“A Bug’s Life” - Durant in Standard!

Trainers! I’m spending this week going to visit my dad and go have some fun renovating his house. He lives quite a while away, so I have tons of time to think of some awesome decks for the Brilliant Stars expansion - some competitive, and some fun ones. I have a local friend at the league who really enjoys mill archetypes, and he tasked me with the following challenge: “what is the best mill deck you can possibly make in the standard format?” Well, let me tell you, immediately Durant came to mind! It gains a lot from the Brilliant Stars expansion, and although it’s a bit more on the fun side, it can definitely steal games with ease against some of the top prospects this format has to offer. I don’t think every deck ever created needs to be piloted to win a tournament - sometimes it’s how you win the tournament that matters more than the win itself. Are you looking to flip all 60 cards in your opponent’s deck into their discard pile? Do you want to see your opponent struggle to move their active? Well let me tell you, do I ever have a deck for you! I hope you all remember to enjoy this article brought to you by PTCGO Store. Let’s talk about one of the funniest decks to play right now, Durant!

I booted up my Pokemon Trading Card Game Online app, loaded up some PTCGO codes, and then traded those Pokemon online codes to trade for this deck. I was very excited, and it honestly didn’t take that many PTCGO codes to make the deck. If you’re looking to buy some codes, we sell them here on PTCGO Store, and I highly urge you to check out our competitive pricing and swift delivery! Let’s talk about the newest way to play Durant!

When I discovered this deck, I initially found it within JustinBasil.com’s database - I really liked the list, so I decided to theory around with it a little bit. I highly suggest checking out their website because their lists are fantastic, and the ideas are always fresh! If you need any PTCGO codes to build Justin’s deck ideas, you know where to buy them - right here on the PTCGO store. The strategy the website quoted is the following:

“Use the deck’s various searching options, get as many Durant in play as possible, then attack using Durant's Devour attack, which mills the top card from your opponent's deck for each Durant you have in play. Further mill your opponent's deck with Cursed Shovel, which discards the top 2 cards of their deck when they knock out a Pokémon with one attached. Use Galar Mine in combination with the deck’s gusting options to give yourself free reign to mill your opponent’s deck without the threat of Durant being knocked out. Use Yell Horn to confuse your opponent’s attacking Pokémon to make it more difficult for them to knock out Durant when gust-stalling won’t work or isn’t an option.”

It seems like this deck uses various powerful Item cards to buy extra turns, so you can use Durant’s Devour attack to mill cards off the top of your opponent’s deck. We can power up the attack very quickly with the use of Twin Energy and the newly released Special Energy Card, Double Turbo Energy! I don’t want to spoil too much of the deck, though - now that we have a general idea of the strategy let’s look over at the deck list to see what we’re dealing with today!

4 Durant BST 10

2 Mew CEL 11

2 Snorlax VIV 131

1 Manaphy BRS 41

3 Bird Keeper DAA 159

3 Cynthia’s Ambition BRS 138

2 Boss's Orders RCL 154

2 Bruno BST 121

1 Peonia CRE 149

1 Roseanne's Backup BRS 148

4 Cursed Shovel RCL 157

4 Level Ball BST 129

4 Quick Ball FST 237

4 Yell Horn DAA 173

4 Pokémon Catcher SSH 175

3 Rescue Carrier EVS 154

3 Scoop Up Net RCL 165

2 Ultra Ball BRS 150

1 Pal Pad SSH 172

1 Tool Scrapper RCL 168

3 Galar Mine RCL 160

4 Twin Energy BRS 151

2 Double Turbo Energy RCL 174

4 Durant - These mountain munchers are the heart and soul of our deck! We aim to mill our opponent out as efficiently as possible, and these ants will eat away at the opponent’s deck as quickly as we can bring them into play. Durant has really low HP, so we expect to be KOed each turn; however, the low HP is actually a strength because they are searchable via Level Ball and retrievable via Rescue Carrier. We don’t do any damage with this Pokémon, so the only attack we really want to look at is Devour, which mills the opponent’s deck one card for each Durant that you have in play. If you have four Durant in play, you will effectively discard four card’s from your opponent’s deck. Considering the opponent starts the game by drawing seven cards and placing down six Prize Cards, that means there are only 43 cards left in the deck. If we mill four cards from our opponent’s deck each turn, and they draw one card per turn, it will take us eight turns total to win the game (in theory). The best part about this attack? It only requires two Colourless Energy, which means we can power it up using either Twin Energy or the newly. We use many cards in our deck to buy additional turns to use Devour, and we can also accelerate our deck out strategy with various other tools in our deck. We don’t play many Pokémon because we would rather place emphasis on the powerful Trainer cards that we can play.

2 Snorlax - Our deck is a massive setup deck that requires many cards to perform its main tasks. Snorlax’s Gormandize ability is essential to set up our board because it can help us setup multiple Durant on the bench while walling with a single Prize Card Pokemon in the active. Snorlax giving up just one Prize Card is the best part about this card. Ideally, we can feed our opponent one or two Snorlax KOs and then begin attacking with Durant as quickly as possible. We need to act quickly with our deck - we don’t have infinite amounts of time!

1 Manaphy - This helps us against decks like Rapid Strike Urshifu, which can take multiple Prize Cards at once. It also helps us fight off foes like Jolteon VMAX and any other spread Pokémon that gets printed in the future. If the opponent decides to target it down, we can always recover it with a Rescue Carrier.

2 Mew - This Mew is kind of like our “engine” of the deck. Mew helps us find key Item cards at opportune times to keep executing our strategy. The main idea here is to send up Mew on key turns when you need something important, use its amazing ability, and then afterward use a Scoop Up Net to pivot into an attacker of your choice! Be careful, though - we don’t have that many Scoop Up Nets, and we don’t want our Mew to get stuck!

3 Bird Keeper - This draw Supporter is unique because it will allow us to switch into our Mew. Alternatively, we can use Mew’s ability and then Bird Keeper into one of our Durants. We opt to use this Supporter so that we don’t have to discard cards with Professor’s Research or use Marnie to shuffle our large hand into our deck.

1 Tool Scrapper - This Item card will help remove pesky Air Balloons from the Pokémon you wish to trap with Galar Mines. Tool Scrapper can also help you to remove random powerful tools.

4 Yell Horn - Ideally, we want to play this card to confuse our opponent’s active Pokemon when we don’t have a Durant in the active. Yell Horn has a small drawback, where our active Pokémon gets confused simultaneously. The best time to play this card is when you send a Mew into the active spot, play Yell Horn, and pivot back into a Durant by using Bird Keeper or Scoop Up Net. Yell Horn, in combination with Galar Mines, makes it very difficult to remove confusion - most pokemon online decks will use Switch or Escape Rope to remove this special condition, however since we’re discarding cards from our opponent’s deck, there’s a big chance that we’ll eventually discard a switching option. This card ties our deck together!

1 Peonia - One of the only ways in Standard to efficiently find cards in our Prize Cards is to play Peonia to ensure that we don’t Prize any Durants! I would consider adding a second copy of this card. It’s essential in our deck because since we’re unable to do big damage, we want to be able to “draw” Prize Cards if our Durants get Prized.

4 Cursed Shovel - A perfect card to accelerate our milling strategy, Cursed Shovel does an excellent job of helping us execute our goal.

3 Galar Mine - A great card to help us strand one of our opponent’s Pokémon active. If one of our opponent’s Pokémon can’t attack because the opponent doesn’t play that Pokemon’s required energy, we can take advantage of that by stranding the perfect target. A prime example of this would be Crobat V - most pokemon online decks don’t play the Dark Energy necessary in order to use Venomous Fang! With Galar Mine in play, the opponent would need three energy to retreat a Crobat V.

4 Pokémon Catcher - A perfect card in combination with Galar Mines. Find a target, flip heads, bring them up active!

This deck is one of the most fun milling options we have in the current standard format and is a lot of fun. Each card inclusion in this deck is designed to help you mill cards from your opponent’s deck and recover your Pokemon from the discard pile turn after turn of being KOed. If you like flexibility with Trainer cards each turn and the ability to lock your opponent out of games with Galar Mines, then I highly urge you to try out this deck. This deck requires a decent bit of stuff from different Standard expansions (as well as the new Brilliant Stars expansion), so you should check out our shop for your PTCGO codes. I’d suggest nabbing some PTCGO codes and building this pokemon deck online because this deck seems like it could potentially be a rising star - it could even be a good choice for the Team Challenge event coming up. Until next time, have fun!

If you’re looking for codes for Pokemon TCG online play, feel free to pick some up in our shop. We offer Pokemon codes at a very competitive price and ensure instant delivery of your PTCGO codes directly to your email. Thank you for reading this article today on the PTCGO store! Have a great day.