Hello, trainers! It’s Tommy from Owl Central Games! It’s the end of the Pokemon season and that means we’re approaching the biggest event of the year, next to Worlds: NAIC! Like last year, we’ll have a new set that will be legal the week of NAIC.
This year, we’ve got Twilight Masquerade to consider! There are many cards from Twilight Masquerade that are expected to make more than a splash at this year’s NAIC. Impactful cards include Legacy Energy and Wellspring Mask Ogerpon in the Lugia archetype, Bloodmoon Ursaluna in the Lost Box archetype and Teal Mask Ogerpon in the Raging Bolt archetype. However, the one with the most hype around it is Dragapult ex.
Dragapult ex has been the talk of the town, with many top players following the latest results from Japan’s City Leagues and Champions League to see how it does into the current meta. Dragapult ex, with its Dragon typing, means it has no weakness in the TCG. It has a staggering 320hp and a powerful attack that does 200 dmg on top of spreading 6 damage counters. When players first read that, we knew it’d be a force to be reckoned with and, unsurprisingly, it has results to back it up.
The most recent Champions League in Sapporo had over 2700 masters playing in it and of the thousands of people, THREE made Top 8. The question remains though, what IS the best way to play the archetype? Is it to combine it with Pidgeot ex to be able to search your deck on a whim? Should we pair it with Xatu for the draw and energy acceleration? Or do we pair Dragapult with Pokemon’s poster child Charizard ex to have fire accel and a late game comeback attacker?
Maybe the answer is none of the above and we pair it with the Lost Zone engine to take advantage of Mirage Gate’s energy accel and Sableye’s Lost Mine. As far as sauce, I’m going to keep mine a secret because I’ll be competing at NAIC BUT we all need somewhere to start so let’s talk about the top performing Dragapult ex list from the Champions League Sapporo and discuss why it might have performed so well.
This is the list that got 3rd out of 2700+ players from Champions League Sapporo. The best performing Dragapult ex list looks to be paired with Xatu so let’s talk about why this did better than the rest and why you should keep this on your radar for NAIC.
The Dragapult archetype’s strength comes from how many cards it can see on its second turn. This is why we see Technical Machine: Evolution included in the list. Most Dragapult players have figured out that the deck actually likes to go second. What can happen is you can attach for turn, attach TM: Evo to the active and then evolve 2 benched Dreepy into Drakloak or choose to evolve something like a Natu and Dreepy into Drakloak and Xatu.
Ideally, your boardstate has something like 3 benched Dreepy and 2 Natu or a Natu + Manaphy to play around Moonlight Shuriken. If you can get all of your benched Dreepy evolved into Drakloak and evolve the Natu into Xatu, you could be seeing upwards of 8 cards, drawing 2 off of Xatu and accelerating a psychic energy into play, and seeing 6 cards off of 3 Drakloak, 2 cards each from its ability.
One of Dragapult ex’s biggest drawbacks is the energy cost for Phantom Dive, requiring a Fire and a Psychic energy. Xatu helps alleviate that issue by accelerating 1 Psychic into play, drawing 2 cards and preserving your attachment from you for turn. In other words, a Dragapult ex CAN be set up and be ready to attack in just 1 turn with the assistance of Xatu.
Tommy, what happens if you CAN’T go second? Scoop and go to game two- JUST KIDDING DON’T DO THAT LMAO.
Don’t worry, you’re still in there, even if you do go first. Let’s talk about another interesting inclusion that helps with going first! The 3rd place list Kengo Ishida played includes 2 Rotom V, likely for consistency but mainly for the event that they had to go first. It’s bound to happen if your playing Dragapult ex at NAIC this weekend.
When going first, there is a chance that you start with a dead hand and won’t be able to play something like Arven to grab Buddy-Buddy Poffin and Forest Seal Stone/ Technical Machine: Evolution. Rotom V helps make your dead hands more playable for the following turn by letting you draw 3 cards and ending your turn. There have been countless times in testing where I was put in a position where I needed to draw 3 off the Rotom to save what otherwise would’ve been an unplayable hand, going first.
Since Rotom V is in the deck, it also makes sense to include Forest Seal Stone, giving any V it’s attached to the ability to search the deck for 1 card once per game. This inclusion can help turn the tide of the game in your favor, searching for that last combo piece.
Next thing I wanted to cover is the radiant Pokémon choice. Kengo Ishida chose to play Radiant Alakazam in their list. A lot of my friends were theorizing about playing Radiant Charizard to synergize with the fire energy that were already in the deck. As our testing group continued to play the archetype, we came to the conclusion that manipulating damage counters was far more useful. It seems like Ishida came to the same conclusion.
Dragapult puts 60 damage counters anywhere on your Opponent’s benched Pokémon. With Radiant Alakazam, even 70 hp Pokemon aren’t safe from another Phantom Dive since you can move up to 2 dmg counters over to something with damage on it already to take a KO.
For example, imagine there’s a high HP Pokemon in the active and small guys on the bench- two 70hp dudes. You could split the damage 50 on 1 guy and 10 on another 70 hp pokemon and do 200 to the active.
On the following turn, if you still have Dragapult and the damage you divided up remains, you can move 2 dmg counters from the active onto a 70 hp pokemon on the bench with the 5 dmg counters from the previous turn to take a KO before you even declare an attack, taking a prize card that way. Afterwards, you can declare Phantom Dive again, place 60 on the other 70 hp Pokemon with 1 dmg counter on it already and KO the active, taking 3 prizes that way, making it a 4 prize turn. When you put it like that, Radiant Alakazam looks like a far better option than Radiant Charizard.
The last thing I wanted to touch on about Ishida’s list is their ACE SPEC of choice. They chose to play the new Unfair Stamp from Twilight Masquerade. This has been a divisive topic amongst people testing the new archetype for NAIC. Players are torn between Unfair Stamp and the returning Scoop Up Cyclone. I believe the reason why Ishida chose to play Unfair Stamp over Cyclone is because decks that see a lot of cards benefit from Unfair Stamp and punishes decks that don’t have a strong draw engine.
In this list, you have the Xatus to accelerate energy into play AND draw 2 cards. You have Drakloak to see 2 cards and put one of them into your hand. If something gets KO’d, you can play Unfair Stamp, disrupt your opponent and then draw 5 cards. After you’ve drawn your 5, you can start digging if you haven’t found the piece you’re looking for.
Drakloaks let you see 2 cards each. Xatus will help you see 2 cards if you have psychic energy to put into play. This means that not only do you get to draw 5 cards off of unfair stamp, but if you have 3 Drakloaks in play, a Xatu in play and the psychic energy to accelerate, you could be seeing an additional 8 cards after Unfair Stamp. At best, Unfair Stamp becomes a “draw 10, see 13” and at worst, you just draw 5 but set your opponent’s hand down to 2. That’s extremely strong either way.
Now, that IS with an ideal boardstate with a bunch of Drakloaks in play and so forth but again, even without the ideal boardstate, the ACE SPEC is still very potent. As you can see, Xatu adds the much needed consistency that the Dragapult ex archetype, alone, was missing.
There are other reasons why you might choose this build over something like Dragapult ex/Pidgeot ex, like it’s less punished my Technical Machine:Devolution but this article has gone on for long enough! If you’re looking for a place to start your testing or a good list for the North America International Championships, look no further than the 3rd place CL Sapporo list!
If you’re looking for Twilight Masquerade product to get your hands on the Dragapult Line or Unfair Stamp, look no further than us- Owl Central Games! Happy testing and I’ll see you at NAIC!
