What’s poppin’, Trainers? There’s been a big shift lately in the metagame with a large surge of LucMetal decks, which has ended with a variety of VMAX decks, including Path to the Peak and Phoebe, into their lists. One of the VMAX decks that tends to do the best of all of those decks is Eternatus, which has seen an insane rise in numbers to prevent LucMetal from succeeding. Eternatus also takes out all of those pesky Shadow Rider Calyrex decks, making it a solid contender in the standard format. At this point, we’re looking for a deck that can handle both Shadow Rider and Eternatus with relative ease; low and behold, we have our answer! And let me tell you – this deck isn’t just a one-trick pony. Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX is a beast in its own right and boasts some of the strongest matchups of any deck within the entire standard format. It has great typing and relatively uncommon weakness amongst what is most popular right now. As long as ADP decks focus around Moltres V instead of playing straight-forward Zacian V lists, I think this is the perfect time for Ice Rider to succeed and take the #1 spot in our standard format. Let’s get into the strategy of our deck and get into why this deck is doing so well right now!

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The Strategy of the Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX Deck

Ice Rider Calyrex VIce Rider Calyrex Vmax

The main strategy with this Pokémon online deck is extremely simple – dish out high damage attacks with Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX while trying to stick a Path to the Peak in play. Since our deck doesn’t require the use of Rule Box Pokémon, we don’t get punished at all by our own Stadium. This results in a one-sided board state that puts in the work against our opponent. Using Inteleon as our main engine, we can search our deck out for any key card that we need at any moment in the game. Using Melony, a new Supporter card from Chilling Reign, we can accelerate energy onto our main attacker and continuously apply pressure onto the opponent.

Deck List

Pokémon - 18 

4 Ice Rider Calyrex V CRE 45
3 Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX CRE 46
4 Sobble CRE 41
4 Drizzile SSH 56
2 Inteleon SSH 58
1 Inteleon CRE 43

Trainer Cards - 34 

4 Melony CRE 195
3 Marnie SSH 200 
2 Boss's Orders RCL 189 
1 Professor's Research SSH 201
4 Quick Ball SSH 216 
4 Level Ball BST 181 
4 Evolution Incense SSH 163 
3 Capacious Bucket RCL 156
2 Air Balloon SSH 213 
1 Reset Stamp UNM 253
1 Pokémon Communication TEU 196
1 Great Catcher CEC 264
4 Path to the Peak CRE 148

Energy - 8 

8 Water Energy 3 

Key TCG Cards

3 Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX

Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX

Coming in at 320HP (much like its Psychic counterpart), this Pokemon is weak to Metal-types (which means it will naturally struggle against Zacian V decks). That being said, it will do extremely well against everything else! It can really abuse Path to the Peak because this deck doesn’t rely on too much to hit high numbers on the second turn; it doesn’t need Dedenne-GX or Crobat V to hit the resources required to attack at all. The most important stuff you’ll need is two energy (which we can get off of a single Capacious Bucket), the Calyrex V, and lastly, the Ice Rider Calyrex VMAX. Max Lance for two energy threatens a 250HP slug on any Pokémon and threatens many Pokémon V. Ride of the High King (for two energy also) does a great job of providing an efficient way to OHKO a Dedenne-GX (provided the opponent has a full bench), or to potentially soften up a Tag Team/VMAX for a Max Lance KO. This Pokémon is a powerhouse! Two retreats are a little hefty, but we can use Air Balloon to lick that up. The biggest thing this Pokémon can abuse from the new set is Melony, which we’ll talk about later. Melony can help this deck stream attacks back-to-back and pump up the consistency of Water-types. This deck does a great job of OHKOing V Pokémon and 2HKOing VMAXs. I don’t have much else to say about the card because it is pretty simple, but the rest of the deck is what elevates such an easy concept to life.

4 Ice Rider Calyrex V

Ice Rider Calyrex V

You’ll learn quickly when playing this deck because there are no bad starting Pokémon, but we’ll get into that later. We play four of the V because it is a must-have on the first turn of the game! We need to attach energy onto something, and ideally, that something is an Ice Rider Calyrex V. 210HP is pretty decent for a Pokémon V, but I really just want to talk about how efficient Pierce is. 40 damage for single energy isn’t a common attack, and it’s lovely for preparing to Max Lance a Tag Team (ideally an ADP). 40 + 250 from Max Lance spells doom for many Three Prizers, so be sure to use this attack accordingly!

4 Sobble

Sobble

Usually, I like to start with writing about the Evolution, but in this Pokémon line, we’re going to start at the Basic. Sobble’s first attack is extremely efficient at setting up your side of the field consistently. Being able to search out all of the other Sobble in your deck prepares you to later evolve them into Drizzile and Inteleon, which can help you to setup further Ice Riders and just progress the game in your favor in general. Sobble is searchable via Level Ball, which is a huge part of why we play so many copies.

4 Drizzile

Drizzile

It isn’t often that we play a Stage 2 without Rare Candy, however in this case, we really want to evolve our Pokémon up manually because we get access to Drizzile’s amazing ability. Being able to search for anyone Trainer card in your deck offers up a lot of skill, which allows for us so many options to outpace the opponent. Drizzile can search for Level Ball, which can grab other Drizziles and continuously create a chain until all Drizzile are evolved. Drizzile can then evolve into Inteleon, which gains access to TWO Trainer cards with its ability. This whole line of Pokémon just aims at setting up your board, and it all is without the use of a Rule Box Pokémon, which is why this deck can abuse Path to the Peak so effectively. Drizzile also allows us to play techy 1-of Trainers because of how much searchability we have over our deck. I love this engine, and I hope it gets used more as people flesh more ideas out in the Chilling Reign format.

2 Inteleon SSH

Inteleon sword and Shield

This Inteleonis just another consistency card that puts the icing on the cake. Searching out any two Trainer cards allows for very cool combinations (i.e., Reset Stamp + Path to the Peak). The attack on the Inteleon isn’t bad. However, it can reasonably clean up Pokémon and also do some spread damage. Inteleon can be powered up in one turn via the use of Melony.

1 Inteleon CRE

Inteleon Chilling Reign

This Inteleon is very interesting and is cuttable for a third of the other Inteleon to focus on consistency. The main strength of running one of these Inteleon is that it allows you to use its ability to soften up future threats and also simultaneously finish off Pokémon that wouldn’t normally be KO’ed. For example, an ADP has 280HP. Max Lance can do 250, but if you use Sharp Shooting that turn, you can do another 20 damage to the ADP; on the following turn, you can use the ability again to finish it off. This ability is randomly good against low HP Pokémon, such as Mew, Mad Party Pokémon, and Spiritomb.

4 Path to the Peak

This card is pivotal and is the main reason why this deck is so powerful. Since this deck is entirely based around Inteleon as an engine, we don’t rely on Rule Box Pokémon such as Dedenne-GX or Crobat V. We can use this oppressive Stadium card to edge out the win against turbo decks eventually. Many turbo decks play ways to remove Path from play (such as Chaotic Swell or Marshadow). Since we play so many Drizzile and Inteleon, we always have ways to search out another Path just if we require a replacement. We can keep on doing this until one of them sticks, and we can progress the game in our favor.

3 Capacious Bucket

A searchable Water Energy via Drizzile and Inteleon’s ability. It’s also better than Water Energy most of the time because we don’t require a high amount of energy to win the game. However, we do need to ensure we attach an energy every turn, and these help us out with that.

4 Melony

Water Energy acceleration for our main attacker! This Supporter allows us to stream back-to-back Max Lances. That being said, it does mean we can’t play Boss’ Orders. However, our deck does a ton of damage, so we make up for it.

1 Reset Stamp

Combined with Path to the Peak, we can time this card perfectly in order to disrupt our opponent and take the lead in any matchup. This is my favorite card in the deck, and it’s highly searchable via our Inteleon engine. Try to play this when your opponent has 1-2 Prize Cards left.

8 Water Energy

You’re probably wondering why this count is so low, and that’s for a few reasons:

  • You don’t need a lot of energy to win the game. You pretty much just need to Max Lance twice.
  • You play a high count of Capacious Bucket so that you can search these guys out, so you don’t need a high count anyways. So you don’t need to draw into these – you’ll search them out.
  • We recover energy from the discard with Melony. It isn’t like Welder, where you attach from the hand. We’re resourceful, not savages.

Conclusion

This Pokémon online deck is one of the most consistent, versatile, top-tier decks within the format, and it really stands a chance most things provided there isn’t a ton of Metal around. If you like flexibility each turn and the ability to lock your opponent out of games with Path to the Peak, then I highly urge you to try out this deck. This deck requires a decent bit of new stuff from Chilling Reign, so you should check out our shop for your PTCGO code needs. I’d suggest nabbing some PTCGO codes and building this deck online because this deck will only get stronger. Until next time, have fun!

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