GLC Colorless Control Ursaluna

In November 2023, Leonardo created “The Dark Side of the Moon”, a highly inventive control deck featuring Ursaluna. While the list has undergone some changes since its inception, thanks to Wheatr, DJ_Backwards, PhoenixFire, and others, the core strategy remains unblemished and stronger than ever over a year later. 

The basic plan of Ursaluna Control is to establish a board state where the opponent finds it impossible to KO Ursaluna and take six Prize cards. However, getting there quickly and safely can be more difficult than it sounds. We want to set up Cinccino, Pidgeotto, and Oranguru as soon as possible, giving us a powerful and decentralized draw engine. Once this core has been established, we want to exhaust the opponent’s resources and fix our Prize cards if necessary. During this early-to-midgame process, we will search for our key Ursaluna combo pieces. When it’s safe to do so, we’ll send in Ursaluna to lock down the game by recovering resources with Peat Hunt or taking a swift KO with Bulky Bump.

Hopefully you have a general idea of how the deck should operate. To play it well, however, we’ll need to explore every avenue and every facet of every line. I’ll be your guide through the grizzly details of playing Ursaluna Control, a deck as devastatingly powerful as it is fiendishly difficult.

The First Turn

Recently, Colorless gained the Pokémon Fan Rotom, which has increased the consistency of the deck dramatically. Let’s use the following hand (going second) to explore how to properly set up and how strong of an engine Fan Rotom + Cinccino + Pidgeotto is.

We will lead Teddiursa, then draw for turn to get Sky Pillar. Not useful right now. First, let’s use Nest Ball to search our deck for Fan Rotom, which will almost always be the first Pokémon we take, unless our hand has an abundance of Pokémon search cards. Since we didn’t Prize any Pokémon, we’ll play Fan Rotom with Nest Ball and attach Capture Energy to Fan Rotom, benching Minccino. (Cinccino should be prioritized over Pidgeotto, since it has more HP and a more aggressive draw ability.) Next, we can use Fan Call to take Pidgey, Pidgeotto, and Cinccino. Finally, we can Scoop Up Net on Teddiursa, to promote Fan Rotom. Fan Rotom’s Assault Landing attack does a deceptively powerful 70 damage for one Energy if a Stadium is in play. If the opponent has a 70 HP or less Pokémon, we can play Sky Pillar to attack with Fan Rotom and get a free Prize card. If not, it may be better to save Sky Pillar, either to bump a Stadium, be used as fodder for Cinccino’s Make Do, or be put into the Prize cards with Peonia. (Since we have a small hand, it may be better to wait to play Peonia until next turn.)

Preparing the Board

Now that our draw engine is established, there are a few key goals to accomplish.

• Find the key combo pieces for Ursaluna.
• Fix the Prize cards with Gladion and Peonia.
• Exhaust the opponent’s resources and answers, particularly Field Blower.

The key combo pieces for Ursaluna are: Teddiursa, Ursaluna, Rare Candy, Luxurious Cape, Recycle Energy, Max Potion/Cheryl, and Triple Acceleration Energy. Not every combo piece is of equal importance. Triple Acceleration Energy will be needed to take KOs eventually, but you can establish Ursaluna with any other Energy to use Peat Hunt. Thorton and Rescue Stretcher can also be considered a combo piece, as they allow us to re-evolve Ursaluna in a single turn. Some matchups will have other key cards, such as Mist Energy into Lost Zone, Sky Pillar into Lightning Spread, and Dunsparce into Fighting. 

Thanks to our versatile draw engine, we will find many of these key cards naturally. To see the most cards (5), I recommend using Cinccino, Pidgeotto, then Oranguru. Sometimes the hand can be clogged by cards that we don’t want to discard with Cinccino. In this case, using Oranguru before Pidgeotto can put a dead card on the bottom of the deck. With Ciphermaniac’s Codebreaking, Mallow, Teammates, Arven, and Guzma & Hala, we can typically find all the cards we need in very few turns.

We will need to use Gladion and/or Peonia to fish these cards out of the Prizes. If only one key card is prized, Gladion will suffice; otherwise, use Peonia twice instead. Make sure to not waste “dead” cards like Buddy-Buddy Poffin or Artazon, as they can be tucked into the Prize cards with Peonia. Other cards such as Scoop Up Net and VS Seeker, while not of vital importance, will assist our long-term game plan enough that it may be worth spending your supporter to liberate them from the Prizes too.

While it’s important to make sure you’re progressing towards your win condition, by fixing Prizes and finding key cards, it’s equally important to make sure your opponent is not. Fan Rotom can take early KOs on pre-evolutions and slow the opponent down, or Bunnelby can be used to mill or recover cards that had to be discarded early. The number one card we want to get rid of is Field Blower (and any other tool removal). Once Ursaluna is rolling, we don’t want to give the opponent any way to KO it, and the main way this happens is using Field Blower to remove Luxurious Cape. Baiting out Field Blower with Stadiums like Parallel City can work against less experienced players, but typically we’ll need to discard Field Blower directly through the use of Eri, Miss Fortune Sisters, Delinquent, and Bunnelby.

Finishing the Game

Finally, you have the cards in hand and you’re ready to win. With Ursaluna active with Recycle Energy and Luxurious Cape, we can use Peat Hunt to get back any cards we need. In particular, Max Potion and Cheryl allow us to heal and re-attach Recycle Energy every turn, presenting an unkillable wall unless the opponent can remove Luxurious Cape, hit 280 damage, or hand disrupt enough times.

Additionally, after attacking with Bulky Bump, we can recover Triple Acceleration Energy with Peat Hunt, allowing us to take a KO with Bulky Bump every other turn and forcing the opponent to win on a tight timer. When playing an offensive Bulky Bump game, using Lost City or Parallel City can make it even more difficult for the opponent to set up a counteroffensive.

Sometimes it’s better to use Peat Hunt more often than Bulky Bump, especially if the opponent is not threatening to set up any win condition. Scoop Up Net is a fantastic card to recover, allowing us to use Delcatty’s Search for Friends ability multiple times, which gets two Supporters from the discard pile to hand. In fact, I would say you should always use Scoop Up Net as soon as possible to leave an open Skitty. That way, if your hand is disrupted, you can use any leftover Pokémon search to find Delcatty and grab the supporter you need. Also, if the opponent has very few Prize cards remaining, using Scoop Up Net to pick up all remaining Benched Pokémon can seal the game.

VS Seeker, Counter Catcher, Stadiums, and more can all be great targets for Peat Hunt. If you suspect Ursaluna could die, grabbing Rescue Stretcher, Rare Candy, and/or VS Seeker for Thorton could be the correct play also. It really depends on the situation!

Paradigm: Loss Prevention

In general, when playing Ursaluna (and indeed, control decks at large) you want to adopt a mindset of “loss prevention”. In other words, rather than seeking your win condition, you want to identify what would cause you to lose and stamp it out. Ursaluna is so tanky, so powerful, and able to recur resources so effectively, that in the long run you will win by default. It is the opponent’s job to take the initiative and find a win. Your job is to prevent that from happening!

The most common loss condition, as discussed before, is Field Blower. Almost every single deck in GLC plays this key item, and very few decks play additional tool removers or ways to recycle Field Blower. You must avoid playing Ursaluna and Luxurious Cape too soon, especially if you don’t have the resources to set them back up quickly. Even if they can’t KO Ursaluna immediately, using Peat Hunt for Luxurious Cape is too slow and you will typically need to use Cyllene, or if Ursaluna was KOed, Bunnelby. Rather than going for Ursaluna as soon as possible, apply safe pressure with Fan Rotom and Bunnelby while using Eri and Miss Fortune Sisters to target Field Blower (and other key items like VS Seeker).

Lost Vacuum or Faba can get rid of your Luxurious Cape (or worse yet, Recycle Energy) permanently, which would very likely lead to a loss. Avoid playing your Luxurious Cape or Recycle Energy carelessly if you suspect your opponent to have those cards, and use your milling cards like Delinquent, Miss Fortune Sisters, and Bunnelby to hit them as soon as possible.

There are many other loss conditions to be aware of. For example, against a deck playing Lost City, avoid benching Teddiursa unprotected. You can use Thorton to get out Ursaluna more safely, or wait until Lost City has been removed. Of course, we play Lost City too, so make sure your Ursaluna is absolutely safe before using it, else you could lose instantly if Ursaluna is Lost Zoned.

Pokémon can also represent loss conditions. For example, Psychic can struggle to deal enough damage to threaten Ursaluna, so you may be okay even if they Field Blower you. However, Mimikyu can copy Bulky Bump and take you by surprise, so until Field Blower is gone, it’s best to stick to Peat Hunt. Haxorus can Knock Out your Ursaluna unless you have Mist Energy attached, so finding Mist Energy when you first set up Ursaluna will be key. Sadly, Max Potion and Cheryl force you to discard Mist Energy, making it a temporary solution. Focus on using Lost City to permanently remove Haxorus from play, even if your own support Pokémon get Lost Zoned in retaliation. Some decks, like Hydro Pump or Rillasaur, can reach the 280 damage threshold with sufficient setup. Since you can only use Bulky Bump every other turn, save your Bulky Bumps for Energy accelerators or doublers, such as Venusaur or Baxcalibur, or for an attacker that’s almost loaded. In this instance, cards like Counter Catcher, Guzma, and Hex Maniac will be key to avoiding a massive KO.

Another crucial loss condition to avoid is hand disruption. Your Ursaluna is only unkillable if you can continually heal and play the cards you need every turn. If your opponent plays Iono and you miss your Max Potion, it could be game-ending. Oranguru’s ability Primate Wisdom helped refine our hand earlier, but now, it will be used to stave off enemy Iono and Marnie by storing key cards, like Max Potion and VS Seeker, on top of the deck. Leaving an open Skitty also reduces brick potentially greatly, as junk cards like Evolution Incense turn into Delcatty which itself turns into two Supporters. Leaving a wide board of Cinccino and Pidgeotto into the endgame can be risky if your opponent has snipe/spread attacks or enough Boss’s Orders to take six Prizes without getting through Ursaluna. Instead, we will want to Scoop Up the majority of our support Pokémon and leave only Oranguru and Skitty.

Decklist Discussion

Above is the 60 that I have been running, for which I give the majority of the credit to Wheatr and Leonardo. I will not explain every card in full, but hopefully this discussion will allow you to understand my inclusions and inform your own deckbuilding.

First, the Pokémon. Fan Rotom is an absolutely broken card, both for its ability and its early cheap damage, and Pidgeotto/Cinccino pair with Fan Call perfectly. Besides their helpful HP numbers, Pidgeotto and Cinccino are better draw Pokémon than Skwovet/Bibarel for a control and combo deck, where we need to amass large hand sizes to parry the opponent’s plays and set up a brutal Ursaluna combo turn. Oranguru assists this draw engine by synergizing well with Pidgeotto, putting unhelpful cards on the bottom of the deck. Oranguru is also critical if you brick, allowing you to still grab cards with Mallow/Ciphermaniac, and if you need to set up a checkmate by loading your top deck with a key card like Max Potion or Triple Acceleration Energy. Delcatty’s Search for Friends ability is key to setting up second Ursaluna with a Lt. Surge and Thorton play, or to get a powerful Surge combo turn with cards like Teammates, Eri, and more. Bunnelby is important for recovering key cards like Rare Candy or Luxurious Cape if Ursaluna goes down, and acts as a safe bridge before or between Ursaluna by pressuring with mill or recovering cards. I occasionally have won games by active mill with Bunnelby. Finally, Dunsparce is necessary for the Fighting matchup.

There are some other Pokémon you could consider. Dodrio, though worse at drawing than Pidgeotto or Cinccino, can attack for Recycle Energy and again provide safe pressure when you’re not ready to use Ursaluna. Persian’s Make ‘Em Pay attack is an alternate way to hit key cards like Field Blower, but with the release of Eri, I no longer think this is a good inclusion. Snorlax’s Gormandize ability can be useful to end your first few turns with, but I think Fan Rotom is powerful enough as a setup Pokémon and attacker to make this Snorlax obsolete. Ditto’s Transform ability can allow you to cut Thorton for Lana’s Aid. This allows you to play or replay Ursaluna more easily and safely than usual, though once you use Ditto, it’s used up until whatever it transforms into dies. This makes it slightly less flexible than Thorton (and takes up a valuable bench spot) but it’s an easier combo to pull off. Finally, I decided not to include Ursaring. The slow tempo of Ursaring makes it rarely worth using, and wastes an Evolution search. You have to search for Ursaluna already, and finding Rare Candy is not that challenging with our draw engine.

I believe the setup engine currently has the perfect balance of consistency and efficiency. Though there are very few draw cards like Iono, the raw setup potential of Fan Rotom, Guzma & Hala, and Winona, combined with the effectiveness of our draw Pokémon, make such cards unnecessary. Instead, specific search cards like Tag Call, Mallow, Teammates, and more allow you to find specific combo pieces and disruptive cards at will. This is particularly effective thanks to how many cards you draw per turn naturally; it’s almost never necessary to draw more.

Of course, there have to be cards worth searching. Besides the key combo pieces of Max Potion, Cheryl, Recycle Energy, Triple Acceleration Energy, and Luxurious Cape, we play a variety of disruptive cards to make Ursaluna even harder to deal with. First, we have Miss Fortune Sisters, Eri, and Delinquent to deplete the opponent’s resources, especially Field Blower. Counter Catcher, Guzma, and Lost City are key to removing threats permanently from play and are a big reason Ursaluna is such a versatile control deck. Field Blower is a staple of any GLC deck. Reset Stamp is highly effective in the late game to remove your opponent’s ways of dealing with Ursaluna sweep, especially when paired with Delinquent to completely hand wipe.

In addition to these active disruptors, we have a number of preventative cards too. Lillie’s Poke Doll is helpful to buy time, refill an empty deck, provide a safe Thorton target, and as a bonus, still activates Teammates when defeated. Mist Energy blocks a variety of unorthodox attacks, such as damage counters like Sableye’s Lost Mine, instant KOs like Haxorus’s Bring Down The Axe, and Special Conditions like Galarian Weezing’s Severe Poison. Though it’s discarded when using Max Potion/Cheryl, Mist Energy does not need to be permanently attached to get value. Against Lost Zone, it can sometimes win the game on its own once Enhanced Hammer has been used or discarded. Sky Pillar serves a similar role; by blocking attacks that target the bench, you can shut down strategies like Hitmonbros and Electivire Spread once they run out of stadium bumps and protect your low-HP draw engine. Parallel City is very useful against decks that prefer a wide bench, such as Rain Dance or Lazy Code. In a few situations, such as against Jumpluff, using Parallel on yourself to limit the opponent’s damage output and remove benched liabilities can be the right play too. Last, Hex Maniac is a crucial card to disrupt ability-reliant strategies such as Rain Dance or Rillasaur. By pairing a KO with Hex Maniac, you may be able to prevent the opponent from making a counter-offensive. Delcatty in particular can help facilitate a Hex Maniac loop.

Last, we have a number of other useful cards. VS Seeker is obviously a good card to recur, but Scoop Up Net with Delcatty is deceptively impactful. Scoop Up Net also is useful for picking up liabilities once the opponent is at their final Prize cards. By making sure you have the same number of Pokémon in play as they have Prize cards (including Ursaluna), you force them to defeat Ursaluna to win the game. Peonia and Gladion are essential to fixing poor Prize cards given how many combo pieces Ursaluna needs. Finally, Cyllene, Lusamine, and Cynthia & Caitlyn provide a mechanism to recover any card in the deck even without using Ursaluna or Bunnelby.

There are definitely other cards you could play or cut based on your local meta and personal preferences. More Pokemon recovery, particularly Lana’s Aid or Night Stretcher, is one area you could improve. Other disruption cards, such as Enhanced Hammer, Faba, Team Flare Grunt, etc. could improve specific matchups. If you want to seek the deck-out win condition more, you could consider Team Rocket’s Handiwork and Galar Mine/Gravity Gemstone with Bunnelby. Pokemon League HQ and Robo Substitute could buy you more turns, and Memory Energy/Shrine of Memories to activate Teddiursa’s retreat lock attack is a unique stall angle I have not tested. I personally don’t think you need to build towards the deck out win condition so strongly, as Ursaluna’s tankiness and the deck’s existing resource denial cards allow a deck out win condition to occur naturally when needed.

Closing Thoughts

Ursaluna is a challenging deck to pick up and play, and even more challenging to master, but the high skill floor and ceiling should not discourage you from trying it! Although I come from a control background, my experience with Ursaluna has still taught me a lot about resource management, when to play safe and when to push advantage, and how to identify and shut down the opponent’s paths to victory – skills that have improved my gameplay as a Pidgeot control and Banette/Gardevoir player in Standard as well. Ursaluna has an ebb and flow between aggressive sweeping, aggressive resource denial, and passive recursion that’s nearly unique among GLC decks. Whether you’ve never played control or you’re a control veteran, Ursaluna is a powerful deck that will reward study and practice and give new perspectives on the game to both the pilot and opponent.

Hopefully I have inspired you to give Ursaluna control a spin! If you have any questions, or would like to share your experiences or suggestions, please message me @espio on Discord. I’d love to hear from you!