Solgaleo is broken. Bulk, speed, power, looks. This card’s got it all. For just 2 energy, Sol Breaker will deal 120 damage, with the minimal downside of dealing 10 damage to itself. Arcanine and Giratina feel insulted. Normally, an attack of this nature is balanced by the fact that Solgaleo is a stage 2 evolution, meaning it’ll take you some time to find all pieces, except Rare Candy exists now, so forget I said anything. What makes this card so good is that its energy efficiency doesn’t just lie within its attack, Solgaleo’s ability is just as important here. Rising Road allows you to switch Solgaleo with whatever pokemon you have in the active slot, for free. This means you can fully focus on building up Cosmog while having another pokemon soak up damage, without losing any momentum in the process.

I’ve seen many players combine Solgaleo with Skarmory, which makes sense, but is also kind of boring. I wanted to go for a combination that really made use of Solgaleo’s Rising Road ability. Because being able to retreat ANY pokemon out of the front line for free is an extremely powerful thing for a card to be capable of. Running Solgaleo with Skarmory is effective, but the Snorlax combination is just downright insane. 140 HP on a non-EX Basic is incredible, this huge HP stat is balanced by a massive retreat cost. Snorlax is designed to be very difficult to pivot with, once he’s sent to the front line he’s pretty much stuck there. Except Solgaleo is able to swap places with him for free. This allows you to use Snorlax as a wall while you build up Solgaleo, which doesn’t take very long at all by the way. Snorlax is asleep? That’s fine, because you’re not actually retreating him. Whether your pokemon is asleep or paralyzed, Solgaleo will swap places with them regardless.

In today’s deck, Snorlax wakes up early. Solgaleo transforms Snorlax into the ultimate early game wall. And thanks to a full set of Barry, Snorlax's role goes beyond that of a punching bag here. After Solgaleo goes down, Snorlax can come back in and collapse for the win. Solgaleo only requires 2 energy in order to fully function, which means the moment we’ve achieved that we can focus on building up energy onto Snorlax. This is why this pokemon combination is so good, together they make up for a deck that’s fast, resilient and powerful enough to threaten a 2 hit KO on pretty much every single pokemon in the game.

To get more value out of Snorlax’s bulk, we run a full set of poison barb. Which will poison any pokemon daring to attack him. Honestly Rocky Helmet may still be better here… I wanted to play the new card ok??

Solgaleo is definitely going to be one of the strongest decks in the meta, and while most players combine him with Skarmory, I believe Snorlax is a stronger combination. Barry accelerates Snorlax’s offense, while Solgaleo elevates his worth as a defender.