[Update 11 Nov 2024] The Raging Bolt ex deck has now emerged as the most popular choice in Pokémon TCG tournaments around the world. There’s also a strong case to be made that it’s now the current Best Deck in Format (BDIF).

[Update 24 Sep 2024] This deck has drawn first blood in the 2024-25 Pokémon TCG tournament season. Haruto Fujita took this deck to the title at Champions League Tokyo. It’s the first time that the Raging Bolt ex deck has won a major tournament.

[Update 15 Aug 2024] Heading into the Pokémon World Championships, many players have reportedly found that the Raging Bolt ex deck has a favorable matchup against the Regidrago VSTAR deck. Due to this as well as other matchup advantages mentioned, this deck will be likely to rank among the most deployed at Worlds.

[Update 16 Jul 2024] The metagame’s most recent changes as well as likely upcoming ones will make this deck an even greater force in the meta. The Raging Bolt ex deck is widely expected to have favorable matchups against aggro decks such as the Miraidon ex, Iron Hands/Iron Crown ex, and Roaring Moon ex decks. Expect many Raging Bolt ex decks to feature at Worlds in August.

[Update 19 Jun 2024] Recent metagame changes have favored this deck; as things now stand, decks which are able to deal much damage in the game’s early stages are now in the ascendancy. The Raging Bolt ex deck is among those decks and is thus expected to be frequently seen at the upcoming World Championships.

[Update 30 May 2024] A thread on the PokeInvesting subreddit has confirmed that the price of all versions of the Raging Bolt ex card from Wild Force [SV5K], the deck’s titular card, has recently been soaring at an astonishingly rapid rate. This in turn will cause the price of the Raging Bolt ex deck to climb in a hurry.

As has been mentioned in this post, the tournament viability of this deck has been augmented by the newly-introduced Teal Mask Ogerpon ex card from Mask of Change [SV6]. This is the primary reason for the price hike.

This bodes well for the deck’s fortunes at two major tournaments just around the corner: the Japan Championships on 1-2 June 2024 and the North America International Championships (NAIC) in New Orleans on 7-9 June 2024.

This is also likely to mean that a similar price increase for other key cards in this deck is on the horizon.

Thus far in the current Pokémon TCG tournament rotation, the Raging Bolt ex deck hasn’t really been a major factor. Its most notable achievement to date took place at the Indianapolis Regionals where US player Adam Reinhardt finished in 37th place with this deck. However, following the release of Mask of Change [SV6], many are now expecting the Raging Bolt ex deck to emerge as a bona fide metagame force.

The main reason behind this deck’s newfound tournament viability is the new Teal Mask Ogerpon ex card. Launched as part of Mask of Change [SV6], this card is widely expected to replace and be an upgrade over the Sandy Shocks ex card from Ancient Roar [SV4K].

By way of the synergy of its Ability of Teal Dance and its Myriad Leaf Shower attack, Teal Mask Ogerpon ex wields a degree of firepower that Sandy Shocks ex doesn’t have. Teal Dance allows Teal Mask Ogerpon ex to receive an additional Grass Energy card once per turn while Myriad Leaf Shower does 30 damage per Energy card attached to both Active Pokémon.

This deck also contains the Professor Sada’s Vitality card from Ancient Roar [SV4K] which works in tandem with the titular Raging Bolt ex card from Wild Force [SV5K]. Raging Bolt ex has the Bellowing Thunder attack which dishes out 70 damage per Basic Energy card discarded from any of the player’s Pokémon.

The player can then follow up on that by playing Professor Sada’s Vitality which allows the player to attach a Basic Energy card from the discard pile to any two of the player’s Ancient Pokémon before drawing three cards.

The cumulative cost of all the cards in a Raging Bolt ex deck is at least 6,000 JPY (~US$39).

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