The new Pokémon TCG tournament season is now underway—and already, a new deck has emerged as a serious contender within the metagame. The Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon/Noivern ex deck made a significant impact at the season-opening Baltimore Regionals with Canadian player Nolan Randall leading all players who brought this deck to the tournament, taking it to a sixth-place finish.

Interestingly, so far this deck has only really caught on in Canada; including Randall, almost all the players who have used this deck in tournament play are Canadian. Nevertheless, if this deck continues to garner solid results, expect it to become a more widespread choice by tournament players across the globe.

Strategy

The primary advantage of the defensively-oriented Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon/Noivern ex deck in the current meta is the fact that it serves as a direct counter to a fairly large number of meta-relevant decks such as the Charizard ex, Raging Bolt ex, Regidrago VSTAR, and Iron Thorns ex decks. This is because the Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon ex card from Mask of Change [SV6] has the Ability of Cornerstone Stance which renders it immune to all damage which would be sustained by way of an attack from any opposing Pokémon with an Ability; many of the key Pokémon in the aforementioned decks have one.

Adding to the deck’s defensive capabilities is the Noivern ex card from Shiny Treasure ex [SV4a]. In addition to dishing out 70 damage for just two Energy cards, Noivern ex’s Covert Flight attack prevents any opposing Basic Pokémon from dealing any damage to Noivern ex during the opponent’s next turn.

With this deck, the main idea is to leave the opponent stranded in a situation that denies the opponent the chance to deal serious damage while the player gradually chips away at the opponent’s deck. For additional survivability in cases of unfavorable matchups, the player can break out Rock Chestplate from Scarlet ex [SV1S], a Pokémon Tool card which when attached to Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon ex, allows the Rock-type version of Ogerpon to sustain 30 less damage when struck by any opposing attack.

Price

The total cost of all the cards in the Cornerstone Mask Ogerpon/Noivern ex deck is a minimum of 5,160 JPY (~US$36).

In other TCG-related news, check out the Noctowl card from Stellar Miracle [SV7]. Alternatively, you can also head over to the SNKRDUNK App via the banner below and find the top trending and latest single cards and boxes.

Follow us on:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• Twitter