Leafeon VMAX

Alola Trainers! I hope you’re all as excited as I am for the new Fusion Strike and your PTCGO codes from PoTown have given you all the greatest pulls! I’m Tablemon and in case you haven’t heard about me, I’m a very passionate and competitive Pokemon TCG player.

I follow the online tournaments closely and to nobody's surprise, Mew VMAX has been doing incredibly well, which has also prompted counter decks such as Single Strike Gengar VMAX, Single Strike Umbreon VMAX and Suicune V with Ludicolo to become quite popular anti-meta choices. So in this blog post we are going full circle with the anti-anti-meta deck: Leafeon VMAX.

Leafeon VMAX has been doing historically well since its release in Evolving Skies, and this is due to the decks' own attributes in terms of consistency and how well it does what it intends to do.

To start off, Leafeon V is a fantastic Basic Pokemon due to the Greening Cells Ability, which allows you to search your deck for a Grass Energy card and attach it to any of your Pokemon. This guarantees that you will have your Basic ready to evolve into Leafeon VMAX with at least one Energy, potentially two if you found one on your first turn. (Ending the turn with two Energy on a Leafeon also lets you be a bit safe against those pesky Crushing Hammers!)

Leafeon VMAX’s Grass Knot attack is fantastic against a lot of Pokemon, especially the pokemon online decks I mentioned previously (Single Strike and Suicune) as you can net easy OHKO’s on their Pokemon, as long as Galar Mine is in play. Most metagame-relevant Pokemon V or VMAX have a two or three retreat costs (except the brand new Mew VMAX and Jolteon VMAX), which means you’ll always be in the 2HKO and sometimes OHKO range with a little help from Inteleon’s Quick Shooting.

The whole Inteleon line is key to the deck's success, and I can’t emphasize enough how much I love Shady Dealings’ Drizzle and Inteleon. Being able to search for any Trainer means you have access to any Pokemon through Quick Ball, Level Ball and Evolution Incense, any Supporter you might need, any Stadium or Tool card, and even Energy through Energy Search. The bonus 2 damage counters from the Quick Shooting Inteleon is a nice way to make use of a Drizzle already in play, but Shady Dealings is the main reason a lot of decks work properly and consistently in today’s metagame.

As you will notice in the decklist below, the deck plays four copies of most of the important cards to help ensure easy access to Leafeon V, Sobble, and Drizzle, meaning you are very likely to attack with Grass Knot on turn two, the decks' main purpose. Four copies of Sobble, four copies of Leafeon V (or a different Pokemon V for a different deck), four Quick Ball, four Level Ball, and four Capture Energy is the holy grail of consistency. Pair that with Professor’s Research, Marnie, and Raihan, and the deck has everything you could dream of. In today’s Standard format, games go by quite quickly, lasting four or five turns at max, so ensuring your turns go by flawlessly is very important to succeed.

Finally, an underrated aspect of the deck is how, even though it needs a Galar Mine and sometimes Tool Jammer in play, in order to ensure you’re doing enough damage each turn to threaten your opponent. Both of these cards are of disruptive nature and can sometimes make it so your opponent isn’t able to attack in any given turn. This is especially important if you missed out on an Energy or Evolution at a certain point and need to buy yourself a turn. Switch is at an all-time low in terms of popularity, with most people relying on Air Balloon to retreat during a game.

As I mentioned, Leafeon VMAX is an already established archetype and thus it has some very good matchups, as well as a few not very good ones, but I believe that is the case for most decks in the format. This to me indicates that right now as long as your deck is decently viable, you should play with whatever you enjoy the most as the matchup roulette is completely random.

Galar Mine disrupts and helps get OHKO’s with Grass Knot. Umbreon VMAX is also weak to grass which means it becomes a big liability to have one in play, essentially half their deck.

Leafeon VMAX can easily limit its bench to prevent Suicune V + Ludicolo from OHKOing, and Galar Mine plus Tool Jammer mean easy OHKO’s on Suicune’s as Cape of Toughness is rendered useless.

Both decks 2HKO each other and focus on taking down two Pokemon VMAX each, hence winning the coin flip is crucial in this matchup. The huge consistency of Leafeon VMAX decks versus the slightly lacking of Rapid Strike Urshifu VMAX decks can make the difference early on to let you push ahead.

Another matchup where there isn’t much to do other than focus down two Pokemon VMAX for each. Once again the consistency of Leafeon VMAX is what can make a difference sometimes, as Sylveon VMAX decks can sometimes have awkward turns early on.

This matchup can be awkward sometimes due to their heavy Cheryl count nullifying your attacks. However, their deck is opposite ours in terms of consistency and there’s plenty of turns where they will wiff a key piece, whilst also only achieving a 3HKO against us versus our 2HKO. This more than makes up for any healing and can give us an advantage as the game goes on.

The free retreat of Mew VMAX is a huge issue as your maximum damage is 120 with Grass Knot, and needing three Energy for Max Leaf is way too slow to keep up. We also don’t have a solid answer to Dyna Barrier’s effect of preventing damage from Pokemon VMAX, so this is simply a terrible match.

Another Pokemon VMAX with free retreat means bad news for Leafeon VMAX. You can power up towards a three Energy Max Leaf as Jolteon VMAX applies less pressure overall to the active, but it's still not enough to beat them in the long run, especially if they can pull off a Cheryl play.

In the right metagame, Leafeon VMAX can certainly thrive. Being a counter to the counters of the most popular / hyped deck can be key to a good tournament run. On top of that, the sheer consistency and raw power of Leafeon VMAX can sometimes carry it through some of the tougher matchups. If you want a very solid, straightforward, powerful, and decently cheap deck, Leafeon VMAX might be the best option for you! And if you want to build your favorite decks, don’t forget to get your Fusion Strike PTCGO codes in PoTown Store!