The biggest western Pokémon TCG event of all time, NAIC 2024, saw a very unique deck make it to day two, and it’s an archetype that you can build for around $50!

Importance of Iron Thorns ex

Iron Thorns ex is the centerpiece of this deck, and for a good reason.

Its Initialization Ability has the potential to win games completely on its own by turning off your opponent’s Abilities while Iron Thorns ex is in the Active Spot.

By playing four copies of Iron Thorns as your only Pokémon, you can always have Initialization live because your opponent can’t gust around it, which can make life very hard for your opponent.

For example, Initialization stops Lugia VSTAR from ever using Summoning Star, so they won’t ever be able to use Primal Turbo.

As you can imagine, this makes the matchup very easy since they will be stuck attaching one Energy per turn from their hand instead of four from the deck like they are used to.

Examples of Initialization

Against Teal Mask Ogerpon/Raging Bolt ex decks, you can permanently stop them from activating Teal Dance, so their damage output grinds down to a halt pretty quickly.

They will be forced to rely on attaching one Energy per turn and using Professor Sada’s Vitality to get Energy into play to discard for Bellowing Thunder.

Another big deck that gets caught in the Initialization crossfire is Charizard ex.

With Charizard ex decks playing as few as five or six basic Energy, shutting off their ability to use Infernal Reign to pluck them out of the deck can quickly get them into a spot of bother.

Not to mention you also turn off all their consistency cards like Lumineon V and Pidgeot ex.

Charizard is used to being able to lean on all these to get through the game, and without them, it can get dicey for them quick. Against Gardevioir you also turn off Psychic Embrace, which again causes massive problems since that is their only form of Energy acceleration.

Iron Thorns ex on Offense: Volt Cyclone

Volt Cyclone is a workable attack. Dealing 140 for three Energy is not bad—with a combination of Lightning Energy and Double Turbo Energy, you can get swinging on turn two.

With Iron Thorns’ typing, Volt Cyclone can KO a Lugia V even with the Double Turbo Energy attached, providing a decent amount of offensive pressure. However, Volt Cyclone does come with the downside of forcing you to move an Energy attached from your Active to one of your Benched Pokémon.

This will force you to keep attaching to your Active Pokémon to keep attacking, or switch between your Active and Benched Thorns. Not the biggest task in the world, but can be a slight annoyance.

After realizing that Iron Thorns ex was more than just a gimmick, Sky DelaCruz and their group started to take Iron Thorns more seriously and work out the rest of the list. Since there are no other Pokémon, let’s take a look at the other spicy cards in the list.

Key Choices for the Deck

Judge works perfectly well with Initialization. Since Iron Thorns ex puts your opponents in strange positions, they will often need to try and find specific outs (like basic Energy in Charizard ex’s case).

Judge makes that job even harder since it resets their hand back down to four cards, which is terrifying when you don’t have access to your Rule Box Abilities to bail you out of trouble.

When you only play four Pokémon you have room to double down on disruptive cards, and Eri slots right in.

Not only does Eri give you hand knowledge on your opponent, which is invaluable, but it also rips two Items from their hand and discards them before your opponent has a chance to use them.

This effect is downright devastating. Eri can discard your opponent’s ACE SPEC, or their only search option to find their attacker.

Against Lost Box you can rip their switching cards too, making them a lot less likely to get to the required 7-10 cards in the Lost Zone, which helps the matchup massively.

Energy Loto and Earthen Vessel are crucial. Energy Loto as a one-of here is important.

We’ve already discussed how Volt Cyclone is very Energy-reliant.

There will be games where you open Lightning Energy and Double Turbo Energy, but for the times when you don’t, that’s where Loto steps in.

A seven-card dig to bail you out is often the difference between attacking or not. What makes this even better is that, since Energy Loto can be searched for via Arven, your Arven often reads “Search your deck for a Tool card and a Double Turbo Energy” which sounds very nice!

Earthen Vessel of course fills a similar role, but it can only grab basic Energy, whereas Energy Loto can be a bail-out for Double Turbo Energy. Playing both makes a ton of sense. Crushing Hammer, when describing how effective Initialization is at dissecting the format, there was a theme of Iron Thorns ex turning off Energy acceleration.

With that in mind, Crushing Hammer makes the game even harder for your opponent. Hammer can completely erase the small amount of progress your opponent has made, all in one cruel coin flip. Very nasty.

Defensive Techniques

Lost City was actually a late addition to the deck, but members of the testing group attribute a lot of their success at NAIC to this card.

One of Iron Thorn’s biggest weaknesses is low-maintenance attackers since these tend not to get affected by Initialization as much. Unfortunately for Iron Thorns ex, there are a few of those kinds of attackers in the format such as Cramorant from Lost Origins and Roaring Moon from Temporal Forces.

This is where Lost City comes in. When you KO them with Lost City out, your opponent cannot recycle them.

This is great for you to begin applying pressure again, since your opponent’s low-maintenance option has now been removed from the game permanently.

This also comes in handy against Gardevoir, since you can remove their Kirlia or Ralts or even their attackers.

That makes life very hard for them, since their attacking numbers are very low to begin with.

Canceling Cologne is here for Safeguard Mimikyu, since that Pokémon can completely stonewall this deck. You can summon Canceling Cologne exactly when you need it with Arven, and when used in combination with Lost City, you can permanently remove that Mimikyu for the whole game so you never have to worry about it ever again!

Technical Machine: Devolution was here as a last-minute defense against Rare Candy decks. Your first defense is to Eri any copies of Rare Candy straight out of the game.

If your opponent does manage to get a Baxcalibur or Dragapult out, then you can Arven for Technical Machine: Devolution and set them back.

The group did let me know of some other sneaky uses of Devolution, though. Like being able to undo your opponents Technical Machine: Evolution, or using Devolution to essentially two-shot evolution Pokémon instead of three-shotting them, which is amazing.

Flexible Supporters

Colress was used as a flex supporter to make your hand more reactive. Since Colress grows your hand instead of refreshing it, you can hold your copies of Crushing Hammer, Lost Vacuum, or Eri so you can fire them off exactly when you need them instead of spinning the wheel with an Iono or Judge.

In summary, this Lightning Deck with Iron Thorns ex at its core provides a unique and effective strategy that disrupts your opponent’s game plan while maintaining your offensive capabilities.

With careful planning and a bit of luck, this deck can pull the plug on opposing abilities and secure victory.