Toxtricity deck: the core, the flex slots, and what beats it

What this deck looks like when you open the box

Across the 19 lists we counted, this deck runs 14 to 22 Pokémon, 29 to 35 Trainers and 9 to 12 Energy. Its attacks are paid for in Darkness.

On results pages and on stream you will see it written « toxtricity-pfl ». Every card named in that label turns up in the tables below, which is what makes it a fair name for the deck.

The bit they tack on the end, « PFL », is a set code: Phantasmal Flames. They spell it out because several cards share that name, and this deck plays that particular printing.

Look at the Energy count first: 9 to 12 out of 60. No single number tells you more about how a deck breathes. A lot of Energy means it wants to load up one big Pokémon and swing hard. Very little means it lives on cheap attacks and on Trainers to dig out whatever it is missing.

It sets up fast. Toxtricity is a Stage 1 Pokémon: a Basic, one evolution on top, and you are attacking. Two cards instead of three. You lose fewer turns building, and you rebuild much more easily when an early knockout lands on you.

On the Trainer side: 10 to 15 Supporters, 14 to 20 Items, 0 to 2 Tools and 1 to 3 Stadiums. Worth saying out loud, because everyone forgets it once a tournament: you only get ONE Supporter a turn, while you can chain as many Items as you like. So a deck full of Items takes longer, louder turns than a deck full of Supporters.

How it actually wins

Toxtricity attacks with Gentle Slap for 100, and it costs 3 Energy (Darkness, Darkness and Colorless). It has 140 HP to absorb the answer. Everything else in the list is built around getting that card online.

Do the arithmetic with us, because it decides your first few turns. You attach one Energy a turn by hand. Toxtricity wants 3. With no help, that means you swing on turn 3 at the earliest. Every card in this deck that accelerates Energy or fetches a Pokémon buys back a turn on that count, and at this level a turn is a game.

Here is the detail that quietly loses games: Toxtricity has a Retreat Cost of 2. Once it is in the Active spot you are not getting it back to the Bench cheaply. Think before you send it up.

Not one ex Pokémon in the core. That is unusual, and it is a hidden advantage: every time your opponent knocks something of yours out, they take a single Prize card. Six knockouts to beat you, where a deck stuffed with ex cards can be beaten in three.

The attackers in the deck's core, with their best attack, its cost and their Weakness

Pokémon	HP	Attack	Damage	Cost	Weakness	Retreat
ToxtricityStage 1	140	Gentle Slap	100	Darkness + Darkness + Colorless	Fighting ×2	2
ToxelBasic	70	Playful Kick	20	Darkness + Colorless	Fighting ×2	1

The core: the 7 cards every list runs

These 7 cards appear in all 19 lists, without a single exception. That is 31 of the 60 slots. The other 29 are decided player by player.

This is the most useful table on the page, and nobody publishes it. Everywhere else you get one list, from one player, who won one tournament. Fine — but you have no way of telling which parts of it were the deck and which parts were that person's idea on the day. Counting 19 lists settles the question by itself: what 19 people put in their deck without talking to each other IS the deck.

A word on the count column. We give you the number that comes up most often, and where the lists disagree we give you the range instead. A card sitting at "3 to 4" is one everybody plays but whose fourth copy is up for debate. That is exactly the kind of slot you reclaim when you want to fit an idea of your own.

The code next to the name — "TWM 130" and the like — is the set and the collector number, printed at the bottom of the card. We show you the printing the lists use most often, because two cards can share a name and have completely different attacks. Check that number before you buy anything.

The cards present in every list counted, with the number of copies

Copies	Card	Printing	Kind	Rotation
3–4	Toxel	PFL 67	Pokémon	stays
3–4	Toxtricity	PFL 68	Pokémon	stays
3–4	Lillie's Determination	MEG 119	Trainer	stays
3–4	Poké Pad	POR 81	Trainer	stays
1–3	Boss's Orders	MEG 114	Trainer	stays
1–3	Night Stretcher	ASC 196	Trainer	leaves
9–11	Darkness Energy	MEE 7	Energy	stays

What changes from one list to the next

68 cards show up in some lists and not in others. The percentage tells you how many lists run each one: at 50%, half the players want it and the other half deliberately chose something else.

Do not read this table as a ranking from best to worst. A card sitting at 80% is one four players in five find useful and the fifth cut on purpose, usually because they were expecting a different field. That disagreement is worth something on its own.

Here is how to use it when you build. Take the whole core first, no arguing. Then walk down this list and stop on every card you do not understand: read its text, work out what it is answering. A card you cannot explain is a card you will misplay, even if the champion had it in their list.

And if this is your first time with the deck, build the boring version — the full core plus the most common cards from here. Understand the deck before you start tinkering with it. That order is the only one that works.

The cards some lists run and others don't, most common first

Lists running it	Card	Copies	Printing	Kind
95 %18/19	Munkidori	1–3	TWM 95	Pokémon
95 %18/19	Fezandipiti ex	1	ASC 142	Pokémon
95 %18/19	Pecharunt ex	1–2	SFA 39	Pokémon
95 %18/19	Ultra Ball	1–4	MEG 131	Trainer
95 %18/19	Energy Recycler	1–2	DRI 164	Trainer
89 %17/19	Team Rocket's Petrel	1–4	DRI 176	Trainer
89 %17/19	Air Balloon	1–2	ASC 181	Trainer
84 %16/19	Mega Darkrai ex	1–3	PBL 48	Pokémon
84 %16/19	Buddy-Buddy Poffin	1–4	TEF 144	Trainer
84 %16/19	Special Red Card	1–2	CRI 82	Trainer
74 %14/19	Dark Bell	2–4	PBL 75	Trainer
68 %13/19	Energy Switch	1–3	MEG 115	Trainer
68 %13/19	Team Rocket's Factory	1–2	DRI 173	Trainer
53 %10/19	Brute Bonnet	1	TWM 118	Pokémon
47 %9/19	Pecharunt	1–2	SVP 149	Pokémon
47 %9/19	Secret Box	1	TWM 163	Trainer
42 %8/19	Team Rocket's Watchtower	1–2	DRI 180	Trainer
37 %7/19	Team Rocket's Transceiver	1–3	DRI 178	Trainer
32 %6/19	Chi-Yu	1–2	PBL 59	Pokémon
26 %5/19	Seviper	1	PFL 62	Pokémon
26 %5/19	Enhanced Hammer	1–3	TWM 148	Trainer
26 %5/19	Janine's Secret Art	1–2	PRE 112	Trainer
26 %5/19	Lisia's Appeal	1–2	SSP 179	Trainer
21 %4/19	Tatsugiri	1	TWM 131	Pokémon
21 %4/19	Team Rocket's Sneasel	1	DRI 128	Pokémon
21 %4/19	Pokégear 3.0	2	SVI 186	Trainer
16 %3/19	Volcanion ex	2–3	JTG 31	Pokémon
16 %3/19	Meowth ex	1–2	POR 62	Pokémon
16 %3/19	Morpeko ex	1	PBL 55	Pokémon
16 %3/19	Brock's Scouting	1–3	JTG 146	Trainer
16 %3/19	Dangerous Laser	1	SFA 58	Trainer
16 %3/19	Hassel	1	TWM 151	Trainer
16 %3/19	Judge	1–2	POR 76	Trainer
16 %3/19	Prime Catcher	1	TEF 157	Trainer
11 %2/19	Latias ex	1	SSP 76	Pokémon
11 %2/19	Mega Gengar ex	1	PFL 56	Pokémon
11 %2/19	Shaymin	1	DRI 10	Pokémon
11 %2/19	Yveltal	1	MEG 88	Pokémon
11 %2/19	Grimsley's Move	2	PFL 90	Trainer
11 %2/19	Binding Mochi	1	PRE 95	Trainer
11 %2/19	Dawn	1	PFL 87	Trainer
11 %2/19	Precious Trolley	1	SSP 185	Trainer
5 %1/19	Carvanha	3	PFL 60	Pokémon
5 %1/19	Mega Kangaskhan ex	2	MEG 104	Pokémon
5 %1/19	Mega Sharpedo ex	2	PFL 61	Pokémon
5 %1/19	N's Zoroark ex	2	JTG 98	Pokémon
5 %1/19	N's Zorua	2	JTG 97	Pokémon
5 %1/19	Eternatus	1	PFL 69	Pokémon
5 %1/19	Gastly	1	POR 48	Pokémon
5 %1/19	Haunter	1	PFL 55	Pokémon
5 %1/19	N's Zekrom	1	ASC 155	Pokémon
5 %1/19	Purrloin	1	WHT 55	Pokémon
5 %1/19	Carmine	4	TWM 145	Trainer
5 %1/19	Jumbo Ice Cream	4	PFL 91	Trainer
5 %1/19	Academy at Night	2	SFA 54	Trainer
5 %1/19	Gravity Mountain	2	SSP 177	Trainer
5 %1/19	Hilda	2	WHT 84	Trainer
5 %1/19	Nighttime Mine	2	ASC 197	Trainer
5 %1/19	Perilous Jungle	2	TEF 156	Trainer
5 %1/19	Risky Ruins	2	MEG 127	Trainer
5 %1/19	Battle Cage	1	PFL 85	Trainer
5 %1/19	Cyrano	1	SSP 170	Trainer
5 %1/19	Mega Signal	1	MEG 121	Trainer
5 %1/19	Rare Candy	1	MEG 125	Trainer
5 %1/19	Switch	1	MEG 130	Trainer
5 %1/19	Unfair Stamp	1	TWM 165	Trainer
5 %1/19	Shadowy Darkness Energy	2	PBL 83	Energy
5 %1/19	Legacy Energy	1	TWM 167	Energy

What it costs to build, and how long it will last

You need 75 different cards to cover every version of this deck, 7 of which nobody argues about. We do not have card prices, so we are not going to put a number on it.

What we can tell you is where the money goes. No ex Pokémon in the core at all, which is very good news for your wallet: the expensive cards in a deck are almost always the ex ones. This deck runs no ACE SPEC card at all.

Now the question nobody asks you before you pay: how long will this deck stay legal? Of the 7 core cards, 1 carry the letter H in the bottom-left corner. That is the oldest letter still allowed in tournaments, which makes it the one that goes at the next rotation. Those 1 cards have an expiry date. We do not know what that date is — the publisher announces it and it appears in no card data — but we do know exactly which cards leave.

One last piece of old-player advice. Never build a deck card by card starting with the prettiest one. Start with the core Trainers: they are cheap, they carry over into other decks, and they are what keeps the deck running. Buy the expensive Pokémon last, once you know you actually enjoy the deck.

What this deck struggles against

The attackers in this deck are Weak to Fighting. A card with a Weakness takes DOUBLE damage from an attacker of that type. Of the decks we track, 7 attack in exactly that type.

Here is how the table below is built. The Weakness is printed on your cards, the type of the attacker across the table is printed on theirs, and the fact that this particular deck really does play that attacker is counted off its own lists. You can check every line of it with the cards in your hand.

One limit, while we are here. Weakness alone does not decide a match. A deck can double your damage and still lose because it sets up too slowly, or crush you without ever touching your Weakness. This table tells you where to look first. What settles the game sits further along.

Going the other way, your attackers are Darkness — and 20 of the decks we track have an attacker Weak to one of those. That is you doubling, for once. Second half of the table.

These pages are about the same corner of the game. If you came away from this one still wondering about something, start with one of them.