The Welder Scrolls: Five Decks for Atlantic City Regionals

Regardless of how you look at the current standard meta from World’s, Melbourne SPE, Sheffield, and League Cups, it is undeniable that Welder is a powerful and popular supporter. Welder is unique because it provides energy acceleration for a specific energy type while simultaneously providing moderate draw power. Welder would still see a high amount of play and success even if it drew one less card, which cannot be said for most supporters in standard format.

There are plenty of decks to build around Welder, and in this article I will be discussing 5 aggressive decks that include a playset of Welder and include lists for the first 3. 

Ability Reshizard

Ability no-Zard Welder Box

Ability Zard w/ Mew3

Mewtwo Box

Blacephalon/Naganadel

General Thoughts

Although these 5 decks all play 4 Welder, they work differently and offer their own strengths for this upcoming weekend. 

Ability Zard variants are likely the strongest in the game and are highly respected by the competitive community. Ability Zard has the potential to beat anything due to its aggression and mix of single, double, and triple prize attackers. However, Ability Zard variants rely heavily on Welder for energy acceleration and also somewhat rely on it for drawing cards. 4 Welder are the only supporters in the deck, and in a nutshell Ability Zard needs to play Welder every turn to function ideally. 

Mewtwo Box is the other deck I’d personally say is in contention for best deck in the format. Mewtwo Box offers an array of attacks, both technical and powerful, which allows players to adapt to different matchups and situations. Mewtwo Box does run into some clunkiness and awkward prizing in my opinion, and I chalk this up to the several one-of tech Pokémon and relatively low count of energy when comparing to other Welder decks. While Mewtwo Box runs off of a Welder engine, this archetype can succeed without using Welder turn after turn from the start. Mewtwo Box can suffice off of using a Welder to start out and then using Turbo Strike in the off turns, or just snowballing the game off of two Welders straight off the bat. 

Blacephalon-GX/Naganadel is surprisingly solid in the current meta due to its favorable prize trade with tag teams, alternate energy acceleration, and draw support from Naganadel-GX. It is still a very linear archetype, but I have found it to be a better deck than I have previously given it credit for in this meta. I think it’s poor Malamar matchup is scary going into AC, but it’s ability to blow up anything in its way is quite enticing. So why play Blacephalon over Mewtwo or Ability Zard? Due to Beast Ring and Naganadel’s Charging Up, Blacephalon can manage to win games without ever using Welder and completely run away with games when Welder does show up. 

Ability Zard

This is the list I have personally been testing for Ability Zard. Some players have been cutting the Reshizard to make room for more single prize attackers; I value keeping both the Reshizard and the Heatran-GX in the list. The Reshizard is useful for its high HP that can survive in the active for a turn often and its Double Blaze GX which can do 300 damage and swing through effects. While your single prize attackers can also reach high damage outputs, they won’t survive for more than one attack most of the time. Heatran-GX is a nice middle ground between Reshizard and your single prize attacking options since it often messes up the prize race with its 2 prize card bounty instead of 3 and has an efficient attack that costs 3 energy and deals 130 damage. Steaming Stomp is mostly used against opposing single prize attackers and Malamars since Heatran-GX can withstand two hits from Giratina LOT.  

The second Baby Blown (Blacephalon UNB) has been insane in my personal testing since I am playing 4 Fire Crystal and 17 Fire Energy. There have been plenty of games where I attack with all 4 of my single prize attackers and then finish with a double blaze from Reshizard. I have seen lists that include a second Turtonator where I include the second Baby Blown, but I have a hard time getting behind second Turtonator. Turtonator needs energy established on your board already going into your turn to ever reach over 150 damage, which is fine if you swung with a Reshizard last turn and it survived. But, Baby Blown can come into a board with zero energy on it, Welder and then attach for turn and then blow up whatever your opponent has active if you can get energy into your hand. In this build of the deck it is much easier to get energy into your hand than it is to get energy onto your board in any of these variants in my opinion. 

I have tried Baby Blown focused decks, from Green’s Baby Blown to Baby Blown with Pidgeotto and Jirachi to Ability Zard skeleton with 3 or 4 Baby Blown in it. In my experience, Baby Blown doesn’t work on its own because you run out of Fire Crystals or you get Reset Stamped and don’t have enough resources to pull of powerful attacks with Baby Blown anymore. In this list, it is powerful and useful but not overdone to create a potential weakness. 

Is 17 Fire energy correct? I think you’ll get a lot of different answers ranging from 13-18 on how much energy to run if you asked a dozen different players. You could run less and another Fiery Flint since you are running 4 Fire Crystal, but then Victini Prism Star caps at a lower damage output. You could take Victini Prism out then, but I think that is one of the worst decisions you can make when building this archetype since Victini Prism is so powerful in recycling your energy and doing a potentially absurd amount of damage at the same time. Access to an attacker like that is definitely worth the slot. I’ve had to make cuts to the list to fit this much energy in, but the deck functions how I want it to more often than not. 

The important cards I’ve cut that would go back in if I had the room include 3rd Vulpix and 3rd Switch. 

I think the lists with more single prizers will run into issues due to their attackers having little longevity on the board, and the more GX centric lists will suffer in the prize-trade to single prize focused versions and Blacephalon-GX. It is a classic debate between tempo and power. 

Welder Box

I won’t be going into too much detail on this list since I covered my thoughts on the variants of Ability Zard earlier, but I do have some input. At a glance I thought the list had some obvious flaws but of course it could just be my personal preferences getting in the way. So far, I tested a handful of games with this exact list and I haven’t been impressed yet. I have been short on energy in every game played so far, and I have missed the sustainability of Reshizard. I don’t understand the inclusion of two Turtonator when you don’t have much hope of energy staying on the board to go into Explosive Jet on the following turn. 

I don’t only have negative things to say though. On paper at least, this list should destroy Blacephalon/Naganadel between the single prizers and the inclusion of Tapu Fini. The onslaught of single prize attackers should also be effective versus Green Zard and Mewtwo Box since they struggle with continuous single prizers that have the capability to one-shot tag teams. The things that bother me the most about this list are the two Turtonators and the low damage cap for Victini Prism. 

Ability Zard w/ Mew and Mewtwo Package

If there weren’t single prize heavy lists running around then I think I would like this variant a lot more. This includes Mewtwo & Mew GX for the diversity of Charizard GX HIF and Magcargo GX. This list includes more GX Pokemon and more Pokemon in general, so it can have odd hands and draws. Because of Mew3’s ability to copy Charizard GX HIF’s GX attack which is 300 damage for 4 energy, you can miss Welder either turn 1 or 2 and still swing for 300 turn 2. You cannot do this with “classic” Ability Zard as Reshizard needs 6 energy to swing 300. This is huge if your concern about Ability Zard is needing Welder almost every turn from the start of the game. If you are playing against a tag team deck, you can easily win turn 3 if your game plays out with Turn 2 copy Flare Blitz and Turn 3 copy Magcargo-GX’s Lava Flow. 

AC and Cologne Regionals

I think the 5 decks I discussed in this article are some of the best selections for the upcoming weekend of Regionals. My personal favorites out of these 5 decks are Mewtwo Box and the Ability Zard w/ Mewtwo. My top choices as of writing this article are Psychic Malamar and Mewtwo Box. I’ll be back later this week with more thoughts on the meta. Thank you for reading!