Mega Evolution Prerelease Recap

We are (maybe?) entering a new era of the Pokémon TCG with the release of the Mega Evolution set, and there are some interesting cards in it. While I don't have any insight on the set as a whole yet (although I hopefully will on the long-overdue second episode of the Nerd Out Podcast if and when that finally comes out), I did participate in a prerelease event, so I can speak to what I used and what I saw.

For those of you unfamiliar with the prerelease tournament format, let me briefly explain. At the start of the event, you're given a "Build & Battle" box containing a 40-card deck and four packs of cards. The goal is to use the base deck and any cards you pull in the packs to build the best 40-card deck you can and compete in three rounds of a Swiss-system tournament.

For this set, there were four possible promo cards, each with a unique deck built around them: Meganium, Inteleon, Alakazam, and Lunatone. I ended up with the Meganium for my deck. Meganium's main appeal is its Wild Growth ability, which effectively turns all of your basic Grass Energy into two.

To help get Meganium on the board, the deck includes Bug Catching Set and Forest of Vitality. Bug Catching Set lets you search the top seven cards of your deck for a combination of two grass-type Pokémon and Grass Energy, making it useful for either finding Chikorita and/or Bayleef to put on the board or finding energy to power up your Pokémon. Forest of Vitality lets you evolve grass-type Pokémon on the first turn they're put into play, letting you accelerate your evolutions.

To support Meganium, the deck also included Exeggutor, with an attack that increases in power for every Grass Energy attached to it; Celebi, with an attack to let you search for either grass-type Pokémon or stadiums; and Dhelmise, which does extra damage if a stadium is in play. However, (spoiler alert) none of these saw much use in my deck.

The most critical piece of my build was in my pulls, the Mega Kangaskhan. It's a 300 HP behemoth in a set where most other Pokémon are dealing around 100 damage at max. It also has Rapid-Fire Combo, an attack that can deal theoretically infinite damage. Even without that bonus damage, the base 200 is more than enough to take out almost anything in the set. While Rapid-Fire Combo normally costs three energy, Meganium's Wild Growth synergizes nicely, reducing the setup time from three turns to two. It also has the Run Errand ability, letting you draw two cards if it's in the active spot.

Also found in my pulls was the Mega Signal, an item that lets you search your deck for a Mega Pokémon. With only one Kangaskhan in my deck, this was a great way to make finding it a bit more consistent.

Of course, for something to enter the deck, something else must leave. I chose to exclude both copies of Lillie's Determination from the deck. It's not a bad card; refreshing your hand with six fresh cards is a valuable ability. However, in the 40-card format where only four prize cards are in play, you'll never have six prizes to be able to take full advantage of drawing the eight card hand. In retrospect, there were a lot of other much less valuable cards I could have excluded, but it didn't really matter in the end.

Here's what my final deck ended up looking like.

• Meganium x2
• Bayleef x2
• Chikorita x3
• Exeggutor x2
• Exeggcute x2
• Celebi x2
• Dhelmise x1
• Mega Kangaskhan ex x1
• Drayton x2
• Lacey x1
• Lana's Aid x1
• Brock's Scouting x1
• Bug Catching Set x2
• Buddy-Buddy Poffin x1
• Mega Signal x1
• Air Balloon x1
• Forest of Vitality x1
• Festival Grounds x1
• Grass Energy x13

The strategy was simply to get both Kangaskhan and Meganium on the board as quickly as possible. Bug Catching Set, Brock's Scouting, and Drayton all helped with getting the pieces I needed to set both of those up, and from there Kangaskhan could simply start sweeping.

The Mega Evolution rule means that when Kangaskhan was knocked out, my opponent could take three prize cards, which is especially dangerous in a four-prize format. However, that didn't end up being an issue, as by the time enough damage was racked up to take out Kangaskhan, the opponent's board was already pretty weak, and Meganium was more than capable of cleaning up.

The Air Balloon was helpful for getting high retreat cost Pokémon out of the active spot, but the other tools in the deck went pretty much unused, as Kangaskhan was just too overpowering with its high HP and high damage output. I ended up going 3-0 with just this basic setup.

I'll save my full set review for the podcast (again, assuming we ever record that), but I will draw attention to Inteleon. It has Bring Down, an attack that simply knocks out the Pokémon with the lowest HP on the field. This can't be done mindlessly, as Bring Down can target your own Pokémon if they happen to have the lowest HP of everything in play, but it is a powerful attack that could be manipulated further with the use of abilities that move damage counters around the board. Alakazam also seems interesting, with its Powerful Hand that lets you place two damage counters for each card you have in your hand. In Pokémon, hand sizes tend to balloon quickly, so this can do a lot of damage. Lastly, the Garganacl in the Lunatone deck apparently was wreaking some havoc with its Powerful a-Salt ability that lets your fighting-type Pokémon do an extra 30 damage. Along with the upcoming Mega Evolutions, it'll be interesting to see what the metagame gravitates toward.