Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

The Other Dark Birds: Shiftry + Pidgeot

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zapatosunidos

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Strategy: Corsola start, fill bench with Sneasel, Seedot, and Pidgey for a turn or two until KO. Build a Scrambled Pidgeot in this time to move him into the active position. Pidgeot hits for 50 and pushes back to the bench without KO to keep the Scramble activated. When your Shiftry is ready, Pidgeot's free retreat gets him out of there, hopefully without losing a prize card. Shiftry comes up to hit for 50-70-90 (60-80-100 with Special Dark). If you flip heads, you devolve a benched Pokemon for the KO. Always have a Pidgeot ready to go up if Shiftry falls. The second one should have Special Dark on it, since evolved Pokemon have better attacks for Mirror Move and you may need that extra oomph for the KO (Pidgeot turns dark courtesy of Weavile's Poke-Power). Finish off with Shiftrys devolving everything and/or hitting for 50+ every turn.

The trainer engine is designed to get two Stage 2 ready to go in tandem; a difficult task. It has to be fast and is, but I may need something to avoid decking out. Sidney and Windstorm are there to keep Weavile and Shiftry going if Cessation Crystal or Battle Frontier Comes out.

3-2-3 Shiftry (DP)
2-1-2 Pidgeot (SW)
1-1 Weavile (SW)
4 Corsola (SW)

19 Pokemon

4 Rare Candy
3 PokeNav
4 Pokedex
3 Master Ball
3 Duskball
3 Professor Birch
1 Team Galactic's Mars
2 Windstorm
2 Sidney's Stadium

25 Trainers

2 DRE
2 Scramble
4 Special Dark
8 Dark

16 Energy

Thanks in advance for any advice you may have.
 
Hi,

This is quite the deck and would do pretty well.
What would you do without a Corsola start? It is pretty much the only good starter you have.
 
Well, a Sneasel start is not horrible, especially if Weavile is not prized, but I must admit, if I don't, the best I can do is get things built as quickly as possible. If it is a Pidgey start, the strategy pretty much stays the same, but without the deep dredging of the deck for basics. Both Seedot and Pidgey can stall if necessary, too.

A Seedot start is more difficult since nothing in that line has free retreat. The only recourse would be to sacrifice one and have a Corsola ready to go. This would put me behind on the prize exchange, possibly losing the game, but no deck wins them all, right? I guess that kind of indicates I should have a Night Maintenance or two to get back energy and a basic from a bad start, huh? That would also help with the decking out thing, too.
 
Maybe you should tech 1 shiftry ex from CG. With target attack, It could snipe off the pidgeoted pokemon on the bench, it has a free retreat and it has dark eyes. And maybe instead of dusk ball, you should run quick ball.
 
Dusk Ball is there to combo with Pokedex, but certainly given the bad start scenarios above, a Quick Ball's guaranteed Pokemon could be significantly more helpful. I will try to figure out how to make space for a couple.
 
Shiftry is loads of fun ... but fighting weakness is really bad with Gallade, Lucario, and a mess of other pretty good fighting pokemon in format. Yes I know Pidgeot is resistant but with only a 2-1-2 line Shiftry's weakness is going to come into play. Having only 1 attack also leaves him somewhat vulnerable to Sableye.

Pidgeot is really interesting but I'm pretty much giving up on it for now. I've built 3 different lists with it and they are a combined 1-13 against a mess of different stuff. The biggest problem is that it just doesn't do enough damage fast enough even with the disruption. Getting a secondary big hitter set up is frequently too slow. Weavile SW + Pidgeot actually works pretty well, but with a 1-1 line it's going to be tough to get it out in some games especially with a ball engine (personal experience here).

Overall I really like the theme of this deck but I would expect it to have major problems with a number of more commonly played decks. If I had to change one thing it would be swapping out the TGM for a Island Hermit. You still get two cards in hand but since it also flips over two prizes Gallade/Garde isn't going to Telepass it.

Good luck!
 
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