New Festival Deck in Pokemon: Twilight Masquerade Looks Fun

One of the new decks themed around Twilight Masquerade that you should be watching for is the Festival Grounds Deck. This deck focuses on using various different cards that may seem sort of silly on their own together to create a lot of interesting synergies and strategies.

Here’s a version of a deck that did pretty well at tournament in Japan. We’ll be diving into the cards used and how to play this deck to win.

• Festival Grounds Deck List

  Pokémon: 20

  4 Applin SV6 11

  4 Dipplin SV6 12

  3 Grookey SV6 8

  3 Thwackey SV6 9

  2 Rellor TEF 23

  2 Rabsca TEF 24

  1 Bidoof CRZ 111

  1 Bibarel BRS 121

  Trainer: 34

  3 Iono PAF 80

  3 Professor's Research PAF 88

  2 Boss's Orders PAL 172

  2 Kieran SV6 96

  1 Lana's Assistance SV5a 64

  1 Cynthia's Ambition BRS 138

  4 Buddy-Buddy Poffin TEF 144

  4 Bug Catching Set SV6 94

  3 Ultra Ball PAF 91

  1 Super Rod PAL 188

  1 Counter Catcher PAR 160

  1 Pal Pad SVI 182

  1 Switch SVI 194

  2 Vitality Band SVI 197

  1 Maximum Belt TEF 154

  4 Festival Plaza SV6 99

  Energy: 6

  6 Grass Energy 1

Thwackey is your card search engine

While there are plenty of interesting cards in this deck, Thwackey is really what makes this deck function as a whole. As long as you have a Pokemon with the Festival Lead ability in the active spot, Thwackey’s ‘Bang Bang Drum’ ability lets you search for any card you want each turn.

What makes this ability extra good is that it’s not limited to one use per turn. This means that if you have multiple Thwackey’s in play and the conditions are meant, you can search for multiple cards in a turn.

Dipplin is your Festival Lead

Dipplin is the Pokemon you will need in play in order to use Thwackey’s phenomenal card search ability. Apart from posesing “Festival Lead,” Dipplin also has a fairly strong attack. Assuming your bench is filled to the brim, you will be swinging for 100 damage each time you attack. While that may not sound like a lot, “Festival Lead” also enables Dipplin to attack twice in a turn as long as you have Festival Grounds in play, even if it KOs the opposing Pokemon. Suddenly, Dipplin isn’t such a lightweight.

Festival Grounds itself is the Stadium card that makes Dipplin’s powerful ability work. Apart from that, it actually doesn’t do a whole lot.

Rabsca keeps your little Pokemon safe

Apart from that core strategy, this deck’s pretty straightforward to play. Because you have an insane card search engine built in with Thwackey, you don’t need a whole bunch of support Pokemon clogging things up. However, you will need to keep your relatively weak Pokemon safe while they are hanging out on the bench. This is where Rabsca comes into play.

Rabsca has Spherical Shield which protects your bench, keeping them safe from the likes of Dragapult ex or even stray shots from Radiant Greninja. Noteably, this also forces your opponent into a situation where they have to deal with an unfavorable prize trade. Typically the best way to deal with a single prize deck like this one is to take out two Pokemon in a turn and speed up the game. Rabsca, however, makes that pretty hard to pull off, leaving your Dipplin free to attack time after time.

A favorable typing

If grass-type decks manage to make a comeback in the meta after Twilight masquerade, that could spell bad news for Charizard ex which sits comfortably at the top of the meta right now. A favorable typing against the dark type Charizard means Dipplin can OHKO the otherwise monstrous behemoth. I’m sure this fact isn’t missed on many Pokemon players, which is why it is seeing play.

Still, I’m sure there are many more interesting ways that this deck can be built, and I’m looking forward to what players come up with in the weeks following Twilight masquerade’s release!