Rayquaza is on high demand here, and I am but your humble servant. Meet the new way to drop a draco. Rayquaza's Draco Meteor deals a total of 160 damage split between 4 random targets. Dragonite’s Draco Meteor is indeed more powerful, yet running Rayquaza offers significant benefits. The first obvious advantage is Rayquaza being a basic pokemon, this doesn’t just enhance your gameplan’s overall consistency, it frees up deck space considerably. While Rare Candy has made certain Stage 2’s significantly stronger, it’s not really that amazing for Dragonite, as his attack requires 4 energy, so there’s little benefit in accelerating his evolution, and while you can run Rare Candy and Dragonair to make sure you evolve into dragonite more often, doing so will soak up 7 card slots out of your 20 card deck.

Rayquaza takes up 2. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Rayquaza is a normal type, unlike Dragonite who requires 2 specific sources of energy in order to attack. But wait, there’s more, Rayquaza being a normal type doesn’t just mean it can combine with more pokemon, it also provides it with synergy with the new trainer card Ilima. I argue Ilima is one of the strongest cards from the latest expansion. This card is one of the driving forces behind today’s deck. You wanted a decent Rayquaza deck, today I’m going to share an amazing one.

Monke and Dragon unite to Drop a Coco. Today’s deck combines Rayquaza with Passimian, in a list that exceeded my expectations. Passimian EX offers the fighting typing something it lacked. Ramp. Kind of. Offload Pass makes it so that when Passimian is knocked out, all fighting type energy placed onto him will be transferred to one of your benched pokemon. Passimian is Rayquaza's best teammate, this isn’t an opinion, it’s a fact. You lead off with Passimian, build up energy onto it to then Seismic Toss as often as you can, once Passimian goes down, Rayquaza will carry on Monke’s will and Drop a Draco once or twice for the win.

Why is Passimian better than Dialga here? The answer is Ilima. The 2 biggest problems a deck of this nature faces are:

1. You’re forced to lead off with the pokemon you want to ramp onto.

2. An opponent’s Sabrina forces said pokemon to the front line.

Ilima solves both of these problems. Far better than Leaf ever could. No matter what, we want Passimian to go down first every single game. If we lead off with Rayquaza, it’s fine. We make use of our high HP stat to soak up early game damage, to then Ilima Rayquaza back to our hand and send in Passimian to retaliate. If our opponent plays Sabrina to force Rayquaza in, it’s fine. We tank the hit, Ilima and bring Passimian right back in. And this is why Passimian is far better than Dialga here. With Dialga’s ramp, as we Ilima, we would lose all energy attached to Rayquaza, forcing us to start all over again. With Passimian the energy transfer that we need is happening all at once the moment Passimian goes down, making our setup harder to disrupt and dealing double the damage in the process.

Passimian may not be a heavy hitter, but 60 damage attacks rack up fast, and your opponents will waste resources and attacks trying to take down your Rayquaza, which will enhance Passimians longevity allowing you to score a kill through Seismic Toss alone.

That’s where the strength in this deck lies, the rest of the build is there to provide us with a tool box of trainer cards to make sure nothing stops us from firing off 2 Draco Meteors. Monke and Dragon make up for a perfect duo that will lead to an end game board wipe, regardless of what matchup you’re facing. Except Oricorio.