The Anti Rare Candy, Rare Candy Deck.
Alolan Raticate comes off as goofy. In both art and design. 110 HP with a 2 energy attack that deals 50 damage and a retreat cost of 3. The HP is decent, the other stats are not. That is the price Raticate is paying for its effect. Scrounge-and-Scarf will discard a random item from your opponent’s hand. At first glance, this seems really bad. Pokemon Pocket is ultimately a game about damage, and Raticate’s Scrounge-and-Scarf is not quite delivering in that aspect, also discarding an item seems nowhere near as useful as discarding a supporter. The most common item in the game is a card players are playing as soon as possible, the odds of sniping a pokeball from the opponent’s hand seems virtually nonexistent. Until you add in some context.
Trainer cards that force your opponent to redraw do in fact exist, by playing red card or Iono just before our Raticate attack, we can prey on a fresh hand, a hand our opponent hasn’t had the chance to play out yet, giving us the opening to discard and item they would opt to play immediately. And of course there’s also rare candy. Alongside Red Card, Alolan Raticate is actually a pretty amazing rare candy counter. With a full set of Red Card, we can slow down our opponent’s hand build up, to then strip them of their key combo piece, denying them their ability to evolve. This level of disruption is very neat, but pokemon pocket is a game where overall damage output is key, and Alolan Raticate is unfortunately weak. So if we want a playable Raticate deck, we need to pair him with a pokemon that absolutely wrecks.
Behold, the anti rare candy rare candy deck. Alolan Raticate attacks the hand, while Staraptor’s Brave Bird is difficult to withstand. With Rare Candy and Barry, Staraptor absolutely carries. Rare Candy allows us to accelerate onto Staraptor, while Barry enables Brave Bird for as little as one energy. These two pokemon work wonders together, as Raticate brings disruption, while Staraptor represents destruction.
We end up with a deck that is extremely efficient at denying rare candy combos, while not lacking the power needed to end the game. Disrupt their ability to complete their board thanks to Raticate, and then send in Staraptor to eradicate.
