GLC Deck - Phoenix Fire

My iteration of a Blaziken fire list.

The goal of this deck is to spread early and often with Reshiram and Oricorio. At the same time setting up your bench and hand for big plays and intentionally going down 1-3 prizes to comeback with Surge. Being able to have the option to Surge Guzma/Blacksmith/Welder/Hex/Iono/Ace Trainer and recur them with Lusamine creates a ton of hand pressure while also taking 2 threats or support mons off their board. This makes a situation where your opponent will likely not be able to: disrupt your hand, power another attacker, refill their bench with support mons/attackers all in one turn with just one supporter. Being able to capitalize on this can create many opportunities to come back from 2 or 3 prize deficit games. The deck requires a ton of resource management and prize mapping, but I've found success with it by simply taking it slow and planning to 222.

Optimal starts -> Castform, Reshiram, Oricorio -> GuzHala for Capture, TM Evo, Artazon -> Capture to Reshiram or Oricorio -> TM Evo Slugma and Salandit -> T2 attach to active to begin spreading damage until they take a prize

Optimal mid-game -> Ninetales and Entei were added to include 2 energy attackers who can do math fixing on predamaged pokemon. Torchic blindside is still a strong option and easily achievable with stretcher blacksmith.

• THE OPTIMAL CASTFORM: I've had a lot of questions about this one so I'll talk about a few points related to it here. The 150 damage castform is not what this deck is going for. First and foremost we would like to win the stadium war and have permanent access to basin or training court, we don't want to be discarding our own stadiums. Always exert pressure with your stadiums, force them to bump what we put out - especially to bait out rough seas early as possible. Second, we WANT to fall behind. Taking a KO with 150 is sick but what's sicker is doing 50 damage, powering up an attacker on the bench and having a dumb blob in the active you force them to gust around. This sets up blindside damage, with a basin out we can power up chi-yu and torchic from scratch in one turn, and most of all, if they gust whatever we move the energy to, we can just stretcher blacksmith it to do the same thing but now they are down a gust. Last, don't be afraid to Singe for burn. 20 damage is what reshi is doing anyways and when you're comfortable with the deck, you will know when that 20 damage will come back and be relevant. It is absolutely not a terrible desperation play for 1 energy.


• THE GIANT HEARTH CLAUSE: This is a scary cut. I cut hearth for Lost City because it felt like I was at most getting 1 or 2 uses out of hearth before deciding to bump it myself. Realistically I think the cards are interchangeable depending on how comfortable you are, with hearth being a more training wheels option. I believe you should be able to get what you need to start the game with letter or colress and be able to work out of the discard for energy for the rest of the game. It can be hard and requires more testing on my end, but I had no problem on energy going 4-0 at locals.


• THE LOST CITY CLAUSE: This is a scary card for both players. But lost city creates insane value plays by either ninetales LZ a key support pokemon (drizzile, manaphy, tatsugiri, skwovet, etc.) or torchic or blaziken LZing two key attackers or support pokemon to bury your opponent. I found that the risk of torchic being lost zoned is mitigated by good prize mapping and being able to use chi-yu, entei and ninetales to close out the game as long as you know your line. Crisis punch is still hitting for 280 even if it's not on a torchic! Taking two with torchic or blindside and lost zoning 2 relevant attackers makes it that much harder for a deck to keep up, so if you lose torchic to the zone you should still be fine, but make sure you plan ahead before blindly sending it!

Obviously a lot can go wrong, but you're looking at a fire deck so shut up.