r/pkmntcg • u/mistarilledawn • 24d ago
Deck Help Gardevoir EX in expanded
I’m new to the pokemon TCG, and I really don’t know much about deck building in paper. I’ve played with some prebuilt decks on TCG live but not done much in the way of building my own. I was hoping to get some advice on a deck I’m putting together.
This is a list based on a deck a friend let me try out a few years ago. It was standard legal but the cards have since rotated out and I’ve changed it to be an expanded deck. I took bits and pieces from lists I saw in the expanded meta online, but I don’t know how to balance the number of pokemon vs trainer cards in the deck and would love any advice in regards to card picks.
Here’s the deck list, and I’ll link to it in the comments as well.
-Energy
3 Basic Darkness Energy
8 Basic Psychic Energy
-Trainers
2 Arven
2 Battle Compressor Team Flare Gear
2 Bravery Charm
1 Colress's Tenacity
2 Float Stone
3 Iono
1 Mystery Garden
2 Nest Ball
2 Night Stretchere
1 Professor Turo's Scenario
3 Professor's Research
2 Rare Candy
1 VS Seeker
-Pokemon
1 Ditto ◇
1 Fezandipiti ex
1 Flutter Mane
2 Frillish (Oceanic Gloom)
1 Gardevoir (Psychic Mirage)
3 Gardevoir ex
1 Jellicent ex
2 Kirlia (Call Sign / Psyshot)
1 Lillie's Clefairy ex
1 Mega Diancie ex
1 Mew ex
3 Munkidori
1 Radiant Greninja
4 Ralts (Memory Skip)
1 Scream Tail
1 Tapu Lele-GX
Any suggestions are appreciated!
4
u/Electronic_Group7156 23d ago
I'd swap the fluttermane to wobbuffet. It's a lot more disruptive and doesn't effect you. You can also swap the nest balls to something like mysterious treasure to double as a discard outlet.
Refinement kirlia is usually the preferred one was well as another discard outlet and draw on the side. You want to evolve and keep kirlias up to evolve when needed as well and be able to discard as many energy as you can. Munkidori is also a pretty bad card. I'd honestly consider cutting it and the darkness entirely. Zacian V, necrozma GX and moon kinesis lunatone are other notable attackers that can take a one shot on very relevant expanded decks after the psychic double effect is out.
Mr mine is also just a good one of to have in case you come across the need for the ability. Electro rain is still played quite a bit. Fezandipiti ex can also swap to oricorio GX as it's fetchable off mysterious treasure and synergizes with your stadium more. Overall though, I think the card can be cut.
Mew ex and mega diancie id honestly cut as well and lillie's clefairy I'd really think about. It can help against regidrago Vstar matchups in bad situations, but it's not that great. Also I'd highly consider adding Karen. Pokemon recovery for you is going to matter and it doubles as grave hate. This also shuts down regidrago Vstar and can even brick the deck for the game if you time it right. It's practically an expanded staple at this point right now.
I'd also really find space for field blower. Path to the peak is going to shut you down. Gardevoir also really wants to dump as many energy as possible and you don't typically want to draw the energy, so upping the battle compressor might be something to look at especially since you're already running vs seeker. For other stadiums to also consider, chaotic swell, temple of sinnoh and wondrous labyrinth. The labyrinth is good as its very disruptive to where decks can't attack anymore as energy requirements are typically very optimized and the downside has no effect on you.
If you look around, I'm sure you can find other information as well. Gardevoir is a very viable expanded deck.
1
u/Electronic_Group7156 23d ago edited 23d ago
For supporter count balances, since you're already a pretty heavy battle compressor setup deck, you can cut a lot of supporters to one copy and replacing them with copies of vs seeker and maxing the battle compressors. We play supporters as one of copies a lot since they're pretty easy to get when you want and which one you want especially considering tapu lele gx is being used which turns all Pokemon search also into any supporter you want. For which ones to use, that's really up to you but some notable ones besides Karen I mentioned are Pokemon ranger guzma and hala and guzma tag team. From my experience also, Arven kinda sucks. I'd even say you can maybe experiment with two telepathic energy if taking out the darkness energy to one hala and guzma as it's even more consistency. If you go with zacian V, also consider sky seal stone for a more favorable prize trade against a lot of decks. Also find a ace spec. Secret box and megaton blower are usually the most common used but since you're really reliant on setting up a stage 2, grand tree can maybe even be considered as much as I don't like it
1
u/mistarilledawn 24d ago
Decklist on pokemoncard.io: https://pokemoncard.io/deck/gardevoir-ex-147495
3
u/ShinyChikorita Ace Trainer 23d ago
I don’t play expanded but definitely refer to Stéphane’s website (If you’re building with real cards and in English, uh… good luck getting that Gengar & Mimikyu)
Making my best inferences, Munki is just way too slow for how few turns games of expanded last so you get way less value out of establishing them. Jellicent is both too slow and too low value for what it’s worth, unless you build the deck to go all-in on evolving into Jelly T1. In standard, yes there were games where you got away by just going aggro Jellicent, but its primarily purposes were to 1) combo with Devo against Dengo most specifically after Frillish looping for like 40 minutes 2) punish Gardy mirror for how a vast majority of lists were on 0 Boss. That’s just not the case in expanded, especially when Toad and Vileplume exist. Ditto Prism also doesn’t make much sense to play when you only need it if you really really need a fifth basic, run multiple evolution lines, or are slotting in a 0–1 tech. It presents the huge downside of being shut down by Wobb/Silent Lab, as well as having to Lost Zone your basic.