Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Guru Point Challenge #4 - Making Raichu LvX work!

This LvX looks SO GOOD but noone has experienced much success with it in tournament.
I think, players around the world would thank us if we could put our heads together and come up with Raichu LvX ideas that work.

SO... today's challenge is to contribute a REAL (viable) examples of how Raichu LvX could be successful in a deck that has synergy, consistency, and winning potential.

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My list might just be a draft, but Electrode Twins has to get play with Pikachu Pachurisu decks. The deck should be in the hands of the hyper aggressive player. Every single game will be both short and close in prizes.

I'd like to hear what other people's opinions of this are. Especially the players working with Raichu.
 
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4 Pikachu
3 Raichu prime
1 Raichu lv.X
2 uxie
3 pachirisu

4 pokemon collector
3 bebes search
1 luxury ball
3 super scoop up
3 seeker
2 twins
3 broken time space
2 rare candy
2 junk arm
3 research documents

10 Lightning energy
2 rescue energy.

This is a standard raichu/pachirisu list.

As you can see, this is only a skeleton list, as there are a few things you can do with the deck.

1. Add smeargle: Smeargle is a great starter in decks like this to help you get an early start off of your opponent's supporters and is splashable into almost any deck.

2. Sableye: Another good starter that again lets you use a supporter on the first turn and sometimes two supporters a turn. It's good for a turn one collector or other things you need to use.

3. Spiritomb: More about starter pokemon. Spiritomb is a good starter because he can build up your pokemon fast while giving an early-game trainer lock. This isn't the best choice for a deck like this, however.

4. Unown Q: It's a great card that helps you retreat you pokemon without wasting a lot of energy. I reccomend just one in this deck, as it is not a card that you want to start with.

5. Fisherman: really reccomend fisherman for this deck as it is a very good way to get energy back from the discard pile. Since raichu happens to discard a lot, this is almost a staple.

6. Bronzong SF: A great card for getting energy into your hand and combos greatly with pachirisu. I reccomend running it in the 1-1, or 2-2 lines.
HoPe I helped.
 
Raichu LvX

The obvious strength of this card is its Link Lightning PokeBody. When you level this guy up, you can attack twice in one turn, as long as the first attack is Voltage Shoot. This leads to obvious problems with the second attack, as Voltage Shoot requires a discard of 2 Lightning Energy for 80 damage. So, the best way to utilize this Raichu is to accelerate energy as quickly as possible to hopefully grab two KOs in one turn.

The obvious Raichu to pair with this LvX is the Raichu Prime. His PokePower allows you to move Electric Energy to Raichu whenever you want during your turn. His attack is pretty obviously average, but could be a nice one hit KO when necessary.

There are a few cards out there that could potentially help get the energy onto Raichu. Right now, one of the internet's favorites is Pachirisu from the Call of Legends set. When you Bench the Pachirisu, you can attach 2 Electric Energy from your hand to Pachi. Then, you can use Raichu Prime's Power to move that Energy to Raichu. The problem with Pachi is that he's kind of a one-shot deal. He either works or he doesn't, and there's no real middle ground between the two. He also basically requires you to maximize your Super Scoop Up and Junk Arm count to maximize his potential. I don't really like him for Raichu, mostly because he removes spots from other things in your deck that might also be necessary.

Another option, especially for mid-game or late game, would be Magnezone #6 from Stormfront. During your turn, you can attach an Electric Energy from your Discard to your Active Pokemon, placing one damage counter on that Pokemon if you do. This also allows for the very powerful Magnezone #5 from Stormfront to be played, which lets you search for an Electric or Metal Pokemon from your Deck and add it to your Hand. There are more methods for getting Electric Energy in the discard than there are for getting them in hand, so I like this option much better. It also opens you up for better card acceleration with the SF5 Magnezone.

With all of that in mind, let's try and build a deck incorporating these elements and some Raichu recovery thoughts.

Pokemon (25):
4 Sableye SF
3 Pikachu MD 70
2 Raichu Prime
2 Raichu LvX
2 Uxie LA
4 Magnemite SF66
3 Magneton SF 42
2 Magnezone SF6
2 Magnezone SF5
1 Azelf LA

Trainers (21):
3 Broken Time Space
2 Rare Candy
3 Bebe's Search
2 Pokemon Collector
2 Pokemon Communication
2 Engineer's Adjustments or Sage's Training
4 Super Scoop Up
1 Palmer's Contribution
1 VS Seeker
1 Luxury Ball

Energy (14):
4 Call
10 Electric

There's a lot of extra stuff here that's not part of our basic strategy, so I'll try and do a turn-by-turn of how this deck should work ideally.

Starting with Sableye, you should use Impersonate for Collector, making sure that you have a Pikachu and a Magnemite either in your hand or in play, and a Uxie in your hand. If you have additional spots, then you should either an Unown Q or a second Magnemite. If you have an energy, especially a Lightning, attach it to Sableye before you Impersonate.

On your second turn, try any and every means necessary to get that SF5 Magnezone into play. He is the basis of your speed, and you'll need every advantage you can get. You've got a 4-3 stage 1 line below the SF5 Zone, 5 ways of accelerating your evolutions, and 6 dedicated Search cards. Magnezone should search out either a second SF5 Magnezone or your Raichu Prime, with the Raichu getting preference so that you can evolve him quickly and get set for the LvX to hit play. While you're doing that, do any means necessary to get Electric Energy into your Discard. You've got either Engineer or Sage to help with that energy discarding, that's a choice that depends solely on your play style and what tradeoffs you're willing to make for this deck.

After this, it's just a matter of using Magnezone SF6 and your regular energy attachments to get at least 5 Electric Energy in play, or 4 Electrics and a Call on a Raichu. The moment you have that, Level Up a Raichu, pull the 5 Energy up to the Raichu, and use Link Lightning followed by either Link Lightning or Mega Thunderbolt, whichever you feel is better at getting the KOs that you need. You need to get 2 KOs from that one attack phase.

The turn after you do that LevelUp and Attack, you must use your Super Scoops to get that first Raichu back into your hand. Hopefully, you've got a second Raichu Prime already on your bench, and again hopefully with at least 5 energy in play or ready to be played. Even if you can't get the SSU flip, Free Retreat the Raichu into another Raichu and have the LvX in play. Then, you do it again. There are very few decks that can handle getting KO'd 4 times in 2 turns.

Hopefully, after this, you can find some way to get the final two KOs using some combination of your Raichus and Magnezones. With Magnezone being able to snipe for 40, Porter for 60, or deal a straight 80, along with Raichu's big attacks, you should be able to get those prizes relatively easily. If the opportunity exists, try out the Link Lightning combo once again with a Super Scoop Up.

As far as the rest of the deck, it's there to mitigate bad starts as much as possible. Uxie is the most powerful draw card in the format today and should be included in every deck. He's how you'll get to your Turn 2 Magnezone. Azelf will help you get stuff out of your Prizes, as stuff gets prized far too easily in this game. Call is a personal call, but it makes getting Magnemites out of the Active Position by benching another Magnemite and using that Magnet attached to your Active. Palmer recovers anything that gets KO'd, though it should be used most often on Raichu and SF6 Magnezone, as those are the backbone of your deck. If an SF5 Magnezone gets KO'd, you'll usually be fine as long as you've got the rest of the setup going. VS Seeker is just an extra copy of a bunch of different Supporters, any of which can be useful in a given situation.

Oh yeah. I know I'm going to get questions about this, so might as well touch on it right now. The 2-2 Raichu-LvX line. I ran a Glaceon LvX deck for a long time, and I realized that Azelf is not a great thing to have on your bench. Also, once the LvX is gone, it's gone, and it's tough to bring it back. With 2-2, it's a little bit harder to get out the base Raichu, but it's much easier to keep the LvX in play and in your deck. Again, I don't like using Azelf more than I have to, so I'll hedge my bets against using it.

Now, about the stuff you're likely to see...

SP decks, unfortunately, will tear anything involving Raichu to pieces. I'm sorry, that's just how it is. They're too big, too strong, and too fast for Raichu to have enough time to set itself up. If you do manage to get set up and somehow manage to KO two of their LvX cards, then you might have a chance, as at times they can be slow to reset. But don't rely on it. Hedge your bets at all points by getting two SF5 Magnezones out, and search as often as possible.

Gyarados is another too big, too strong, too fast deck, but this one you've got a fighting chance against because of the +30 weakness plus the fact that they can't get multiple KOs in a single turn. Just make sure that you can get 2 KOs in a turn when you bring up the Raichu, and you should be fine. But this isn't an easy matchup.

VileGar is an interesting matchup, and it really comes down to which player can get their evolutions out faster. VileGar can easily shut down your Trainers, but they also play BTS, which makes your job a lot easier. Don't worry too much about running into a Fainting Spell flip, as you have a few ways of getting the Pokemon back, and the energy is easily recoverable with SF6 Magnezone. Again, the SF5 Magnezone will be your biggest help in this matchup, with its ability to search through your deck easily and grabbing exactly what you need at any given time.

There are a few different Lost World variants out there, and most of them have a natural advantage against you because you run a ton of Pokemon in your deck. Against Gengar, you should only be searching out the Pokemon that you absolutely need, rather than trying to thin your deck for something else. Don't worry too much about discarding Pokemon with Sage once you've got out what you need. Palkia is trickier, as you have to ensure that your bench is less than 4 at all times. It's OK to Lost Zone a couple of Pixies, but try and limit yourself as much as possible. Against virtually all Lost World decks, getting two KOs in one turn will be critical to your success.

There are a few other matchups out there, but none of them really have a strategy other than what you already know for your deck. Basically, don't worry too much about the particulars of what your opponent is playing and make sure that your deck is working to the best of its potential at all times.
 
Oh god yes. This is going to be fun.

This is just falling out my nose right now, but it looks like it could be awesome:

PKMN: 18
4 Pikachu
1 Raichu X
3 Raichu Prime
2 Bronzor
2 Bronzong
1 Unown Q
2 Uxie LA
1 Azelf LA
1 Pachirisu

NRG: 14
14 Lightning

Stuff: 22
3 Bebe's Search
4 Pokemon Collector
2 Professor Oak's New Theory
4 Seeker
2 Pokemon Communication
2 VS Seeker
3 Broken Time Space
1 Palmer's Contribution
1 Energy Returner

The above list has 54 cards, leaving you 6 slots to fernagle with as you see fit (a starter, more energies, some disruption, etc). This is what I would start out with if I was trying to make a Raichu X Swarm deck.

Card Explanations
Pikachu
The promo one is basically the best of the Pikachu litter.

Raichu Prime
Raichu Prime is used for his Voltage Increase Poke-Power. The attack, which dumps all of your energies into the discard, is a secondary option to Raichu X's Voltage Shoot attack.

Raichu X
Given the thread, this is the main card of the deck. Attacking twice with Voltage Shoot is gnarly, grabbing two prizes on most pokemon or dumping a 160 damage OHKO on some big beastie. Of course, discarding from your hand means you'll have to dump 4 energy cards into the discard, but I included ways to cherry-pick them from the deck and recycle them.

Pachirisu
Pachirisu is used to recover energies for you, primarily after you use Mega Thunderbolt. Allows you to use Mega Thunderbolt without having to worry about running out of energy for the Raishu swarm tactic.

Bronzor
The Bronzor you use will most likely not matter. I just wanted to have an excuse to talk about Bronzor today, if only to make some kind of joke involving a Pokemon LARP-er using a Bronzor plushie as a shield. Perhaps in GURPS?

Bronzong
This is how you pull Energies out of the deck every turn. Having both of these in play allows you to yank four Lightnings out per turn, paying for that round's volley of Voltage Shoots.

Seeker
Allows you to scoop Raichu X up and reuse him that very turn. I will get into more detail later.

Palmer's Contribution and Energy Returner
This is how you get those Energies you're discarding back into the deck. Then, you can immediately use Bronzong to pull them back out and fund another Voltage Shoot.

Basic Strategy

Big letters turn even basic strategy into mega strategy.

Anyway, the idea is to be spamming away with Voltage Shoot all game. This is done by utilizing the provided tools to create a constant swarm of Raichu Xs doing a double Voltage Shoot.

I'm tired and cannot utilize good paragraph structure when I'm like this, so get ready for a hot list.

  1. Have Raichu X active.
  2. Have a Raichu Prime benched, evolved last turn.
  3. Ensure you have enough Lightning Energies in hand to utilize the desired number of Voltage Shoots.
  4. Retreat Raichu X for Raichu Prime.
  5. Move all Energies from Raichu X to Raichu Prime.
  6. Use Seeker to return raichu X to your hand.
  7. Level Up Your active Raichu Prime into Raichu X.
  8. Using Broken Time Space, Bench Pikachu and Evolve to Raichu.
  9. Have a heyday attacking.
  10. Rinse and Repeat as necessary.

That's pretty much it. Raichu Prime's Power makes him pretty much built for swarming, but his attack doesn't, so I made up for it by building an engine around Raichu X's Attack and Body. Have fun, kids.
 

Would Poke-Drawer + be a good idea in a speed build like that? Other than that, great build, a lot of fun to play:lol:
 
RA is a busy man, though he really should update this. It takes maybe 2 hours to update ALL of the threads with points and final tally.

Just having 2 hours a day is rough, so I know what he is going through.
 
Raichu LV.X can use its Pokebody even if it didn't level up from your hand, so Level Max could be used to do double attack on your first turn. Any way this can be used for a Raidonk ?
 
this really should be updated.
or pachurisu hype will die

AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHA

"Update the thread or the Squirrel gets it!"

That's funny man :lol:

Yeah. I'm on it. I've been combing through the threads and updating points on lists so this can be updated.

It may take a couple of days because everytime I sit to do it, SOMEONE in the family needs me for something (last night it was "can you help me with my research paper that's due TOMORROW!! :eek: )
 
Now why couldn't we put the squirrel back in the binder? :)

Looking forward to seeing how these go, some of these lists are great!
 
RA is a busy man, though he really should update this. It takes maybe 2 hours to update ALL of the threads with points and final tally.

Just having 2 hours a day is rough, so I know what he is going through.

Yep. That's the problem. To update the points you need like a BLOCK of time where nothing else is happening. I usually get this block on Sundays but Feb/March are my busiest months of the year. So, I've gotta STEAL time from somewhere. If it was something I could do from an iPod touch while on-the-go, it'd be done. but come fire or high water, it'll get done this week!
 
Alright, here's my idea:

POKéMON

4x Pikachu SF
2x Raichu Prime
2x Raichu Lv. X
3x Pachirisu CL
2x Uxie LA
2x Uxie Lv. X

TRAINERS/SUPPORTERS/TOOLS/STADIUMS

4x Bebe's Search RR
3x Energy Restore AR
2x Energy Returner UL
4x Energy Search MD
3x Expert Belt AR
4x Seeker TM
4x Sunyshore City Gym

ENERGY
3x Call Energy MD
18x Lightning Energy

Alright, the energy is high, but Raichu Lv. X needs it- it discards 2 energy every turn. Anyway, I playtested (though only against LuxChomp) on Redshark, and I got 2 cheap prizes- a benched Uxie, and a Luxray GL Lv. X.

EDIT!!!- Manectric G works very well in this deck. I removed a Bebe's Search and an Energy Returner, and put in 2 of them. It works well, and got me a win against LuxChomp.
 
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Just a heads up, you may only have 4 Raichu in your deck, including Lv. X (considered the same name). Otherwise, looks good! =]
 
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