Hi there, Celebi’ here! Today I’d like to present a Card of the Day double feature – Volbeat and Illumise! These two cards, playing off of the whole Volbeat x Illumise theme, work well together, and I decided to review them both!
Volbeat and Illumise have similar stats: they’re both Grass types (yuck!), they both have 70 HP (decent for a basic), and they both have an average one retreat cost. Being Basics means you can swarm them early in the game.
That’s the strategy of any Volbeat/Illumise deck: use a turbo engine to create…well, a firefly swarm.
How exactly do they gain strength in numbers? Well let’s look at Illumise’s attacks. The first is just bad. It lets you heal three damage counters from one of your Pokemon. This will never be useful – both of your main Pokemon have 70 HP and will get OHKO’d anyway. The second attack is where Illumise shines (another shiny pun? Man, I’m unoriginal).
Vulcan beat is the attack you’ll want to be using. It costs just one Grass energy and lets you flip a coin for each Volbeat in play. You can then do thirty damage times the number of heads. If you’re very lucky, you can hit for 120 damage – just on turn one! Even taking into account its flippiness, Vulcan beat averages 60 damage, which is great for one energy on your first turn.
You’ll obviously want to have a full bench of Volbeats, then. And since you’ll run four of them in a deck, there’s always the chance of being in a sticky situation where you’ll have to attack with him.
Volbeat’s first attack is the one that you would want to use. It’s called Illumisile, and for one Grass energy you get to snipe the bench for 30, as long as you have Illumise in play.
While 30 damage isn’t much, especially since you’re not allowed to attack the Active, it does have the possibility of KOing babies or low HP Pokemon like Solosis. Illumisile should only be used when you can’t do anything else, but I thought I’d still bring it up. It’s better than the awful Firefly Light – that’s one attack you’ll never use.
So, let’s say you really like fireflies and you want a fun deck to play around with. Volbeat/Illumise may be right for you! I’m not going to get into specifics about the decklist, but I will say that you need to have the absolute speediest engine possible. You should definitely include:
- Pokemon Collector
- Professor Juniper
- Dual Ball
- Any other Trainer-based Pokemon search (this may actually be an opportunity to use those Victory Medals!)
Another tech that may work (I haven’t tested this yet, but wanted to throw it out there) is “Fliptini” from Noble Victories. It’s one more basic you have to get out, and it means that you won’t be able to set up a new Illumise until the other one is KO’d (your bench would consist of a Victini and four Volbeats). But it increases the odds of Vulcan Beat being effective, and it may be worth a try.
Volbeat and Illumise together provide a fairly reliable donk, but they have a hard time scoring KOs later in the game. Their 70 HP means that your opponent will get a KO each turn, and when you’re averaging just 60 damage, you won’t be able to keep up in the prize trade. This is the main thing that keeps them from becoming a competitive deck.
However, Volbeat/Illumise can still be a fun and fairly easy to play league deck. Here’s a great video 6P member Vysekun made of a first turn played out with the deck.
Pokemon TCG: Illumise/Volbeat Turn 1 Play-through (HGSS+)
I’d rate Illumise at 6/10 and Volbeat at 5/10. I may have rated them a little low because they are so dependent on each other, but I think it’s pretty fair. Illumise also got an extra point because she has a higher damage output, whereas Volbeat is just there to support.
Have any of you tested out a Volbeat/Illumise deck? What do you think of the cards? Thanks for reading, and thanks to baby_mario for suggesting the last image! :D
