Deckbuilding Ideas

From Nathan M

My favorite deck to play right now is Yveltal control. The goal of this deck is to stop the opponent from doing damage to your Pokémon. Against popular decks, such as Lugia VSTAR or Mew VMAX.

You can use Yveltal’s Cry of Destruction attack to discard 3 special energy from your opponent’s Pokémon. Since Yveltal only gives up 1 prize card, you can easily string multiple attacks together and run your opponent out of energy. 

Against decks such as lost box and Regigigas, you can use Eiscue to wall out basic Pokémon, and Wash Energy to negate Sableye’s attacks. 

Against other decks, such as Hisuian Goodra VSTAR, you can use Snorlax with the Thumping Snore attack in combination with Lost City to remove their only Cramorant from the board. Then you can use Scoop-Up Net to make sure that you only have Miltank in play. 

Control is always a formidable strategy, but the deck takes tons of practice and sequencing. However, with practice, it is possible to become a very efficient and good control player.

From Nathan M

One of my favorite standard format decks right now is the new Arceus VSTAR with Malamar VMAX. The main strategy is to accelerate energy to Malamar VMAX using Arceus VSTAR’s trinity nova attack. This attack does a base 200 damage and allows you to attach three energies from your deck to your Pokémon V. From there, use Malamar VMAX’s max jammer attack to disrupt your opponent’s hand to the point where they have to hope to draw into something to help them. Combining this with cards like collapsed stadium helps to limit the bench and helps a lot against Mew VMAX decks and Eternatus VMAX decks. For a ready to play consistent Malamar VMAX deck check out this link for a deck made by player JMUBoy. 

This deck is relatively new to the standard format, but it is a good and consistent pick for the next upcoming Brilliant Stars tournament.

From pokego-Justin

My favorite standard deck is Stonjourner VMAX. The deck uses Stone gift to heal itself and it builds up energy so it can use Hyper Potion. Hyper Potion lets you heal 120 damage. With stone gift, hyper potion and a bunch of healing cards such as Lucky Ice Pop, team yell towel and pokemon center lady stonjourner can't get knocked out. You can also use Boost shake with can prevent meloetta donks which was an issue but now it's not due to boost shake letting the v evolve into vmax T1. Any extra turns you have with the deck you use max rockfall to 2HKO most v and every vmax. Stonjourner VMAX is a great pick in the Brilliant Stars metagame. It hits for weakness against Arceus and Gengar two popular deck. If you want to play an interactive and fun deck, Stonjourner is the deck for you!

From stealthboy-Michael

Mew VMAX is the BDIF for a reason.  This deck features Mew VMAX and Genesect V which work together to bring powerful attacks after pretty much drawing through half your deck on turn 1 to get what you need.   Mew VMAX has the Cross Fusion Strike attack which lets it copy any attack of other Fusion Strike Pokemon, so you generally copy Meloetta’s Melodious Echo (70 for each Fusion strike energy in play) or Genesect’s Techno Blast (210 damage).  Using Elesa’s sparkle, you can get two Fusion strike energy in play, so turn 1 going second it’s theoretically possible (with 4x Power Tablet, Choice belt) to get an attack off for 210 + 30 + 120 = 360, which is insane.   With Brilliant Stars, the deck got even more powerful with Ultra Ball (lets you not only discard to draw more with Fusion Strike System, but also get any Pokemon), Choice Belt, and Double Turbo Energy.  VIP pass and Cram-o-matic help you draw even more.   It’s quite weak to Path to the Peak, and of course Dark type Pokemon, so have counter-stadiums ready, and attack quickly against Dark.

November 2020

Here's a presentation showing the popular Pokemon and Trainers being in used in the current Standard format. Includes a few popular decklists being used in competitive tournaments.