This is my favourite deck this expansion.
Today we cook, with Krook. With 140 HP, Krookodile’s Poaching Fangs deals 90 damage for 3 energy and then you flip 3 coins, for each heads you return a random card from the opponent’s hand back to their deck. This is a very strong effect, because we are not just taking cards away from their hand, by returning them to the deck we force them to have to draw them again, making it so that as long as Krookodile is online, our opponents will be unable to thin out their deck, effectively forcing them to fight with minimal resources.
Unfortunately, there is a big price to pay for this effect. Krookodile requires 3 energy to function, and for a stage 2 evolution his attack is weak. Failing to score a 2 hit KO on big EX pokemon backed up by healing. And once Krookodile goes down, so does the 3 energy we invested onto him, building up another attacker that can provide us with the damage output to finish the game seems pretty much impossible given the speed at which most decks operate. I tried combining Krookodile with Giratina EX, following the same logic behind Darkrai/Giratina. Which is to build up 2 attackers simultaneously. The problem is Krookodile takes up 4 more deck slots, and once you start attacking with him, you can’t really afford to stop, this makes Giratina extremely awkward when going second, as you’ll have to skip a turn in the end game without having Darkrai’s passive damage to aid you. Krookodile’s design leads to quite the conundrum, as he is a 3 energy attacker that wants to be your offensive lead, as the more time passes the more deck thinning your opponent will achieve.
How the hell do we make a viable deck with a card that wants to attack first, requires 3 energy to do so, and lacks overall damage output? The answer is Guzzlord.
Today’s deck combines Krookodile with the Ultra Beasts, we destroy our opponent’s hand to then bring in the end game power we desperately need, thanks to Lusamine. Celesteela’s Ultra Thrusters allow us to pivot our Ultra Beasts effortlessly. This allows us to sponge our opponents early aggression while we build up Sandile in the bench. How do we send in Krookodile to the front line though? Celesteela’s ability can only swap ultra beasts. Here’s where things get spicy. Celesteela is a normal type, meaning once it's damaged we can return it to our hand with Ilima. Krookodile comes in and the poaching begins, undoing our opponent’s hands and leaving their deck nice and thick. When they finally manage to take down Krook, Lusamine charges up Guzzlord, allowing us to sweep with Tyrannical Hole.
We run one copy of Red Card, which we keep in hand up until Krookodile is ready to go, as we can undo our opponents hand build up to then poach the remains. Some games we need a little bit of extra damage output, which is why we run one copy of Rocky Helmet.
This is my favourite deck this expansion so far, Celesteela walls, Ilima recalls, Krookodile deletes their hand, Guzzlord slams.
