League Battle Decks are back, this time with a focus on Rapid Strike and Single Strike Pokémon! Today we’re going to take a look at the Rapid Strike Urshifu VMax League Battle deck! While it isn’t perfect, this is easily one of the most powerful League Battle decks around and with a little bit of tweaking, it’s going to be a serious contender in tournaments! This review is of an unmodified deck, so you’ll have a pretty good idea what you’re getting into!
The Rapid Strike Urshifu VMax League Battle Deck is a very reasonably priced $30 and is honestly pretty chock full of goodness. Not only do you get the 60-card deck, but you’ll get a set of vibrant blue hit point dice and a glitter blue coin flip die, a pair of redesigned tokens for poison and burn status, a rulebook, and a card box to put it all in. The dice are particularly nice with a vibrant color to them, but the status counters are a bit odd. The redesign uses raised plastic on the burn and poison counters and covers them in a thin layer of silver paint. Sadly, they’re very easily scratched…so easily in fact that my burn counter was scratched right out of the box brand new (it’s a lot more visible in person). Compared to the previous tokens, these are definitely a step down.
But status counters are certainly the smallest of quibbles when it comes to the Rapid Strike Urshifu deck. This deck comes chock full of awesome cards with a combat engine that is near unstoppable if it gets moving quickly! You get two Rapid Strike Urshifu Vs from Battle Styles and two Rapid Strike Urshifu VMaxes. Neither are promo cards, just standard versions from the original set. These are the core of the deck, and considering the easy 150 damage that an Urshifu V can do and the 240 you can do with the VMax, you’ve got a lot of power. Add in the Vmax swap to do 150 per turn and keep cycling your Pokémon and you’re rolling over the opposition, especially after you get the Tower of Waters out that drops those retreat costs!
But to get that engine going, there needs to be a lot of support. That’s one thing the Rapid Strike Urshifu Vmax deck does right! Out of the box, you get a couple card combos that get things moving incredibly fast. First off is the Remoraid/Octillery combo. Remoraid by itself isn’t anything special, but evolve to a Rapid Strike Octillery from Battle Styles and you’re laughing. Its special ability is Rapid Strike Search, allowing you to search your deck for any rapid strike card and then shuffle once per turn! Considering the deck design here, if you get a couple Octillery out, you’ll be dominating the game! You can literally pull the Urshifus, the support cards, and any other Rapid Strike stuff you need. Modify the deck with a few more powerful Rapid Strike trainers and Pokémon and you’re a force to be reckoned with! You don’t even need the Octillery’s attack to make it useful, but a 50 point hit if needed doesn’t hurt either!
On top of the Octillery combo, there’s another solid set of Pokémon in the Rapid Strike Urshifu deck to get things rolling. Minccino and its evolution Cinccino! The fluffy colorless Minccino doesn’t do much other than letting you peek at an opponent, but this is another Pokémon designed to sit on your bench. Evolve to a Cinccino and the Make Do ability lets you discard a card from your hand to draw two cards, helping to cycle your deck from a bad shuffle! Tack on the single colorless attack for 40 that also pulls an energy from your discard and drops it on a benched Pokémon and you’ve got yourself one useful puffball!
There’s one last Pokémon in here that’s incredibly useful and powerful too. Included in the deck are three Rapid Strike Falinks from Battle Styles. They aren’t much on their own, only doing 30 damage for 2 energy (one fight, one colorless), but they have the Rapid Strike Squad ability, familiar to anyone who’s been using Rapid Strike Pokémon for a while. This ability does 20 damage multiplied by each Rapid Strike Pokémon you have in play, for a maximum attack of 120 per attack if your whole bench and active spot are Rapid Strike. That’s a pretty handy little bonus tossed in! Sadly, Minccino and Cinccino aren’t Rapid Strike and weirdly, there’s a single Galarian Zigzagoon tossed into this deck which not only isn’t Rapid Strike but can’t even really attack since there’s no dark energy in the deck. This is one of those spots where some re-balancing with cards from your collection might really boost the Rapid Strike Urshifu deck’s effectiveness.
Interestingly enough, there’s a decent variety of energy in the deck as well. While running on a core of 4 fight energy, the Rapid Strike Urshifu deck has 4 Rapid Strike energy (each producing 2 water or 2 fight energy on any Rapid Strike Pokémon and 4 Stone energy which counts as fight energy and provides a 20 HP shield to any Pokémon it is attached to. While that’s only 12 energy, most of your Pokémon in the deck are Rapid Strike, effectively boosting the energy count to 16 and with the Minccinos, you can bring back basic energy if it ends up in your discard, mostly mitigating the low energy yield of the deck. Depending on how you like to play and what you swap out for your own play style, this might be a bit of a low energy deck. Personally, I like to have around 18 energy in a deck and I’ll probably be tweaking the balance a little as I experiment with the build on this one.
Last but not least are the trainers. There’s a wide range of trainers in the Rapid Strike Urshifu deck, both Item and Supporter, and they’re a bit of a mixed bag. Let’s look at the items first. The useful stuff is obvious. Quick Balls and Level Balls to get your essential Pokémon out fast and get things moving. A couple of Evolution Incense round out the best Item cards because most of the combos here rely on Evolutions. But then there’s a bit of filler. A couple of Escape Ropes, an Ordinary Rod, a Pal Pad, a Fan of Waves, a Scoop Up Net, and a Tool Scrapper. Since most competitive decks use tools, the Scrapper makes sense to foil an opponent, but there’s only one.
The Scoop Up Net on the other hand, while allowing you to pick up a Zigzagoon or a Minccino/Cinccino in order to power up your Falinks is a bit weak. The same goes for the Fan of Waves, pushing one of your opponent’s special energy to the bottom of the deck if they happen to have one. These are a bit of filler that could definitely be cycled out. The Ordinary Rod is certainly useful as is the Pal Pad but the Escape Ropes are kind of a crap shoot too. There’s plenty of room in the items for some versatility here, that’s for sure!
Supporters are the final component of this deck and there’s another wide range to consider and some notable exclusions that would have been excellent. Naturally, there are a couple Boss’s Orders here, as it’s a staple of any tournament deck to be able to swat away your opponent’s active Pokémon at your discretion. Korrina’s Focus is also pretty solid, especially because it works well with the Octillery combo, allowing you to pull a needed trainer from your deck and then draw back up to six cards in your hand. The rest of the trainers are a bit more iffy though. A single Cheryl that heals all damage from your evolution Pokémon at the cost of all the energy on them is more than a bit steep when there are only 12 energy cards in your deck. And with how fast this deck burns cards once it gets moving, Professor’s Research is a questionable choice for card cycling; great if you have a slim hand, but risky. Then there’s the three Marnies. Sure it’s great to force your opponent to cycle their hand out and switch yours up, but it’s no guarantee that you’ll be better off, and it’s more of a screw your opponent element than anything else.
Considering some of the other trainers available, especially with regards to Rapid Strike, there are definitely some better trainer choices possible if you have them lying about in your collection. A Brawly from Chilling Reign for example is a perfect choice for this deck, allowing you to search for up to 3 basic Rapid Strike Pokémon and put them directly onto your bench. Siebold (also from Chilling Reign) is an excellent replacement for Cheryl, instead healing 60 points of damage on two of your Rapid Strike Pokémon. And finally Rapid Strike Style Mustard lets you retrieve a Rapid Strike Pokémon from your discard pile and draw five cards…but only if it’s the last card in your hand. Considering the speed with which you can burn cards with this deck that should be at least feasible.
While we’re on the topic, there are a few other cards that could work well in this deck. A Rapid Strike Scroll of Swirls (Battle Styles) can ping an opponent’s entire lineup easily. Professor Kukui (Sun & Moon) can boost your card draws and your attacks. Avery (Chilling Reign) lets you draw cards and burn off your opponent’s bench if they have more than 3 Pokémon out. And a couple of notable inclusions for alternate Pokémon would include Milotic (Evolving Skies) which blocks the effect of enemy supporters and Wishiwashi (Evolving Skies) which gets heavily boosted by water energy and basic energy (though that might require a bit more rebalancing.
All in all, the Rapid Strike Urshifu VMax League Battle Deck is easily one of the best pre-built decks available for purchase. With a reasonable price point, a plethora of powerful Pokémon (yeah, I did that), and some solid mechanics, this is the core deck to build on! Chances are you’re going to see a lot of Urshifu VMax decks in the near future, and they’re fun to play! As you can see, there’s also plenty of room available for modification and tweaking in the balance for energy, trainers, and even Pokémon here too, so you can easily manipulate the balance to suit your play style or Pokémon preferences! This is a deck that’s not only worth your time, but one that challenges players to be more creative in designing deck mechanics that complement it, allowing for fine tuning and a lot of fast damage dealing! Don’t hesitate to pick one up if you get the chance…you won’t regret it!