Pokémon TCG Live - Divide by Hero (ver. 3.0.3)

Now that I’ve shown what I did with one of the pre-made decks, given to me as a way to get started, I’ve proven that I was able to catch up and understand what’s going on. After some time, I felt ready to put together my own deck, though I had quite the time accumulating enough credits to put this all together.

This deck, “Divide by Hero,” features Palafin. Well, Palafin ex, who, like in the video games where this Pokémon originates, has incredible power but has the downside of needing to change out of sight of the battlefield—that is, Zero Form Palafin needs to move to the bench, and THEN it can change to Hero Form Palafin and start kicking butt.

If you’ve ever gazed at the Pokémon Trading Card Game section at Target, or other such stores that sell these cards, you may have encountered the Palafin ex Box on the shelves. I took a good long look at this, thought about if there is a way to make this work as a viable deck, and this is what I came up with.

POKÉMON (14)
4x Finizen (Twilight Masquerade)
2x Palafin (Twilight Masquerade)
4x Palafin ex (Twilight Masquerade)
1x Luvdisc (Paldea Evolved)
1x Manaphy (Crown Zenith)
1x Bidoof (Crown Zenith)
1x Bibarel (Crown Zenith)

TRAINERS (39)
2x Boss’s Orders
3x Buddy-Buddy Poffin
1x Canceling Cologne
4x Earthen Vessel
1x Hisuian Heavy Ball
3x Iono
4x Irida
2x Lake Acuity
1x Pal Pad
1x Perrin
1x Prime Catcher
2x Professor’s Research
4x Rescue Board
2x Super Rod
4x Switch
4x Ultra Ball

ENERGY (7)
7x Water Energy

Palafin ex is the main attacker of this deck. Everything else in this deck was designed to overcome Palafin ex’s horrific drawbacks, both the requirements for even getting it into play and ways to use Giga Impact on consecutive turns. 250 damage for 1 Water Energy on a 340 HP Pokémon is a major threat!

Luvdisc is a Common card that is normally not given any attention at all, but I have it here for Matching, which lets you put any 2 Supporter cards into your hand. (I think the idea is that Luvdisc is doing matchmaking, but by coincidence, most of the Supporters in my deck are of female characters—Irida, Professor Sada, Perrin, Iono—and so Luvdisc winds up as a yuri shipper…and sometimes of characters who don’t even live in the same time period.)

Manaphy’s Wave Veil protects benched Pokémon from damage, crucial to keeing the vulnerable Finizen around so they can evolve. Finally, we have Bibarel again, with Industrious Incisors providing major draw power.

You’ll see the trainer list is even bigger and more convoluted than in “Loyal Three.” Irida is the most important trainer card. She lets you search your deck for any Water Pokémon and an Item card. Most commonly, I pick Palafin (Zero Form) and Switch. I evolve Finizen into Zero Form Palafin, then use Switch and the standard retreat (or the other way around, depending on what loses the fewest Energy), which results in Palafin ex on the Active Spot and ready to dish out Giga Impact.

Switch is crucial because I can only retreat once per turn. Switch allows me to put a Pokémon to the bench, then have it come back up in the same turn. To facilitate this, I have as many Rescue Boards as the deck can carry, which reduces the holder’s Retreat Cost by 1.

Lake Acuity ensures that if any of my Pokémon has a Water Energy attached, they take 20 less damage. It also helps me bump off Stadium cards unfavorable to this deck, like Neutralization Zone, Lost City, or Jamming Tower.

Perrin is there in case Palafin ex winds up in my hand. You can’t play Palafin ex from your hand, so I can use Perrin to swap it out with any other Pokémon I want.

Canceling Cologne is to help deal with Mimikyu, Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon ex, and other Pokémon immune to Palafin ex’s attacks. Only one is necessary, as even playing it at all makes people think twice about using these Pokémon for the rest of the match.

And, of course, there’s Prime Catcher, yet another card that lets me switch my Pokémon, but with the bonus of Boss’s Orders without the Supporter card limitation. As a regular Item card, I can search for it with Irida too. As an ACE SPEC card, I can only have this one Prime Catcher in my deck though.

I had considered Furisode Girl, but her use is limited in this deck because while she sends Palafin to the bench, she's only useful at the beginning of a match.

But really, all this together is no substitute for actually showing it in action. You may notice my opponent’s deck is pretty familiar—they’re using their own modified Loyal Three deck.

You may notice some odd sepia tone to this video This is not from the game itself, but from the borrowed computer I recorded from to make this video—I mainly play it on mobile. I also turned off the music because the mobile version just has this one song playing continuously, and it was getting on my nerves after some time, so I turned it off. I’ll turn it back on for the next video if you’d like (and hopefully, I also won’t forget to change the color settings back to normal).