Deck Profiles: BRS - SSP Episode 6 | Zapdos

Episode 6 of Deck Profiles: BRS - SSP will be about Zapdos ex.

I have been learning about the card game Magic: The Gathering recently, and the first thing that jumped out to me was how many styles of disruption they have in it. You can prevent your opponent's creatures from untapping (stun counters), you can destroy permanents as they are played (instants), and so on. This is much different in concept than Pokemon, as not only are Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering different games historically, but progression in Pokemon and Magic are much different, too.

Disruption in card games, and building around disruption-based strategies, is called building what is known as "control decks" in trading card games. However, there are many different ways to build control decks beside just disrupting your opponent. In this video, I argue that attacking multiple Pokemon on the board and putting damage on them is a form of control. Historically, in the card game, this is known as "spread", but if you understand what spread does, you understand that it forces your opponent to stray away from their original strategy and adjust to the spread strategy.

Zapdos ex is a card that can do this. Its attack can attack multiple Pokemon on the board, and there are a lot of strategies that you can exploit to capitalize on this. I cover one that I made in the Surging Sparks format in this video, and explain that this is a control-based strategy that can really shake formats up if explored deeply enough.

This is a fun deck to play and I hope you enjoy playing it. Thank you for listening and I hope you continue to support my work.