One of the biggest complaints about getting involved in Trading Card Games is how expensive the cards are. If you want to play Magic’s Modern format, for example, you’ll have to be prepared to drop $1000 on a viable deck. Heck, it's easy to drop $2000 or more on a decent Commander deck, and that’s a casual format. Yu-Gi-Oh! Is no different.
If money is hindering you from competing in your favorite hobby, you may want to consider giving the Pokémon TCG a try. The World Championships just concluded, and a rogue $60 deck was the ultimate victor.
Iron Thorns EX
The deck in question only utilizes one Pokémon: Iron Thorns EX. Four copies of the card exist in your deck, and that’s the only card Pokémon you’ll be using to take down your opponents.
Iron Thorns EX locks down the abilities of all non-Future Pokémon, which happens to hit just about the entire metagame. This takes a ton of incredibly powerful tools off the table, like the once-per-game V-Star effects. Otherwise, a high amount of hit points combined with a decent attack is enough to scrap it out with many of the common meta threats. Don’t be mistaken, it’s truly the Initialization ability that makes Iron Thorns EX stand out. This completely shuts down all kinds of synergies in many of the popular decks. The popular Charizard deck, in particular, struggles with this.
Even though this card only cost about $2.50 before winning the World Championships, Iron Thorns EX already appears to have doubled its price. While this was a $60 deck, it could increase in price shortly.
In the finance department, there’s only one card in this deck that’s worth over $10. Prime Catcher is a common ACE Spec item found in many different archetypes at the Pokémon World Championships. Sure, $20 for a card is rather expensive in Pokémon TCG terms, but you only need one copy of it, and it can help optimize all kinds of different competitive archetypes.
How Does This Deck Play?
Your entire deck really revolves around shutting down your opponent’s game plan with the Initialize ability of Iron Thorns EX. You aren’t a combo deck, so you’re more interested in using your resources to shut down what your opponent wants to do. Effects like Crushing Hammer are common in this deck, attempting to interact and slow down your opponent’s game plan.
This means that, should a deck arise that Initialize cannot impact heavily, this deck will probably fall off the rails. Initialize was the perfect tool to attack the current meta, but it doesn’t work on other Future Pokémon. As a result, with all the searches in this TCG, finding a Future Pokémon that can duke it out with Iron Thorns EX and including it as a silver bullet is not unrealistic. A big part of the Iron Thorns EX deck is running the opponent out of attackers and relying on the body of Iron Thorns to win scrappy bouts.
Whether this is a one-trick pony or not, Iron Thorns EX did win the World Championships and remains a strong strategy for the current metagame. If you want to try this deck for yourself, you probably won’t be able to buy it for $60 anymore, but it should still be relatively cheap.