Hello TCG Cards people!
What’s poppin’ TCG Park? I’m here to write my first article for this awesome website and help our community learn more about the Pokemon TCG! Since this is my first time writing for the site, lemme introduce myself to all of y’all. My name is Zach Lesage, I’m a professional Pokemon TCG player, a YouTube partnered content creator, and I’ve been involved with the Pokemon TCG since 2005. I earned my first invite to the Pokemon TCG World Championships in the 2005/2006 season and I’ve most recently won the 2020 Players Cup II event! I’m beyond blessed in my life to be able to do full time Pokemon TCG, via coaching, writing, casting, videos, and sponsorships, and my goal is to use my knowledge to empower the community! That’s where this article tunes into everything – I can share my knowledge of Pokemon to help you make informed decisions with your purchases here at TCGPark.com! In today’s article, I’ll be going over Jolteon VMAX (Jolteon Vmax Box) and why it’s one of the most successful decks in our Sword and Shield to Fusion Strike Standard format. I’ve been extensively testing this deck since the release of Jolteon VMAX (Evolving Skies) and I hope my understanding of this deck helps you on your Pokemon journey. There is a lot of ground to cover so let’s get into it!
Max Thunder Rumblin’
The strategy behind Jolteon VMAX is to abuse Max Thunder Rumble, it’s only attack! The attack is pretty self explanatory, you do 100 damage to your opponent’s Active Pokemon and you can do 100 damage to one of their Benched Pokemon if they have damage on them already. That’s a huge if, but there are ways to make it happen! Galarian Zigzagoon (Sword and Shield) can totally Headbutt Tantrum a Damage Counter on one of your opponent’s Pokemon and Inteleon (Chilling Reign) can use Quick Shooting too. The best part about placing Damage Counters on your opponents Pokemon is that you can attempt to draw multiple Prize Cards in a single turn – that’s epic! This deck uses a Drizzile (Sword and Shield) engine to effectively grab whichever Trainer cards you need and that makes this deck fairly consistent. Do you have a dead hand? Grab a Professor’s Research (Celebrations). Need to heal your Jolteon VMAX? Nab a Cheryl (Battle Styles). There are plenty of options to grab and that makes this deck a great choice – it’s filled to the brim with options. Another reason why this deck is so successful is due to the fact it has its own special form of Energy acceleration in the form of Elemental Badge (Evolving Skies). Elemental Badge works specifically with Pokemon V that have Vaporeon, Jolteon, or Flareon in their name and reduces their attack costs by a Colorless Energy. This means that Jolteon VMAX can attack with Max Thunder Rumble for a single Lightning Energy. There are also disruptive cards in this deck that can seriously put a halt on your opponent’s strategy. Path to the Peak (Chilling Reign) stops most Abilities in the game and it’s a great way to slow down popular decks, such as Mew VMAX (Fusion Strike), from drawing cards with Genesect V’s (Fusion Strike) Fusion Strike System Ability. Other spicy inclusions are Fan of Waves (Chilling Reign) to get rid of your opponent’s Special Energy, Marnie (Sword and Shield) to disrupt their hand, and Tool Scrapper (Rebel Clash) to take away their Pokemon Tools. When you wrap it all up in one deck, you have one of the best decks in the entire Pokemon TCG format – let’s check out this list:
| Pokémon – 20 |
|---|
| 3 Jolteon VMAX EVS 51 |
| 4 Jolteon V PR-SW 151 |
| 1 Inteleon SHF 100 |
| 2 Inteleon EVS 227 |
| 4 Drizzile SHF 99 |
| 4 Sobble CRE 41 |
| 2 Galarian Zigzagoon SHF 151 |
| Trainer Cards – 33 |
|---|
| 4 Path to the Peak CRE 148 |
| 3 Professor’s Research CEL 24 |
| 3 Marnie PR-SW 121 |
| 2 Boss’s Orders RCL 189 |
| 1 Cheryl BST 159 |
| 4 Evolution Incense SSH 163 |
| 4 Quick Ball SSH 216 |
| 4 Level Ball BST 181 |
| 3 Elemental Badge EVS 147 |
| 2 Scoop Up Net RCL 207 |
| 1 Fan of Waves CRE 226 |
| 1 Energy Search SSH 161 |
| 1 Tool Scrapper RCL 208 |
| Energy – 7 |
|---|
| 4 Speed Lightning Energy RCL 173 |
| 3 Lightning Energy EVS 235 |
Important Cards
Sometimes cards might be more pivotal to a deck’s strategy than others which is why I want to circle back to a few of them. Don’t get me wrong, most decks are filled with important cards, but these ones would be the highlighted ones if you want to learn about this deck in one article.
Jolteon V
Jolteon VMAX might seem like the star of the show, but Jolteon V (Jolteon Vmax Box) can definitely get the party started. Thunder Spear can set up Damage for Jolteon VMAX’s Max Thunder Rumble to secure damage on the board. It also has the benefit of being an attack so you can hit a Pokemon that has Fusion Strike Energy (Fusion Strike) attached that otherwise would be immune to Quick Shooting or Headbutt Tantrum. This can be successful against Mew VMAX to bring its HP from 310 to 290 which is incredibly important since it turns Max Thunder Rumble from a four shot to a three shot Knock Out. Pin Missile can also be a last ditch effort to win a game and it can be used for less Energy because of Elemental Badge – just try and be lucky.
Boss’s Orders
Sometimes you can lock your opponent out of games by bringing up one of their Pokemon with Boss’s Orders (Rebel Clash) and hoping it sticks. That works particularly well against Genesect V because it has two Retreat Cost and it likely won’t be able to get out of the Active Spot as long as your opponent isn’t holding onto a Switch (Sword and Shield). If you can bring up a Pokemon and get it stuck in the Active Spot, you can freely use Max Thunder Rumble and Quick Shooting to pile on loads of damage on your opponent’s board. This strategy seems to double down under Path to the Peak because your opponent might rely on Abilities to find cards to get out of the Active Spot. Additionally, Boss’s Orders can be used to set up multi Prize Card turns for you to effectively use Max Thunder Rumble to steal games. When in doubt, rely on Boss’s Orders to change the dynamics of your match really quickly!
Happy Testing
Well, that’s what we have going on for Jolteon VMAX today! If you’re interested in picking up the cards for this deck, they’re available in the Jolteon VMAX Premium Collection (Jolteon Vmax Box), Evolving Skies (Evolving Skies Booster Box), and singles as they become available on the website. This deck is incredibly effective against our current metagame and is a must have deck for many top performing players in the game. As for future articles, I plan on bridging that gap to help inform buyers of the best Pokemon TCG products for competitive play and doing my best to grow our competitive community. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this article and I can’t wait to write my next one for TCGPark.com. Happy testing!