How To Win a World Championship - Iron Thorns Deck Tech
The Pokémon World Championships have concluded and a new Pokémon Champion was crowned. Fernando Cifuentes journeyed all the way from Chile to Honolulu, Hawaii to battle his way through two days of competition and emerge victorious with his specially crafted team of Pokémon. Let’s take a look at the World Championship metagame and why Fernando’s deck was probably the perfect anti-meta deck.
Alex Kivitz
Metagame Breakdown
Before we dive into the deck and why the Iron Thorns deck was such a good pick, we need to understand what the expected metagame was. The four most played decks at the tournament were Regidrago, Lugia Archeops, Charizard, and Raging Bolt. There was even notable Gardevoir representation at the event. Each and every one of these decks utilizes key “Rule Box” Pokémon as engines to power their decks and keep them going. Here is where Iron Thorns shines. Iron Thorns “Initialization” ability terribly shuts down their key engines and value generators.
Regidrago, for example, can no longer use Teal Mask Ogerpon’s Teal Dance ability to attach multiple energy per turn, or use Squawkabilly to cycle through their deck and put powerful Pokémon in their graveyard. Charizard loses the ability to utilize Pidgeot EX to Quick Search, or Charizard’s on enter to search for and attach extra energy as well. This even shuts down Gardevoir’s ability to attach energy from the discard pile.
In a tournament where players are not expecting to see Iron Thorns and don’t dedicate deck space to deal with it with cards like Canceling Cologne, the deck can stall and slowly gather prize cards while preventing the opponent from utilizing their own abilities.
The Champion Team
Let’s dive into the decklist, the Pokémon that make up the team, and all the Trainers that help make the deck the control powerhouse that it is. Starting off, and ending the list, we have four Iron Thorns in the decklist. As the only Pokémon in the entire deck, it’s guaranteed that you will start with them on the field. How many mulligans will it take? Not too many, but even so, it won’t matter. The core of the Deck is Iron Thorns and its Initialization ability.
Initialization states that while Iron Thorns is in the Active Spot, Pokémon with Rule Boxes in play lose their abilities, except for future Pokémon. Right away, you can see how Iron Thorns shuts down many deck’s “value engines”. With an entire deck focused on two hitting opponent’s Pokémon, removing their energy, and stopping them from attacking, Iron Thorns is a slow but steady deck that will win, eventually.
That’s it for the Pokémon, that’s the entire team. Maybe those trainers with only four Pokémon on Victory Road were right about something all along. But now, let’s dive into the Trainer Cards, where the deck strategy really shines.
Let’s start off with the Supporters. We have four Arvens, arguably the best supporter currently in the game. These help search for key pieces to keep our deck moving, and moving energy around to keep Volt Cyclone active on Iron Thorns. Also, to help you find key pieces to stop your opponents, Professor’s Research is an easy way to refill your hand and continue playing your turn, attaching more energy and digging for more ways to remove energy from your opponent’s Pokémon.
I love the use of Judge as a way to also somewhat refill your hand, but with Iono, it also functions as a way to reduce the number of cards your opponents have. These coupled two Colress’s Tenacity, one Penny, and one Giovanni’s Charisma for energy manipulation and “healing” a damaged Iron Thorns.
Key Items
Let’s start off with the base item sets that add to the deck strategy. Four Pokégear 3.0s for general digging for the supporter card you need and four Crushing Hammer to remove energy from your opponent’s Pokémon. In decks like Gardevoir and Teal Mask Ogerpon decks for instance, where they gain extra energy through abilities, these heavily slow down the opponents. A good tool to keep your Iron Thorns safe. We then have four Pokémon Catchers. If you see your opponent trying to buy time by leaving out a big health active Pokémon and attaching energy to a Pokémon on the bench. This is a good way to bring out that benched Pokémon and put a stop to that plan.
Now, we only have four Pokémon in our deck and we need to find a way to see them quickly. Techno Radar helps us search for two of our four Iron Thorns quickly and easily. Once they’re on the field, 140 damage and four retreat cost is doing no one any favors. This is why we pack in three Future Booster Energy Capsules, just to have that extra damage and allow for a two attack 320. This also helps us swap Iron Thorns in and out when one maybe gets low, or we have to sub one in with the right amount of Energy because we had to move away.
Finally, we have our arsenal of tech cards. These are items chosen mostly to target the other decks that were expected at the main event. Two Canceling Colognes to target the few Future Pokémon that slip through Iron Thorns’ ability. Three Lost cities to further disrupt the large amount of Regidrago decks expected. Regidrago can’t gain choose an attack from the discard pile if there are no attacks in the discard pile.
We have some fun one-offs in the deck as well. Energy Lotto and Earthen Vessel help accelerate our draw and energy gain. Additionally, there is one Technical Machine: Turbo Energize to accelerate energy gain even further. We also have a single Lost Vacuum for any pesky attachments, such as Bravery Charm or various Capes – or opposing Booster. And finally, we have our Ace Spec. The Prime Catcher of the deck, allows us to swap in targets of choice, and readying an attacker to take it out in one fell swoop.
Want to learn more?
If you’re interested in the full decklist, you can find all the info here.
