GLC Deck - Pressure Points: Water Spread

A spiritual successor to my first ever GLC deck Shell Shooting, Pressure Points is a flexible and fun water spread list. There are plenty of routes to take to victory, whether its overwhelming slow set up decks with Palafin and Castform, or creating devastating TM:Devo plays with Inteleon, Greninja, and Cloyster. This decks setup is very simple in that you either start using Beacon asap or you run into Ball Guy/Irida. There's also the chance to hit Sobble's Keep Calling to bench Remoraid and Shellder. Sometimes your starting hands can really reek, but I don't think this deck is one to autolose to a bricked hand. This is due to my attacker lineup having some really nice staying power. Palafin acts as my wallbreaker and as a win condition against a lot of raw attacking decks, it can easily go 2-1 on prizes and then can just be recurred later into the game. The low energy cost allows you to save resources and attach other energies to your main spread tandems for an efficient attack string. Cloyster really helps into low to the ground decks that typically sacrifice on DPS for low energy costs, its ability allows it to take 30 less damage from attacks and its attack itself is very serviceable. 60 and 30 to 2 for WC is a really consistent option that will always come in handy. Greninja acts as a last boss sort of attacker, it sports a solid 50 to 2 attack, but its ability is where it really shines. As all good decks should, we need to cheat a little bit here, and Greninja works just fine for that. Its ability Evasion Jutsu allows it to deny any damage taken 50% of the time, which may not seem too strong until you actually hit it in game. The dismay on your opponents face is 100% worth the chances of it failing, and getting more free turns to spread those 50's while stacking with Inteleon's Quick Shooting is a huge boon. Frogadier just makes the Greninja even more justified as its ability Gale Shuriken allows you to get another usage of the aforementioned Quick Shooting, allowing for some early math solving and prize taking. To cover the rest, we have Phione to disrupt opponents board states by forcing support Pokemon into the active and Wishiwashi to absorb damage and stall out turns to get another attacker online if necessary. This deck omits water's classic idea of energy acceleration mons like Frosmoth, Baxcalibur, and Blastoise and opts instead for bursts of accel using cards like Raihan and Aqua Patch. Most of my attackers only need 1-2 energy so attaching for turn with some extra help is more than sufficient. In almost every deck I build, I like to make at least 1 underutilized card shine, the choice for this deck is Pokemon League Headquarters. This stadium forces basic Pokemon to need an extra C energy in their attack costs. This synergizes especially well with my attacker core as all of the main attackers are stage 1's and 2's. A theme of this deck is to steal turns from your opponent to give time for the setup of your board and the tear-down of your opponents board. PLHQ helps as another way to deny an attack (or even a TM!) from being used. Finally, I wanted to touch up on the fact that this deck has 2 insane users of Luxurious Cape, being Palafin and Greninja. Palafin's attack states that it will do recoil damage equal to the amount of damage on Palafin itself. This means that if it was hit for 130, the next time it uses Vanguard Punch it would deal 130 in recoil as well. This allows you to bypass the text of Luxurious Cape and KO yourself via self damage, denying your opponent a second prize card. Greninja's use case is just that if it can fail Evasion Jutsu but still live the damage, it makes the chance of the ability procking even more likely. I believe that this deck is very close to completion right now, and I'm incredibly happy with the state it is in. Discord @jaboingus for any questions and ideas (o-o)