Hey y’all, I’m Simon! If we haven’t met before, then consider this my introduction – I love Retro TCGs of all sorts, but the Pokémon TCG is where my true passion lies. I own a massive retro Pokémon TCG collection, (about 100 decks with no proxies, and another 100 more proxied up), and love to just play games and explore the history that the game provides. Another thing that I love is scouring old strategy articles for information on historical events, tournaments, and decks, which leads us to this article today.

For the past few years, when reminiscing about the golden days of card games, a friend of a friend has consistently brought up a deck that he remembers playing back when he tried getting into the hobby about a decade ago. He remembered playing both Garchomp and Altaria in this deck, but could never remember the year nor era it was played in. As someone whose detailed retro knowledge only really spans from Base Set Pokémon until about 2011 before picking up again in 2017, I never quite knew what deck he was talking about due to it not being one of the more popular decks from the era. It never was something brought up in regaling stories of times past, such as MetaNite or Luxchomp. However, my lack of information changed when I decided to browse through PTCG Legends' deck catalogs and old SixPrizes articles. I usually do this when I have downtime or when needing a splash of inspiration for my next retro gauntlet. To my surprise, I stumbled upon the aforementioned deck - affectionately named “FluffyChomp” by the community.

I started to realize why exactly I didn’t know about this deck or format. You see, when most people look back at retro formats, they tend to pick ones with diverse card pools, which have historically meant either Nationals or Worlds. FluffyChomp was only played for a brief period during the 2012-2013 Fall Battle Roads and Regionals season, where it was bookended by the Worlds 2012 format on one side, and the release of Boundaries Crossed, a highly impactful set, on the other. (Though the legendary Ross Cawthon took the deck to a surprise Top 64 finish at the 2013 US National Championships!)

Worlds 2012 still had cards from the HeartGold & SoulSilver expansions, and Boundaries Crossed introduced the new ACE SPEC cards alongside meta defining cards like Keldeo-EX, Landorus-EX, and Deluge Blastoise – so where does this forgotten format carve its niche out? In the next section of this article, I will explore what makes this format interesting and appealing to me while also detailing what the downfalls of the format are.

Format Overview

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To look at the Black & White - Dragons Exalted format as a whole, we need to examine the surrounding formats to determine why this era has been mostly forgotten or passed over in retrospect. Firstly, I think that one of the “features” of the BLW-BCR format is actually to its detriment. ACE SPECs are, in my opinion, fundamentally flawed card designs that cause major balancing issues in any format they reside in. While having options between multiple ACE SPECs makes them feel more diverse, the BLW-BCR format overwhelmingly plays Computer Search, with the occasional Gold Potion here or there. Computer Search allowing you to find any one card in your deck is extremely powerful within the context of the game, as these sorts of effects don’t commonly pop up. Coupled with the fact that it was limited to one copy per deck, ACE SPECs could create imbalances in momentum when one player found it at a more opportune time than the other. Landorus-EX, another release in the Boundaries Crossed set, created pressure from the first turn of the game. It required minimal energy investment to start setting up relevant damage numbers for KOs, while also having a strong typing against some of the main attackers in the format.

The Worlds 2012 format had all the HeartGold & SoulSilver cards available to play with, which led to unique decks, but not necessarily ones that felt designed together. Cards like Portrait Smeargle and Junk Arm made decks hyper-consistent and allowed you to reuse powerful cards and effects many times over. Additionally, Allergy Flower Vileplume placed Item Locks with relative ease, leading to game states that could have one player feeling helpless and entirely locked out of doing anything productive. I believe that many of the cards from those releases, such as Typhlosion Prime, Jirachi UL, Pokémon Collector, and Mew Prime, are on the backburner here when compared to cards like Mewtwo-EX and Darkrai-EX. They tend to be more enjoyable to play in the Worlds 2011 format, where they can be at the forefront of the decks that they are in.

But the ever-pressing question exists, “Why play this format?” What makes it a good choice worth looking into? The BLW-DRX format deserves a fair look to be considered for a retro collection over other mid-BLW era formats for the reasons above, plus some additional ones below.

Firstly, it takes the small card pool (due to being played immediately after a large rotation) and creates a metagame in which there was still innovation to be had - while also establishing the “Pillars of the Format.” The Pokémon have relatively fair damage output (you’re usually not trading one-shots unless you hit for Weakness), and many times you’re trying to maximize the smallest of advantages and leverage them into victory. To me, many of the games feel like old-school Base-Fossil or Base-Jungle matchups where you slowly maneuver yourself to a win, but through a modern lens and understanding of the game, which can be extremely helpful for getting newer people interested in retro formats.

Secondly, the multi-prize nature of EX Pokémon combined with single-prize attackers leads to interesting prize mapping - especially in a format with N in many decks. If you want something to dip your toes into as a fun side-quest, this format provides back-and-forth games with moderately even matchups across the board that reward planning turns in advance.

Lastly, one more upside to playing this format is that many of the cards are dirt cheap. The decks that I built were roughly $50 USD apiece, with the most expensive card being Raikou-EX at about $15. Accessibility and cost can become very real concerns when building decks for an era, especially one that’s over a decade old. Thankfully, with meta shifts, reprints, and the lack of card playability in other formats like Expanded and GLC, cards from this format are easy to find and purchase. This means that you can build each variant of the deck quickly and experiment with what you do and don’t enjoy about each deck!

Once more, I’d like to reiterate how much this format, to me, feels like early Base format Pokémon decks. We have Gust of Wind in the form of Pokémon Catcher, a variety of attacking Big Basics reminiscent of the old Haymaker strategies, while also a deck or two based around accelerating energy such as the Base Set Blastoise engine. Micro decisions on turn 1, such as discarding a Pokémon Catcher with Professor Juniper, can be detrimental to winning turns down the line. Small advantages can be capitalized on by good players and used to set up checkmates efficiently. If you enjoy resource-based gameplay with back-and-forth strategy choices where every decision matters, this format is more than likely one you will enjoy greatly.

Now that we have my personal thoughts on the format, let’s dive into some historical context!

Historical Context

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A very important thing to note about this era is that it was part of the dawn of shared online decklists. Prior to the popularization of websites like SixPrizes and HeyTrainer, many players had to rely on local gameplay and scoured the forums of Pokegym for potential tournament reports. Decklists were often kept extremely secret, and it was poor form to tell others outside of your testing group about the decks you were building. However, around the turn of the new decade, SixPrizes started to become more and more popular, and their Underground articles (monthly subscription-based content) would often contain fresh decks and detailed descriptions of matchup information. This caused most of the competitive hub of Pokémon players to place heavy emphasis on this site, and it’s easy to find tournament reports and deck techs while looking back today.

Coming into the format fresh off the rotation of the HGSS sets, a relatively new phenomenon was that we had Japanese Decklists for the upcoming post-rotation format. Here you can find a Pokegym article detailing those decklists that the players used to qualify for the 2012 World Championships.

An interesting thing to note here is that due to these results, we had massive amounts of community hype placed into the Garchomp Altaria deck that was mentioned at the start of this article. Yuta Komatsuda, the winner of the 2010 World Championships, as well as Top 8 in 2012 and Top 4 in 2006, played the deck to a 1st place finish at one of these Spring Battle Carnival events, and other players saw successful results during these events as well. While the deck slowly faded out of the Japanese metagame, the rest of the world still thought there was something to the deck. Jay Hornung wrote an early article on the deck and how to approach the mirror match that you can find here.

Eventually, the deck would suffer the same fate that it did in Japan - falling out of favor by the time Fall Regional Championships rolled around. It received only one topping result for the North America region, (a 3rd place finish in the Seniors Division). It proved to be too inconsistent at its setup and found itself losing pace to the other top decks of the era.

Throughout the Battle Roads season and leading up to Regionals, many players were unsure of what to play. Darkrai decks seemed like safe options, and Eelektrik NVI decks continued to stay popular as well. In fact, a promo printing in early October of Rayquaza DRX (originally a Secret Rare) made Eelektrik-focused decks an appealing choice since the card was now much more accessible. However, the accessibility did not last - promos were in high demand, and players often had to forgo playing the card altogether unless they already owned the Secret Rare copy. A deck that started to show up at Battle Roads was Ho-oh-EX, a deck popularized by Kyle “Pooka” Suchevich’s gameplay videos on The Top Cut youtube channel. While a somewhat risky and unconventional choice, it ended up having a few Regional Top 8’s to solidify itself as a real deck. A few anti-meta decks like Tornadus-EX with Terrakion NVI and Stunfisk DRX popped up here and there to take advantage of slower starts by some decks. However, at the end of the day, many players opted to stick with a well-rounded Darkrai-EX/Mewtwo-EX/Terrakion deck for Regionals, which was straightforward and boasted even matchups across the board, allowing for individual skill expression to shine.

Decklists + Building Your Gauntlet

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So, with that information contextualized, what did decklists look like? What was the BDIF of this era? The answer isn’t quite clear, but we can learn a lot by looking at the skeletons that make up most of the decks in this format.

Trainers

Let’s start by discussing the Trainers, as many decks will share the same general setups. Due to only having six legal Supporters in the format, nearly every deck chose to run 4 N and 4 Professor Juniper, alongside some ratio of Bianca and Cheren as additional draw support. Cilan was almost never played, but Hooligans Jim and Cas made the occasional appearance as a disruption tool. More often than not, players opted to stick to more conservative choices that helped advance their own strategy instead of disrupting their opponent’s. To help make up for the lack of Supporters, decks would often run copies of Random Receiver to help bolster ratios artificially and have more comeback options after a late-game N.

Other consistency options in the form of Items came in Ultra Ball, Pokémon Communication, Level Ball, and Heavy Ball. Ultra Ball was the most common due to its unconditional search - provided that you didn’t mind discarding two cards. Pokémon Communication and Level Ball were mainly used in decks that needed to evolve or play a high density of specific Pokémon, so while they weren’t as common, they were still present in decklists. Eelektrik decks, for example, tended to use Level Ball more due to it searching out both Tynamo and Eelektrik itself on a single card. Heavy Ball was seen as the worst option out of all of these, boasting the biggest restriction - needing the searched target to have a Retreat Cost of 3 or more. It saw some minor play in decks with heavy Terrakion NVI or Garbodor DRX as additional ways to search for crucial cards, but not much elsewhere.

Cards like Pokémon Catcher and Switch were very common too, as they would give you strong options to capitalize on weak starts from opponents or provide utility throughout the match. Keep in mind that during this era, Pokémon Catcher was *not* tied to a coin flip, it was simply a Gust of Wind without any drawback! This meant that you had to keep close track of how many Pokémon Catchers your opponent had played throughout a game to know whether or not to aggressively bench certain cards.

Our Tool options were relatively lackluster at the time. If your deck was shut down by Garbodor, you simply had to respect it by playing some number of Tool Scrapper in your list. The most commonly played tools were Eviolite, which helped to mitigate damage and turn OHKO’s into 2HKO’s, and 2HKO’s into 3HKO’s, or EXP. Share for decks that needed to keep their energy on the board to chain attackers.

Stadium options were also lacking, which you may see as a common theme in this format. We only had 4, and out of those, Skyarrow Bridge is the only one worth playing. I personally tend to enjoy formats with diverse Stadium choices, but BLW-DRX unfortunately does not boast that.

Limitation breeds creativity, and it allows for skill expression in specific tech card choices to truly shine. While the Trainer cards may seem like there isn’t much room for skill expression, it’s quite the opposite. This format is a great example of knowing your exact 60, using your information on the metagame, and then leveraging that knowledge to win!

Pokémon

Much like the format preceding it, BLW-DRX had a healthy dose of Darkrai-EX and Mewtwo-EX to set up the blueprint for how decks would be designed on the Pokémon side of things. While Mewtwo-EX was more splashable and could fit into a wide variety of decks (and often did), the Darkrai-EX decks as a whole were just as popular. Darkrai-EX was often paired early on with Junk Hunt Sableye DEX, but a few other variants started to crop up by the end of the format’s lifespan. Garbodor as a partner could help shut off Abilities (at the cost of your own!), while the Hydreigon DRX-97 variant aimed to move your energy around for maximum value on Max Potion to heal up a heavily damaged Darkrai-EX and keep attacking. Although both variants proved that they could be successful and performed well on the Regionals and Battle Road levels, most Darkrai-EX decks performed best with a combination of Sableye and/or Terrakion.

Speaking of Terrakion, the card was a common sight to see in plenty of decks in this format due to two main reasons. Firstly, its typing was excellent. Darkrai-EX and Zekrom Eels - another popular deck I’ll discuss next - both featured prominent Weakness to Fighting-Type Pokémon. Secondly, it didn’t require much energy to perform the necessary attacks. With just two Energy, it could easily OHKO opposing Darkrai-EX and Eels while not being KO’d in return. You could pair it with a variety of decks and cards like Mewtwo-EX or Tornadus-EX due to their Colorless Energy Requirements for their primary attacks. Terrakion served as a strong check to the rampant Darkrai-EX usage in this period - which also led to the two being commonly paired together!

Eelektrik may remind modern players of Dynamotor Flaaffy from EVS, but the impact that Eelektrik had on its timeframe was far greater. There were two main routes you could take with an Eels deck. The first was loading up Zekrom BLW with energy and taking a single-prize game as often as possible and pivoting to alternative attackers if needed. The other Eels deck was using the newly released Rayquaza-EX to easily one-shot most of the format once 3 Basic Energies were attached. Both lists would also play Mewtwo-EX and the occasional Raikou-EX or Registeel-EX for bench damage potential, and both lists saw roughly the same amount of performance results at the higher levels. It truly came down to which playstyle of the deck you enjoyed more or which one lined up into a specific metagame better.

If you’re curious to see how these different cards and decks were viewed going into the Regionals season, here is a Fall 2012 Regional Guide from Six Prizes outlining where each deck was viewed. And here's another, slightly valuing the Eels variants higher.

To sum up the Top 5 in this article, we had:

1. Hammertime (Traditional Darkrai Sableye)

2. Darkrai Hydreigon

3. Darkrai Mewtwo Terrakion

4. Zekrom Eels

5. Ray Eels

While these were the most common and agreed-upon “Top Tier” decks, there were still others that were viewed as strong meta contenders, at least at a Battle Roads type of event.

Empoleon DEX was able to let you recover after a late-game N due to its Diving Draw ability, so while it was a Stage 2 and harder to set up, it still saw play amongst some members of the community. Usually paired with either Roserade DRX to increase consistency, or with Accelgor DEX and Mew-EX to facilitate a Paralysis lock, Empoleon was a solid choice for many events.

Another deck just on the cusp of Tier 1 was Ho-oh-EX. With Ho-oh-EX’s ability to place itself on the bench from the Discard Pile with a handful of energies, players would quickly churn through their deck and could combine it with Energy Switch to create a strong attacker on Turn 1. This would usually come in the form of Mewtwo-EX and Tornadus-EX or dropping a surprise Terrakion out of nowhere in the midgame for a quick and clean KO on a Darkrai or Eels player.

Lastly, I want to talk about the anti-meta or donk style deck of the format - Tornadus Terrakion. Tornadus-EX/Terrakion was designed to be able to play a longer game if necessary, but due to no restrictions on the first turn of the game, could often find itself in a winning situation on Turn 1. The 60 damage from Tornadus-EX with a DCE and Skyarrow Bridge in play was enough to OHKO most of the smaller basics of the format, and with Plus Power could hit the 70 damage needed to KO a Sableye. Stunfisk also lets you OHKO lone Tynamo with a single Fighting energy, and you could often find yourself in a situation to win before your opponent has even taken a turn. Lastly, Mewtwo-EX helped you to stay relevant with your damage output later on and could even pick up easy KOs on Trubbish or Tynamo. Not only that, but Tornadus-EX came with a coveted Fighting-type Resistance, leading to opposing Terrakion failing to do much, if any, damage to it.

The decks mentioned above were the most popular at the time and, looking back, continue to be the most powerful. If you were to build a gauntlet for this format, I believe it would be best to start with 4 decks of your choice and go from there. Picking your preferred variant of Darkrai, whether it being the Hydreigon version, Hammertime, Garbodor, or Mewtwo Terrakion, is a great starting place for your Darkrai-EX deck. From there, I would add either one or both Eels decks, depending on personal preference as well. That gives you either 1 or 2 more decks to work with, which can be rounded out with any of the other ones listed above or even more fringe decks like Klinklang-BLW, Gothitelle-EPO with Accelgor DEX, or Durant-NVI! For my personal starting gauntlet of 4, I built the following:

1. Darkrai-EX/Garbodor

2. Zekrom Eels

3. Ho-oh-EX

4. Tornadus-EX/Terrakion

~ and I have plans to expand into:

5. Empoleon/Accelgor

6. Garchomp/Altaria

7. Ray Eels

8. DMT (Darkrai-EX/Mewtwo-EX/Terrakion)

As always, PTCG Legends has great decklists to start with, but one of the fun parts of this format is just how a few changes can really shift how your deck plays. Maybe you want to add in some Eviolites to shore up your matchups against the aggressive decks. Sigilyph DRX and Bouffalant DRX can give you an edge over other opposing EX decks. An extra Max Potion or Enhanced Hammer can change the tide in an instant when your opponent isn’t expecting it. Although the overall card pool is small, the amount of minute tech options can dramatically change how certain decks play. I encourage you to experiment with the available options and tailor your deck to your liking - just remember, there is no wrong way to play retro!

Closing Notes

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I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my thoughts and summaries about this unique format. While it is a footnote in history to many players, I think that it is also a neat era to look at and its relative ease of access can be used as an introductory tool for newer retro players. It has much in common with other well-beloved formats such as Base-Fossil, which leads to the games having many micro decisions that equate to large-scale results. I look forward to expanding my Gauntlet in the future to accommodate new deck variants and matchups, and who knows - maybe I’ll be playing them with you at an event sooner rather than later!