On its own, Wishiwashi is weaker than a Magikarp. With just 30 HP, the only thing he can do is call for family. He’s like Vin Diesel, without the ego. If A Bug’s Life taught us anything, it's that there's no greater strength than that provided for by unity. When Wishiwashi’s unite, they become something else entirely. Wishiwashi EX is a basic pokemon with a gargantuan HP stat of 170, School Storm will deal 30 damage initially, boosted by 40 for each other Wishiwashi in the bench. Capping out at a whopping 150 damage.

Being able to deal 150 damage with 3 energy is incredible, especially considering Wishiwashi is a basic. Yet the Wishiwashi archetype has one big problem. Because you need to fill up the board with them in order to obtain this power…

What can you do to survive early game aggression?

A couple of days ago I featured a Rayquaza deck that initially suffered from a similar issue, and found a card that solves it. What if we used Ilima to save us from early game pressure? The end result was quite spicy.

Today’s deck combines Wishiwashi with the OG Snorlax, in a list that aims to build up 2 Wishiwashis in order to school our opponents. We use Snorlax to sponge early game aggression while we build up Wishiwashi in the bench. When the time comes, if Snorlax remains, we bounce him back to our hand with Ilima, allowing us to not only send in Wishiwashi immediately, but to also free up our bench space so that our School Storm reaches full force. Snorlax is a normal type, meaning we can still run Fishing Net to return our fallen Wishiwashi to our hand even if Snorlax has also been KO’ed. But wait, there’s more. Oricorio would normally be an auto win against Wishiwashi, yet our Snorlax is able to one hit KO it with a Rollout.

Why do we play this Snorlax version over the newer one? The answer is simple, regular Snorlax has the highest HP stat out of all non-EX Basics in the game. Unlike the other one, OG Snorlax can survive a maxed out attack from Incineroar, and withstand a Darkrai going second, given that 3 nightmare aura pings onto Dark Prism deal a total of 140 damage. The extra 10 HP matters more than you think, and given Snorlax’s role in this deck, which is that of a punching bag, this version fits our strategy best.

The rest of the deck consists of trainer cards to support our tactic, you’ll see me playing one copy of Misty in today’s gameplay, I ultimately decided for a full set of Sabrina instead, given how impactful it is alongside our School Storm attack.

We’re not breaking the meta today, but I wanted to share a playable Wishiwashi deck that can compete with the best decks in the game. Once Wishiwashis unite, they’ll steal the spotlight.