If you have read the post about our trip to EXG last month you may of seen that one of the free codes available was for a Pokemon Trading Cards Online deck, if you haven't read it yet I would recommend it but here is the code that was posted: 49H3-J2S8-VX21

This code unlocks the Rallying Cry theme deck which is a Pokemon Trading Cards Online exclusive and is not available as a physical pack.





This code is for use only once per account this will give you a copy of the deck and all cards within. It uses the standard card back and a red Arceus coin so doesn't add anything new for visual customisations.

This deck is comprised of water and normal type Pokemon and also contains a selection of Trainer cards which are generally useful for your own deck building, such as Cheren which allows you to draw extra cards and the Switch card which allows the player to switch out their active Pokemon freely.

The main aim when playing with this deck to to build up the bench with Pokemon who have the Round attack. The unique thing about this attack is that it gets more powerful with each Pokemon in play with it.
For example Wigglytuff does 20 damage times the number of Pokemon with Round in play.
The Exploud in this deck does 50 damage per Pokemon in play with the round attack while this maxes out at an impressive 250 damage enough to neutralise any Pokemon card your opponent may have. However only having two Pokemon on the bench with Round this Pokemon can still output 150 damage per attack which deals with almost everything apart from strong legendary Pokemon/ Pokemon EX cards.




A decent strategy with this deck is to use kangaskhan and its call for family attack to start filling the bench quickly while using its high hit points to absorb damage. Alternately Chatot can be used to stall the opponent by causing confusion with its Tone deaf attack.

This should leave you with enough time to build up the bench full of Pokemon with Round. However if you are unable to do this the Wigglytuff also has Hypnoblast which deals 60 damage and has a chance of causing sleep. This attack really has helped to to neutralise some fairly serious threats with a little luck on the coin flips to make or keep the enemy asleep.





The one downside of this deck is that there is no single card able to deal high damage by itself so without the set up of other Pokemon on your bench the match may become difficult. Particularly if your opponent has a strategy which damages the benched Pokemon making it difficult to get them out to evolve. At this point my only resort is to use Chatot, Wiggytuff or Jigglypuff to hopefully get a status effect on the opponents active Pokemon to lower its threat if its not possible to deal the damage to take it out quick enough.

Finally once you have been playing with this deck in versus battles for a while you may want to change a few of the cards to customise it. There isn't too many substitutions that can be made without changing the focus of the deck away from building up the bench for the round attacks from Loudred and Wigglytuff.

An easy substitution is to change the Meowth/Chatot in the deck for a stronger basic Pokemon card. The purpose of the Meowth/Chatot in this deck is to help stall for time while you add energy/ evolution cards to your bench. 
However it is possible to get basic Pokemon with more HP and attacks which aid stalling.

For example:
Bouffalant From the Dragons Exalted expansion
This can be found in the Basic Green deck obtained from the trainer challenge so the easiest to get.
With 100 HP and the Bouffler special ability reducing incoming damage this card is really effective at stalling.
Alternatively you could use this as an opportunity to use a water type Pokemon Ex for this purpose or if you have an Articuno/ Kyogre the high HP will help stall and they can deal high damage on their own if the rest of the deck is not yet set up.

Trainer card substitutions

For a deck which needs the bench to be set up with evolved Pokemon it is surprising that there are only two cards (Level ball) which allow searching for Pokemon. A worthy addition to this deck would be the Wally supporter card makes it easier to get to the first and second stage Pokemon which have the Round ability particularly after using kangaskhan to fill the bench with Basic Pokemon.

Personally I would trade out the two Ether Trainer cards. The Ether card attaches an energy card to a Pokemon in play only if the top card on your deck is a basic energy card. Without any ability to stack the top of the deck this approach is down to luck at best. Perhaps other players have much better luck with this than I do but I find the use of this card rarely if ever works out for me and isn't to be relied on.

Finally if a single Rallying Cry is not enough for you and you would like to obtain more copies of the cards for deck building you can find more codes on the Bulbapedia page here.
 If you'd like to see more Pokemon themed posts various craft posts are available over at Buzy Bobbins which this month is creating Pokemon baubles.