Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and today I am going to cover one of the most exciting deck from Ultra Prism… Garchomp Lucario!. At first glance, the deck seems to have all the ingredients to be played: a mighty attacker, its own search engine and consistency. No wonder so many players have been testing this strategy since the beginning.

So, what makes Garchomp such a great deck for this format? It is basically thanks to the perfect synergy of its three main characters, Cynthia, Garchomp and Lucario. Just as in the games, they are able to unleash their true potential when fighting together. Cynthia (unarguably one of the best supporters released in the whole S&M era) allows Garchomp to reach 200 damage consistently and Lucario is basically a costless computer search. What else can be needed?

One of the reasons I like Garchomp is because it has many tools available and different routes a player can choose when building the deck. The core of the deck (the skeleton, so to say) is pretty straightforward but there are different ways of addressing those open spots and they highly depend on the player circumstances.

For example, a very common choice is to play 2 Tapu Lele GX along with some copies of Bridgette to ensure a quick and consistent set up. However, it is also perfectly viable to opt to go in a more economic direction and play Brooklet Hill alongside with GRI Vulpix and some fighting type Gible. This also ensures constant searches in early and mid game until Lucario is set up. From that moment on, the priority is to search Cynthia and DCEs for the knock outs. Breakpoint Garchomp provides late game DCE recovery which is very much needed in some late situations so I would for sure recommend playing one copy.

To wrap this small article, there are also different tech cards regarding Lysandre-like cards. In addition to the always popular Guzma, some players are opting to run a 2-2 line of Lycanroc GX, which can also be turned into a deadly attacker with its GX. Another interesting possibility that requires less space can be Counter Catcher, allowing insane turns with both Cynthia and a knockout of Pokémon in the bench.

All in all, Lucario Garchomp looks like a very solid deck for the format and the ways of playing it are completely diverse.  I highly recommend you to give it a chance, you won’t be disappointed!