Temporal Forces Prerelease Strategy Guide

Miraidon and Koraidon are your strongest attackers to build your Temporal Forces prerelease deck around.

Pokemon TCG prereleases are always the cause for a lot of celebration for players. But they can also be a little intimidating. How do you know what cards you are going to get? Will you be able to put together a solid deck in a short time frame?

Luckily, we played at a Temporal Forces prerelease over the weekend and got a pretty good overview of what the various strategies are. They center around the four promos officially revealed by the Pokemon Company.

What’s included in the Temporal Forces prerelease build and battle decks?

Each Temporal Forces prerelease Build and Battle kit includes actually two of the strategies you see above, and they are arranged at random. While this does make up for a lot of variety in game play, the only problem is that there isn’t a ton of synergy between the two different strategies. For example, my deck had the Metang and Koraidon. However, Metang is all about accelerating metal energy, but Koraidon and his Ancient Pokemon pals don’t use metal energy. That left me scratching my head a bit about which one to lean into. I tried going with both – ancient Pokemon and the Metang strategy which requires a high energy count, and it didn’t work out. It would have been much stronger to just roll with the Koraidon gimmick. After all, for only two energies he hits pretty hard.

Primordial Beatdown may not seem like a huge attack at first, but it’s deceptively good. In fact, it hits for about 180 if you an get your bench stacked with Ancient Pokemon. That shouldn’t be too hard to do as the deck itself comes with plenty and you are likely to pull some more, like the powerful Roaring Moon single prize card that’s coming out in Temporal Forces.

Which Temporal Forces prerelease deck is best?

The best deck is the strategy that centers on Miraidon. If you can manage to get Miraidon out turn one, you should have no problem dismantling just about any strategy you face. Miraidon itself has excellent energy acceleration and also hits for a 160, which is strong enough to take out about anything that you’ll face in a prerelease (unless your opponent pulled a gnarly Pokemon ex).

Second strongest is the Koraidon build, but you really want to focus on just Koraidon and his Great Tusk single prize backup as they are going to be your strongest cards. You can probably leave out whatever other strategy the deck comes with and use whatever you find in your four Temporal Forces booster packs to boost your Koraidon/Ancient Pokemon play.

How do Feraligatr and Metang work?

Feraligatr and Metang are thet two weaker promo cards that the decks get built around, and really if you have Koraidon or Mairaidon you don’t need them. Metang focuses on accelerating energies with its ability. And while that’s okay enough, it can be a little tricky to pull that evolution line together in a prerelease format that favors fast decks with basic Pokemon. Once you do get him rolling, his Stage 2 Metagross evolutions does have aa strong attack that can be used to take out really tough Pokemon (dealing 200 damage) although it takes four energies, two of which you must discard to use the attack.

Metagross has another attack that you can use for just one metal energy, however. While only dealing 60 damage at first, it gains an additional 60 damage each subsequent turn, making it a decent attacker for prerelease.

Meanwhile, Feraligatr is equally challenging to get out, although you can combine it with Relicanth to do a lot of damage for just one energy (Relicanth lets you use any attack from previous evolutions and Feraligatr’s ability lets you pack on extra damage to those attacks), you’re going to struggle once again to get that attack off if you’re facing down a Koraidon or Miraidon who can start knocking you out turn two.

Of course, you have a lot of options to customize your prerelease deck, and whatever you choose to do, the point of the Temporal Forces Prerelease is not just to win but to have fun playing with the new cards and hopefully pull some really cool looking Pokemon cards. My best was Gouging Fire ex (although I pulled that after the event).

For more info on building the ultimate prerelease deck, see our Pokemon prerelease tips and tricks, or get your own Temporal Forces Build and Battle deck via the link below!