Speed Decks: Kingdra

I miss having an article a day to read so it’s about time maybe I wrote another one again!

I haven’t written one recently as I’ve been in hospital but I’m sure most of you will be glad to hear this will be the last Pre-Rotation article that I will write.

Kingdra has been played in various shapes and forms for a long time. All the way back to the EX series Kingdra has been a popular deck. But what has the latest edition of Kingdra (Kingdra Prime) done for this deck?

This is a deck I came up with (in a rush) as i needed something competitive to play at Nationals. I’ve made a couple of alterations since then but nevertheless, here’s my current list:

Deck List:

This deck is run as a Speed Deck and so some of the lines may seem a little… unusual if you’re are unused to seeing a speed deck layed out.

The Basics

Kingdra
Kingdra is the main attacker of this deck. For just 1 energy he can hit for 60 damage with “Dragon Steam”. You may say although his damage is not great although his real potential comes from his Poke-Power.

“Spray Splash” allows you to place 1 damage counter on any one of your opponents Pokemon during your turn. It is this Power I wanted to make the most of in this deck and so used 3 Primes to be able to use it up to 3 times before attacking. Making it a lot easier to weaken benched Pokemon so you can 1 hit kill them when they become Active. Or even kill them in some cases.

Unfortunely the major downside to Kingdra is that if the opponent has ANY Fire Pokemon in play, Dragon Steam will only hit for 20 damage. So to stop you on your killing spreee all they need to do is place down any random Fire Pokemon on the bench and leave it there.

For this reason I had to include 1 of the regular LA Kingdra. This Kingdra can also hit for 60 Damage only using 1 Water Energy and even has the added benefit of hitting one Pokemon on the Bench for 20. However you must discard 2 cards from your hand for this to work. Combine the 2 Kingdra together however and hopefully you can pick off that Fire Pokemon before it becomes too annoying.

Claydol
This Pokemon is an amazing secondary attacker! You can in fact kill with this useing the Multi Energy which can be useful if facing a Lightening deck. However it is mainly for draw power.

Most decks utilise 2 of these; when my friend said he ran 3 i told him he was dumb! However he was right in that the consistency it gives in getting out early Claydols is immense.

Uxie/Azelf
Uxie gives you nice draw with “Setup” and Azelf will grab that prized Pokemon you so dearly need. Not much to say about these little critters apart from they clutter your bench. I’d kill them myself sometimes if i could!

Techs

That leaves you with a bit of space to run any Techs you may wish to add in. In general people love to run techs in decks however in a speed deck they may not be as beneficial as you might want them to be.

A Tech is something you will use to give you the edge over the opponent in a specific situation. However the more techs you run the slower the main part of your deck will run as it will lose some of its consistency for each tech you add in.
I personally run 3 in this. There are many more options, so here are my picks:

Dusknoir
You’ve got your Claydols and Kingdra’s out and your bashing the opponent to oblivion. So once you’re setup with a speed deck; what do you do? As in many cases you’ll find all your Claydols and Kingdras are setup by turn 4 or so at the very latest and there is little else you can do.

Apply pressure to your opponent:
Dusknoir’s “Dark Palm” Poke-Power will allow you to shuffle one of your opponent’s Pokemon and all attached cards back into their Deck if they have 4 or more Pokemon on their Bench. This means you can get rid of their Claydols so they don’t have any draw power, or maybe an attacker their building up. Maybe if they only have 1 attacker which is active and will take you a while to kill (for example Tyranittar Prime with its stacks of HP) you can Warp Point it then shuffle it back in.

The idea of this is to put them on the back foot. Get rid of the Pokemon they need to attack or setup with and then keep their bench restricted to 3 so they have to be careful what they play.

Machamp
I hate Pokemon SP. They setup too fast and hit hard. Probably the most horrible thing Kingdra can encounter is a Luxray GL. So solely for this purpose, Machamp is in here with a Multi Energy to “Take Out” and kill Basic Pokemon. It can also be nice if you manage to pull it out in the first couple of turns to rage havoc with your opponents setup as they desperately try to evolve everything.

Floatzel GL LV.X
This is a card I only recently added in as a tech. The LV.X may be a bit hard to get into play however it’s Poke-Body is amazing.

When any of your Water Pokemon in play gets killed by damage from an opponent’s attack you may use “Water Rescue” to take that Pokemon and ALL CARDS ATTACHED to it from your Discard Pile back into your hand.

This means when you lose your Kingdra Prime you may simply pick it up again from the discard pile; and while Broken Time Space is in play can put back onto your bench the Horsea, Seadra, Kingdra, Water Energy (and Expert Belt if you wish to lose another 2 Prize Cards); free retreat your Floatzel GL LV.X and send your Kingdra straight back in again! Keeping your opponent under constant pressure.

This is good against other Speed Decks such as Jumpluff which setup new Jumpluffs quickly as when your Kingdra dies you can simply send the same one straight back in again, making it pretty much unkillable. Just beware of being “Bright Look”ed by those pesky Luxrays.

A Word on Supporters

Speed decks are designed to get setup and start attacking as fast as possible. With that in mind you want to play as few Supporters and as many Trainers that you can, so you can simply keep on drawing and drawing more cards.

With this in mind I managed to keep my Supporter line to 8. Playing Collectors to get that 3rd Basic Pokemon, while still retaining the Roseanne’s Research to allow me to get a Water Energy when I may need one. As there are so few Energy Cards being able to search for them is a must.

I don’t know why I play a Judge. The only benefit is that it annoys the opponent no end *Thumbs Up* and you can draw more cards with “Cosmic Power”.

A Quick Overview of Trainers

These are the strongest part of Speed Decks as you can play as many as you like! With cards such as your Claydol and Uxie the Draw Power will allow you to keep drawing them and using more of them, so your next Cosmic, or Setup is even more effective. Using this method you can carry on Cosmiccing through half your deck easily on your first turn if you draw nice things.

Pokemon Communication is probably the most powerful card in this deck. Favoured over Bebe’s as Supporters aren’t favoured it will allow you to search your deck for that vital Pokemon. Using these in combination with Pokemon Collector can mean you can get out an entire evolution line of Pokemon and with the help of BTS put them all down to reduce your hand size to draw yet more cards with Cosmic/Setup.

Warp Points can get out the Floatzel LV.X, bench your active Claydol, send your opponent’s attacker to the bench to Dark Palm it, or just get out of an awkward situation.

4 Rare Candys are a must as Machamp, Dusknoir and also your 4th Kingdra rely on them.

Expert Belts will boost your damage when you really need it, and hopefully make you survive a bit longer.

Conclusion

Hopefully this has not only given you an insight into the wonderful world of Kingdra, but also into how some Speed Decks work if you’re not familiar with them. I’ll see if I can find some alternative draw power for Post-Rotation.

Other Possibilities:

Regice
Regice allows you to force the opponent to switch their active Basic Pokemon by discarding 2 cards from your hand. This gan be useful for getting rid of Spiritombs, Mr. Mimes, or any annoying Basic/SP. However, I removed this to make room Floatzel as Machamp does a pretty good job at that.

Ditto
Ditto with Ditto DNA can use any of your opponent’s active Pokemon’s attacks. Ditto can be useful when fighting against another Kingdra or Jumpluff or something similar. Put it active with a Multi Energy and you’ve got your very own Kingdra or Jumpluff! I’d love to use this but lack the space (maybe you can throw out the Judge).

Mankey SV
With the main problem being Luxray GL, if you’d prefer to not have to bother Rare Candying a Machamp, you can simply use a Mankey with a Multi Energy you can “Extra Punch” the Luxray LV.X in the head for for 60 damage x2 for the one hit kill. However, it’s a sitting duck afterward and doesn’t provide as many uses as Machamp.

Use Some Stage 1′s!
You could use a Dusclops and Machoke so that instead of relying on getting a Rare Candy you can simply use BTS to evolve the Dusknoir/Machamp. This will probably help the consistency of getting the cards out as most of the time you’ll find you have the Basic and Stage 2 but no Rare Candy.

So… if you want something different to play with in the final 3 weeks or so before rotation; try a Speed Deck!