Expanded Deck Tech: Venusaur VMax + Celebi & Venusaur Tag Team

Hello everybody. I'm Rodrigo, bringing news, curiosities and information about Pokémon TCG. Carrying on with the Expanded format, I had posted about the Kanto starters using just their forms' VMax cards. In this article, I will bring the union of the current mechanic with Tag Team GX's last mechanic and the recent mechanic, the VMax in general. And today, I will talk about Venusaur VMax with Celebi & Celebi Tag Team-GX.

Decklist

Forest Storm

, costing only 2 colorless energies, deals 30 damage for each grass Pokémon in play. Considering that this deck has 10 energies, it can hit 300 damage total. This damage can be increased thanks to Venusaur SLG 3, whose ability

doubles the effects of your basic grass energies, providing two at the same time

. So, this deck has virtually 20 grass energies and we still have Rillaboom SHF 13 with the ability

Voltage Beat

, in which you can look for two energies in your deck and attach them to your Pokemon, as an alternative way of charging. As for

G-Max Bloom

, it costs 2 grass energies and two colorless ones, deals 210 damage and heals itself 30 damage. To compensate for this weak damage, you need to try and cause these "bad statuses" on your opponent with previous attacks from its base form, Venusaur V CPA 1 using the Shining Celebi PR-SM SM79's ability. Considering Venusaur V CPA 1 as a part of this system, we have

Pollen Bomb

, which for 2 grass energies and a colorless one, deals 80 damage and makes your opponent asleep and poisoned. Here we have the main question: it causes these special conditions, "bad status", which will make enemy Pokémon wither, and for that, we have Shining Celebi PR-SM SM79 with the ability that allows you to copy the previous attacks from the Pokémon's past evolution (a version of Memory Capsule VIV 155, only built in a Pokémon rather than in a tool). That means, you hit first with

Pollen Bomb

to then use

G-Max Bloom

, when you evolve to Venusaur VMAX PR-SW SWSH102, and in sequence, you deal 80 (aside from the bad status) plus 210, so you're dealing 290 damage and 10 more damage dealt by the poison in between rounds! Here this comes as second good attacker in the game, and it is by far crucial to this deck due to its GX attack, which is something

extremely broken

for its effect:

Evergreen-GX

, which costs two grass energies and two colorless ones, deals 180 damage and heals

all the damage it took

, and still has an extra effect in which if it has at least 1 extra Grass Energy attached to it (in addition to this attack's cost), besides doing all of that (180 damage and full heal),

you can shuffle all cards from your discard pile back into your deck!

(essa parte na formatação tá esquisita)

Recursive Pokémon

Again, it goes without saying that Venusaur SLG 3 and Rillaboom SHF 13 are resources that can help out this charging and copying energies system so we can execute our plan. Here the ideal is to use

Pollen Hazard

to cause "bad status" so you can start to make your opponent wither and force them to spend resources to clear these conditions, or they will be punished by it, and then we start our second attack combo,

Solar Beam

. Because of that, ideally you will place them on board

as soon as possible

so you have the quickest setup and Venusaur VMax is able to attack very quickly, having 4 Evolution Incense SSH 163 and 4 Rare Candy CES 142. The best way to quickly get your charging setup is to prioritize Bulbasaur evolving to Venusaur, and Grookey to Rillaboom; even though the build line is 1-1, we have plenty of resources to speed up our evolutions. - Venusaur SLG 3 has the ability

Jungle Totem

, which makes all basic grass energy be worth two energies at the same time, which makes paying for the cost of our Pokémon easier. - Rillaboom SHF 13 has

Voltage Beat

, which allows you to search in your deck for two grass energies and attach them to one of your Pokémon. - Shining Celebi PR-SM SM79 has

Time Recall

, which makes

all your evolved Pokémon able to use their previous versions' attacks (and the energy cost to do this attack still needs to be fulfilled)

. You will use this to make Venusaur VMAX PR-SW SWSH102 copy Venusaur V CPA 1's first attack.

Trainer Cards

- Professor's Research (Professor Oak) CEL 23 is your deck's card draw: you discard your hand until you draw 7 new cards. - Gardenia's Vigor ASR 143 is the deck's charger. You attach two grass energies in your hand to one of the benched Pokémon. If you do it, you draw two cards. - Net Ball LOT 187 makes you able to search for a grass Pokémon or a grass energy in your deck. - Trainers' Mail ROS 92 is useful to advance a basic Pokémon evolution to stage 2. - Evolution Incense SSH 163 is useful to search in your deck for a Pokémon's evolution card, which combos with

Rare Candy

for your recursive Pokémon. - Life Forest ◇ LOT 180 Stadium is useful to heal your grass Pokémon in 60 damage and also removes all the special conditions that they might be under. Only as it's a Prim Star card, if it's discarded, it goes to the Lost Zone. - Turffield Stadium RCL 170 is useful to search for grass Pokémon' evolutions, making it easy for your deck's recursive Pokémon to evolve, so they can combo with

Rare Candy

, besides Venusaur V's own evolution into Venusaur VMax.

Special Energy

Here, in this deck, I replaced Cherrim UPR 11's use to this special energy, which

removes the weakness of the Pokémon it is attached to

, and in that, avoids one more use of the recursive grass Pokémon evolution line setup so you can focus on your deck's other setups.

Advantages

We have an advantage over water Pokémon which have grass weaknesses. If you set it up quickly with Rillaboom SHF 13 and Venusaur SLG 3 in your matches, it will help a lot so your Celebi & Venusaur-GX TEU 1 can attack first, causing the "bad status" and then you can close the game with a "Midgame" or "LateGame" with Venusaur VMAX PR-SW SWSH102, with which you'll be able to do the same setup of causing these status and bit by bit make your opponents wither. This a good deck to cause these adverse effects: it can cause poisoning, confusion, burn and also has healing and resource recycling potential through Celebi/Vanusaur's GX attacks, plus the Life Forest ◇ LOT 180 Stadium, which heals you 60 damage per turn and removes special conditions. It is a multipurpose deck.

Disadvantages

Fire type weaknesses are practically pure agony. If you don't have Weakness Guard Energy UNM 213 to avoid taking the double damage, it's the end. As you have special energy, any "Single Prize" Beedrill CRE 3 deck is a complicated match. Due to its deck not having much speeding and card draw cards such as Dedenne-GX UNB 57 and Crobat V DAA 104, the feeling you get is that your game's setup is a bit slow, that it needs to speed up with Trainers' Mail ROS 92 to quickly search for Professor's Research (Professor Oak) CEL 23 or Gardenia's Vigor ASR 143 to speed up the benched Pokemons' charging setup. The recursive Pokémon setup, in case of Venusaur and Rillaboom, as it is a 1-1 line, is a bit complicated in your deck and it can be a problem if you don't speed it up as soon as possible. It is an essential part of your deck so it can flow with as much speed as it can in a few rounds. The card Avery CRE 130 is your biggest

fear

here, because if you fill the board, it might make you discard your Pokemon, which might make you sacrifice your recursive Pokémon. Hand control decks and deck card control decks can sabotage your game and be very hard to play against. It is a reasonably good deck, and even though it is the slowest Kanto elemental starter decks, it has its "bad status" aggressive side which compensates this slowness. As that is its focus, in essence, the rest of the deck is a bonus, when it comes to handling damage as a tanker and also as it recycles your discards, which is something surreal and as absurd as is the card Lysandre's Trump Card PHF 99 (which, of course, was banned precisely because of that). So, I would like your opinions regarding my deckbuilding. Which are your expectations? Would you change something to make it better? Make yourself comfortable in the comment section and tell me your suggestions. See you next time!