Roaring Moon ex Deck Guide (Post 2024 Rotation)

This Roaring Moon ex deck innevitably had to be updated to fit what’s changed for the popular archetype since the 2024 rotation.

Roaring Moon ex is a deck with a ton of power, and it’s been gaining a ton of traction at major competitive events as most players realize its place as a top Pokemon deck.

In this newly updated guide to Roaring Moon ex, we’re going to be looking at the most successful version of this deck to date that includes a Galarian Moltress V from Chilling Reign.

*Updated April 16, 2024

Roaring Moon ex deck list

*6th Place Regional Perth - Tim Franklin*

Pokémon: 14
4 Roaring Moon TEF 109
3 Roaring Moon ex PAR 124
3 Dunsparce TEF 128
3 Dudunsparce TEF 129
1 Radiant Greninja ASR 46
Trainer: 37
4 Professor Sada's Vitality PAR 170
4 Explorer's Guidance TEF 147
1 Boss's Orders PAL 172
1 Penny SVI 183
4 Dark Patch ASR 139
4 Earthen Vessel PAR 163
4 Nest Ball PAF 84
3 Trekking Shoes CRZ 145
2 Ultra Ball PAF 91
1 Prime Catcher TEF 157
1 Counter Catcher PAR 160
1 Super Rod PAL 188
4 Ancient Booster Energy Capsule TEF 140
2 Artazon PAF 76
1 Temple of Sinnoh ASR 155
Energy: 9
9 Darkness Energy 7

Card Type

Roaring Moon ex Deck – key cards

Roaring Moon ex is going to be your strongest attacker. And while it’s a great card to use against many of the top meta decks right now, in this deck list it’s also gets paired with a solid secondary attacker – another Roaring Moon.

Released in Temporal Forces, this one-prize Roaring Moon hits extraordinarily hard for a single-prize Pokemon. Of course, you aren’t going to be able to use it right away as you’ll need plenty of Ancient Cards in your discard first.

But don’t worry – this deck is really good at getting those cards into your discard pile.

Speaking of – one of those cards you’re going to want to play early and often is the Explorer’s Guidance supporter card.

Using this card, you can pull out two key cards from the top six of your deck and also discard the rest. While normally a card like Professor’s Research would be the preferred draw support, this card can be much handier in this deck for a plethora of reasons. By enabling you to just pick out the cards you want, you can make it much easier to get Ancient cards into your discard. Also, you can pretty easily discard darkness energies. The former will help you power up your baby Roaring Moon more quickly, while the latter will help you start accelerating energies onto your Roaring Moon ex via Dark Patch or Sada’s Vitality.

Speaking of getting darkness energies into your discard pile…

Get darkness energies into your discard pile

Although this post 2024 rotation version of Roaring Moon ex doesn’t use Radiant Greninja’s Moonlight Shuriken attack, it certainly takes advantage of its one-of-a-kind “Concealed Cards” ability. Once again, because this deck relies heavily on accelerating energies from your discard pile onto your Pokemon, you are going to want to get as many basic energies into your discard pile as possible. Concealed Cards lets you drop an energy to draw two cards. But first, you need to get those energies into your hand.

Here’s where Earthen Vessel comes in handy. It’s an extraordinarily strong card for getting any kind of energy from your deck into your hand. And, because you have to discard a card in order to use it, you can use it to discard a darkness energy, and then pull extras from your deck.

Alternatively, Earthen Vessel can be a great way to put unneeded Ancient cards into your discard. This will pay off in dividends down the line when you can take OHKOs against any Pokemon with baby Roaring Moon.

Additionally, this deck runs one copy of Squawkabilly ex from Paldea Evolved. With Squawkabilly, you can discard your entire hand on your first turn and draw new cards. This can also be paired with Earthen Vessel to get several darkness energies into your discard straightaway that you can then later accelerate onto your Pokemon using a combo of Sada’s Vitality and Dark Patch

With plenty of darkness energies in your discard pile, it’s time to start accelerating them onto your Roaring Moons!

Sada’s Vitality helps get your Roaring Moon ex up and running much, much quicker than would otherwise be possible. With Dark Patch and this card, you can feasibly get Roaring Moon ex powered up to take knockouts in a single turn. Not only does this supporter function as one of the primary ways to accelerate energies, it’s also your primary draw support card, enabling you to draw three cards each time you play it.

Roaring Moon ex is your primary attacker

Now that you know what your key cards are and how they function in your deck, let’s get into how your primary attackers fit into your strategy.

Primary attacker: Roaring Moon ex

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Roaring Moon ex is a one-stop-shop attacker, enabling you to take select knockouts against weaker one-prize Pokemon pretty easily – two prize basic Pokemon as well – with Calamity Storm or even take OHKOs against the bulkiest two-prize/three-prize Pokemon.

Of course, the OHKO Frenzied Gouging attack does come with a glaring downside – it nearly KOs your Roaring Moon ex. To help it survive just a little longer, equip Roaring Moon ex with an Ancient Booster Energy Capsule.

Use Ancient Booster Energy Capsule to give extra HP to Roaring Moon ex. While this HP boost isn’t going to help it survive from serious hits, it will avoid letting it get taken out unnecessarily by small pot shots.

One interesting little tech this deck sports is the powerful Penny trainer card, letting you bring your Roaring Moon ex back into your hand (assuming he’s not already dead). This can be very helpful after getting off a Frenzied Gouging attack.

How the Dudunsparce thing works

It’s worth taking a dive into how the Dudunsparce thing works in this deck, and why top players are building their Roaring Moon ex deck around this unorthodox draw engine.

Dudunsparce is in this deck for a few reasons. First of all, take a look at its “Run Away Draw” ability. Once during your turn, you can shuffle Dudunsparce (and all attached cards) back into your deck and draw an additional three cards. While that’s pretty cool, how exactly does this differ from other draw engines like the particularly powerful Bibarel?

Well, Dudunsparce has a few advantages that Bibarel doesn’t. First of all, this deck has plenty of draw options, meaning that your hand will often be quite full. The problem with Bibarel is that it only lets you replenish your hand up to five cards. Meanwhile, Dudunsparce isn’t limited by how many cards are in your hand, meaning you will often actually draw even more cards with its ability than you would with Bibarel’s Industrious Incisors.

The reshuffle ability with Dudunsparce is also quite strong, enabling you to use this ability over and over, often within the same turn.

Dudunsparce is like having a built in Switch

Meanwhile, the ability to pivot is another huge advantage to using Dudunsparce in this deck. Because of your reliance on the powerful Dark Patch card, you will often need your primary Roaring Moon attacker (ex or baby) to be on your bench in order to power it up for the attack.

Instead of running a bunch of switch cards like Switch cart or just basic Switch, keep Dunsparce in your active and easily switch in your Roaring Moon after evolving into Dudunsparce. Of course, don’t do this if you anticipate your Dunsparce getting picked off by an early game attacker like Cramorant.

Lastly, while this deck might not run the usual count of switching cards, it does have a Prime Catcher for those scenarios where you really need to switch out your Pokemon or your opponent’s.

Through the combination of Prime Catcher and Dudunsparce, this deck actually ends up taking an incredibly efficient card count, fitting in plenty of powerful cards in the 60 card count limit.

Is Roaring Moon ex a strong Pokemon TCG deck?

Yep. One of the strongest. Being a basic Pokemon and having the ability to OHKO anything out there as early as turn one is unparalleled in the format right now. In many ways, the cards that have come out in Temporal Forces have only made Roaring Moon ex stronger, not weaker as many had feared after losing Galarian Moltres V.

Does Roaring Moon ex have any weaknesses?

Besides the obvious answer to this question (Roaring Moon’s main weakness is to grass type Pokemon), there are a few counters you’re going to want to look out for against his deck archetype.

Roaring Moon ex can be countered by removing stadiums

First of all, Roaring Moon ex benefits greatly from having a stadium in play. Without it, Roaring Moon ex has trouble taking knockouts against many Pokemon, especially against single prize decks. Without a stadium in play, Roaring Moon ex is forced to use its Frenzied Gouging attack, causing its HP to drop drastically low. Once that HP is low, you can quickly take it out.

Lost Vacuum is a powerful card to use against this deck as it removes stadiums without having to replace it with another stadium. And because this deck list runs just three stadiums, getting rid of those three is a pretty powerful way to get Roaring Moon ex to start using its Frenzied Gouging on everything just to get a KO.

Frenzied Gouging is a double edged sword

The double-edged sword nature of Roaring Moon ex’s attack is its other main weakness. There aren’t a lot of great ways around this weakness, however giving Roaring Moon ex just a little more HP via one of the tool cards included in this deck can be quite helpful in letting it get taken out unnecessarily.

A reliance on one supporter

Lastly, Roaring Moon ex takes a lot of energies to get its attacks off, and is heavily reliant on Professor Sada’s Vitality. While Sada’s Vitality is a really strong and versatile card, needing to play it frequently removes the opportunity to play other supporters that are strong, like Iono.

Similarly, a reliance on one supporter can also reduce consistency, meaning some games no matter how hard you try you just won’t be able to pull Sada’s Vitality when you need to.

Final thoughts on this Roaring Moon ex deck

I’m really excited to be seeing Roaring Moon ex performing well competitively right now, as it is one of my favorite decks in the Pokemon TCG meta. I think this version of the deck is virtually perfect, and will help a lot more players be a lot more successful at playing this powerful and deadly dark-type Pokemon deck.

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