A Strategy with No Weakness

By Kim Cary

The EX Dragon Frontiers expansion has many Pokémon with something extra—extra abilities to help your deck, like Bench shielding, attack boosting, damage avoiding, deck searching, and more. This article focuses on powerful ex Pokémon with something missing: Weakness! Powerful Pokémon are often balanced by Weakness—even double Weakness, in some cases—but Dragonite ex δ (#91) and Flygon ex δ (#92) are 150 HP Pokémon with no Weakness at all! This means no particular Pokémon type will have an advantage over either of these two Pokémon.

Dragonite ex δ is a Grass Pokémon, which are often weak to Fire or Psychic Pokémon, but as a Delta Species, it has neither Weakness nor Resistance. How interesting! With 150 HP, it’s going to take a lot of damage to send this one to the discard pile.

 

Dragonite ex’s big attack, Dragon Roar, costs 2 Grass and 2 other Energy in order to put 8 damage counters on the Defending Pokémon. Putting counters, as opposed to doing actual damage, gets it past the Grass Resistance of Pokémon like Steelix ex (EX Unseen Forces, #109). Dragon Roar also puts any extra damage counters not needed to Knock Out the Defending Pokémon on your opponent’s Benched Pokémon in any way you like. So, when you use Dragon Roar against a Pokémon with only 30 HP left, you can put 5 counters on a Benched Pokémon that has only 50 HP or less and thus Knock Out a second Pokémon as well. This is a very efficient attack.

Dragonite ex has an even better attack with Deafen, which does 40 HP damage for only 2 of any Energy and prevents your opponent from playing non-Supporter Trainer cards on his or her next turn. You can use Deafen to keep your opponent from setting up with Master Ball or attaching a Pokémon Tool or from using Holon Transceiver. The best use of Deafen may be to lock in your own Stadium card that then can’t be blown away with Windstorm or countered with another Stadium. Some good choices: Crystal Beach (EX Crystal Guardians, #75) is devastating to decks that use Special Energy. Battle Frontier (EX Emerald, #75) stops certain Poké-Powers and Poké-Bodies. And Holon Legacy (EX Dragon Frontiers, #74) disables Poké-Powers for Delta Species Pokémon. So, choose your Stadium and play it because there’s very little your opponent can do to get rid of it. (A hint if you ever need to get around Dragonite ex’s Deafen attack: Tauros, EX Crystal Guardians, #12.)

Flygon ex δ (EX Dragon Frontiers, #92) is a Psychic type. Psychic Pokémon often have Weakness to Psychic Pokémon, but not this Delta Species dragon! Flygon ex’s Sand Damage Poké-Body let you put 1 damage counter on each of your opponent’s Benched Basic Pokémon between turns. Flygon ex’s Psychic Pulse attack does 80 damage to the Defending Pokémon plus 10 damage to each Benched Pokémon that already has a damage counter on it… all for only 2 Psychic Energy and 1 other Energy. Benched Basic Pokémon will be Knocked Out in short order between Sand Damage and Psychic Pulse! Flygon ex’s Psychic type is also good against popular Psychic-weak Pokémon like Mew ex. A good helper for Flygon ex is Flygon (EX Holon Phantoms, #7)—its Delta Supply Poké-Power provides extra Energy to get Psychic Pulse going quickly. And Rare Candy (EX Holon Phantoms, #90) can help get your Sand Damage moving early in the game.

It’s good to be missing something—if it’s Weakness—but don’t miss the excitement of EX Dragon Frontiers!