Arguably the best deck in the entire Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) at the moment, the Pikachu and Zekrom GX deck is dominating the competitive scene. The deck has multiple variations, but they all revolve around the Pikachu and Zekrom GX (Pikarom for short) card.
Here’s a look at the deck, what cards make it so good, and some tips for playing it.
Pikarom deck essentials
Pikarom
The obvious and most essential card in the deck is Pikachu and Zekrom GX. This card has two moves. Full Blitz is its first move, which costs three lightning energy, does 150 damage, and allows you to search your deck for three lightning energy cards and put them on any Pokémon. This allows you to get Pikarom and your bench Pokémon energy very quickly, ramping the deck up fast.
Pikarom’s GX ability is also incredibly powerful. It does 200 damage and an additional 170 to an opposing bench Pokémon if Pikarom has six lightning energy attached to it. This is almost always worth at least two prize cards, and often more.
Jirachi
Most competitive decks run a couple of copies of Jirachi. This card helps you find supporter cards to get your Pikarom and energy as fast as possible. There isn’t much to using this card, just be sure to use its ability as often as possible. You can also throw an Escape Board on it so it can retreat for free.
Electropower
Every Pikarom deck should run four of these. They make the next lightning attack do 30 additional damage. This helps you KO pesky high-health targets without taking multiple turns. Popular cards like Zacian V are often just out of KO range, and this helps you get it.
How to play the deck
The key to winning with the Pikarom deck is getting three energy cards on your Pikachu and Zekrom GX as fast as possible. Doing this allows it to use Full Blitz to do damage and get more energy cards on your Pokémon.
You can do this in several ways. If you don’t start with Pikarom in your hand, you can search for it with Quick Balls, Electromagnetic Radar, or another fetch supporter card. If you don’t have any of these, you can try to fetch them with Jirachi if you start with that.
To get energy cards, you can attach one each turn if you have them, or use Boltund V to get them quickly if you have that. If you don’t, try to get supporter cards like Professor’s research to find them.
Once you have your Pikarom with three energy, you need to get it on the board and use Full Blitz. Here, you will have to decide whether to attach three more energy to it to use Tag Bolt GX or if you want to attach the energy to a Pokémon on your bench. Generally, it’s best to try to go for Tag Bolt GX, but if you think your opponent will KO you, you want to get it on a bench Pokémon, ideally a second copy of Pikarom.
If you can’t find your core cards, you should also have Vikavolt V, Boltund V, or Mew and Mewtwo GX in the deck that also serve as valuable attackers. This deck is fairly easy to play and has a lot of options, so be sure to take advantage of it while you can!
