This deck is inspired by the old Mega Altaria-Greninja deck, and the current Dark Greninja deck.
I have always been bothered the fact that you can't attack with Greninja in either of those decks due to the mismatched energies. Wouldn't it be great if there's a powerful water attacker who can take the place of Mega-Altaria or Darkrai / Mega Absol?
The new water deck of the season have shown us that there is one: Chienpao
Combining Chienpao with Chingling and Greninja gives us the following deck list:
- 2x Froakie (Water Drip)
- 2x Greninja
- 2x Chingling
- 1x Chienpao ex
- 2x Pokeball
- 2x Rare Candy
- 2x Rocky Helmet
- 2x Inflatable Boat
- 2x Professor's Research
- 1x Cyrus
- 2x Copycat
Unfortunately I didn't keep a good record of my win rates this season. It did certainly felt better than my other two homebrew decks though: Aegislash and Cursola-Dusknoir.
I'm guessing the average win rate for it would be sub-50%, but it shouldn't be lower than 40%.
How to play it:
The way to approach it in early game is the same as the meta Chingling-Greninja decks: use Chingling to control your opponent's board while building up pokemons on the bench.
With 3 water basics, the odds of starting with not-Chingling is high, hence the 2 copies of Inflatable Boat for free retreat into Chingling.
Mid game is where a key decision may have to be made: whether to attach an energy to Greninja. Remember that in this deck, Greninja can be used as an attacker. It is decently strong, capable of 80 damage in a single turn. However, that would mean one more turn is required to charge your Chienpao up.
If you make it to the late game - before anyone concedes - that's where you'd witness the true power of this deck: 170 damage to anywhere on the board. That's enough damage to take down a benched Mega Absol, or a Mega Altaria that has taken damage from Rocky Helmet or Greninja ping one turn prior, in one shot!
Notable exclusions from this deck:
Starting Plains - with 3 permanent basics, this stadium seems like a good idea. Unfortunately, in the current meta, your opponent would likely run some of their own: Oricorio, Chienpao, Suicune. The hp buff is a double-edge sword, potentially putting your opponent's pokemons out of KO range. Run a bunch of pokemon tools instead.
Cryogonal - Makes going first an auto-lose. Also, in this deck, you've got to make every energy count. Attaching one to Cryogonal slows down your Chienpao way too much. Run Chingling instead.
One card I am unsure of is Cyrus. Cyrus is usually used to finish off a key injured pokemon, but this role has effectively been taken up by Chienpao.
However, a timely ping + Cyrus in the early game can disrupt your opponent's board devastatingly.
I'd say replace Cyrus with Red Card or Guzma depending on the situation.
Hope this makes for a more varied battling experience for you, if you were to try this deck out. How has your ranked climb been?
