Advice for competition deck gift: Darkrai EX question

Hi-
I am the mom of a Pokemon trading card fan and want to surprise him with some cards for a Psychic/Dark deck. I was looking at Darkrai EX, but I can't figure out why it costs so much more from "Dark Explorers" than from the "Fall Legendary 2012 Tin" on Ebay. I know the holo card is cooler and has more value for collectors, but the powers all look the same and I think he can use the cheaper non-holo card and get the same 'bang' in a tournament. That would leave me with more cash for some other cards.

Can someone let me know what they think, and if there would be any other suggestions for nice cards? His birthday is right before our regionals and I am surprising him with a trip to Philadelphia for his first tournament. Thank you so much!

Hello there! Basically Darkrai EX from the Dark Explorers set is a lot harder to obtain than just buying one from the tin, which is what accounts for the massive price difference. In either case, the card still has the same playability so from a competitive standpoint, you should get the tin version as that will indeed save you a fair bit of money and you get other cards with the tin too. From the point of view from a collector, it would probably be the case that they would want the rarer version from the Dark Explorers (as well as possibly the tin variant too).

Hmm so you want to use a deck with Psychic and Dark types. Well you could run Hydreigon Darkrai which is predominately a Dark type deck but because it runs blend energy (which can provide Dark, Psychic, Grass and Fire) you can tech Psychic type attackers like Sigilyph and Mewtwo EX (though the latter doesn't really use Psychic energies to attack with, they really only use X-Ball). I'll provide a deck list below.



Alternatively you can run a pure EX deck without Hydreigon which would solely focus on EX cards. They usually run 3 Darkrai, 1 or 2 Mewtwo EX and then another tech EX / Sigilyph for attackers. Since you don't have the weight of Hydreigon in the deck list you have a lot more space to play around with for other stuff - you get a lot more flexibility in your deck building. I don't have a deck list for this to show though but I could draft one up when I have some spare time if you wanted.

Anyway, good luck with it all.

Thanks so much for this info! I looked at a thread on a Hydreigon Darkrai deck, and it also recommended 3 Darkrai, so it sounds like whatever way he wants to go with the deck, getting a few Darkrai EX would work. And now that I know it's OK to get the cheaper ones, I can afford to get them!

I don't know enough about Pokemon to know which way he'd go with the deck, but looking at some other deck lists I notice he seems to go really heavy on actual Pokemon and only have a handful of trainers and supporters compared to what more experienced players do. Maybe that's where I could help him. Are there also one or two trainers/supporters you'd recommend that are harder to find? He also has only one Blend Energy, so maybe a couple of those also?

I really appreciate your advice!

Yeah pretty much any deck which runs Darkrai will run three.

Most decklists do indeed tend to be the other way around with regards to the Pokemon / Trainer / Energy ratio. Blend energy is a decent card to pick up - it's only really used in the Darkrai Hydreigon build though, as far as I am aware the standalone Darkrai decks do not really need to use it, unless you wanted to tech some other attackers like Shaymin EX over a Mewtwo or something, which is a sound idea but blend energy cannot be abused as easily unless you have Hydreigon though.

Well pretty much any deck needs to be running four Professor Juniper and two to four copies of N. After that it comes down to messing around with Cheren and Bianca.

As far as trainers go, here are a few good ones to consider.

Eviolite
Pokemon Catcher
Random Receiver
Ultra Ball
Energy Switch
Super Scoop Up

If he likes to go Pokemon heavy for the deck then I would go with the Hydreigon Darkrai build as that is heavier on Pokemon compared to the pure EX attacking deck.

If there's anything else you want to know just ask.