Today I am going to be looking briefly at the Primal Kyogre deck and how it will stand up now that Breakpoint is out.
The main card of this deck, is of course, primal kyogre from primal clash. This card does 150 damage to your opponents active pokemon + 30 damage to any EXs they have on their bench. You do however have to move 2 energies to a benched pokemon when you use this attack.
Ideally, you would want to have 2 of these set up: your active with 4 energies and another one on the bench with 2 energies. This way you could attack with your active, move the 2 energies to the benched one and have it ready to go next turn. With manaphy EX from breakpoint, you can now retreat any pokemon with water energy on it for free, meaning you no longer have to worry about that heavy retreat cost. This means the next turn, you can retreat your kyogre with 2 energies, send out the one with 4 and do the same thing all over again!
Some of the main benefits of this deck are:
- Spreading damage so things become easier to knock out
- Capable of knocking out many pokemon at once
- Opponent can no longer retreat injured EXs to save them, as they will still get hit
- with a huge 240 HP, it's very hard for primal kyogre to be knocked out
- Free retreat with manaphy EX, this was one of the major hurdles the deck had before breakpoint
- Primal ability allows 2 energies to be attached at once, speeding up your energy attachments
- 150 damage + a muscle band knocks out any 170HP EX
- 150 damage + 30 damage (from when it was on the bench and got damaged) knocks out any 180HP EX
- Couple this with rough seas and you can heal 30 damage per turn per kyogre, making them even harder to knock out
However, this deck isn't perfect. Some of the weaknesses are:
- Weak to grass, so is susceptible to decks such as vespiquen
- Evolving to primal kyogre ends your turn, so you have to attach a spirit link if you don't want this to happen. This can slow you down
- Mr mime throws off your numbers by stopping the 30 damage to the bench, meaning 180HP EXs are hard to knock out
- If you run manaphy, it only has 120HP, meaning if it is lysandred out, it's very easy to be knocked out
- This deck relies on being able to draw quickly to be able to set up at the beginning, so if you draw badly or are item locked (by something like seismitoad EX), it can slow you down too much
So what should you run with this deck? As far as pokemon go, I would advise things like Kyogre EX and Primal Kyogre EX (obviously!) as well as manaphy EX and shaymin EX (if you can afford it). For trainers, go with the staples, a bunch of supporters (sycamore, shauna, birch, lysandre etc) as well as some cards that are great for water like dive ball, the spirit link and rough seas. I would recommend having around 12-14 water energies in this deck as well as a way to recycle them (such as fisherman). The rest is up to you! Fill it up with trainers you like to use, make sure you have plenty that can help you set up really fast.
If you want to play this deck, most of the cards come from primal clash and breakpoint, so that would be a great place to start. Already have some of the cards? Great! Build up the deck from what you have and slowly make it better when you get cards that are better for the deck.
Let us know how you get on with the deck and make sure you share any comments you have about the deck in the comments section below!
Don't know what some of these terms mean? Check out our glossary here.
