Cynthia’s Garchomp ex Deck Guide

By Rashon Davis — Midnight Art Journey. Please commission me to make art for you.

View the Dragon Master decklist

Intro: Play this playlist while you read.

Hello, if you are reading this guide you are reading for a couple of reasons.

1. You want to help support me and my growth as a player (thank you!)
2. You have asked me for this guide cause apparently I’m the “Best Garchomp player in the triangle” (I don't think this cause I do not beat top players consistently)
3. You think that this is the best dragon pokemon ever and you want to play with him!

I really thank everyone for supporting me and helping me grow to where I am today, this guide will walk through my decklist. I will also try to include ideal boardstates, mid game plays, and late game plays to focus on. Sit back and get ready for the journey! I will say now, I do not think Stamp is the optimal way to play garchomp because it is harder to get energy onto chomps to chain attacks.

Terms: Spawn Camp- the act of taking out a pokemon as soon as it hits the board.

Neo Upper Decklist

Pokémon: 7
3 Cynthia's Garchomp ex DRI 241
3 Cynthia's Roserade DRI 184
4 Cynthia's Gible ASC 109
4 Cynthia's Roselia DRI 7
1 Shaymin DRI 185
4 Cynthia's Gabite ASC 110
1 Cynthia's Spiritomb ASC 244

Trainer: 13
4 Buddy-Buddy Poffin TWM 223
4 Lillie's Determination MEG 184
4 Cynthia's Power Weight DRI 162
3 Fighting Gong MEG 168
1 Judge SIT-TG 25
2 Team Rocket's Watchtower DRI 180
3 Boss's Orders PAL 265
1 Night Stretcher SSP 251
1 Rare Candy PRC 135
2 Hilda WHT 171
4 Poké Pad POR 113
1 Special Red Card CRI 113
1 Team Rocket's Petrel DRI 226

Energy: 3
4 Rocky {F} Energy POR 87
4 Basic {F} Energy SVI 258
1 Neo Upper Energy TEF 162

Total Cards: 60

Second List: Dragon Master

Open Dragon Master in the Lost Zone League deck builder

Pokémon: 7
4 Cynthia's Gabite ASC 110
4 Cynthia's Gible ASC 109
1 Cynthia's Spiritomb ASC 244
3 Cynthia's Roserade DRI 184
3 Cynthia's Garchomp ex DRI 232
1 Budew ASC 221
4 Cynthia's Roselia DRI 7

Trainer: 14
3 Boss's Orders PAL 265
4 Lillie's Determination MEG 169
1 Judge POR 76
2 Hilda WHT 164
1 Night Stretcher MEG 173
4 Fighting Gong MEG 168
1 Special Red Card CRI 113
1 Switch PRC 163
4 Buddy-Buddy Poffin TWM 223
1 Rare Candy GRI 165
4 Poké Pad POR 113
4 Cynthia's Power Weight DRI 162
1 Battle Cage PFL 116
1 Forest of Vitality POR 109

Energy: 3
4 Rocky Fighting Energy POR 87
1 Neo Upper Energy TEF 162
3 Basic {F} Energy MEE 6

Total Cards: 60

This is a standard Garchomp list, the key cards trainers wise in this list are pokepad, buddy buddy, fighting, Lilly, Boss, Power weight, and Neo Upper. The Key cards pokemon wise are your Gabites and Roserades. I will go into detail about each of these and why they are important.

Optional Cards that may be added: Battle Cage, Another rare candy, Rosa’s Encouragement, premium power pros, another roserade, a switch card, genesect(ace nullifier), AZ tranquility to fix numbers of damaged chomps

General Tips: If the knockout seems too good to be true, it probably is because they want to bait you into taking a knockout so you can be hand disrupted. We don't want to be hand disrupted, we want to slay whatever comes in front of us but we have to be smart about it. Your opponent is a matador and they will wave a red flag in front of your face to make sure you look stupid when you charge ahead to take them out. We are not a bull with low intelligence, we are dragons who represent wisdom and power. Learn how to use both!

Key Pokémon

Cynthia’s Gabite

Gabite is the heart and soul of this deck, your mission is to get him out on the field as soon as possible and chain champions calls. His ability “Champions Call” allows you to search you deck for any Cynthia’s pokemon. This is so important for your deck because you do not have any on board draw to get your pokemon out of the deck other than items. He is also so important because under item lock you can still get your whole pokemon lines out with him. Each Gabite can get one Cynthia’s pokemon out per turn so it is imperative you are always pulling them out of the deck to effectively thin out your deck. Your turn one should be establishing your roselia’s and gibles and securing a way to get out Gabite as soon as possible.

Cynthia’s Roserade

Roserade’s ability is “Cheer on to Glory” allows our Cynthia’s pokemon to 30 more damage for each Cynthia’s roserade on the bench, very important for hitting our big numbers and doing more damage in matchups where we usually would not do a lot of damage.

Big Man Garchomp

This card is broken. Its first attack is 100 damage without modifiers but lets you draw up to 6 cards in hand, this is basically your draw and the way you can take out smaller pokemon for free and still see cards in your deck. The second attack is what we use to put people into the dirt. It does 260 but with roserades it can do more. 1 roserade= 290, 2 roserades= 320, 3 roserades= 350 and 4 roserades= 380. A lot of damage happens really fast, but you have to discard your energy, so it is imperative if you can to continue to put energy on each Garchomp per turn so that you can prepare to combo draconic busters over and over without being stuck a turn trying to load up the next.

Tools

There’s really only one important tool for this deck that isn’t in every other list:

Cynthia’s Power Weight

This tool is broken, taking your pokemon from tanks to basically giant walls makes it really hard for matchups to effectively one shot Garchomp. The only way to counter this is with a jamming tower or a tool scrapper, but other than that you are living most attacks and getting by easily on other attacks.

Opening Turns and Board States

At this moment you have a way to set up two Gibles and two Roselias. The biggest thing to recognize here is that you are about to get an item locked, and you need to be careful about where you attach energy. The ideal way to take this turn is to buddy buddy for a gible and roselia, fighting gong for a basic energy and pass. You do not want to risk attaching energy before you can effectively attack and chain attacks if the energy is removed from E-Hammers, Crushing Hammers, or other energy manipulation cards/ abilities.

So this is the start of your next turn, you notice that your opponent is bricking, this must be the perfect time to swing for a knock out right? Well let's look at the board state, you can effectively get out two gabites, and two roserades with champions call and hilda combo, you want to always be thinning out the deck with champions calls so that you are seeing the cards you need more frequently once your hand gets disrupted. When playing Garchomp, it is not if your hand gets disrupted, it's when it does. You have to ask yourself, “if I took this knockout would I be able to continue to attack if I got my energy crushing hammered off and I got unfair stamped?” If the answer is no, then do not swing, you are an agro deck and people are a lot of times baiting you to swing, but we struggle with the fact that we set up slower than other decks. Especially under item lock, so if you have the time and luxury to set up your board then set it up and temper the agro nature.

Another crucial thing to note is the placement of your power weights per matchup and I will get into that for specific matchups and what to do later on in the guide, but in this instance we are going to evolve everything, attach a basic to Gabite, attach power weight to roserades, and then one to a Gabite, you can safely attach to active in this point because nothing will cause him to get knocked out next turn, in other board states one can be attached to the bench one or it can be held for another turn. Your ideal boardstate for most games against most decks will look like this:

After playing TCGmasters for about 2 hours against dragapult, what I have further solidified is that Dragapult is a toxic deck and honestly, it's disgusting how much it has the answer. Oh if you’re playing James Garrett Turbo Darkness the goat? Scoop. Don’t even try just scoop. Doesn’t matter the variant, he will COOK you! But here’s my advice per dragapult deck:

Pult Hammers: 70/30 Pult Advantage

For every Pult variant you want to go first so you can use your items!

This honestly is the worst pult variant for you to play against, mainly because they have the ability to pick your energy off and disrupt you from building combo attacks. I would relate this matchup to driving a manual car, somethings you will have to shift up to 4th gear and really lay the hammer down on them and sometimes you are going to downshift and take the pace of the game slow. A couple of tips, if you are noticing they are bricking, be careful of what you bench and how many energies on board you have. Their favorite play to utilize is the boss trap, hammer energy off, and budew you. Very annoying, but if you see that they arebricking you have two options:

1. Prep your board and prepare for the war of attrition
2. ATTACK ATTACK ATTACK

A caveat for plan b is be careful that you put yourself in a position where they can stamp rosa’s and swing tempo on you. Be mindful of what you’re knocking out, if you can knock out drakloaks, and Munkidoris then do that. You can also go for a boss stall play yourself to try and break the item lock but this one is a hard case to read. You can easily attack yourself into a brick because they hand disrupt you early and just oppress you. I would also hold the stadium at all times to bump it so you can continue to set up your bench as much as possible. This matchup is a very skill intensive matchup, and it takes proper sequencing and board knowledge to consistently win, something I do not have yet lol.

Another thing to note is to save your power weights for the Roserades, make them boss the Roserade, and if possible bench three so that you can keep up tempo with swing to hit big numbers.

Tech cards to include in the matchup to make the matchup more favorable:

1. With the addition of the two night time mines, this could be a very good way to make attacks difficult for pults and really make it awkward for them to chain attacks over and over again.
2. Battle cage can also be included to stop the spread of damage onto the bench and also stop munkidori from being able to KO or put up multiple combo potential numbers on our pokemon
3. Rosa’s encouragement is a good supporter to add because if they take a prize on the spiritomb then after trading they will be at one prize card and you can be at 2 and you can get the sneaky advantage to Draconic buster for the win out of nowhere
4. An inclusion of a 4th boss to increase the potential of knocking out their combo pieces is also another key piece

Pult Dusknoir: 65/35 Chomp Advantage

Are you playing Regionals Top 67 Gabbie Fulp? If yes then scoop, you got about a 10% chance of winning that. Are you playing some random joe blow though? You are gucci, the matchup is fun because they will help you speed run the game by blowing themselves up like idiots. Power weight your attacking chomp and some roserades, get three of them out, and just chain attacks well and you just have to worry about hand disruptions but other than that, boss up the fez or meowth, force them to make awkward plays and just move forward from there. Also again, hold you stadiums to bump the jamming tower, because they will try to combo plays off of that against you. Its ok if they get one chomp with it, make sure they do not get two though.

Tech cards that can be included:

1. The inclusion of psyduck would make this matchup a lot easier because it stops their early game aggression of being able to take early prizes with the ghost. The best time to place the psyduck down is when they have a couple duskull on board so you can force them to bench lock themselves and stifle their combo potential
2. Night time mine: makes pult harder to swing with
3. Battle cage: this would stop the ghost from being able to damage things on the bench as well as stop munkidori too!

Pult/Chicken (Blaziken): 55/45 Chomp Advantage

Are you playing Oliver King? Good luck, this dude makes it his personal mission to hunt down chomp and embarrass it. Dude literally thrives off humbling me and my chomp deck LOL. If youre playing anyone else, then the gameplan is simple. Do you see a torchic? If yes, boss that up and put it into the ground, that is their combo potential right there. Pult although it is a very dominant card, it needs a lot of support in order to make its crazy plays. If you take out its big combo pieces then you can pretty much keep that dragon tame. Keep the torchic and fez in the discard and you should be pretty good. If anything make sure to power weight your roserades to prevent easy KO’s from spreading damage.

Tech cards that can be included:

1. nighttime mine
2. Battle cage
3. Rare candies to keep up with their rare candy attacks and combos and protect your gibles
4. 4 boss to increase capabilities of knocking out the blazikens

General Pult Tips

THIS IS OUR TRUMP CARD!

Cynthia’s Spiritomb allows you to take all the damage on your bench cynthias pokemon and basically mirror force it back at the opponent, do not bench this until you got enough damage to one hit KO on your opponent. If you bench this early then your opponent will target it down! It makes a good distraction though if you want to combo something else later on, but also can put you in an awkward prize trade scenario. I've lost games because of this sometimes, especially against pult hammers, which is very annoying.

Lastly for the pult variants, just please take your time with your lines, each matchup requires detail on their hand size, the items used, the supporters used, and what they are doing with their energy on board. If you can take out a munkidori early, do it but remember they run two and it's simple to get it back and set it up again. The best advice is to make them use the supporter that hinders their combo potential the most. Make them have Lillie's or Rosa’s, Crispin or Boss, etc. Do not make their job easy by mindlessly swinging and knocking stuff out and making your job harder than it needs to be. On paper you are favored because you have a lot of HP and can hit hard, but they are a terrorist deck so be prepared to fight smart.

Tech cards to include:

1. 4th boss to maximize potential to knock out possible matchups
2. Rosa’s encouragement
3. Another rare candy

Basic Box / Slop Box / Wendys Fo Fo Fo: 50/50

Go First: allow yourself the first attack and more turns to set up

This matchup is a tricky one. They just have a lot to deal with everything, there are a couple of cards to watch out for in this matchup. Your prize trade should be to make them take 7 prizes, by attacking with chomp, spiritomb, chomp, chomp. Try your best to prevent getting one hit KO’d so that you can have damage on board to take the prize trade effectively. Also try to prevent yourself from getting sob locked. This is a matchup where you could honestly not bench roserades and double down on setting up for multiple draconic busters if possible. They also have a lot of pokemon that can make the game tricky for you to win or very easy for you to lose. Here are some of them:

This combo does 400 damage even, please pay attention if you see them cyrano and pull these two out. They are prepping to one hit KO you, the best way to prepare for this is to have a judge ready, or if you can boss up and swing for KO on the teal mask that has the most grass energy on it. That way it slows the turn down enough so you can survive. Most Basic Box lists play 5-7 grass energy so be mindful of how many you see go into play and into discard.

This is just your worst nightmare in any grass based matchup mainly because it uses its energies and then your energies and then doubles it because of weakness. A lot of Basic Box decks will leave their Kang as easy pickings while they build two of these up so they can hit you with the special red card knock out on your Chomp. If you see it and you have the ability to knock out and draconic buster next turn then do it. If you cannot then be mindful of what you're doing and how you are set up post knockout. Always be thinking ahead, what happens next and know what resources they need to punish you.

This card looks harmless but it is not, it can use every attack of all their pokemon on the bench, my best case of advice is to set up three roserades and corkscrew dive this little menace so you do not get put into awkward positions. Also be aware of them trying to use this card to sob lock you as well.

I recommend also looking for Red Card + Watchtower combos or Judge Watchtower combos. The smaller their hand the lower the chance they have to combo a bunch of attacks.

Tech cards to make the matchup 70/30:

1. additional watchtower to try and win the stadium war
2. Additional nightstretcher for recovery of pokemon and energy
3. Nighttime mine for the same reason as pult make their Tera pokemon need to have additional energy to attack, I do not know if this means mew would need an additional energy as well to attack too
4. Switch cards just in case they try to sob lock you in the active while they develop their board
5. Lisia’s appeal, confuse their active basic pokemon and try to stall a turn yourself. Ideal to combo with knocking out the Latias and bumping their stadium

Hydrapple ex / Festival Lead / Any Grass Deck: 90/10 Grass Advantage

Go first, you want as much as an advantage as possible to try and get the first attack and win

Honestly this matchup just sucks. You can play perfectly and do everything right and they will just vomit grass and knock you out anyways. Your best bet is to try to judge + watchtower and try to out-tempo them. The deck can brick easily and those are the times you need to be uptempo. This is not a deck you can pace yourself, it is literally all gas all the time. You see a chikorita? Take it out. You see an Applin? Take it out. You see a teal mask with more than 1 energy on it? Dragonic Buster. But honestly these decks are usually an autoloss for you. It happens, it's annoying but most of them rotate out. Thank the Lord. Also if you can, avoid 2-2-2 prize trade, try to be on odd prizing because the briar+ teal mask ogrepon play is real and will be very tilting for you

Tech cards that can be included:

1. Switch to stamp version and pray you brick them

Slowking: 80/20 Chomp Advantage

Go first

The deck just doesn't have much answer for you. Your biggest window of you losing in within the first three turns. If you prize shaymin or cannot get it out fast enough and they trifost you then it's suspect. Your best way to make it past the first three turns is to either power weight your babies, find shaymin, or judge watchtower them while you set up. I have come back from games when all my gibles/gabites have gotten board wiped and I have done it multiple times. Slowking’s biggest problem is they run out of gas very fast, but we are a deck that if you allow us to build a board then we become almost unkillable and hard to defend against. Find your shaymin, attach your rocky energies to avoid annilape shenanigans and you should be fine!

Lopunny/Dusknoir: 90/10 Chomp Advantage

Go first

Honestly if you go first, and can avoid getting brozong evolve locked, and can attach your power weights correctly then the match is free because you just have to get two KO’s on the bunny and then you win. Be smart and be wise and hunt the bunny.

Mega Lucario / Mega Excadrill: 70/30 Chomp Advantage

Go first against Mega Lucario, also do not put a gible out front if you can help it, because they will knock it out easily with solrock unless you have a power weight in hand

Go first against excadrill, if you can put the pressure on them by turn two boss knockout on a drillbur or Beldum then you are good. Also if you can judge turn two and slow down their metallic signal potential that’s also really good as well.

I combo’d these because they have the same premise and our mission is the same for both. They want to slap a gravity mountain down and hit you really hard. Hold you stadiums and make sure you are prepared for this. If you see them prepping another one of their babies on the bench then you can spawn camp them while you set up your roserades and then take them out last. Spiritomb also is a big help in this matchup as well. Mega Lucario with 4 PPP only does 390, so honestly if they want to use them all to not even one hit, then let them and just spiritomb them away. Be careful of toolscrapper though. Dont mindlessly slap down your power weights, do it preemptively to protect yourself but dont just slap them down whenever. Especially early on because you dont want to lose them on an early gabite KO. If you can set up or find your rare candy to get chomp set up faster then do that. Also reminder you need 3 roserades, 2 roserades+PPP, 2 roserades and a kieran, or whatever damage mod to one hit KO these guys.

Tech cards to include:

1. tool scrapper to get rid of the cape/max belt and make sure they can’t make themselves tankier than usual or hit harder than usual
2. Additional stadiums to bounce the gravity mountains
3. 4th boss to put pressure on their two prizers such as meowth, genesect, fez, and also to spawn camp their babies

Crustle: 55/45 Chomp Advantage

Go first

With crustle it honestly is a weird matchup, but remember that their whole goal is to enter the battle of resources. If you enter this battle you will not win, they have more healing and recovery than we do and they one shot our gabites. The best way to win is to spawn camp the dwebbles with boss, this leaves the kang alone and we can easily deal with him. There are various lines to take though if you cannot spawn camp the dwebbles.

1. Judge +Watchtower: this deck is honestly prone to bricking very hard if you do this and you can really slow them down and make sure they cannot draw their resources
2. Gabite attacks into the crustle. We can do 130 Damage with a Gabite and 3 Roserades up on the bench. A lot of times if they cannot find healing then we two shot, if they do find healing then we have to 3 and 4 shot them and try to manage resources well to get the knockouts. Attack with you roselias and gabites to try and whittle down the crap
3. Bait and switch: Really good crustle players won't fall for this but bad ones will, you can evolve your gabite into garchomp and take a knockout on kang, and if the crustle player sucks they will promote crustle and then swing into garchomp. They will do 240, then you will happily retreat him and bring up spiritomb and knock out the crustle. Hooray!

The matchup is very boring and it will take a lot of deck knowledge, try to keep your hand size smaller to avoid being punished by Xerosics and also try your best to disrupt their hand so that they cannot find healing!

Tech cards to include:

1. budew: budew locking a lang and basically making them deck out is honestly a good strat
2. Tool scrapper to get rid of the hero’s cape to make crustle not so unkillable
3. Additional hand disruption to promote them bricking and not being able to find key items

Alakazam / Alakazam Dusknoir: 55/45 Chomp Advantage

Go first

This is another matchup on paper we are more favored than we are. If you are my wife or Andrew Da Silva, then you're in for a long game and you better be on your A Game for sure.This is another example of you have to be careful of your resources and their resources. The way alakazam really wins is if they can get the rocky energies off of your chomp. Here are some cards to pay attention to and to track,

These cards manipulate our energy or get rid of our energy and the Dedenne cycles them back from the discard. The best course of action is to set up three roserades, boss around the fans and also stack multiple rocky energies on two chomp. Two rocky per Chomp is ideal, you can also do one big chomp where you stack all of them on him. It honestly depends on the draws. If you see Dedenne on board, spawn camp immediately. Another thing to do is if you see a kadabra on the bench or abra, spawn camp that. If you can hinder the alakazam from going through the full evolution stage then they will not be able to draw as much. They usually run two E Hammers and one Rust Syndicate, so if you can stop them from drawing into them then you can have a smoother game. Also if you have a red card in hand and it's not time to use it yet, Lilly it out your hand. If they Eri it out your hand then you have lost 1 of your only 2 ways to disrupt their hand. Be mindful of just having it there to be there, we want to be able to petrel for it later, not have it snatched out our hands. If they are playing the dusknoir build then know they usually have a very thin line or no hammers at all. So just powerweight your roselias so that they cannot be spawn camped and also maybe a chomp or two as well. Other than that the matchup is just using the skill of resource management and learning how to set up consistently against them. If they attach a handheld fan early to an abra or something, hold off on benching roselias and roserades, and set up your gabites and garchomps for a turn or two, so if you swing the rocky will just go back onto a chomp evo line pokemon and not the roserade.

Tech cards to include for this matchup:

1. Another judge
2. Tool scrapper
3. Rosa’s encouragement

Zoroark: 80/20 Chomp Advantage

Go first

This matchup is usually free because even with all their damage mods they will never hit enough to knock you out in one hit. You can draconic buster, spiritomb, draconic pretty well against them. Be mindful that they run 4 bosses and will target lower HP pokemon or might even go for a clutch play while they set up their board. Just be mindful of what they are benching. Easy targets are the Zekrom, Pech, and Reshiram if you are only on one energy and want to keep up KO tempo. Your power weight is important to go on the chomps. If you can get set up by turn two with a candy or turn three with multiple chomps and roserades then you will have a pretty easy time in this matchup. Just continue to prep back up attacks on the bench.

Tech cards to include are:

1. tool scrapper to get rid of the binding mochis and also hero’s cape if they run that build
2. Switch cards just in case they try to yvetal trap your pokemon to buy time

Single-Prize Matchups: 70/30

Go first

Single prize matchups are tricky because on paper you are advantaged because you are a big hp pokemon and can hit hard, but you have to take out 6 pokemon and ideally they only have to take out three. Decks like team rockets honchkrow, fishtival lead, dhelmise hide and sneak, and others are decks that are unfavored into you but if you play too cockily then you will quickly find yourself in a losing position. Best tips is to always have 3 roserades on the bench and 3 chomp and do your best to cycle the chomps and never leave one in the active that’s damaged and can give them the opportunity to get a free 2 prizes.

Fishtival lead: watch out for their combo potential, with everything they can knock out a chomp without a power weight on and they will have toolscrapper on deck just in case. Possible to bait out the tool scrapper but only attaching one power weight at a time

Dhelmise: they will cycle this stupid anchor over and over again, make sure you have enough roserades to one hit ko it or boss up their dunsparce and knock that out to make sure they waste recovery resources on them and not the dhelmise

Team rockets honchkrow: best thing to do is to get our 3 roserades, hand disrupt them and then get power weights on all Garchomp to make them have to have ALOT of supporters in order to get the knockout

Tech cards to include:

1. stadiums to bump their stadiums
2. Hand disruption
3. Additional recovery for your own pokemon and pieces as well.

Mirror Match: 50/50

Go first get first attack It honestly depends on the build you’re playing and the build they are playing and how many roserades you have in play. The biggest thing to do is boss up the roserades and take those out so that they cannot one shot you. I would have a judge ready to use once you have set up at least one to two gabite with energy to try and brick them. And then continue the pressure. Another thing that can be added is rare candies to speed up your evolution line and get an early prize card advantage as well! This matchup is mainly who can set up first and who can continue to get pressure on the board!

Tech cards to include:

1. tool scrapper to increase the chance of making their chomps hp smaller
2. Rosa’s encouragement to combo draconic busters easier
3. Budew to item lock them and stop them from setting up

Conclusion

This is the conclusion of the meta game and how chomp goes into some of the biggest decks in the meta right now. This is not an end all be all list and if you have additional tips or tricks from games you have learned please feel free to share! Thank you for reading!

-Rashon “Midnight” Davis