Deck Surgery – Volbeat/Illumise from theonlytsunami

This is the second written deck surgery I have done for my site and I have just received this great deck from theonlytsunami, a user on Youtube. This deck is actually one that I had heard about, but has never really seen play because it’s been deemed a ‘fun’ deck for now. I think it could be extremely fun to play at your league or even take to a few Battle Roads in the future.

Here’s the list that he gave me:

Pokemon – 15	T/S/S – 33	Energy -12
4 Volbeat TM 4 Illumise TM 3-3 Yanmega Prime 1 Tyrogue HS	2 Copycat 4 Dual ball 4 Junk Arm 4 Plus Power 4 Pokemon Collector 4 Pokemon Communication 4 Professor Juniper 4 Seeker 3 Switch	12 Grass

So this deck is a donk-based deck that focuses on Illumise being the main attacker, using ‘Volcan Beat’ for as much damage as possible on turn one for a single Grass energy. To be able to get some decent damage on the field, you need to pair that with benching as many Volbeat as possible so that you can rack that damage up. The only catch to the attack is that it relies on flips to get any damage going at all, seeing as each Volbeat = 1 flip and each heads = 30 damage. Two heads on the first turn would be enough to get a KO unless you are faced with Reshiram or any other Basic from the new set with obscenely high HP, making this deck fairly effective.

As for the list, there isn’t a whole lot you can do to make it ‘your own’ seeing as you need to go all out and max the search, draw and resources needed to mount that damage on the first turn and onwards.

Max Pokemon Collector and Communication is a great start meaning that turn one, you could be getting yourself 3 Volbeats to get some flips prepared for some damage, so you should definitely leave this as it is. Max Dual Ball also helps with this so that you can attempt to grab all 4 in one turn, or go for the support you’ve chosen when veering past the early game.

Plus Power is a great inclusion to this deck since it rounds off those potentially odd numbers to get some KOs you would otherwise be short of getting. The max Junk Arm also assures that you can reuse these as much as possible when needed and start tacking on extra tens of damage, possibly negating the need for an extra heads if you play 3 Plus Power at the same time.

So what I’m not sure about at the moment is the Seeker and Switch. Seeker is what is puzzling me most since Volbeat and Illumise will both be OHKO’d by pretty much anything competitive at the moment so I’m guessing you’re using them to further the donk capability at the beginning of the game. As it stands, I haven’t tested this deck a whole lot, but I’m guessing that you’re going to need that turn one Collector more than you’ll need a turn one Seeker, so maybe you could cut it down to 2 to make room for some other cards that I will suggest later.

If I were to run the deck, I would maybe cut these down to keep the early game as consistent as possible which means it will be easier to pull off two KOs in a row, rather than benching them out turn one without using a Collector. Sure, Dual Ball is there, but two tails on this will force you to use up a Collector anyway and I will always suggest to make plays less dependant on coin flips and go for what you can definitely do.

I’m not really sure if Switch is going to be needed in this deck since your main attacker and its support has one or zero retreat cost, making it very easy to switch attackers, since you run a fairly high amount of energy anyway. I would probably take these out altogether to make some extra room simply because I don’t feel they will be needed. If you really like to have them in there, then you can keep a single copy to reuse with Junk Arm when you like, which would be a lot more effective.

The energy count is looking solid and the single Tyrogue in there is nice since it can deal with an early Baby Pokemon, still getting the donk, but with less work on your part!

As for a back up attacker, I like Yanmega as an idea, but with the things I said I’d take out earlier, you’ll be able to add in some more support for the late game if things don’t go too great early on. Don’t forget that Yanmega can deal some very heavy damage early on as well, so if you’re given the resources, don’t hesitate to go aggro Yanmega early on.

The two main things you can do to improve your Yanmega support is bump up your Copycat count to the maximum and throw in a few Judge as well. Not only will this help you to slow down your opponent early on, but it will allow you to make full use of Yanmega in both the early and late stages. If you didn’t manage to slow them down with Judge in the early game, disrupting their plans during the late game while attacking with Yanmega is great as well.

Adding these two things in will improve your all round performance through all stages in the game and will further strengthen your early game, seeing as Yanmega can start applying offensive pressure straight away.

Overall, your list was very solid, but I just felt a couple of changes could bring this more into the competitive environment. I really like the idea of this deck since it seems fun to play and is vaguely competitive, if the flips go your way. The only thing I don’t like is the flip aspect since it can go really well or just poorly, even if you get the dream set up.

Thank you for sending in your list and I hope this helped you out.

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I hope you enjoyed reading this and I look forward to reading and analysing more of your great lists!