Durant

Durant
Deck Founded: 2011 (HGSS-NV)
Other Names: Durant Mill, Kevin
Top Performances: Multiple City and State Championship wins

Skeleton List

Spaces Available: 4

Strategy:
Durant has made itself probably one of the most popular common Pokemon cards you will ever find in competitive play as a main attacker. Given to us in Noble Victories, this deck highlights one of the four ways of winning the game that isn’t always at the front of people’s minds, decking the opponent out. This sometimes happens when your opponent helps you towards doing this by playing a lot of Junipers etc, but this deck actually mills your opponent of up to 4 cards per turn through Durant’s ‘Devour’ attack. This attack allows you to discard a number of cards from the top of the opponent’s deck equal to the amount of Durant you have in play, with the maximum obviously being 4. Cards like Collector, Dual Ball and Rotom will help you to get 4 Durant into play as soon as possible, even when they are in the prizes and Rotom has become the speculation of intense strategy by working out what is prized and then fishing for other resources too, not necessarily Durants. Many people dislike this deck, but it takes a very specific strategy to both play and play against, so don’t rule it out just yet and make sure you get plenty of testing against it.

Techs:
4 spaces is expected since you don’t have a lot of Pokemon in the deck, but fill up that space with a lot of time stalling trainers. This deck has a very simply and straight-forward strategy so the cards you will be adding in only really cover getting the chance of hitting 4 Durants on turn 1 even more probable. However, here are some options to get you started:

Level Ball: This card can act as another form of search when it comes to fishing out your Durant from the deck. At first, this can seem like a no-brainer to put in the deck at 4 since it can search out your Durant very easily. The only downside is that this card can become very clunky compared to the likes of Dual Ball since you can only search out a single Durant each time you play it, where Dual Ball can sometimes net you 2. It’s really up to player preference which form of search you would like to get those Durant out, I would personally choose Dual Ball because of the potentially better outcome, but if you don’t like relying on flips, then maybe Level Ball is more your style.

Alph Lithograph 4: Must seem quite strange to have this kind of card in here, but it actually makes for quite the tech for  when one or more or your Durants become prized. What this card allows you to do is simply look at all of your prize cards and then return them face down. Now, this sounds like it would be good in most decks, but with only needing to run one and the chance of drawing it being slim, only decks that run high Twins count with no Trainer lock can use it effectively, which is exactly what Durant is. What you do is Twins for this card to look at your prizes and then use Rotom’s Poke Power to put the card you know is Durant on top of your deck. This just makes it faster to find those Durants in your prizes and can also come in useful when you are looking for extra Catchers and important resources that are prized.

Black Belt: This very card allows you to become more aggressive with your Rotom’s attack, which can come in handy when your opponent only has one attacker on the board, trying to deal with your Durants and you can take full advantage of this. By using ‘Plasma Arrow’ you can deal 20 damage times the number of energy attached to the Pokemon you are attacking, which can already mount to a fair bit, but when paired with Black Belt, you can deal some serious damage. When you aren’t going to be taking prizes anyway, Black Belt is always going to be able to be used instead of your standard draw supporter for the turn, making your Rotom quite the threat without your opponent even being aware of it. If your opponent has a fully powered Zekrom, for example, plowing through your Durant, you can play down your Rotom, attacha Prism energy, play Black Belt and you’ll be hitting for 100 damage! Enough to KO it after a single Bolt Strike, so don’t count out Rotom as a great hitter, especially when paired with this card.

N: This card is always one that I would like to include in this deck for the sole reason that you can always benefit from drawing 6 cards to your opponent’s lower amount and you can stop your opponent hoarding cards like PONT to shuffle cards back into their deck. The best part about this card is why it’s included in any other deck really, that it can completely disrupt a strategy your opponent is holding in hand as well as make sure that good cards are shuffled back into the deck, ready to Devour away on the same turn. However, you also run the risk of needing to use this card when your opponent already has a pretty awful hand, which is a common risk when running this card in the first place, so keep in mind that you need to play smart with it to keep your opponent on edge when it comes to them taking their last 1 or 2 prizes.

Shaymin EX or Mewtwo EX: Both of these cards may seem strange additions to a deck that doesn’t need to take prizes, but they can come in very handy when you factor in the way you can shut an opponent down, even when they are down to their last 1 or 2 prizes. By playing the card above, N, you can limit your opponent’s hand and then make full use of either Mewtwo EX or Shaymin EX to sweep your opponent’s undeveloped field, and it works really effectively. All you need to make this work is either a Shaymin EX and regular Shaymin for Shaymin EX sweeping, since you already run Prism for the cost and a single Mewtwo EX with a Double Colourless in the deck will make sure you’re set to take down your opponent’s poor field. These cards make for great techs when you learn to play them right, but bear in mind that they will be horrible starters, so you do run the risk of giving up easy prizes if starting with them.

PokeClass Deck Analysis:
This very decklist was shown and analysed in a PokeClass Episode! If you wan’t even more explanation about the deck with further information on how it works, how to build it and more techs you can include, then watch the video below!

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