Go big with six Legendary Pokémon at once thanks to the Sword & Shield—Astral Radiance expansion.
By Stéphane Ivanoff, Contributing Writer
Today, we’re taking a look at a unique Pokémon Trading Card
Game deck that is powered by a card from the Sword &
Shield—Astral Radiance expansion—Regigigas.
Regigigas’s Ancient Wisdom Ability lets it attach any 3 Energy cards (not just
Basic Energy) from your discard pile to one of your Pokémon in play. Pokémon
TCG veterans know that attaching more than the typical single Energy from your
hand per turn—also known as Energy acceleration—is a powerful effect that has
been at the core of many top-tier decks over the years. Having such a powerful
form of Energy acceleration on a Basic Pokémon is particularly notable. Of
course, Ancient Wisdom has a strict condition: in addition to Regigigas, you
need to have Regirock, Regice, Registeel, Regieleki, and Regidrago in play. This leaves
no place for any other Pokémon on the board besides these six. Therefore, we’ll
play these six Legendary Pokémon exclusively.
The combination of a powerful, deck-defining effect and a highly
restrictive condition may remind you of other cards; Eternatus VMAX required you to only play Darkness-type
Pokémon, for example. In a similar way, we need to take advantage of what our Regigigas
deck offers while trying to mitigate the drawbacks of this Pokémon’s Ability.
Let’s start with the good news: none of the Legendary
Pokémon are ultra-rare cards, and we’re not playing any Pokémon V (or VMAX or
VSTAR). This means building a complete Regigigas deck is a little easier to
achieve than some of the other big hitters in the format. Does this mean that
the deck will be less effective than others? Not at all! While Regigigas might
not be the single best deck in the format, it was strong enough to win Japan’s
National Championships. This is definitely a deck that even the best players
have to respect.
Another advantage of playing Regigigas is that the six
Pokémon on our Bench are all good Pokémon to have. They are single-Prize, Basic
Pokémon with high HP (at least 120), so it won’t be easy for the opponent to
Knock Out all of them. We can’t play Manaphy
to protect our Benched Pokémon, but we don’t really need to because of our
Pokémon’s high HP. Radiant Greninja
is the main reason for Manaphy’s ubiquity, but as it can’t one-hit KO our
Pokémon, Manaphy is not needed.
Finally, notice that each of these titanic Pokémon has a
different typing. Regigigas can attach Energy to any of our Pokémon, which
means it can power up any of the deck’s attacks if we play Aurora Energy. Since our Pokémon
are of different types, they can hit a range of Pokémon for Weakness. What’s
more, some of their attacks have effects that make them very versatile indeed.
Let’s take a closer look at our roster’s attack power:
Regigigas: The Gigaton Break attack is
particularly powerful against Pokémon VMAX since it hits them for 300 damage.
That might be a bit out of reach for a Knock Out on its own, but with Choice Belt, and potentially Powerful Energy, it’s possible
to get a KO in one hit and three Prizes in one turn.
Regirock: Its Giga Impact attack does a
decent base 140 damage. But because Regirock is a Fighting type, it hits the
popular Arceus VSTAR for
Weakness. There are other Pokémon, such as Gengar VMAX, that can be one-hit KO’d as well, although
Regirock would need a Choice Belt to do so.
Registeel: Registeel’s Heavy Slam does 220
damage at most, so in theory it can Knock Out a Pokémon V who has no Retreat
Cost, such as Mew V or a
Pokémon with an Air Balloon attached.
It’s situational for sure, but keep an eye out for times when it could be
effective.
Regieleki: Regieleki is a Lightning-type
Pokémon, which makes it a great choice to attack the powerful Origin Forme Palkia VSTAR (or V) for Weakness with Teraspark.
This attack can also do damage to the Bench: If it manages to attack twice, it
can Knock Out two Sobble on
the Bench. But doing so won’t be easy—that Bench damage can be prevented by
Manaphy, removed by Scoop Up Net,
or Sobble can simply evolve to get out of range of a Knock Out. Nevertheless,
Regieleki is good for putting pressure on opponents.
Regice: Its Blizzard Bind attack is
often the best option against a Pokémon V or VSTAR that can’t be hit for
Weakness, such as Hisuian Samurott VSTAR.
Blizzard Bind does 100 damage and prevents the opponent from attacking. There
are ways for them to play around it, such as retreating their Active Pokémon,
but they’ll still end up with a Pokémon that is in range of a KO by one of your
attackers.
Regidrago: Giant Fang hits for 160
damage, which allows it to Knock Out basically anything in two hits. The
Pokémon is also used for its Dragon’s Hoard Ability, which will help you draw
cards if you have a dead hand, making it a key Pokémon in this deck. Because we
can’t play support Pokémon such as Drizzile,
Bibarel, or Crobat V in a Regigigas deck, we
need other ways to draw cards. Regidrago helps with that. The Regidrago from Sword &
Shield—Evolving Skies could also be played for its higher damage output,
but the lack of a draw power makes it a worse option overall.
The Regigigas deck must meet a few requirements before it
can accomplish its goals. First, all six Pokémon need to be in play. This can
be accomplished via the usual consistency cards: Quick Ball, Ultra Ball,
Capture Energy, etc.
Regirock, Regice, and Registeel also have the Regi Gate attack, which can help
with this goal on the first turn. Afterward, it’s better not to use your attack
for set up—use
it for doing damage. Hisuian Heavy Ball
is also crucial in getting two Pokémon out of our Prize cards. We can’t
devote too much deck space to attackers, so playing two copies of each of our
Pokémon is a good compromise. We’d lose the match if both copies of any one
Pokémon were Prized, and Hisuian Heavy Ball avoids that.
Second, we need to get Energy in play to attack. Regigigas
can accelerate Energy, but the Energy needs to be in the discard pile for that
to work. Quick Ball, Ultra Ball, and Professor’s Research can send Energy cards to the discard pile
if needed. The Energy card that we need the most is Aurora Energy: if we don’t
have two of them out of the deck, we’ll be unable to use most of our attacks. Energy Loto can also help to
draw Aurora Energy.
Finally, this deck needs to continually get Pokémon back in
play whenever they get Knocked Out so that Regigigas can maintain a supply of Energy.
Ordinary Rod is perfect for
that purpose. Ideally, we only need to play an Ordinary Rod every other turn (assuming
the opponent gets a KO every turn), but sometimes we’ll need to discard Pokémon
and will need to play Ordinary Rod sooner. Including four copies of Ordinary
Rod is the safest choice.
Because Regigigas relies on having a full board of six
specific Pokémon, this deck does have exploitable weaknesses. It’s important to
be aware of them in order to protect against them as best as possible.
Bench disruption can be a problem for Regigigas. Avery forces us to discard Pokémon
from our Bench until we only have three, so if one is Knocked Out, we must make
it a priority to get three Pokémon in play on the next turn. Similarly, Collapsed Stadium makes us discard
one Pokémon, but it also stays in play and would need to be dealt with before
we could use Regigigas’s Ancient Wisdom Ability again. For these reasons, we
need to include Stadiums of our own in the deck.
Regigigas also only plays Basic Pokémon. Some decks can
include techs that will take advantage of that. For example, Origin Forme Palkia
VSTAR can play Eiscue,
whose Blockface attack makes it immune to Basic Pokémon. The best way to deal
with such an attack is to play Escape Rope
to force Eiscue back to the Bench, and then use Boss’s Orders to bring it back with Blockface’s effect
removed. Then, Eiscue can be KO’d.
The last potential issue is that Regigigas relies on Special
Energy, so Duraludon VMAX is
immune to attacks from our Pokémon thanks to its Skyscraper Ability. The main
way to counter this is to play the Path to the Peak
Stadium, which shuts down Skyscraper.
Once we understand how the Regigigas deck works and the threats
that we need to prepare for, the full deck list becomes apparent:
Source: Pokemon
