Standard Off Meta: Dracozolt VMAX

Hey everyone, it’s Tate, this time with a look at a slightly less “meta” deck than some of the ones I’ve written about recently. I am always a fan of creative rogue decks, but as a competitive player I will play the deck that I feel gives me the best chance to win, and sadly there hasn’t been much room for rogue lists in my tournament picks recently. The deck in this article was one of the first in a while to change that, and it’s centered around a funny Pokemon on a card that was almost completely overlooked: Dracozolt VMAX.

The Sword and Shield block has already given us a vast number of VMAX Pokemon, and while we all know the names of those that have entered the Standard metagame as regular archetypes, there are even more VMAXes that have never seen the light of day competitively. With the recent rotation to the SWS-on format, we have seen somewhat of a shift away from linear, turbo-style “big Basic” decks, towards a VMAX-centric metagame boosted by the Drizzile/Inteleon SSH/Inteleon CRE engine. This shift has enabled some forgotten VMAX Pokemon, notably Dragapult VMAX, to return to the forefront of Standard, and made fringe archetypes such as Single Strike Urshifu VMAX into real top-tier contenders.

With VMAXes enjoying a premier place in competitive Pokemon TCG, one of the current joys of Standard is trying to make completely overlooked VMAXes into functional decks. While formats in the modern game are often “solved” too quickly for true top archetypes to be overlooked during the early weeks, new archetypes that seek to exploit an empty niche in the meta can still exist. With the possible exception of the quad Zamazenta V deck I played with Luke Morsa recently, the format since the rotation of Lucario & Melmetal-GX has lacked a slower “tanky” archetype to compete with the Inteleon engine decks and hard-hitting turbo decks. While it seems crazy, recent testing with my team (UNDNTD) and some other players has suggested that an almost completely overlooked VMAX from Evolving Skies can fill the niche of this “tanky” deck in the current meta. That card is Dracozolt VMAX.

Dracozolt VMAX sits at 330 HP, placing it in the moderate to high HP range for VMAX Pokemon. Its Fighting Weakness seems terrible considering that both Urshifu variants (Rapid Strike and Single Strike) are prominent meta decks that can hit it for Weakness, but note that Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX actually does a maximum of 150 damage (300 with Weakness), so Dracozolt VMAX will actually survive a hit from it. Single Strike Urshifu VMAX is more of a problem, but every good deck in this format has some sort of Weakness-based poor matchup, so it’s not a dealbreaker.

The main draw of Dracozolt VMAX is its first attack, Spark Trap (in fact, as you’ll see, it’s extraordinarily rare for its second attack to be used in this deck). Spark Trap does 60 damage for one Lightning Energy, but if your opponent attacks Dracozolt VMAX on the next turn, the attacking Pokemon will take 12 damage counters. Essentially, you are forcing your opponent to take 180 damage for one Energy, or to pass without dealing damage to your Dracozolt VMAX. 60 damage per turn is not a lot, but when you are slowing your opponent down as much as this deck can, it can stack up and quickly win you games. In this article I’ll explain how to build a deck around this at-first mediocre-seeming card to best take advantage of Spark Trap’s tanky potential.

The first I learned of Dracozolt VMAX as a potential “real deck” was through one of my coaching clients, who alerted me to a list piloted to a 4-2 record by the player “EricSmash'' in the 98-player Lux Series event on September 18th. EricSmash’s list was very straightforward, featuring a 4-3 Dracozolt VMAX line as the only Pokemon, and a huge number of healing cards.  Among their four wins, they defeated a Dragapult VMAX as well as my friend Alec Geissler on Jolteon VMAX, two matchups that indeed seem quite favorable. But I was more interested in their other two wins, which came against matchups that on paper seem horrible: a Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX and a Single Strike Urshifu VMAX with Umbreon VMAX. Two games is a very small sample size and it’s possible these games were flukes where the opponents drew very poorly— but it was also possible that these matchups were genuinely winnable and that Dracozolt VMAX was much better than I was giving it credit for.

Intrigued, I began testing the deck alongside my teammate Dustin Zimmerman, although I made numerous changes to the list found on Limitless. In particular, Dustin and I were dissatisfied with the Supporter engine, some of the specific counts of things like healing cards or Energy, and the lack of any other strategy within the deck besides using Spark Trap every turn. After some testing, we decided that maybe our adjustments were not as strong as we’d theorized, and indeed many of the Dracozolt VMAX lists that have subsequently found success in online tournaments (under players like Vini Fernandez and MunchlaxTCG) looked more similar to EricSmash’s. I’ll talk about some of my and Dustin’s potential adjustments at the end of the article. For now, let’s stick with the more traditional build and break down a Dracozolt VMAX list from the Late Night Series LCQ:

Draw engine

You’ll notice this deck strays away from a more typical Standard draw engine based on Professor’s Research and Marnie--instead, the key Supporter is a full four copies of Kabu. Kabu is objectively the strongest Supporter in Dracozolt VMAX as since you will typically have just one Pokemon in play, you will almost always be drawing the full seven cards with Kabu, instead of the four you would draw with multiple Pokemon in play. You could draw seven with Professor’s Research, but this is not a deck that can afford to discard cards--almost every card in here is a crucial healing resource or needed to win the battle against opponents’ resources.

Marnie is still played as a three-of because it is another shuffle Supporter and can be used to disrupt the opponent if you know or suspect they are sitting on a hand that can counter your current game plan.

The above list runs a few copies of PokeGear 3.0, which has historically been used in these slower decks because you don’t run Pokemon such as Crobat V to help “dig” for Supporters or other cards, so you need as many outs to draw Supporters as possible. EricSmash also included two Pal Pad so that you effectively can use up to a whopping eight copies of Cheryl per game, or reuse other Supporters should you need to. 

Healing

As a “stall deck” or “tank deck,” Dracozolt VMAX is at its core focused on healing, healing, healing. When you are not playing a draw Supporter for the turn, you will most likely be playing Cheryl. Because Spark Trap costs only one Energy, you can always power it up again instantly after using Cheryl. Currently, there are essentially no decks in the Standard metagame capable of dealing 330 damage with one attack, so it is almost impossible for your Dracozolt VMAX to ever be OHKOd--thus Cheryl is always a very valuable card, keeping the same Dracozolt VMAX going for multiple turns on end. Sometimes, your opponent might just be attacking for “chip damage” or using an Ability like Inteleon’s Quick Shooting to place a few damage counters on Dracozolt VMAX each turn. In these cases, just using Pokemon Center Lady is sufficient, keeping your Energy attached and saving Cheryl to respond to larger attacks.

However, there are turns when you need to play a Supporter other than Cheryl or Pokemon Center Lady. This is why the deck contains all those other healing cards--cards that, prior to the creation of this archetype, were essentially just “binder fodder,” unplayable in other decks. Potion, in particular, has been a much-memed card for years, reprinted in every single set block for over a decade but rarely ever impactful in Standard. However, Potion, alongside Moomoo Cheese and Lucky Ice Pop, is actually quite good in Dracozolt VMAX. The main reason is to respond to the ever-present Quick Shooting Ability on Inteleon. Smart opponents playing Inteleon decks will forego attacking (and taking the 12 damage counters from Spark Trap) and instead stack up damage on Dracozolt VMAX with Quick Shooting until one of their attacks can essentially one-shot it. With your 12 copies of healing Items, you can effectively nullify a large number of uses of Quick Shooting, buying time for your 60 damage per turn from Spark Trap to add up to Knock Outs. 

Disruption

In some games, just being able to heal huge amounts of damage isn’t quite enough to win when you’re still only dealing 60 damage per turn yourself. Smart opponents may cycle through high-HP attackers to run you out of healing cards, or use cards like Marnie to disrupt your hand and prevent you from finding your most crucial pieces (healing cards, Energy, etc.) on any given turn. That’s why this list contains a few disruption cards: two Tool Jammer and four Path to the Peak. We know how strong Path to the Peak can be; sometimes, if played on the first turn, it can cause your opponent to brick for the entire game, while other times it can be used late-game to rob your opponent of access to a crucial Ability on their board or prevent them from using Crobat V to draw out of Marnie.

Tool Jammer can prevent opponents from taking advantage of Air Balloon to move a Pokemon out of the Active Spot easily. Basically, if your opponent cannot move their Active Pokemon, you are forcing them to either attack and take 12 damage counters, or pass and keep taking 60 damage from Spark Trap without dealing any damage themselves. Because Dracozolt VMAX can take so long to win games, Tool Jammer can be important in slowing down your opponent and dragging down the tempo of games. 

Energy

While this might seem like a deck that can run a low Energy count because you’re really only using a one-Energy-cost attack, you actually need to play a moderately high number. EricSmash’s list plays nine and I think that is the minimum number you should run; a list I crafted early on with Dustin played ten. The reason for this is twofold. First, you need to actually draw the Energy, and as mentioned, this deck is not great at drawing specific cards because of the Supporter counts and the lack of Pokemon-based draw. A high Energy count ensures that most of your hands will contain at least one Energy, especially in the early game before you’ve gotten to thin your deck. Second, since you will be playing Cheryl multiple times per game, you are constantly discarding your Energy (and on any turn you play Cheryl, you are not playing a draw Supporter to look for another Energy). To ensure that you are always able to use Spark Trap again after you use Cheryl, you need to keep that Energy count high. Note that EricSmash actually played one Energy Recycler in their latest list as a potential answer to this problem; I don’t necessarily think that card is worth a slot, and would simply play a sixth Lightning Energy, but it does highlight the need for constantly having Energy in hand with this deck. 

A Note on Gameplay: Dealing with Inteleon

I mentioned earlier that the Inteleon line (including Inteleon SSH, Inteleon CRE, Drizzile SSH, and typically Sobble CRE, although some decks are now switching to a 70 HP Sobble), has taken over the Standard format and is key to a wide variety of archetypes. (You can read my Ice Rider article here from a couple of months ago for a closer look at the Inteleon engine.) In particular, I noted that Inteleon CRE gives these decks the ability to deal damage to you without actually attacking, via the Quick Shooting Ability. This is a potential way for opponents to pressure you without taking the 12 damage counters from Spark Trap. 

Fortunately, Dracozolt VMAX is good at dealing with this potential problem, for two reasons--one an aspect of the card itself, the other an aspect of the deckbuilding associated with it.

All the Pokemon in the Inteleon line are weak to Lightning, meaning Spark Trap deals 120 damage to them. This means that not only will Spark Trap two-shot an Inteleon, it will actually one-shot Sobble before your opponent can even begin evolving them. If your opponent opens the game with a Sobble and can’t pivot it out of the Active Spot, you can actually use Dracozolt V’s Primeval Beak attack to cleanly OHKO it. One of the cards Dustin and I experimented with when working on this deck was Escape Rope. Our logic was that in many games, Escape Rope could force a Sobble into the Active Spot within the first couple turns, letting you use Primeval Beak to remove it from play without needing to play Boss’s Orders as your Supporter for turn. I still think there is a lot of merit to messing around with counts of Escape Rope in the deck.

Without Escape Rope, and with only two copies of Boss’s Orders (which you often cannot play since you may need to use a draw Supporter or a Cheryl), it can be difficult to find those early Sobble KOs or chase Inteleon KOs later on. However, the assortment of healing Item cards in this deck make it very easy to outpace Quick Shooting. If your opponent uses Quick Shooting twice to place 4 damage counters, Potion or Moomoo Cheese can then remove 3 of those, effectively setting your opponent back to square one. One Lucky Ice Pop automatically nullifies one Quick Shooting and has the chance, off of coin flips, to get rid of more. 

Revising the List: Altaria

I talked already about the Escape Rope idea Dustin and I formulated when we were brainstorming changes to the Dracozolt VMAX lists from Limitless. The other major modification we wanted to make to the deck was to add some different Pokemon to make the deck less one-dimensional. If we ran into an opponent that had a good way to deal with Spark Trap, we would basically have no way to win, because of the linearity of the more common lists.

Our solution, which was partially inspired by my coaching client who brought the archetype to my attention in the first place, was to add a line of Altaria. Altaria is immune to damage from V Pokemon, so against decks that did not play a good single-Prize attacker as an answer, you could almost forego Dracozolt VMAX entirely and instead just play an Altaria deck. You could still deal 60 damage a turn but would not need to worry about continually playing Cheryl or losing to multiple chained attacks after bricking off a Marnie in the mid- or late game. If your opponent attempted to attack you with a low-damage single-Prizer like Cinccino or Oranguru, you had Potion, Pokemon Center Lady, and the other healing Items to respond and win the trade.

I do still like the Altaria idea but it did mean we had to cut a lot of other good cards from the deck, notably many of the healing Items, to accommodate this new Evolution line. One interesting thing to note is that in addition to the traditional V-immune Altaria, you could also slot in one or more copies of the new Altaria EVS, letting you stack a Supporter to the top of your deck each turn. This helped ensure that you continually had Cheryl to respond to every attack, or could insure against opposing Marnie by putting a draw Supporter on top of your deck. You could even search out a Supporter and then use a PokeGear 3.0 from hand to snag it on the same turn. 

Conclusion

While Dracozolt VMAX isn’t the best deck in the format--far from it--it is still a viable rogue archetype, which is pretty good for a VMAX that barely even got mentioned in many content creators’ set reviews. (I certainly glossed over the card myself when Evolving Skies was leaked.) In the age of readily-available decklists from top players and huge amounts of metagame data generated on sites like Limitless, it’s very nice to see players still exercising their creativity and seeking to make these under-the-radar cards work in competitive play. Dustin and I got to flex our deckbuilding muscles trying to improve on the Limitless lists and try some new ideas, and playing a deck that genuinely wants to run Lucky Ice Pop is too good an opportunity to pass up.

Thanks for reading— as always, you can hit me up with comments or questions on Twitter @twhitesell42, find my team @UNDNTD, and if you’re interested in coaching, I’ve got that too. I intend to bring y’all another article here later this month— I have some thoughts on my latest Ice Rider list I’ve been doing quite well with, as well as on the upcoming Fusion Strike set and on the not-too-far-away return to physical play and the competitive event circuit. Stay tuned!