GLC Ancient Fighting Deck

Temporal Forces spoilers are out and the Fighting type got a big boost for one of its most powerful archetypes. If you´re a fan of big punches, fast starts and rocks of all types then you should be playing this deck.

Coalossal builds of the past could set up as early as turn 2 and chain attackers putting most decks on the backfoot and playing catch-up. However, prizing a card in the Coalossal line or early hand disruption from an opponent was almost always an auto-loss for the deck. Recent printings have added some much needed redundancy and a bit of flavor to re-invigorate not only my interest in the deck but its overall consistency and power-level. Here's a look at what I have cooked up.

The Deck

The Engine

Tar Generator Coalossal is the deck´s heart and soul, doing the heavy shoveling to keep this steam-engine rolling. With its ability to attach a Fighting and a Fire energy from the discard pile to your Pokemon in any way you like, you can power up some of the most powerful attackers that the type has to offer in a single turn. Getting a Coalossal into play early is the deck’s primary gameplay and helps set up a strong board state that many decks just can’t beat.

Previously, the deck was single handedly relying on Coalossal which made prizing or an early KO on one of the evolution lines a difficult matter to maneuver. However, Coalossal recently got a friend in the shape of Energizing Rock Salt Garganacl whose ability allows you to attach a Fighting energy from the discard pile to one of your pokemon and heal 30 damage. It’s definitely not as powerful as Coalossal, but having both in play almost guarantees you three energy attachments per turn without having to worry about what’s in your hand. Furthermore, having a contingency plan in place for those games when you can’t get Coalossal in play adds to the consistency and overall power of the deck. 

Besides these two powerful support mons, Technical Machine Turbo Energize, Raihan and Professor Sada’s Vitality all help accelerate energy onto your attackers diminishing the reliance on a singular line of play. With all of these energy acceleration options at its disposal, Ancient GarganCOAL doesn’t care about drawing cards, but rather focuses on building an imposing boardstate asking your opponent the question, “Can you keep up?”.

The Attackers

With such powerful energy acceleration, the deck can focus on strong, basic attackers in the prize trade.

Groudon from Paradox Rift has been another great, recent printing for the list. Both attacks are often utilized within this build as they synergize well with what you’re doing. Groudon’s first attack Swelling Power allows you to attach a Fighting energy from your hand to one of your pokemon, giving you yet another way to accelerate energy. Its second attack Magma Purge does all that you could ever want from an attacker in this build. For two fighting and a colorless you do 60 damage times the amount of energy you discard(up to four) from your Pokemon. Not only does this allow you to hit 240 damage when needed, but you can discard the energy from any of your pokemon. That’s right, ANY of your pokemon. Accelerating energy, discarding energy and huge damage from a 130hp basic is all that Coalossal could ever want. 

Not quite a basic, but a card with amazing synergy and attacking potential is Roaring Resolve Lucario. Its ability allows you to place two damage counters on it and search your deck for a fighting energy and attach it to Lucario. When you pair this with your Coalossal and Garganacl engine, you can attach three energy(two fighting and one fire) to Groudon from your discard and search up a fourth energy with Lucario, letting you hit for 240 energy without a single energy in play at the start of the turn. Lucario can also hit for big numbers on its own. Aura Sphere Volley costs two fighting energy and requires you to discard all fighting energy attached, but it does 10 + 60 for each card you discarded. Since it can attach to itself, you can deal 130 damage in one turn with just an attachment from hand. Add Garganacl and Coalossal into the mix and you’re hitting 250. 

Hisuian Arcanine is another strong attacker in this build. For three energy it can do 160 damage and burn as long as a fire energy is attached. Since it doesn’t discard energy and has a very respectable 150hp, attaching to Arcanine can really help preserve resources if you can KO your opponent’s strongest attacker and then tank a hit. 

Terrakion functions in a similar role hitting 120 damage for 3 energy with its Cavern Tackle Attack. Cavern Tackle also makes Terrakion immune from damage at the cost of not being able to use Cavern Tackle the next turn. With the immunity, you can buy yourself another turn to navigate tricky spots if needed as long as your opponent doesn’t have an escape rope or gust effect. Since Terrakion only hits for 120, he’s the primary target for Strong Energy and Fighting Fury Belt. 

The Ancient Ways

As I mentioned previously, recent (and future) printings have really elevated this archetype. In the Scarlet and Violet sets, we’ve seen the printing of the Ancient mechanic. While some of these cards like Earthen Vessel have been powerful enough to play on their own in the Gym Leader Challenge format, no one type had enough “Ancient Synergies” to make it worth running an Ancient Package. However, I think Fighting has been given the tools to do so, and there’s the possibility that they might even print more before it’s all said and done. 

Slither Wing does not look very powerful at first glance. Its first attack is nothing special, and its second attack leaves it vulnerable to easy KOs from your opponent. However, after testing it in multiple builds, I can say that Slither Wing is pretty great and it’s the decks beat starter. Needing only two energy to attack and dealing 140 damage (120 + burn) Slither Wing poses an immediate threat that your opponent has to navigate while you set up. Also, it can also be easily powered up without the help of Coalossal, giving you a viable attacker when things have gone south. While there is the downside of it dealing 90 damage to itself, I’ve still found Slither Wing to typically trade favorably in terms of prizes. 

The other Ancient Pokémon in our list is the Great Tusk from the Koraidon EX starter deck. For one fighting and two colorless Great Tusk does 80 damage plus 80 more if any of your bench Pokémon have damage counters on them. To help with the damage counter stipulation, we have the Roaring Resolve Lucario that I’ve already talked about, Slither Wing that damages itself and we’re running Rainbow Energy as well. In my testing, Great Tusk is rarely not able to hit 160 and being a basic with 140hp has caused my opponents all sorts of issues as it can be easily recurred. Furthermore, with double Colorless in the attack cost, Great Tusk is your only attacker that can take advantage of a double fire energy attachment if you ever find yourself in that situation. 

Both Great Tusk and Slither Wing have the credentials to be played on their own, but a big reason to play them in this build is that they give you access to Professor Sada’s Vitality. Sada’s allows you to choose up to two of your ancient pokemon and attach a basic energy to each of them from your discard. If you do, you get to draw three cards. Since fighting has no draw support pokemon, your supporters need to do the heavy lifting and in that regard a card like Sada’s having an effect plus draw is great. While it may be limited in its use, having an alternate way to power up attackers seems important in this build and for this reason I think it merits a spot in the list even if you only get one energy attachment out of it. 

Set Up for Success

We all know that the Fighting type lacks any real draw support Pokemon leaving it vulnerable to hand disruption in every facet of the game. This deck tries to solve that problem by just not caring about its hand and instead focusing on building a boardstate that functions in and of itself. Here's how we do that.

To maximize explosive starts this deck plays some of the most powerful set up supporters in the format that are still flexible and useful beyond the first couple of turns. Cards like Green´s Exploration, Korrina, Guzma and Hala and Arven all help us grab multiple cards to get the wheels turning.

Korrina and Green´s Exploration both have similar uses in this deck helping to improve our odds at having explosive starts that other decks can´t handle. Your primary use of them will be to grab rare candy and a way to get either Coalossal or Gargancl so that you can immediately evolve into one of your powerful energy accelerators. 

Guzma and Hala can be used to achieve similar results as well while helping to discard energy. Guzma and Hala will typically help you grab one of the technical machines, an energy to attack with it and Brooklet Hill to get a basic to the bench. You´ll usually want to grab TM Evolution over Turbo Energize, but the decision is very contextual and depends on a lot of factors like prizing, hand composition and opponent´s board state. Guzma and Hala is also great in the mid-late game, helping you grab Float Stone as a retreat aid or Martial Arts Dojo, Strong Energy and Fighting Fury Belt as damage buffs. 

Our most flexible supporter is Arven and he does a little bit of everything in this build. With the printing of Buddy Poffin in Temporal Forces, Arven has become a super-charged set up supporter. Now, it can get you two 70 hp pokemon (namely Roly-Coly and Nacli) and TM Evolution for some BUSTED starts. Beyond that, being able to grab energy in the form of Earthen Vessel or Battle Compressor or as another out to Hisuian Heavy Ball makes Arven an indispensable asset in this archetype. 

With these cards in our supporter line-up, our main focus is precision rather than an abundance of resources. Ancient GarganCOAL knows what it needs to do, and I believe that these are the tools to help it best compete. 

Matchup Spread

Below I’ve included how I think Ancient GarganCOAL fares into the other types. Since GLC is such a diverse format and decks vary so much within types, these are my general thoughts based on my play experience. Please take them with a grain of salt as you do your own playtesting. 

Best Matchups

Dark

With weakness on your side and big basics that aren’t easily donked, Dark is an extremely favorable matchup. Every single one of your mons will be able to OHKO Guzzlord with ease and since the majority of your attackers have HPs higher than the 120 damage that Guzzlord can produce you won’t care about the three or four prize turns.

Lightning

Again, weakness and the ability to survive Zapdos attacks give fighting a considerable edge in this matchup. Add in the fact that Regieleki misses key KOs while playing into Great Tusk’s ability and this one should be an easy dub. 

Decent Matchups

Fire

Fire takes a lot to set up and relies heavily on Charizard to hit the big numbers necessary to take out your hefty fighting Pokemon. This matchup boils down to who can get set up first and take the other player’s key support mon. Heatmor is a huge threat in this matchup as he can snipe your Coalossal or Garganacl. 

Dragon

Dragon’s attackers hit for the right numbers making it difficult to tank hits and trade favorably on prizes. Fast Call Dragonite can also be difficult to manage if they’re able to continuously disrupt your hand with Iono, N an Marnie or your board state with gust effects. Your biggest advantage if your ability to chain attackers with ease which is something Dragon can struggle to do later in the game. Be smart with your damage mods and use Terrakion to good effect. Terrakion taking a KO on Drampa to then nullify a Druddigon revenge KO is a huge swing in Tempo. 

Metal

This matchup is very similar to the Dragon match up but with a little extra tankiness thrown in from the metal side. Again, your biggest strength is the ease with which you’ll be able to chain attackers once set up, and unlike Metal, most of your acceleration can go to the active making you less reliant on switch cards.  You should also face less disruption from Metal since they don’t have a supporter search engine either. 

Water

The Water matchup is a bit of a toss up in all honesty. Their tankier mons aren’t that difficult to take care of since you can hit for big numbers with Groudon and recur it with relative ease. The big issue comes from CRZ Kyogre which decimates your bench, and is equally recurable. Your biggest edge in this matchup is that your acceleration comes from the discard instead of your hand. Take advantage of this by targeting their raindancers and by using Marnie or Iono after a Kyogre attack to get rid of the energy in their hand. This Matchup is probably 45/55 in all honesty favoring Water. 

Colorless

Oh Colorless! You’d think with a lot of Colorless Pokemon being weak to Fighting that this would be a good matchup. Unfortunately, Flying type Pokemon are resistant to Fighting making this a lot tougher of a matchup than Lighting and Dark. Lugia is a real problem and trades ridiculously well in the prize trade especially with an HP buff from Fighting Fury Belt or Luxurious Cape. Newer builds of Colorless are running tech cards that just don’t do Fighting any justice. They play a lot of switch cards in the form of Rhyme, Boss, Guzma and Escape Rope that can get around Terrakion’s damage immunity or put one of your support mons into the active. On top of that, some iterations are even playing Reset Stamp which is one of the scariest cards for fighting to see. Even with all of this, you’ll still be able to OHKO anything they throw at (except Lugia) which makes this a decent matchup still. 

Bad Matchups

Psychic

With their ability to search supporters on command with Buddy Catch Gallade and access to Marshadow, your hand is never safe against Psychic. The matchup isn’t unwinnable by any means since you can still output big numbers and consistently KO everything they throw at you.  

Unwinnable Matchups

Grass

Since almost all of your key mons are weak to grass this matchup is pretty difficult to navigate. Add on the fact that they have HP boosting in the form of Kricketune and Fighting Fury Belt and all of a sudden you might be finding it difficult to take prizes. Your best bet is to outpace them and to do everything in your power to get set up and start the prize trade early before they can get Rillaboom or Venusaur out. 

Conclusion

To sum it all up, I think that Ancient Fighting is the future of the type. With the tools to set up fast and the ability to hit hard, Ancient GarganCOAL is a force to be reckoned with in the world of singleton Pokemon. One day we might get a draw support Pokemon in Fighting like Cosmic Power Claydol, but until then, punch first and ask questions later. 

Thanks for reading and to keep up with the changes I make on this deck list check out here.

Also, be sure to check out my YouTube and Twitch channel to keep up with my GLC videos!

To see gameplay of this deck, check out the video below!

Thanks for all the support!