The Central Strategy

In the early game you want to establish a Pidgeot (preferably the Poké-Power one) and a Garbodor. These two cards will accelerate the pace of the game for you and slow the pace of the game for your opponent. The deck is naturally incredibly slow, so being able to force your opponent to play at a similar speed to you is essential. Once Pidgeot, Garbodor, and Slowking are established, the next goal is to force your opponent to have no useful cards in hand by spamming hand control cards. At the same time, use cards like Pokémon Catcher and Gust of Wind to bring up one of your opponent’s Pokémon that has a higher Retreat Cost and a weaker attack. The goal of this stage is to make it so your opponent cannot attack you every turn as you have no way to stop them from attaching Energy cards to their Pokémon in play each turn. Once that step is complete, begin Mewtwo V-Union’s reign of terror. Use Psysplosion to spread damage across your opponent’s board if they have a useless Pokémon stuck in their Active Spot or Final Burn if you need to take a quick knockout on their Active Pokémon. When Mewtwo V-Union takes damage, attempt to bring up one of their weak Benched Pokémon again and use Super Regeneration to heal 200HP. Remember that V-Unions can only be put into play once per game, so add the additional safety net of Focus Band to your Mewtwo V-Union in case something goes wrong. Mewtwo V-Union has helped me come back from being down 8 Prize Cards before, so anything is possible with this behemoth of a Pokémon.

Effect on Partner Battles

Slowking is an extremely annoying card to play against and the only counter to it is Igglybuff (read: Format Staples – Part 8: Colorless Pokémon). However, if you force one of their Pokémon in the Active Spot, then promote Slowking, the lock is reestablished. This makes Slowking extremely difficult to counter. On top of that, if your opponent does proceed to knock out the Slowking, you can immediately rebench it at the start of your turn. Because so many Partner Battles decks rely on a large amount of Trainers to help them win, being able to stop them from doing what they want to do (50 percent of the time) is oppressive.

Possible Solutions

To come up with solutions to combat the deck, the strengths of the deck must be identified. The main strengths of the deck can be simplified into 4 sections. First is the Slowking itself. Then is the Pidgeot package. Thirdly is Garbotoxin. Finally is the hand control. So where’s the biggest strength? I would give that to the Pidgeot package. While it is largely unassuming at first, the ability to search for ANY card out of your deck during your turn allows the deck to be as dominant as it is. However, that exact Pidgeot package can be played in any Partner Battles deck. So does that mean that it’s the biggest problem? No. As everybody expected, the Slowking is the biggest problem to the format. The fact that no evolution is needed and it can be played straight from the Partner Zone makes this card as strong as it is. In that case, what changes can be made to decrease the potency of strong partners such as Slowking. One option that is currently being tested makes knocking out the Slowking a viable move. The idea is that when a Partner returns to the Partner Zone, it must stay there for a full turn before returning to play. While this helps against Slowking, the real question is whether or not it impacts other decks too harshly, such as Gyarados who relies on its Partner in order to attack each turn. This change is still being tested, so until then the best way to beat a Slowking deck is by using less Abilities, running a higher Energy count, or finding a turn to pull off a huge combo to win the game. I suppose we’ll see what the future holds for this style of deck.