Frozen Nova!

Hello everyone, it's ZapdosTCG here and welcomes back to another blog post on the PoTown Store. Today, we will take a closer look at the Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX deck with Arceus VSTAR. This is one of my personal picks for the upcoming Regional tournaments.

Let's start by explaining Arceus VSTAR because it's a really phenomenal card. Arceus VSTAR is one of the best cards from Brilliant Stars, and for a good reason. It's VSTAR Power Starbirth allows you to search your deck for any two cards. This allows you to be really consistent all of the time! We also get Double Turbo Energy with Brilliant Stars, and combined with Melony, we can get the attack, Trinity Nova, off in one single turn which puts up a huge amount of pressure. Double Turbo Energy might reduce our damage output by 20, but with the new Choice Belt, we can ignore that basically.

The Arceus V also accelerates three energies to our V Pokemon for a single Double Turbo Energy, which helps Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX out quite a bit to start using Max Lance at full capacity.

Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX becomes way better with Brilliant Stars. Why is that, you ask? Well, first of all, we get the support of Arceus VSTAR, which allows us to fetch out puzzle pieces instantly. On top of that, we get Choice Belt which turns that tack of Max Lance to a dangerous 280 damage output. Combine that with some Quick Shooting Inteleon and you OHKO VMAXs. Not only that, but with Lumineon V, we also have more outs to find Melony, and there's also Ultra Ball to dump some Water energies in the discard pile.

The fun doesn't stop there, though. With the help of Collapsed Stadium, you can have some prize denial for the opponent. As soon as Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX gets damaged and is not KO'd, we can retreat it to the bench, and if the bench is full, we can smack down Collapsed Stadium. This will allow us to discard one Pokemon until we have four bench Pokemon remaining. Ideal for prize denial to discard an almost knocked-out Pokemon.

Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX can now also make use of Double Turbo Energy for the Ride of The High King. We usually couldn't gust and play Melony at the same time after a powerful Max Lance. This changes because Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX can hunt down Pokemon with the first attack using Double Turbo Energy. I know a 20 damage reduction from Double Turbo Energy might be bad, but of course, there's Choice Belt to help us out!

The rest of the Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX is pretty much unchanged. We are still running a low count of Professor's Research and Marnie because Boss's Orders and Melony are our main supporters of choice. There's also a sneaky one-off Raihan in there, which allows you to fetch any card while accelerating energy. This can also be used on Inteleon, which helps to attack with a one prize Pokemon!

The Path to the Peak and Fan of Waves are both one-offs that can be fetched out with Shady Dealing Drizzle or Inteleon or Starbirth. These help to slow the opponent down in the right situation.

All around, this is an ideal consistent decklist that I can recommend to everyone. It's super fun and allows you to have an even matchup against almost everything. As soon as you play this deck, you will see that Arceus VSTAR really shines in the deck. You use Starbirth the most on turn 1 to have a really aggressive start. Then Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX is your finisher of the game! Here's a decklist to try it out today:

This is interesting, as Mew VMAX can be really quick with Meloetta. Luckily there's Path to the Peak and Fan of Waves. You can fetch these cards out of the deck on turn two by using Shady Dealings or the Arceus VSTAR. Arceus VSTAR can also OHKO a basic Mew V and Genesect V as well if we have Choice Belt. I would say if Path to the Peak sticks, it's about a 50/50 matchup.

This is a rather difficult matchup as Rapid Strike Urshfiu VMAX can hunt down our Arceus VSTAR, so I suggest you go full-on with a lone Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX. Use the Collapsed Stadium to have some prize denial. You can also hunt down the Rapid Strike Urshifu V on turn two if you went first and KO it. Fan of Waves also is really useful here. Without Manaphy to protect our bench, this matchup is a bit 60/40 unfavorable. So if you want to improve that matchup, tech is Manaphy.

Malamar is, in theory, also pretty difficult. But not unwinnable. I would say, time your Marnie right. And use the one prize Inteleon on top of Quick Shooting to get multiple KO's. Collapsed Stadium might also cripple them a bit. So, in the early game, you attack with Arceus VSTAR and hope you don't get KO'd. Then you attack with Ice Rider CalyrexVMAX and try to use a Marnie. After that, you try to come with Inteleon and Raihan onto it. Hopefully, by this time, you have Quick Shooting Inteleon out as well, so at one point you can take multiple KO's. It's pretty skillful but not unwinnable.

This is a rather easy matchup as they damage themselves with Single Strike Roar. This means Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX with Choice Belt can easily get the desired KO's. Early game a Fan of Waves combined with Boss's Orders on a Houndour also works miracles.

Same strategy as against Gengar VMAX

This is actually easier than you might think. It becomes easy because Duraludon VMAX switched over to the Arceus VSTAR and left Zacian V at home. We have enough Water Energies to deal with Duraludon VMAX and can easily two-shot it with Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX

And that's it for another blog post on the PoTown Store website. My name was ZapdosTCG and I hope you enjoyed reading about how Arceus VSTAR makes Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX busted and consistent. I have played with this deck for a month now and really enjoy the current list. Try it out for yourself and if you want more competitive Pokemon TCG action, go check out my channel: https://www.youtube.com/ZapdosTCG. See you guys next time!