Luxray Blaziken FB Lv. X (2009)

When people would think about Luxray in the Diamond and Pearl TCG era they’d think of Luxray GL Lv. X almost assuredly. In fact that card’s dominance left such an iconic impact it’s the first Luxray card you’d think of regardless of era. While it’s the best print Luxray has and probably ever will ever get there are 2 more Luxray cards in the DP era that are pretty good (there were also 2 bad ones as well). The good ones would be Luxray from Legends Awakened and the one from Arceus. Both of them are really different in what makes them good but you can build a deck focused on either one as your main pokemon. Today, I’ll be showing you a deck built around the Legends Awakened Luxray and why it can be really effective against a lot of Diamond and Pearl decks from the era. First the deck list:

Luxray x4 Luxio x4 Shinx x4 Blaziken FB Lv. X x2 Blaziken FB x2 Claydol x2 Baltoy x2 Blissey x1 Chansey x2 Uxie x1 Spiritomb x4

Sunyshore City Gym x2 Luxury Ball x1 Night Maintenance x1 Switch x1 Roseanne’s Research x4 Felicity’s Drawing x4 Cynthia’s Feelings x1 Professor Oak’s Visit x1 Bebe’s Search x3

Lightning Energy x9 Call Energy x3 Fire Energy x2

Legends Awakened Luxray is one of the strongest counters to most Lv. X pokemon in the era thanks to Rivalry. This poke-body will boost its damage by a whopping 50 if your opponent has any Lv. X pokemon in play, whether in the active spot or tucked away on the bench. This increased damage applies when you hit any pokemon too, not just a Lv. X. Many of the strongest decks in the era feature Lv. X pokemon as their main cards, particularly SP decks. Imagine the decision a Luxchomp player will have to make when coming across this card. Knowing that they’ll be giving you an insane boost by just playing their main pokemon or going through the entire game without them at all. That would be a nice feeling for you right? With Rivalry in effect this turns Plasma into an impressive 90 for 2 and Shock Bolt can get a OHKO on most pokemon dealing 150.

Even without the boosts though Luxray’s attack are pretty solid an can be used together to get a 2 hit KO on most pokemon anyway. Plasma attaches a lightning energy from the discard pile to Luxray helping go for Shock Bolt next turn without having to commit your manual attachment and this helps you maintain some energy presence on your field. This card still wouldn’t be considered a fast attacker but as long as Luxray survives to use at least one Shock Bolt then it did a pretty good job. With 120 HP a fresh Luxray will usually be able to take a hit for you to get a 2 hit KO and the discarded energies won’t matter after that. The free retreat is also a great asset here and helps us get into Blaziken Lv. X easier.

With Shinx you want to run one that has 60 HP, helping you a bit against the cursed Sableye. A few other ones also have the same HP and a better 1 energy attack but the Arceus print can attack with any energy and has Swagger as a desperation option. One shiny Arceus secret rare could be included for the fourth copy as a better desperation option but I don’t recommend it because of that 50 HP.

All 3 Luxio cards in the era have something to offer with their attacks but the free retreat on the original one from Diamond and Pearl seals the deal for me. This is the best one to run overall if you ask me, dealing solid damage with its attacks while having that free retreat to get Spiritomb in the active position without losing a valuable energy attachment. Don’t even think about it twice and use this one.

Blaziken FB Lv.X is an important secondary attacker in this deck as the best counter to Dialga G Lv. X. That card is the only Lv. X Luxray can’t get any advantage from as it shuts down our poke-body. As a result, this also makes Garchomp C Lv. X in the deck a lot more dangerous offensively and defensively. Dialga G is a pokemon that aims to tank hits and then heal with Garchomp; this gives them to much of an advantage against a slower deck like ours. This also means they have more time to power up Garchomp for more Dragon Rushes and you definitely don’t want that. Luxray does have a handy resistance to Dialga which will make it harder for them to kill us too but they should still be in control thanks to the SP trainer engine. Blaziken FB is a great solution against Dialga because it kills it easy in one shot and thanks to our free retreating pokemon won’t be that hard to level up into.

In general this is a good offensive pokemon and can serve as a nice attacker in other situations too and between Jet Shoot and Plasma you can get 2 hit KOs between these attacks as well.

The regular Blaziken FB is necessary to run for the Lv. X but it’s also a pretty good card too. Luring Flame is useful to get some stalling time which our slower deck will appreciate. It’s also good to pull a Dialga your opponent will try to save from Blaziken.

Our slower deck requires Claydol for consistency and it only makes sense to run a line when we have Spiritomb in this deck too. The draw power is great and bench space isn’t too much of an issue in this deck; you may be able to even get a second Claydol out if you didn’t bench Uxie or something else.

Platinum Blissey is great because it helps Luxray with surviving that second attack so that hopefully we’re always able to attack with Shock Bolt at least once. She’s also very important as one of the few discard outlets we have in the deck, helping us discard lightning energies for Plasma to be effective. I wish I could have used Mysterious Treasures Bronzong in place of Claydol exactly for this reason but sadly its draw power just isn’t as good. It could still work but it’s also more risky. You won’t be happy to open with Chansey but at least if you do evolve into Blissey Return gives you nice draw while dealing some damage too. If Blissey gets stuck active this also helps you in digging for your Switch.

The savour card of slow decks in the era, Spiritomb is an ugly pokemon but we need to use it to stand a chance against the fast decks. It goes without saying this is your best opening pokemon and what you want active while you’re trying to evolve and get some energies on your attackers. All the extra copies can be removed with Claydol, Felicity and Blissey but running a full play set is essential to hopefully start with it. Unlike a Gengar deck, manual attachments are even more important with Luxray, so we’d rather not open with something random only to move it out of the way and burn an energy for the turn.

Pulled Punch is enough of a reason to have this Chansey as opposed to the one from Mysterious Treasures. The 10 fewer HP doesn’t make much difference here as 90 is still fantastic on her. The attack is situational, but it’s still a great move to use against Garchomp C Lv. X after it uses Dragon Rush.

If we could run 61 cards in a deck I’d have a second Switch here but of course that’s not the case. You don’t exactly need 2 or even 1 it’s just the matter of Blissey or Claydol getting stuck. Luxray and Luxio have free retreat after all.

Call Energy is fairly compatible with Luxray and besides; we need a non lightning energy on anyway to get the most value out of Shock Bolt. With 15 basic pokemon in the deck lots of copies of this card aren’t needed as much but they’re a nice insurance. You could drop one of these for a third fire energy but you don’t need to, 2 should be enough on the occasion we attack with Blaziken.

For some recovery we have the usual Night Maintenance; not too much to recover in this deck besides one of each card from Luxray’s evolution line. On a rarer scenario you may need to recover the Blaziken line and a fire energy.

The drawback with Baltoy is always starting with it but we need it for Claydol. Psychic Balance is situational but could be something useful. Realistically though, if you can you want to get Baltoy out of the way ASAP for Spiritomb.

Without the bonus draw Cynthia’s Feelings is a very average supporter, but with the bonus she becomes the best supporter in the era. Shuffling your hand to draw 8 cards is amazing, but the condition also makes it a bad supporter to have in the set up process. Some pokemon are really aggressive, but realistically you don’t want to be in a position where you’re losing prizes so easily, especially at the start of the game so you won’t be getting her full effect. For this reason I’d rather not favour her so much.

Uxie gives you some nice insurance if you don’t have much going on but can’t/didn’t quite get Claydol out yet. It’s even easier to have in this deck because we’re not too tight with bench space, especially if we don’t intent to use Blaziken FB.

Unfortunately, we don’t have space for any copies of Broken Time-Space because I want to include 2 copies of this card. Machamp isn’t that strong against evolved pokemon, but it’s still annoying for us hitting Luxray for 30 more damage due to weakness. Blissey helps us get out of that 2 hit KO range but Sunyshore City Gym is also a good solution too, acting as a counter stadium and also removing lightning resistance from certain pokemon. Broken Time-Space is such a popular stadium in the era you probably won’t miss it even if you go without it but not including it here contributes to the deck’s slowness.

Felicity is our valuable method to get some lightning energies in the discard pile while providing solid draw. Depending on the deck we’re playing against we may not need to hold onto the Blaziken line or at least the full line and other copies of Spiritomb are also cards we can get rid to thin out our deck mid to late game.

The majority of the decks I’ve featured up to this point have always included only one Bebe’s Search and some of them didn’t even run the card at all. I explain in those decks my reasoning behind that but for this deck the card is favoured heavily due to the inclusion of Claydol. With Claydol in the deck this card’s cost and trade-off doesn’t bother us that much as if we get Claydol out with Bebe, we can use its effect to draw more cards for the turn. If you burn space in your deck for Claydol but are unable to get it out in time you’re only making your deck less consistent have stuck Claydol cards in hand with no Baltoy, or Baltoy on field with no Claydol in sight.

I have only 3 trainer cards in this deck and obviously Luxury Ball has to be one of them. Your usual best way to get evolution pokemon in the era.

Roseanne has the important role of getting you basic pokemon at the start of the game but more important for this deck is making sure we always have an energy to attach every turn. We have 15 basic pokemon and 14 energies in the deck so along with Roseanne this deck should very rarely have completely unproductive turns early game. We also need to have some spare energies at the early stages of the game to discard with Felicity. Without the energy acceleration from Plasma this deck will never be able to keep up with your opponent.

And there it is, a Luxray deck in the DP era that’s not Luxray GL Lv. X. Luxray has a great advantage against the strong water decks in the era, especially against Palkia G, which also relies on a Lv. X pokemon too. Even popular decks that don’t care about your lightning type will be annoyed if their main pokemon are Lv. X enabling our immense bonus with Rivalry. I already touched upon Dialga G as the exception, but the inclusion of Blaziken FB and Luxray’s resistance to metal also give us advantages against them too. Luxray can also fair pretty okay against Gengar, being a slower deck but also because we don’t have that many trainer cards to fuel Poltergeist. We can also use Blissey to get rid of non pokemon and energies making their damage even more inconsistent. The Rhyperior deck that I showcased previously wouldn’t be considered a top deck, but it would beat Luxray easily. Even with Sunyshore City Gym, it won’t be enough to make you win. Machamp can also be annoying, particularly because it attacks with 1 energy and hits for weakness but it’s a lot more manageable compared to Rhyperior because it can’t get any OHKOs and thanks to Blissey.

This card is similar to Felicity but more forgiving, letting you draw 3 cards and then putting 1 card from your hand at the bottom of your deck instead of discarding. Nothing extreme but reliable.

2 fire energies are here for Blaziken FB but also have a role to play when attached to Luxray; avoiding a third energy discard when using Shock Bolt.

Luxray discards lightning energies with Shock Bolt but also gets them back with Plasma, so we need enough for manual attachments and early discards but don’t need to go overboard. It’s also in your best interest for Luxray’s third energy to be a non lightning one so that you only discard 2 energies after Shock Bolt. If all 3 are lightning then Luxray has to discard all of them after the attack.

Any deck with Nidoqueen will also be annoying as she easily turns most of our 2 hit KOs with Luxray into 3 hit KOs or even worse. Plus resisting Luxray if she’s attacking herself. Abomasnow spread decks will also usually be an auto loss because we can’t OHKO Abomasnow and getting to attack twice every time will eventually kill off all of our pokemon. Even Blaziken FB can’t get a OHKO hitting for weakness. Another almost impossible matchup is against GardeGallade. Gallade can get a guaranteed OHKO without trying too hard, Luxray’s worst nightmare as it makes it impossible for us to build up Shock Bolt and Gallade can do this 3 times before running out of prizes to reveal due to our fighting weakness. Well, I think that should give you a good idea of the deck’s strengths and weaknesses. Luxray certainly isn’t perfect and just like most middle decks it has plenty of even matchups, a few good ones and a few bad ones. I hope you enjoyed reading about a less infamous Luxray deck and I’ll catch you guys on the next article. Thanks for reading.