The first Pokémon that you have the chance to battle with in the Pokémon video games leave an indelible mark on your memory. The same Pokémon also often hold a cherished place in the Pokémon Trading Card Game. In the Scarlet & Violet—151 expansion, classic Kanto first partner Pokémon Evolutions Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise return as Pokémon ex that are not only fun to collect—but are also potent in battle. This latest TCG rendition of the classic trio feels as fresh as ever!

We’ve rounded up three Pokémon TCG experts and put their deckbuilding skills to the test with Venusaur ex, Charizard ex, and Blastoise ex. Let’s explore how to build three intriguing decks that could start you down your path to the peak of TCG play.

At first glance, Venusaur ex may seem like a garden variety card, but with some savvy deck building, it could end up earning its laurels. The key to success is to identify and enhance the strengths of this Pokémon. Venusaur ex has a huge amount of HP, which makes it difficult for an opposing Pokémon to Knock it Out in one hit. In fact, this Pokémon is all about sustainability. When Venusaur ex is in the Active Spot, Tranquil Flower heals 60 damage from one of your Pokémon in play. If you target Venusaur ex with this Ability every turn, it could be on the battlefield taking Prize cards with its Dangerous Toxwhip attack for a very long time. Let’s take a look at a list that will enable Venusaur ex to blossom.

For Venusaur ex to take root on the battlefield, the importance of Rare Candy cannot be overstated. This Item card expedites the Evolution of Bulbasaur into Venusaur ex by skipping a stage of Evolution. Digging up a Rare Candy from the deck is a bed of roses with the Arven Supporter card. Using Professor’s Research, Iono, or Bibarel’s Industrious Incisors Ability to draw cards also increases the chance for players to find a Rare Candy when they need it. An alternative to Bibarel is Dodrio from the Scarlet & Violet—151 expansion. Dodrio’s Zooming Draw Ability can be used to draw an extra card each turn, and its Ballistic Beak attack is a cheap way to Knock Out a Pokémon with low HP in one hit or to land the finishing blow on a Pokémon ex or Pokémon V after a Dangerous Toxwhip.

This deck also includes a few ways to nurture Venusaur ex once it is in play. The Leftovers Tool card provides healing, as do the Abilities of Radiant Tsareena and Oricorio. With help from Switch, Escape Rope, and Big Air Balloon, players can even make use of the Tranquil Flower Ability of two Venusaur ex in one turn. That is up to 180 damage healed in a single turn! Dangerous Toxwhip may also prevent the opponent from taking Prize cards. When a Pokémon is Confused, their attack comes down to a coin flip. Even if they flip heads, V Guard Energy remains as a thorn in their side. Players may choose to branch out to a more offensive build with Radiant Hisuian Sneasler instead of Radiant Tsareena.

During Pokémon TCG battles, there is rarely time to just stop and smell the roses. The opponent will be launching attacks as soon as they can, so Venusaur ex needs to be set up quickly to attack, too. That’s why this list includes Forretress ex. By using its Exploding Energy Ability to green the board with Grass Energy, players can ready Venusaur ex to attack with Dangerous Toxwhip on as early as the second turn of the game. Unfortunately, the cost of this strategy is two Prize cards because Forretress ex Knocks itself Out in the process. To mitigate this, the deck has four copies of Iono, which is both a reliable draw supporter and a means to disrupt the opponent. The more Prize cards the opponent has taken, the more powerful Iono becomes.

To flourish, this deck relies on a bunch of different Pokémon. It should be no surprise, then, that there are multiple copies of Item cards that search for them. Ultra Ball, Nest Ball, and Battle VIP Pass are staples of many competitive decks. In this deck, however, there are also two copies of Artazon…and not just because of its floral aesthetic. Artazon provides an additional way to sow the seeds for an attack on turn two by enabling players to put an essential Basic Pokémon, like Bulbasaur or Pineco, into play on the first turn of the game. This Stadium has a similar effect to Nest Ball and can be used by the opponent, so why not play four copies of Nest Ball instead? Unlike Nest Ball, Artazon can counter the opponent’s Path to the Peak, which removes the Abilities of Venusaur ex, Forretress ex, and Radiant Tsareena. That kind of effect is guaranteed to make any Venusaur ex player turn green. Stay on the path to greatness by using Artazon and Worker.

Venusaur is number three in the Pokédex, but I hope it is now number one on your list of Pokémon from the Scarlet & Violet—151 expansion to take to the battlefield. Homegrown decks are often the most fun and rewarding to play, so I encourage you to use this list as a source of inspiration to build your own deck. When choosing your cards, make sure you consider your local metagame. This list includes Manaphy to protect Pokémon on the Bench from Radiant Greninja and Ivysaur in case the opponent uses Banette ex to block the use of Rare Candy. Greninja and Banette ex are both commonly played at Pokémon Leagues on my home soil. If this does not apply to you, consider replacing them with Mew to boost the consistency of the deck.

Natalie says: Ellis’s deck looks very frustrating to play against. The combination of Venusaur ex’s high HP, its Tranquil Flower Ability, Oricorio’s Ardent Dancing, and Radiant Tsareena’s Elegant Heal will make Knocking Out a Venusaur ex a very difficult task for your opponent. I really like how the Supporter line of this deck is constructed, with only one copy of Boss’s Orders and mostly supporters to find other cards. This is a setup-based deck, so cycling through cards to find all the pieces is very important!

Stéphane says: Venusaur ex is a card I appreciate a lot; I think decks that rely upon big tank Pokémon are really cool. I think Ellis did a good job building a deck around its strengths (I was unsure about Leftovers, but I think they might have a spot in this deck!), although I have to wonder whether Forretress ex is worth it. It’s certainly the easiest way to attach Energy to a Grass-type Pokémon, but giving up two Prizes might be too big a sacrifice in this kind of deck. I wonder if a slower approach, maybe using Klefki to delay the opponent’s setup, could be worth it here. Gardenia’s Vigor is also an option, though it’s not very reliable since it only draws two cards.

Blastoise ex functions so differently from almost every other Blastoise we’ve had! Usually, Blastoise will sit on the Bench and help you with your Energy attachments, but Blastoise ex from Scarlet & Violet—151 has the potential to be your main attacker. The Solid Shell Ability makes Blastoise ex take 30 less damage from attacks, which goes really nicely with its massive 330 HP. However, the main reason to play Blastoise ex is its attack. For only 2 Water Energy, Twin Cannons lets you discard up to 2 Basic Water Energy from your hand and do 140 damage for each one you discard. This attack caps out at 280 damage, which is well above what you would normally expect for only 2 Energy. With a deck playing Blastoise ex, you want to have an engine which can easily find enough cards to allow you to use Twin Cannons for its full effect every turn.

Because the Twin Cannons attack requires you to discard 2 Energy cards from your hand every turn, we want to fill the rest of the deck with cards that can continuously replenish our hand. While we can use Supporter cards for this, instead I decided to play the Kirlia engine. Kirlia has the Refinement Ability, which lets you discard a card from your hand to draw 2 cards. By itself, this doesn’t do much, but we can get multiple Kirlia into play and use one Refinement for each Kirlia! Kirlia also evolves into Gardevoir, which has the Shining Arcana Ability. Shining Arcana lets you look at the top 2 cards of our deck, attach any Basic Energy we find there to our Pokémon, then put the rest of the cards into your hand. This Ability is very crucial for our deck; it is rare to consistently find Water Energy in your Shining Arcana, but it is nice when you do. However, the main selling point of Shining Arcana is that it lets you put 2 cards into your hand without forcing you to discard. When I tried this deck out, I found that having to discard a card for Refinement would force you to lose crucial resources, so having a draw outlet that doesn’t discard was nice.

I chose to include both the Squirtle and Wartortle from Pokémon GO instead of Scarlet & Violet—151. While the Squirtle from Scarlet & Violet—151 has a decent attack in Withdraw, only having 60 HP in a world of Sableye’s Lost Mine just didn’t cut it. The Wartortle from Scarlet & Violet—151 had the opposite problem, it had too much HP! The Free Diving attack could be useful sometimes, but having 100 HP makes it unsearchable by Level Ball, so I instead chose to play the Pokémon GO version, which has 90 HP.

The rest of the Pokémon are just to help you set up and protect your board. We play one Mew to hide behind in the early turns. Mew’s Mysterious Tail Ability lets you look at the top 6 cards of your deck and add any Item card there into your hand. This is helpful early on to find copies of Battle VIP Pass, which is the main engine for this deck. There is also a Radiant Greninja; while we do want to keep Energy cards around for the Twin Cannons attack, it is still nice to have the option to cash them in for extra cards with Concealed Cards. I also included Manaphy to protect you from an opposing Radiant Greninja and its Moonlight Shuriken attack.

The Supporter cards are where this deck gets really interesting. Having four Iono is natural for a Stage 2 deck, as you typically will fall behind, but instead of extra draw Supporters, I’ve included three Raihan. Blastoise ex has a bit of an awkward attack cost: it is difficult to attach two Water Energy to it in one turn. Raihan helps with this, and it also helps find whatever you want from your deck. Raihan is perfect here—most of your early Pokémon will get Knocked Out, so it will always be online. I chose to round out the Supporter cards with a Boss’s Orders. While Boss’s Orders doesn’t really work well with the rest of the deck, bringing up one of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon to the Active Spot is so powerful that it’s typically worth including at least one copy.

Only three Rare Candy are included in this deck because you aren’t under much pressure to get your Stage 2 Pokémon out immediately on the second turn. This deck also has a very high count of all its Stage 1 Pokémon, so you can easily evolve up through Wartortle or Kirlia. Rare Candy is still a great card, but the extra copies often just get pitched to Refinement in this deck.

To search for and recover Pokémon, I added three Super Rod. Because this deck has two Stage 2 lines in it, so many Pokémon will be quickly sent to the discard pile that you will want to instantly recover them. There are four copies of Battle VIP Pass, three Level Ball, and two Ultra Ball to help find Pokémon throughout the game. While Ultra Ball is the only way we have to find Blastoise ex and Gardevoir (outside of Raihan), the cost of discarding 2 cards is often too great to justify playing more than two copies. There are also two copies of Artazon, both for finding Basic Pokémon and bumping problematic Stadium cards. Lastly, I chose to play the full four copies of Energy Retrieval. Energy Retrieval synergizes perfectly with this deck, letting you recover exactly 2 Basic Water Energy to fulfill the discard requirement of Twin Cannons.

Before we finish, I would like to go over a little trick you can pull off with this deck involving Gardevoir and Super Rod. If you get to a point where you have no cards in your deck and you need to power up a Blastoise ex, you can use Super Rod to put 3 Water Energy back into your deck. Then, you can use Shining Arcana, which should guarantee that the cards you see off Shining Arcana are Water Energy that you can attach with the effect. This lets you power up a Blastoise ex and play a Supporter card that isn’t Raihan in the same turn! You can also use this to get 3 Energy on your Radiant Greninja, going from nothing to a Moonlight Shuriken in one turn. This gives your deck much more flexibility, as you are able to threaten with attacks you normally would be unable to use.

Blastoise ex is a ton of fun! Once you get your Blastoise ex Active and attacking, its shell protects it from almost all one-hit Knock Outs, and its Twin Cannons let you wash away anything in your path!

Ellis says: Most of the Blastoise ex decks that I have seen feature Palkia VSTAR and Bibarel. Natalie’s deck is on a completely different wavelength. Using Kirlia’s Refinement and Gardevoir’s Shining Arcana to create the situation described with Super Rod by drawing loads of cards each turn, is a genius plan. It brings a sense of calm and control to Blastoise ex, which otherwise reads as explosive and reckless. The deck seems to rely on low HP Pokémon in the early- and mid-game. If Manaphy is in your Prize cards, one or two Moonlight Shuriken from an opposing Radiant Greninja could be catastrophic. The addition of a Hisuian Heavy Ball could calm the waters.

Stéphane says: I like what Natalie has been doing with Blastoise ex. Raihan is, I think, a strong Supporter in this deck. I think the deck could be even better with a couple copies of Irida in there, since it’s a versatile card that can find the important Blastoise ex + Rare Candy combination, as well as other key Items like Energy Retrieval. I’d also add at least one Switch or Escape Rope to make sure our support Pokémon won’t end up stuck in the Active Spot if the opponent plays Boss’s Orders!

As you might expect from its design or its history in the Pokémon TCG, Charizard ex isn’t exactly the most subtle card out there. It does one thing, but it does it well: incinerate the opponent’s Active Pokémon. For only one Fire Energy, it can do an impressive 160 damage with Brave Wing; and for four Fire Energy, it can KO any Pokémon in the Standard format with Explosive Vortex. This power comes at a cost, however—discarding 3 Energy from Charizard ex. This isn’t an attack that can be used every turn, but if the opponent is also relying on powerful, high-HP Pokémon, Charizard ex can deal with any of them in only one attack!

Charizard ex also has a huge advantage over Venusaur ex and Blastoise ex: it’s already a powerful deck! While I’ve been tasked with building a deck around the new Charizard ex from Scarlet & Violet—151, it’s impossible to ignore the Darkness-type Charizard ex from Scarlet & Violet—Obsidian Flames, which is already a popular competitive archetype. But don’t think that the two cards are in competition, though! We can build a deck using both as they have synergy together: Infernal Reign is a great way to put enough Energy on the new Charizard ex to use Explosive Vortex, and while the new Charizard ex’s Brave Wing is a nice early game attack, the other Charizard ex’s Burning Darkness becomes incredibly powerful as the game goes on.

Of course, since we can only play four cards total with the name Charizard ex, we’ll have to split them: two copies of each seems like an acceptable compromise. There are also multiple Charmander and Charmeleon in the format, and it’s important not to choose which ones to play at random. The best ones are the Charmander from Scarlet & Violet—151 for its higher HP and usable first attack, and the Charmeleon from Scarlet & Violet—Obsidian Flames because it can do 70 damage for 2 Energy, which can KO a Mimikyu. In order to play Charizard ex quickly, we’ll need Rare Candy, but we’ll also need ways to search for  it. Mew and Arven are both ways to search for powerful Item cards. Not only can they find Rare Candy when we need it, but they can also help us get other powerful Item cards, such as Battle VIP Pass, on the first turn of the game.

With all this, we have a strong foundation to build our deck around. Here’s what I came up with:

As you can see, I chose to include a line of Pidgeot ex. Charmander and Pidgey, together in a deck: doesn’t that make you feel like you’re walking Kanto’s Route 1 again? (Not me! I was a Bulbasaur fan.)

People who have played the Pokémon TCG for a long time may experience nostalgia when they recognize its Quick Search Ability from Pidgeot in the FireRed & LeafGreen expansion, which used to dominate competitions almost twenty years ago. But Pidgeot ex is not here for nostalgia purposes. In most games, setting up Pidgeot ex should be your priority in the early game; then, each turn, you can search your deck for whichever card you need, such as additional Rare Candy to evolve your Charmander into Charizard ex.

Note that the new Pidgey from Scarlet & Violet—151 also has the very useful Call for Family attack if you happen to start with it.

Also, since we’re already playing Arven, I added Forest Seal Stone for even more consistency. You can get that card from your deck thanks to Arven, then attach it to Lumineon V or Entei V and get any card you need (again, Rare Candy is a common target), once per game. Note that I’ve also added Choice Belt and Vitality Band: the former will add more damage but only against Pokémon V while the latter gives a smaller but more consistent bonus. Thanks to Arven and Pidgeot ex, you can choose which one you need more in any given game.

The rest of the Trainer line is mostly consistency cards like Iono, Artazon, and Ultra Ball. Strong staples like Boss’s Orders that target Benched Pokémon are also included, and Super Rod is there to recover cards from the discard pile. Speaking of the discard pile, I also added a couple Magma Basin to the deck to recover discarded Energy. Magma Basin can attach a second Energy to Entei V so it can be charged up in one turn, but it can also put an Energy and damage counters on Charizard ex to unlock the extra damage from Brave Wing. If Magma Basin is in play, don’t hesitate to use its effect every turn. Remember that it can only power up Fire-type Pokémon, though, so you can’t use it to attach an Energy to the Darkness-type Charizard ex! Also, having more Stadiums in the deck is generally good in order to counter Path to the Peak, a powerful and popular choice that shuts down some of our more important Abilities. If your opponent is playing that card, keep your Stadiums in hand to replace Path to the Peak when it’s in play.

There are multiple other cards you could choose to include or exclude from the deck. For example, you could use other Basic attackers like Delphox V and Radiant Charizard, or remove Pidgeot ex from the deck and add more Mew or a Bibarel line to reduce your susceptibility to Path to the Peak.

You could even choose to run the Charizard from Pokémon GO, which doubles the amount of Energy attached. With it, you would only need 2 Fire Energy to use Explosive Vortex! While that option is nice in theory, it requires you to evolve one more Charizard. In most situations, it will be both easier and more effective to simply evolve Charmander into the Darkness-type Charizard ex and use Infernal Reign to get the Energy needed into play. That said, I hope you can appreciate the novelty of being able to run up to four different Charizard cards in a single deck!

Ellis says: This deck reminds Stéphane of Kanto’s Route 1, but I get Cinnabar Island vibes because it is hot suff. I particularly like the inclusion of Jet Energy. In a roundabout way, this Special Energy card helps to unlock the full potential of Charizard ex’s Brave Wing attack. Attach Jet Energy to Pidgeot ex to move it into the Active Spot, then use Magma Basin to power up a Charizard ex on the Bench. Follow this with a retreat (for free) by Pidgeot ex, and finish with a Brave Wing for 160 damage. Note that Pidgeot ex can use Jet Energy to satisfy the attack cost for Blustery Wind, which means the attachment also prepares it to attack in later turns. Charizard ex’s Brave Wing is a cheap way to take Prize cards against decks like Lost Box or Gardevoir that have loads of low-HP Pokémon. Perhaps this deck could have included more copies of Professor’s Research or a Radiant Greninja to discard Fire Energy for use with Magma Basin. Either way, it is fire!

Natalie says: One of my favorite aspects of the Pokémon TCG is how different cards that feature the same Pokémon can interact with each other. Stéphane’s deck showcases this with the Charizard ex from Scarlet & Violet—Obsidian Flames being able to use its Infernal Reign Ability to power up the Charizard ex from Scarlet & Violet—151. While these are technically two different Pokémon cards, they evolve from the same Charmander and thus can be easily played in the same deck together! I like how focused Stéphane’s deck is on that early Stage 2, with four Rare Candy, Mew, Arven, and Forest Seal Stone to consistently find that Turn 2 Pidgeot ex.