Destined Rivals Prerelease Recap

I attended a prerelease event for the upcoming Destined Rivals set in the Pokémon TCG. This was my second time attending any kind of live Pokémon event. Let's go over what I pulled and what I built.

Deck Building

Mimikyu seemed to be very common as far as the promo went. In addition, my initial deck included Weezing and Tyranitar. Koffing has an ability that lets you search for 2 more Koffing from your deck each time it takes damage, and Weezing has an attack that does extra damage for each Koffing or Weezing in play. Tyranitar has a strong 180 damage attack, although it costs 4 energy, but it also has an ability that does 20 damage to all of your opponent's Pokémon between turns.

In my first packs, I managed to pull an SIR Yanmega, as well as Team Rocket's Moltres ex. Certainly not a bad day overall.

There were a handful of cards that seemed interesting, but I didn't have a use for in my deck. First was Crustle, which has an immunity to Pokémon ex thanks to its Mysterious Rock Inn ability. Second was Team Rocket's Arbok with Potent Glare, which prevents your opponent from playing Pokémon with abilities, other than Team Rocket's Pokémon. Third is Gorebyss, which does 30 damage for each Water energy attached to it, but also lets you attach as many Water energy from your hand as you want before the completion of the attack. Finally is the Sacred Ash, which lets you pull 5 Pokémon from your discard back into your hand.

As far as cards I wanted to put into my deck, I also found a pair of Drowzee and a Hypno.

Mimikyu was an easy target to exclude from the deck, since it relies on Tera Pokémon, and there are none in this set. While I probably should have also dropped a pair of Murkrow that my deck came with but didn't provide much value, I instead decided to reduce the number of Larvitar and Pupitar in the deck, relying primarily on my single Rare Candy to get Tyranitar out should I need it. This gave me space to slot in my Drowzee and Hypno. I also reduced the number of Fighting and Darkness energy in my deck from 5 to 3 to make room for some Psychic energy. The initial deck came with Team Rocket's Energy, which can be used as either Psychic or Darkness, but Hypno relies heavily on Psychic, so I wanted to make sure I had plenty of extra.

With that, here's what my final deck looked like.

• Team Rocket's Hypno x1
• Team Rocket's Drowzee x2
• Team Rocket's Weezing x2
• Team Rocket's Koffing x4
• Team Rocket's Tyranitar x2
• Team Rocket's Pupitar x1
• Team Rocket's Larvitar x3
• Team Rocket's Murkrow x2
• Youngster x2
• Team Rocket's Archer x1
• Team Rocket's Proton x1
• Lacey x1
• Buddy-Buddy Poffin x1
• Rare Candy x1
• Switch x1
• Team Rocket's Great Ball x1
• Ultra Ball x1
• Team Rocket's Energy x3
• Psychic Energy x4
• Darkness Energy x3
• Fighting Energy x3

I had three potential strategies. The first was to get Hypno out and use Bench Manipulation to do lots of damage, assuming my coin flip luck is good. The second was to load my bench with Koffing and Weezing and use Explode Together Now. The final option was to get Tyranitar activated and do a solid 180 damage with Demolition Tackle, plus a residual 20 damage from its Sand Stream ability.

Game 1

Game 1 was pretty quiet. While I was able to get a bench full of Koffing and Drowzee, I wasn't able to find any of my evolutions. My opponent was able to get Ethan's Typhlosion into play, and was able to power Buddy Blast up with a pair of Ethan's Adventure in the discard, making this game a pretty one-sided affair.

Game 2

The second match was much easier. I was able to get Hypno out and powered up with Team Rocket's Energy relatively quickly, and I was able to hit enough heads to take the knockouts I needed. I was disrupted slightly by Torment from Murkrow, but Psyshot was a 2-hit KO, and that was enough to dispatch that.

Game 3

By the end of the first turn of the third match, my opponent had 4 Koffing in play. While I had a shot to build Tyranitar and strike back, I accidentally miscounted my energy and ended up being unable to use my big attack. As a result, the game came to a close pretty quickly. Purely a show of my own inexperience.

Second Pulls

We all received 3 additional packs as prizes for completing our games. I didn't have any hits on those packs, although I did pull a Shaymin, which seems potentially interesting due to its Flower Curtain ability protecting the bench, even if it excludes rule box Pokémon.

Conclusion

For the second time, I went 1-2 in the prerelease. That said, the vibe of local events is always pretty positive, and it was a fun time. 2 hits out of 7 packs also wasn't bad as far as pulls are concerned, especially since one of them ended up as an SIR. I'm not sure how well these cards will adapt to the standard meta, but it will be interesting to see how things change once the cards become legal.