it might have looked like. [Professor Oak's New Theory was a popular supporter in the HGSS-on format.]

Pokémon (17)

4-2-4 Oshawott-Dewott-Samurott (BW)

3-3 Electrode Prime (HGSS Triumphant)

1 Cleffa (HGSS)

Trainers (22)

3 Rare Candy

3 Pokémon Communication

3 Junk Arm

3 Pokémon Catcher

2 Switch

2 Energy Retrieval

2 Pokémon Collector

2 Professor Juniper

3 Professor Oak's New Theory

Energies (21)

I just found my stash of pokemon cards that I got from a thrift store YEARS AGO, and I counted all of them. I have 117 pokemon cards, 17 energy cards, and 17 trainer cards... and still not enough to complete a deck *SOBS IN POKEMON* (6 cards short for just one deck; oh the pain)