Magmortar Lv. X Typhlosion (2009)

If one is familiar with Mysterious Treasures Typhlosion, they would think it’s easy to make a Magmortar deck in the Diamond and Pearl era. “All you have to do is pair those cards with Typhlosion and you have a deck” While this isn’t entirely untrue players and deck builders that have dedicated themselves in such cards would able to tell you that no matter how you’d go about that pairing you’ll run into different problems. Trying to use a fast and thick trainer line with Rare Candies and pretending trainer lock and Spiritomb don’t exist will get you in trouble against a lot of relevant decks. On the other hand trying to go the Spiritomb route yourself or relying on Broken Time-Space to evolve your pokemon eats up too much space for this kind of deck giving you other issues. While depending on the decks you play both deck building approaches can work the reality is to have a consistent and efficient list for this deck isn’t easy. We’re trying to evolve into multiple different pokemon while trying to get fire energies in the discard pile too. Below is a list of one of the many versions I tried with this deck along with explanations for their inclusions and the appeal of Magmortar in the first place:

Magmortar Lv. X x1 Magmortar x3 Magmar x4 Typhlosion x3 Quilava x3 Cyndaquil x4 Fan Rotom x1 Uxie x2 Pachirisu x2 Spiritomb x1

Stark Mountain x1

Broken Time-Space x2

Rare Candy x2

Luxury Ball x1

Dusk Ball x1

Pokemon Rescue x1

VS Seeker x1

Night Maintenance x1

Switch x2

Roseanne’s Research x4

Felicity’s Drawing x4

Cynthia’s Feelings x1

Professor Oak’s Visit x1

Bebe’s Search x1

Fire Energy x12 Call Energy x1

This Lv.X is one of the primary reasons to use Magmortar. Flame Buster is the main attraction here; an 100 damage snipe for 4 fire energies and you also have to discard 2 of them afterwards. Costly, but accelerating fire energies for costly attacks if what our deck aims to do. So, setting the cost drawback aside and Magmortar not being able to use Flame Buster on consecutive turns, this attack is very good. 100 damage will put in the work on many pokemon and working as a snipe is beautiful. Just think of all the key pokemon on the bench you can get rid of instantly. Claydol, Uxie, Bronzong G and any other basic SP or un-evolved pokemon. When you can do this you also get to play around Fainting Spell on Stormfront Gengar buying you at least another attack before the potential worst case scenario. Torrid Wave isn’t as useful as the attack but it is a way to deal free damage on your opponent’s active pokemon through burn. If they get the tails you also deal 3 damage counters as opposed to 2.

Secret Wonders Magmortar is the perfect package of good attacks, helpful poke-body and excellent HP for just stage 1. Flame Blast will only get stronger the more fire energies we have on this card which obviously pairs with the Firestarter Typhlosion line here. What’s also neat is that you can start doing damage with it immediately and snowball into that high damage. Fireball Bazooka does 40 for 3 and 20 on two of your opponent’s benched pokemon. That totals to 80 damage if you factor the spread damage and also enables Flame Buster to KO even bigger pokemon. Last but not least getting to heal 20 damage every time you attach a fire energy from your hand make this card even harder to take down. Honestly with a different deck approach, this Magmortar card could make for nice tank.

Out of the 3 options you have, Mysterious Treasures Magmar is the best one to use, not only because of the nice 20 for 1 you can start doing immediately, but also because Flamethrower is very usable too thanks to Typhlosion. If for whatever reason we don’t have access to Magmortar, this Magmar can still be used as decent attacker if you don’t want to promote Typhlosion or Rotom.

While it could be unnecessary given how great the previous Magmortar card is, I also have the Supreme Victors Magmortar in this deck. In terms of damage, its attacks aren’t as good but they do give us some utility that could be handy. Fire Arrow is a 2 for 30 snipe, not very strong but can come up for a specific KO. Flame Ball is more useful doing 60 for 3 but also letting you conserve a fire energy on the bench which is pretty good if this card wouldn’t survive till your next turn. Its poke-power auto burns and confuses your opponent’s active pokemon which might only be good against decks that don’t have ways to retreat easily. Lastly, its retreat is slightly better so if you planned to use Flame Ball and then retreat it on your next turn for a healthier attacker you can do so more efficiently than Secret Wonders Magmortar.

Firestarter Typhlosion gives us fire energy acceleration from the discard pile and this is perfect to power up Magmortar and other pokemon easily and mitigates the costs of Flame Buster. In fact, if it wasn’t for the inclusion of this card we’d be lucky to use Flame Buster even once in a whole game. 3 copies of this card is the best number for enough consistency and be happy if you can get out and keep 2 of them on your bench during the game. Unless you didn’t get any other support pokemon down or your opponent KOed them, you won’t have the space to have a bunch of attackers and all 3 Typhlosions out most of the time. Its HP is on the lower end of stage 2 pokemon but nevertheless this can still be an additional attacker in the deck and maybe somewhat of a counter against water decks which we’re weak to. That’s because Evaporating Heat discards a water energy on the defending pokemon. Another cool thing to keep in mind is that this effect doesn’t specify basic water energies, so other random pokemon using Multi Energy, Rainbow Energy or even SP Energy will have their energies discarded.

Both of these cards are obviously ran in high numbers as the pre-evolutions of Typhlosion. It’s nice that Cyndaquil can attack for no energy and 2 for 40 is also decent on Quilava as opposed to doing something useless.

Fan Rotom is a useful tech attacker in this deck and a card only someone as dedicated on this deck as me would think of. Perhaps I’m giving myself too much credit but nevertheless Fan Rotom gives us 3 different utilities here. It is naturally a lightning pokemon, so we can use it to deal more damage to lightning weak water pokemon. Gyarados and Kingdra are the big ones and Palkia G gets killed even easier having a x2 weakness to lightning. Thanks to Fan Shift, it can also turn into a colorless pokemon during your turn meaning it can also get a OHKO on Garchomp C Lv. X. That 60 for 3 Air Slash is a magical number for these SP OHKOs. Now, obviously this card alone likely won’t be enough to deal with a through and through water deck but along with Typhlosion it at least gives us some kind of response. And its last utility is that excellent free retreat which is useful when Typhlosion only attaches energies on benched pokemon. Spin Storm is a gimmick we’ll mostly avoid but if you bounce your opponent’s pokemon early game and they don’t have any bench pokemon you win just like that, so don’t forget it exists. If you have Rotom active and can’t do much if you’re setting up, even if you don’t get the cheap win returning your opponent’s pokemon back in hand will be annoying for them and slow them down.

While I’ve tried having Claydol in this deck I’ve ultimately had to cut them out as you don’t have enough space for them in the deck especially if we get Uxie down too. This card is better though for our purposes; we don’t have much bench and deck space so Uxie can give us that great draw without needing to evolve. 2 copies insure that if you open with one or if one is prized there’s always a second option. When that happens though you’ll definitely want to use one as a decoy sacrifice so that you get some open space on the bench.

Call Energy is essentially useless on Magmortar and for this reason I don’t want to rely on it a lot on this deck. This is where Pachirisu comes in; it can give us even more basic pokemon with Call for Family and then you can start doing some damage with Smash Short. If your opponent is using tools this becomes a very solid attack making it a nice little answer to soften and annoy SP pokemon. Kingdra commonly holds Expert Belt so you’ll be able to get the bonus on that card as well, especially as a lighting type pokemon.

As usual, because I don’t like to overuse Bebe’s Search, Luxury Ball will usually be reserved to get our evolution pokemon but if you’re really desperate you can obviously get any pokemon with this card besides Magmortar Lv. X.

Most of the serious decks in D/P don’t use this stadium which makes it a good counter stadium. We don’t just have it for that though, its effect is very valid for our strategy serving as an Energy Switch you might be able to use more than once if it sticks around. Since Typhlosion can only attach fire energies on benched pokemon, getting the energies on your active pokemon can be awkward if you don’t have switch outlets or an actual Energy Switch. Stark Mountain will help us a little bit in those situations and its restrictions ensure that your opponent won’t be reaping its benefit if they’re not using any fighting or fire pokemon. Besides not being affected by common trainer lock in the format, thus making it better than Energy Switch, as a stadium we might able to use it more than once.

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.

Pokemon and energy recovery although most of the time we won’t be recovering energies. The main necessity of this card is another method to recover Magmortar Lv. X along with the rest of its pieces. However, if we’re playing against water decks then having this is a way to reuse Fan Rotom is also good.

Another risky card due to trainer lock, but the appeal is it can turn into a few different supporters given what I want and need in a situation. You can’t get this if you were to run just an extra copy of the supporters included in this deck.

Instead of third Pachirisu I include 1 Arceus Spiritomb in this deck. The trainer lock doesn’t actually hurt as that much as many of the trainer cards in this deck are meant to be used later on in the game anyway. Such examples include Pokemon Rescue, Night Maintenance and Switch. Since many of the good non SP decks are built around Spiritomb as their opener, I have the deck built to be resilient to trainer lock and rely on Broken Time-Space to evolve. For this reason Spiritomb also makes sense as I’ll be having the Quilavas anyway and Magmortar is also a stage 1 (in the tcg at least).

In this deck we need to get out a few stage 2 pokemon and our main attacker Magmortar so for fetching a lot of basic pokemon at the start of the game Roseanne is our girl. Unfortunately this card won’t be that good afterwards, especially because even if we use her to get fire energies in hand, we can’t discard them on the same turn using Felicity. Still, I decided to max her out instead of running extra copies of other supporters since she can also grab Uxie.

Speaking of Rare Candy I still run two in this deck despite all the Quilavas and Broken Time-Space. It’s good to have at least two copies of this amazing card in your deck regardless as if we don’t play against trainer lock a speedy Typhlosion with it is great. Ultimately, if Magmortar wasn’t compatible with Broken Time-Space I still would have favoured Rare Candy despite trainer lock but since it also benefits from it along with Typhlosion I had to decide that it’s better to go that approach as opposed to running 4 Rare Candies.

Obviously this stadium is extremely good at evolving our pokemon mega fast but being so good also gives us a spoiled problem. Numerous other decks will run this card in high numbers and once one of them hits the field all other copies in our deck become pointless cards. On the other hand if we don’t run it in high numbers we cut our speed if it doesn’t get played down. We do have Felicity and other cards that can remove extra copies of it from our hand but that won’t always be a good solution since we want to use that supporter to discard fire energies. Due to trainer lock though I opt to take that drawback along with the fact that we would eat up less deck space if we just favoured Rare Candies.

Switch can be handy in a lot of situations but for our deck this card is even more important to get an attacker with powered up with Typhlosion in the active position. For the same reason Stark Mountain helps moving energies Switch gives us the full green light. It’s also amazing to play around Flame Buster’s limitation so you can use that attack 2 times in a row. This alone would make us want to have a lot of these but because of trainer lock and because it doesn’t help our consistency when setting up we can’t go overboard.

Getting a pokemon in hand from your discard pile is handy especially in this deck when I don’t have Premier Ball. This card will usually be reserved to get Magmortar Lv. X but depending on the game state, it also allows you to reuse an Uxie for draw etc. Very good card.

Just like in my Electivire deck, Felicity is the most important supporter ironically. Perhaps because we don’t have many options for discard outlets in this era? Either way Felicity is essential for pitching fire energies from our hand into the discard pile for Typhlosion while giving us solid straight draw without a hand limit. She’s so good in fact that part of the reason I have VS Seeker in the deck is to almost have a fifth copy of her in the deck.

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.

Dusk Ball usually isn’t used by most serious players because it doesn’t guarantee a pokemon and will also be shut down by trainer lock. However, I like one copy in this deck and some others because we have a lot of pokemon; 24 to be exact. This gives you good enough odds to always grab something with it especially when it gives us a way to get evolution pokemon without using Bebe’s Search, a supporter card, including a Lv. X pokemon. These are the reasons why I like it.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of supporter cards that have you pay a cost only to get 1 card but if we’re not over relying on her 1 Bebe’s Search in the deck should be fine. She can also turn into a draw supporter if you use her to get Uxie but you’d rather use her to get evolution pokemon. A lot of decks in the era would play 3-4 of her only because you’d grab Claydol and then you can draw additional cards that way. So, even though you’ve spend your supporter and didn’t gain any card advantage it would balance out with draw from Claydol. From there, you can use Claydol to draw more cards every turn. Since I don’t have Claydol in this deck though, we’d rather have supporters that actually draw us multiple cards.

Magmortar can deal damage without a lot of energies but to get the best out of it and certainly to exploit the Lv. X you’ll need a lot of fire energies. We need enough so that we don’t miss manual attachments per turn and enough in the discard pile for max value with Typhlosion.

I only run one Call Energy in this deck because Magmortar can’t make very good use of it and Typhlosion can’t recover it with its poke-power. Multiple copies of this card obviously help if you must play first but they will hurt our consistency later on because they don’t synergize well with this deck. Pachirisu is just better in this deck in my opinion.

That should do it for the cool Magmortar. Water decks are going to be your biggest problems and unfortunately there are several strong ones in the D/P era. While you do have counters for them they usually won’t be favourable regardless. You also have some pairings though too, Beedrill and more importantly DialgaChomp, one of the toughest decks form the era. Gengar will always be annoying against most decks thanks to Fainting Spell but you do have the ability to play around it with Flame Buster, targeting Claydol or the Arceus Gengar if it’s on the bench. Magmortar deals very good spread as well which will also give you an edge in this match up because of all the Spiritomb they’ll likely have on the bench. With a little luck you may be able to avoid dealing with Stormfront Gengar until you’re at one or two prizes left.

LuxChomp is a pain for nearly every deck of the era unless we’re lucky enough to get the Typhlosions out instantly. If you leave unevolved Cyndaquils on the bench it’s easy prizes for them unfortunately while preventing us from accessing Magmortar’s key partner. Machamp is easy since this is an evolution deck and GardeGallade is pretty fair too as one of the slower decks. In general slow decks are acceptable for Magmortar since we’re not the fastest deck either but the complete set up of this deck will be superior to most others thanks to Magmortar’s unlimited damage output with Flame Blast and the amazing snipe of Flame Buster. For now, thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.