The almost invincible Goodra VSTAR

Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG, and it is great to be here once again at PoTown’s blog. Lost Origin has clearly impacted the metagame with the advent of Giratina VSTAR and the Lost Zone engine (Comfey, Colress’ Experiment, Cramorant and so on), so that is why today we are going to focus on one of the most underestimated strategies on the format: Goodra VMAX. Before we dive into it, I need to warn you that because of the nature of the deck, your friends and opponents might not want to speak to you for a while after you finish your game. Remember that you can get all the Pokemon TCG Online codes you need for your Pokémon TCG Online game here in the PoTown store. With that being said, let’s dive into it!

In more than one way, Goodra VSTAR reminds me of Duraludon VMAX from Evolving Skies. Both are Dragon-type Pokémon that have no weakness in the format and require a lot of energy cards to attack but, on the bright side, can wall out entire strategies once they are set up. While Duraludon has a lot of HP and can’t be touched by Pokémon with special energy attached, Goodra VMAX’s Rolling Iron attack reduces the damage it gets in the following turn by 80. Let’s pause here for a second and consider the implications of this.

Goodra’s durability can escalate up to 300 HP with a Big Charm attached. With the extra 80 protection, it means your opponent needs to deal 380 damage to take it down in just one hit. If we add one copy of Radiant Gardevoir to this mix, the total number is 400, which, if you ask me, is absolutely ridiculous, and outside things like Kyurem VMAX, there is nothing in the format that can reach that amount.

But Goodra’s strength does not stop there. If the opponent's active Pokémon is not able to KO it, it will go ahead and use its Moisture Star power to heal itself completely, sending your opponent directly to square one. And that is the reason why once a Goodra is in the field and has the three energies attached, it is almost impossible to get rid of it.

In order to maximize the potential of Goodra, we need to do two things.

With that in mind, there are two main possible routes you can choose: Good old Arceus VSTAR or the Lost Zone mechanic. I would personally not recommend the latter as it is a bit more clunky and the only real advantage it provides you is the opportunity of playing Fantina to tank some additional damage. Overall, I feel the Arceus build has more options and more space to include consistency and healing cards, which can have a great impact in the long term.

As such, let me show you what an Arceus Goodra VMAX decklist looks like:

This list is the one that recently won the Salt Lake Regional in the United States, piloted by Hale Obernolte (+800 players). For those of you that have been playing the game for some months now, you will see some parallelisms with Arceus Duraludon, and the reality is that both Pokemon online decks behave in a very similar way. The idea is to start with Arceus V (which explains the fact that we run the complete playset) and use it to power up your benched Goodra in turn 1 or turn 2, depending if you go first or second. From that moment on, you can forget about your Arceus and really concentrate on making Goodra an immortal Pokémon. In order to do that, we have HP modifiers like Big Charm, a shielding Pokémon like Radiant Gardevoir and the healing power of Crystal Cave and Hyper Potion.

However, not everything is going to be so easy. This deck tends to brick from time to time, as Duraludon Arceus does, and can have a hard time finding the right cards in the first couple of turns. To try to solve that, most decklists include Trekking Shows to have access to more additional resources and others, like the one we are reviewing today, feature Colress’ Experiment. While you send cards to the lost zone, it is true that seeing 5 cards and taking 3 can make the difference between finding the card you need or losing.

Another very important inclusion is Big Parasol. You can maybe consider taking it out if you don’t expect to run against many Giratina VSTAR decks, but if you do, the only card that can truly save you is Big Parasol, as it will block Giratina’s VSTAR movement. Last, one important aspect to highlight about this deck is that it relies on disrupting your opponent as much as possible to reduce their variety of plays, which is why it runs heavy counts of Avery, Marnie and Boss’s Orders.

Now, the question you might have is… how good is Goodra VSTAR really in the metagame? One might be tempted to say for sure it is good as it has just won a regional, but as I always say, the context is everything. For Salt Like, a lot of people played Lost Box and Regigigas, which are precisely the Pokemon online decks that Goodra can win pretty comfortably against because their damage output is very limited. Also, Giratina VSTAR’s lists didn’t include a way to remove tools from the field (Lost Vacuum or Tool Scrapper), something that gives Goodra the advantage. Goodra, however, suffers a lot against aggressive or very fast decks that can target down Goodra before it evolves, like Mew VMAX or Palkia. Palkia is actually a very tricky matchup because they are much more consistent than you, but Avery punishes them very hard, and if Goodra is able to survive the first turns, it can turn the tables upside down. So, in a nutshell, just like Duraludon was, Goodra is the perfect meta-call for certain environments.

Goodra is definitely one of the most annoying strategies to go against, following the tradition of Stonjouner VMAX and Duraludon. I feel it can be the perfect choice if the metagame mainly focuses on one-prize Pokémon and, of course, needless to say, you should totally try it if you like control and stall strategies. Remember that you can get all the PTCGO codes you need from Lost Origin or any other sets for your Pokémon TCG Online game here in the PoTown store, so don’t forget to get your packs before you leave the site. Thanks for reading!