Standard Deck Tech: Drapion VStar - Exotic and Useful Dark Box

Hello everybody. I'm Rodrigo, and I'm here to bring you more ideas and deck possibilities for the Standard format in the Pokémon TCG.

In the face of new cards from the new expansion, let's get to know another Pokémon VStar that is present in the collection and see if it has the potential of a strong deck for the format with the footprint of Dark Box? With you, Drapion VStar!

Deck Analysis

With an exotic uniqueness in its Basic V form, its Wild Style ability reduces the cost of colorless energy from its attacks by the amount of Single Strike, Rapid Strike and Fusion Strike Pokémon in the opponent's play, causing its Dynamic Tail attack (for 4 colorless energies) to do 190 damage and choosing an opponent's Benched Pokémon to take 60 damage (being a "Spread Sniper").

At a hypothetical situation, against the fearsome Mew VMAX FST 114, it takes a lot of damage for two reasons:

1) Due to the weakness to dark types

2) This opponent usually has around three Genesect V FST 185 and one Mew V FST 113 on the bench, that is, there are 4 Benched Pokémon. So, it looks like this Pokémon was tailor-made to counter Mew VMax.

And its evolution, Drapion-VStar, has its Big Bang Arm attack, for two dark energies and one colorless energy, which does 250 base damage minus 10 for each damage counter it is on. Although it has this setback, if it is at full HP, 250 damage is an excellent value within the Metagame, considering the use of Choice Belt BRS 135 to add 30 damage against the current format's Pokémon V and VStar.

And its VStar power, being its ability, Hazzard Star, leaves your opponent's Active Pokémon paralyzed and poisoned, and poison damage counters are 3 counters instead of 1 between turns (the so-called check-up).

Recursive Pokémon

1) For attacking Pokémon we have Galarian Moltres EVS 93, which is good to use in the last stages of the game, when the opponent is about to win the prize card because its Fiery Wrath attack does 20 damage plus 50 damage for every prize card the opponent has taken, and in a hypothetical situation that they have taken 5 prize cards, your Galarian Moltres “Baby” is doing 270 damage for only 3 energies!

2) Your second resource and tertiary attacker is Galarian Moltres V CRE 97, which in addition to having its Direflame Wings ability that recycles a dark energy from your discard pile and turns it on, it also causes a great 190 damage attack, but with the downside of taking 30 to itself, the Aura Burn.

3) The Mew CEL 11 card has “almost” the same function as the Jirachi TEU 99 at the Sun/Moon era. Mew with its Mysterious Tail ability makes it so that if it is your active Pokémon, you look at the top 6 cards of the deck, and place an item card among them in your hand.

4) Radiant Greninja ASR 46, which with its Concealed Cards ability, you discard an energy card from your hand to draw two cards.

5) Lumineon V BRS 40 is close to the "Tapu Lele-GX" of the new generation due to its Luminous Sign ability that if it is played from your hand to your bench, you can look for a Trainer Supporter card in your deck and put it in your hand. So looking for the three most important Trainer cards in the deck, like a Boss's Orders for the Drapion-VStar equipped with the Choice Belt to deal 280 damage to an opponent's Benched high HP Pokémon such as a Darkrai-VStar or Origin Forme Palkia-VStar.

6) And finally, we have Crobat V DAA 104 with its Dark Asset ability, which if played from your hand to your bench, you can draw cards until you have six in your hand.

Trainer Cards

- Professor's Research SHF 60 serves as the “Draw Power” of your game.

Marnie SSH 169 serves as “hand control”: you and your opponent take the cards that are in your hand and shuffle them and place them on the bottom of the deck. Next, you draw 5 cards from the top of your deck and your opponent only draws 4 cards.

Boss's Orders BRS 132 is used to pull a Pokémon from the opponent's Bench to bring it as active and close with a knockout.

Dark Patch ASR 139 is one of the key power-up pieces for your Drapion.

Ordinary Rod SSH 171 is recycling basic energy resources and Pokémon in your discard, being able to choose both options.

This one serves precisely to seek these basic energies at the discard pile and put them into your hand. This effect can be used between turns, both for you and your opponent.

Advantages

This deck manages to be a better representative of Dark Box than the Darkrai VStar itself, which has the weakness of depending on the number of energies connected in the game to hit 30 for each one. Doing some quick math, for a quick comparison, Darkrai with 8 energies in play, almost ¼ of the deck to deal 240 damage, while Drapion-VStar with only 3 energies (two dark and one colorless) does 250 damage if it has full HP!

And with many decks that use Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX BST 88 or support cards from the Inteleon line (especially Inteleon CRE 43) and that come with a base of 4 Sobble CRE 41, and Mew V FST 113) will suffer in its hand, mainly Mew VMax due to the weakness to dark type.

Disadvantages

Drapion-V's initial form relies on 4 energies to deal 190 damage, and since the deck doesn't have Double Turbo Energy, it has a slow attack response. It's always ideal to evolve into your VStar form so that you're at least guaranteed to be able to deal damage in a short amount of time. But even so, the deck is only strong if there are the conditions of its ability to be able to hit with no energy cost; otherwise, it becomes a problem in the game.

And to make matters worse, there are only two copies in the deck, which is very dangerous as it doesn't have consistency of a 3-2 base at least for the assembly, forcing Galarian Moltres-V and Galarian Moltes “Baby ” to the attackers' role.

This deck can be seen as low competitive potential because it can't necessarily respond to everything and everyone in the format, but it's fun to play!

It will make Mew-VMax players angry (the best part of it). But from the Dark Box that have shown themselves so far, losing to the height of Eternatus VMax at the time of 2019 that did a lot of damage, this Drapion deck is decent and interesting to play, since Galarian MoltresV always is more of a supporting role than being the star of a Dark Box, as Darkrai-VStar had a lot of hype but didn't live up to expectations.