Fireball Circus - Baby Blacephalon is Awesome!

What’s up PTCGOStore readers? It’s your self-distancing homie Zach Lesage here and I am writing about one of my favorite decks in Standard - Blacephalon (Unbroken Bonds) / Welder (Unbroken Bonds). I have been grinding this deck on the PTCG Online Versus ladder and this deck is incredibly promising. Whether you are playing casually, getting ready for upcoming IRL events, or a large online event such as a Limitless Qualifier - this deck seems like it can perform greatly! If you are new to Pokémon TCGO, this deck is slightly cheaper to build than Zacian V (Sword and Shield) / Arceus & Dialga & Palkia (Cosmic Eclipse), that means you can get up and running with a competitive deck super quick. As an amazing bonus, you can plug in the zlesage5 discount code at checkout to save 5% on any purchase from PTCGOStore.com. With the large selection of codes available at this site, I’m sure you won’t be upset with the prices and the vast range of PTCGO codes in stock. One of the best things about Baby Blacephalon is that it doesn’t necessarily require a vigorous amount of skill and it is aesthetically pleasing to discard fistfuls of Fire Energy (Sun and Moon). Using cards like Beast Bringer (Unbroken Bonds) you can even turn the Prize trade into your favor by drawing an extra one against GX Pokémon. So that being said, your goal in most games is strictly attacking your opponents Active Pokémon due to the limited amounts of gust cards, like Great Catcher (Cosmic Eclipse), in this deck. Welder onto Baby Blacephalon, attach Fire Energy (Team up), attach Fire Energy (Generations), Fireball Circus, and draw some Prizes. Compared to other available decks in the metagame, such as Malamar (Forbidden Light), this deck is much easier to start with and a lot of the cards in this deck are available in a single set, Unbroken Bonds. Between the scalability of damage from Fireball Circus and the ease of play, Baby Blacephalon is easily one of the best decks in the Standard format. Let’s look at the list I have meticulously worked on and see how it works below. Build your own deck and get Pokémon code cards at PTCGOStore.com.

This deck allows you to do large amounts of damage relatively quickly by pitching Fire Energy (Evolutions) from your hand. 50, 100, 200, 400... Whatever amount of damage you do, you can scale it to whatever numbers you need to hit! Wanna Knock Out a Pikachu & Zekrom-GX (Sun and Moon Promo) for a Knock Out? You can do 250 damage easily by discarding five Fire Energy (Burning Shadows) from your hand. Mewtwo & Mew-GX (Unified Minds) has you feeling sad? Turn that frown upside down by pitching six to do 300 damage! Whatever damage you need to do, Baby Blacephalon can easily hit it! You might just win your next game in two turns when you play this deck on the Pokémon TCG Online platform!

The goal of the deck is to use Welder to power up Blacephalon and use Fireball Circus to OHKO whatever your opponent throws at you. Fire Crystal (Unbroken Bonds) is a great way to get back more Energy to continuously use Fireball Circus. Each and every turn your goal is to find out how many Energy cards you will need to discard in order to get a Knock Out. It isn’t necessarily the most complex strategy, but it certainly is an effective way to win quickly.

In this section of the article, I will go over what the important Pokemon code cards in the deck do! Some cards, such as Quick Ball (Sword and Shield), are merely consistency cards that many decks play and I will not be explaining them for that reason!

These are the cards that allow us to get setup in the game, nab consistency cards, and / or draw more cards. All together, they work super duper hard to allow this deck to take flight - the paper necessary to beat some top decks. Jirachi (Team Up) is a great way to search for a key Trainer card - Welder (Unbroken Bonds), Energy Retrieval (Sword and Shield), or even Fiery Flint (Dragon Majesty). With most decks playing Dedenne-GX (Unbroken Bonds), it is usually easy to pinpoint what it does, and this deck is no different. Dedenne-GX is used as a tool to draw into whatever cards you need by pitching away your previous hand. Don’t worry too much about discarding any Fire Energy (Team Up) because you can always get them back with Fire Crystal (Unbroken Bonds) or Ordinary Rod (Sword and Shield). Oricorio-GX (Cosmic Eclipse) is a great way to draw cards after one of your Pokémon was Knocked Out during your opponents last turn. I typically like to use Dance of Tribute, Welder, and Heat Factory Prism Star (Lost Thunder) before using Stellar Wish to maximize my odds of hitting what I want. Overall, the deck wouldn’t nearly be as consistent without all of these cards in the mix.

The main Pokémon of the deck, Blacephalon (Unbroken Bonds), is meant to steal the show! First and foremost, it is easily accessible by Ultra Space (Forbidden Light) and that means we can easily plug in a single Prize Card attacker into play as soon as possible. You can use that speed to gamble your luck with its first attack, Blazer, to try and do some damage or take a Knock Out. Usually I like hiding Blacephalon on the Bench until I have enough Energy to take a large Knock Out with Fireball Circus, but I have used Blazer to Knock Out Inkay (Forbidden Light) go win the game. Beast Bringer (Unbroken Bonds) paves a new way for this deck to operate because it can essentially “cheat” an extra Prize Card from your opponent if you Knock Out a GX Pokémon first. Even though Sword and Shield introduced Pokémon V, GX Pokémon are still played in massive amounts on PTCG Online. This can bring an Arceus & Dialga & Palkia-GX (Cosmic Eclipse) from being worth three Prize Cards to four - that is bonkers! With the explosive power of Blacephalon combined with the chaotic extras that Beast Bringer brings (no pun intended), they allow this deck to push forward in any metagame.

Cramorant V (Sword and Shield) is an all around useful card in this deck and in most instances where it sees play. If you are ever struggling to find a card, Beak Catch is a great way to search out whatever you need. Sometimes I need Welder, and other times I need Heat Factory Prism Star - if you are in a tough position, this card can allow you to squirm out of scary positions. Spit Shot is an amazing attack that allow you to Knock Out a Dedenne-GX in a pinch. You can also snipe anything else, but make sure you are aiming towards a Knock Out - remember that!

This card is a solid tech for mirror matches on the Pokémon Trading Card Game Online because it punishes your opponent for playing down Blacephalon. Tapu Fini (Unified Minds) allow you to attack for a single Colorless Energy instead of a handful of Water Energy (Evolutions) as long as your opponent has an Ultra Beast Pokémon in play. While Ultra Beast Pokémon aren’t as popular since Blacephalon-GX (Lost Thunder) is no longer a heavily played deck, “Baby” Blacephalon is one of the most popular decks of all time. With recent online events unfolding and the power of the deck, Tapu Fini seems necessary in this deck at this time!

These two cards really function as the “tech” cards of this deck and also offer flexible spaces in case you want to try out anything new. Phione (Cosmic Eclipse) gives you the opportunity to pseudo-gust your opponents Active Pokémon into one of their Benched Pokémon. This is especially powerful if your opponent only has one Pokémon on their Bench and you can force up the “better” one! Absol (Team Up) is a great way to punish players for abusing Jirachi (Team Up) because most decks run Jirachi nowadays. They will be forced to find a Switch (Sword and Shield) instead of using Escape Board (Ultra Prism) like the deck is used to.

There isn’t really much to say about Welder (Unbroken Bonds) that hasn’t already been said. You use this card to power up your Pokémon quickly and draw cards. This is one of the best Supporters in the entire game!

All of these cards work well together to search out Energy or to retrieve them back from the Discard Pile. Fire Crystal (Unbroken Bonds) is an absolute gem in most Fire-type decks because it can grab back three Fire Energy (Generations). After using an explosive Fireball Circus, you can gain all of that power back by using a Fire Crystal or two! Energy Retrieval (Sword and Shield) is more or less an extension of Fire Crystal because we can’t play four copies of that card. Fiery Flint (Dragon Majesty) is a great way to gather Energy for Fireball Circus, to use with Heat Factory Prism Star, and Welder (Unbroken Bonds). This deck thrives off of using Fire Energy (Sword and Shield) and all of these cards allow you to get there!

Well, that’s a wrap for today everyone! I have given you the necessary insight to pilot this deck to success during your next Pokémon TCG Online game and I have provided a solid list for you to build! If you are missing any of the cards for this deck, feel free to head on over to PTCGOStore.com and pick up the necessary Pokemon TCG codes to build this deck! As an added bonus, you can use my promo code, zlesage5, to save 5% off your order upon checkout. I have fully enjoyed myself as I wrote this article, tested games online, and built this deck. My one hope is that the next PTCG-O tournament I play in doesn’t feature exclusively decks that consist of Zacian-V (Sword and Shield) and Arceus & Dialga & Palkia-GX (Cosmic Eclipse)! I plan on writing about a few more decks that exist in this current metagame so keep your eyes peeled for future articles that come out from me on PTCGOStore.com! Until then, thanks for reading and have fun playing this great game!