The Psychic King has awoken!

Ever since details for both M Alakazam-EX and Alakazam-EX were first revealed, the amount of potential in these cards has intrigued me greatly. This is the first Mega combination in which the basic has an ability which activates upon Mega Evolution. Kinesis places 2 damage counters onto your opponent’s Active Pokémon and 3 damage counters onto one of your opponent’s benched Pokémon, all of this happening as you Mega Evolve into M Alakazam-EX, who uses all this built up damage to take knockouts with Zen Force, which does 10 plus 30 more damage for each damage counter of your opponent’s Active Pokémon. Let’s dive in and look at a fast and efficient way of achieving this.

4-4 M Alakazam-EX and Alakazam-EX

We’re playing maximum counts of the Psychic King in this build. This allows you to draw into your attackers easily, as well as have more chances to use Kinesis to rack up the damage counters, ready for Zen Force. With the cards ready at your disposal and the right luck, you can use Kinesis a total of 11 times, which doesn’t include the use of AZ. This is more than enough times to take all six of your prizes and claim victory.

M Alakazam-EX also has a Psychic weakness, which makes it easy picking for Night March’s Pumpkaboo and possibly Mew. However, by playing smartly with our high counts of Alakazam-EX, it is actually possible to take prizes faster than your opponent can. As Night March uses low HP attackers, they fall over easily to Kinesis damage counter drops, and we all know there’s big trouble for Night March when they can’t attack anymore.

Absol

This Pokémon is amazing in a pinch. If you need to knockout a Pokémon-EX or Mega Evolution, then you will need around 4-6 damage counters to take them out in one hit, and unfortunately, this can only be achieved with 2 or even 3 Kinesis Abilities for 180 HP EXs and Megas.

Through the use of Absol’s Cursed Eyes, you can move the 3 damage counters on the bench to the Active Pokémon, knocking out anything with up to 210HP. This includes every basic EX (except Wailord-EX, the fatty), some EX with Fighting Fury Belt (Yveltal-EX, Manectric-EX, Giratina-EX, just to name a few) and certain Megas such as M Manectric-EX and M Gardevoir-EX. This one card tech raises the deck’s efficiency and saves up chances to use Kinesis for later on.

Super Scoop Up

So, you’ve Mega Evolved and knocked out a couple of your opponent’s Pokémon. Now, they have a clean board of fresh Pokémon with no damage counters, and all you can do is a measly 10 damage. Fortunately, we can use Super Scoop Up to continue bombarding our opponent’s with Kinesis and Zen Force. Just flip a heads and you can put a full line of M Alakazam-EX back into your hand, ready to re use for some more Mega Evolution.

This card also has other amazing applications, too. You can erase any damage already on your Pokémon, which is especially good for Alakazam-EX, as it and its Mega have a low 160 and 210 HP respectively. You can also pick up stray Shaymin-EX and Hoopa-EX that get stuck in the active or become delicious Lysandre targets. A good flip on Super Scoop Up can hurt your opponent so much if used properly.

Devolution Spray

This is the other way you can return M Alakazam-EX to your hand to use Kinesis once again. Compared to Super Scoop Up, the attached energy and tool stay on Alakazam-EX, saving manual attachments for other Pokémon, as well as bypassing any tool restricting effects such as Giratina-EX’s Chaos Wheel. A different way of placing damage counters with its own awesome benefits.

Tool Retriever

One day, I was running test games with this deck, Mega Evolving my Alakazam-EX and scattering my Kinesis damage counters like wildfire. However, I always wanted a way to detach Spirit Links from my Alakazam-EX without scooping them up to use on a different base. Then I remembered that Tool Retriever from Furious Fists existed, and games instantly became smoother.

With Tool Retriever, you can choose up to 2 Pokémon Tool cards attached to your Pokémon and put them into your hand. From there, you can attach them to different Alakazam-EX, ready to Mega Evolve and activate Kinesis. In combination with Devolution Spray, you will have the opportunity to use Kinesis four times with just a total of two Spirit Links in play.

There is also another nifty trick you can pull out of your sleeve with Tool Retriever, and that’s the ability to remove your opponent’s Head Ringers. These annoying Team Flare Hyper Gear cards slow you down by making your Zen Force cost more energy, which might be hard to fulfill whilst using Super Scoop Ups, as well as preventing you from attaching Spirit Links at all, forcing you to end the turn when Alakazam-EX Mega Evolves.

Dimension Valley

Zen Force costs one Psychic Energy and one Colourless Energy, so with this Stadium, you can effectively attack a whole turn earlier, which speeds up your strategy immensely. By using Dimension Valley, we can power up a new attacker every turn, whether it be a benched M Alakazam-EX ready to take the Active position later on, or a newly promoted M Alakazam-EX after the use of Super Scoop Up.

The reason you play a high count of 4 Dimension Valley is to bump your opponent’s stadium, especially Silent Lab, which stops this whole deck in its tracks. No Kinesis, no Set Up, no Scoundrel Ring and no Cursed Eyes. Without abilities, this deck will do very little damage, and your opponent will take an easy victory from you.

Mystery Energy

You can use Psychic’s Special Energy to increase the deck’s mobility. Whenever Mystery Energy is attached to a Psychic Pokémon, its retreat cost is reduced by 2, so every Pokémon this can be attached to will be given free retreat. This allows you to use Devolution Spray on an active M Alakazam-EX and still be able to easily attack by free retreating into the new M Alakazam-EX. You can also attach one to your Hoopa-EX, and just like a Float Stone, prevent it from being trapped in the Active position with its retreat cost of 2.

M Alakazam-EX is a deck that can overcome nearly any foe, even the dreaded weakness it has to Night March. With the amount of pressure you will place onto your opponent, they will have a very hard keeping up with your barrage of heavy Zen Forces. Till next time readers!

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