Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex

Intro + Notable Placings

• 41st at World Championships 2025

• 6th at World Championships 2025, Junior Division

• 12th at Regional Frankfurt

• 12th at Regional Pittsburgh

Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex is the evolution of an earlier Froslass/Munkidori deck, adding the unassuming starter deck rare to give it more firepower against high-HP Ability-less targets, and crucially one-shot the ever-popular Gardevoir ex. The deck placed better before BLK/WHT, as that set was a boon to Gholdengo ex, one of Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex's bad matchups.

This deck can be quite unreliable, as it doesn't use Pokémon with draw/search Abilities (due to tight Bench space, and the fact that those Pokémon would be damaged by Freezing Shroud), so it has to rely on Supporters to keep going. Whiffing draw Supporters is a death sentence. On the opponent's end, strategies they can use include Bossing Froslass out and KOing it to stop the bleeding, or teching Picnic Basket.

Game Plan

You usually want to start Munkidori, keeping your opponent guessing what you're on if you go second, then attach Technical Machine: Evolution onto it and evolve your Benched Snorunts/Marnie's Impidimps. Unless you can wipe their board immediately with an early Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex, try to play it slow; annoy them with Budew or Maractus, and set up additional Munkidori or Marnie's Morgrems. The more you stall, the more damage Froslass piles up on their board. (It piles up on your board too, but Munkidori sends it over to them.) Avoid evolving into Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex too soon, as it takes damage from Froslass and can become a 2-Prize liability.

Against Evolution decks, check if Technical Machine: Devolution is Prized during your early deck searches. TM: Devo is your secret weapon against them. At some point they're going to attack with their Evolved 2-Prizer; you'll hit back with Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex, damaging their attacker and their Bench. They may swing back, and you may lose your Grimmsnarl, but if your final Adrena-Brain pushes enough damage onto their side, TM: Devo will take out their attackers and draw/search engines in a single stroke. Most evolving Basics have 70 HP and Stage 1s have 90 HP; if you can get that much damage onto them, they are dead. It doesn't matter if they're evolved into 280+ HP Stage 2 ex's, because their maximum HP drops back to 70 or 90 when you devolve them. You should be able to clean up their devastated board state easily after that.

If you can't do that, well, things get a lot tougher. If TM: Devo is Prized against an Evolution deck, you'll have to play like a bad Dragapult ex: try to get in the first attack so you can tank their hit with Grimmsnarl's 320 HP and swing back for the KO, all while spreading damage to their Bench. Against Basic attacker decks, those matchups are tough as TM: Devo is useless, and they usually have a Teal Mask Ogerpon ex or Iron Leaves ex to 1HKO your Grimmsnarl. Most Basic ex attackers cap out at 240 HP, so one Shadow Bullet and two Adrena-Brains will KO them, provided they don't have Bravery Charm.

Attackers

Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex is your attacker. It's like a hybrid of Charizard ex and Dragapult ex, with Charizard's Energy acceleration upon entering the field, and Dragapult ex's "moderate damage to Active + small damage to Benched" attack.

The silent killers in this deck are Froslass and Munkidori. There was a deck featuring these two Pokémon even before Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex's release. Froslass racks up damage on Pokémon with Abilities, including your own Munkidori, which can then send the damage over to the opponent's side with Adrena-Brain. This deck plays the full 4 Munkidori, so it's always advantaged in a Munkidori war.

First or Second?

This deck wants to go second, as it's an Arven → Buddy-Buddy Poffin + Technical Machine: Evolution deck.

ACE SPEC

Secret Box. It's pretty much in here just as a super Arven. On top of the plays that are possible with Arven, the extra Stadium search can get Artazon to put Munkidori (which Buddy-Buddy Poffin can't get) on your Bench, or Spikemuth Gym + Rare Candy to jump straight to Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex.

Other Options

• Budew, Maractus: Disruptive attackers. Stalling out the game buys time for Froslass/Munkidori damage to rack up.

• Shaymin: Protects your Bench from snipes, which is helpful as Froslass is stuck at 90 HP.

Note that Maractus and Shaymin will take damage from Froslass.

• Iron Bundle: Useful for pushing low-HP meatshields out of the Active Spot so you can KO them with the spread from Shadow Bullet instead, assisted by Adrena-Brain if necessary.

• Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex: Late-game attacker. Has the highest (single-turn) damage output out of all your Pokémon. The danger of starting with it is higher than in other decks, as you don't have Latias ex to retreat it for free.

• Energy Search: Converts the Item search from Arven into an Energy.

• Energy Switch: This lets you search for 3 Darkness Energy to attach to Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex when you Punk Up, then move one over to Munkidori. It can also provide an extra Munkidori activation if you have 2 Munkidori in play, but only 1 Darkness Energy between them.

Tips

• Like with Charizard ex, you don't have to attach the maximum number of Energy whenever you use Punk Up. Just 2 Darkness Energy to the Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex is often the right choice. Another reason you'd want to avoid overattaching Energy with Grimmsnarl is that it can't attach to Munkidori; to get Darkness Energy onto Munkidori, you'd have to draw into it and manually attach. Not overattaching and instead leaving more copies of Darkness Energy in the deck means better chances of that happening.

• If, however, you have Night Stretcher and are looking for a way to get Darkness Energy into your hand to attach to Munkidori, you can overattach Energy to your Active Marnie's Pokémon with Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex, retreat it, then use Night Stretcher to recover the Energy from your discard pile.

• If your opponent's Active Pokémon has an Ability and is near death, try to adjust the amount of damage on it with Munkidori to manipulate when it gets KOed: 

  • If you leave it at 10 HP, it dies to Froslass during Pokémon Checkup, and this KO doesn't enable Fezandipiti ex. If you have to attack with Shadow Bullet to bring their Active down to 10 HP, avoid taking any KOs with the spread too.

  • If it's a liability and you leave it at 20 HP (after factoring in Corner damage with Maractus if applicable), it remains alive in the Active Spot during their turn, blocking them from attacking. They'll either brick and miss their attack for the turn, or spend resources getting the liability out and maybe only take 1 Prize against your Active 1-Prizer. No matter what, the liability is dead to another Froslass tick when it's your turn again (unless it gets Penny/Turo-ed off the board).

• Spikemuth Gym can be used to get discard fodder into your hand for Ultra Ball or Secret Box, or to thin the deck before playing Professor's Research.

• In some matchups, it may be correct to cut either Froslass or Marnie's Grimmsnarl ex out of the equation entirely, and just play as a Grimm + Munkidori or Frosslass + Munkidori deck. Against Gardevoir ex for example, they can match you in the Munkidori war, so you want to avoid putting down Froslass and build towards Grimmsnarl Boss KOing their Gardevoir ex instead. On the other hand, against Gholdengo ex, they have the damage output to 1HKO Grimmsnarl, so you want to build two Froslass instead, generating damage on their Gholdengo ex's for the TM: Devo board wipe that way.