Hello Cut or Tap readers! Little bit about myself; my name is Carter and I’ve been playing Pokémon for just over 3 years. Some of my accomplishments include making day two at 5 consecutive regionals I attended last year in addition to earning my Worlds invite. I live in SoCal and have been with Cut or Tap since April.
We have our first expanded regional right around the corner in Richmond. The last time we had an expanded regional was Hartford back in May. Even though we’ve had two new expansions since then, many of those archetypes that saw success last season are still quite viable. PikaRom, Hitmonchan, ZoroGarb, ZoroControl, Archie’s, and SableGarb are all still strong choices.
Turbo Dark however, is an archetype that hasn’t seen success in quite some time. In fact the archetype hasn’t made day two since Daytona back in the 2017-2018 season. However, we have seen several strong performances from Rayquaza, a deck that shares many similarities with turbo dark. You have a main attacker whose damage scales with the amount of energy in play, a support Pokémon that provides free retreat, Sky Fields, and energy acceleration. Ray outclassed Turbo Dark for the time with a higher base damage in addition to not being weak to fighting.
I think it’s time for the roles to be reversed once more, with Ray taking the back seat to Dark for a few big reasons. The first and most important one being Darkrai GX’s GX attack. Dead End GX reads: ‘If your opponent’s active Pokémon is affected by a special condition, it is knocked out.’ You can turn a Hypnotoxic Laser into a OHKO on anything, namely tag teams. The next reason, is that the deck can utilize Mew FCO very well. Ray can’t take advantage from it since the main attack is 3 energies compared to 2. This means you can keep your ZoroNinja Tag Team safe on the bench and still swing for huge OHKOs with a single prizer. It should go without saying that being able to hit for psychic weakness is extremely valuable as well. Lastly, there’s no Stormy Winds. Getting an extra energy in play is great but having to discard three random cards is not good at all. It’s a small reward for a huge risk. We alleviate this extra energy acceleration with Dark Patches and Darkrai GX’s ability Restoration which lets us bench it from the discard pile with a Dark Energy attached to it.
All that being said, let’s take a look at our skeleton
Turbo Dark Skeleton
| Pokémon – 10 | Trainers – 28 | Energy – 12 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Greninja Zoroark GX | 3 | Professor Juniper | 4 | VS Seeker | 12 | Dark | ||
| 2 | Darkrai GX | 1 | Colress | 4 | Ultra Ball | ||||
| 1 | Darkrai EX | 1 | Guzma | 4 | Dark Patch | ||||
| 1 | Mew (FCO) | 4 | Max Elixir | ||||||
| 1 | Dedenne GX | 2 | Sky Field | 2 | Hypnotoxic Laser | ||||
| 1 | Tapu Lele GX | 2 | Battle Compressor | ||||||
| 2 | Shaymin EX | 1 | Dowsing Machine | ||||||
Here are the 50 cards I believe to be fundamental to the archetype. Any deviations from this will negatively impact consistency. One thing that should be noted is that this needs at least one additional draw supporter. I’ve gone back and forth between a 4th Professor Juniper and a 2nd Colress. Currently I’m leaning towards Juniper just because this deck benefits from discarding certain cards in the early game but it could honestly go either way. In no particular order; let’s look into some cards you could use to fill those extra 9 spots.
Filling the slots
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