Darkrai/Sableye with Keldeo EX (Japanese Fall Battle Carnival)

The fall Battle Carnival tournament was held in Japan recently and they results turned out to be very surprising to many. Plasma Gale was predicted to make a huge splash in the meta but while it did make an impact, it didn't make a very big one. Not a single Plasma deck made it into the top four but one plasma card did and that card was Poison Hypnotic Beam. 

Open League
1st - Darkrai EX + Sableye + Keldeo EX (This is the list shown in the picture above. )


Pokemon 9
4x Darkrai EX
4x Sableye
1x Keldeo EX

Supporter 12
4x Bianca
4x N
4x Professor Juniper

Item 27
4x Dark Patch
4x Pokemon Catcher
4x Poison Hypnotic Beam
4x Potion
4x Ultra Ball
2x Dark Claw
1x Energy Search
1x Eviolite
1x Random Receiver
1x Tool Scrapper
1x Computer Search [ACE SPEC]

Stadium 2
2x Virbank City Gym

Energy 10
10x Darkness Energy 

As you can see it looks like a very standard Darkrai/Sableye variant but you'll notice a few things different about it. The big one being that it plays four Poison Hypnotic Beams and two copies of Virbank City. For those who don't know, Poison Hypnotic Beam and Virbank City Gym read like this...

 

Poison Hypnotic Beam – Trainer
Item (Team Plasma)

The Defending Pokemon is now Poisoned. Flip a coin. If heads, the Defending Pokemon is also Asleep.

You can use any number of Item cards during your turn.

Virbank City Gym – Trainer
Stadium

If a Pokemon is Poisoned, place two more damage counters on it between turns.

This card stays in play when you play it. Discard this card if another Stadium card comes into play. If another card with the same name is in play, you can’t play this card.

So you can see the obvious synergy here. With Virbank in play, one Poison Hypnotic beam is the equivalent to three Plus Powers but with a couple major perks aside from the face that it's +30 damage.

Perk #1- A chance to also put them to sleep. With a few unlucky flips on their side, they could stay asleep long enough for the poison damage to rack up and knock them out.

Perk #2- Paired with Dark Claw (which was played at a higher count than Eviolite) Terrakion almost becomes a non threat to Darkrai. With Dark Claw, Night Spear is doing 110 damage and with Virbank in play, PHB basically turns that into 140 damage KOing a Terrakion. BUT, since Terrakion was killed by poison your opponent wouldn't be able to follow up with a Retaliate from another Terrakion.

So Poison Hypnotic Beam with Virbank City Gym is a VERY strong combo indeed. In fact it was played in all three of the winning lists.

Another interesting thing about the list was that it played four Potion. While Potion has been featured in Darkrai builds before, it has never been played at four. I can only imagine that this was to offset the poison damage done by the PHB/Virbank combo which ,as mentioned earlier, was very popular.

Something else to note was the one Keldeo EX tech. 

With a single dark energy attached to Keldeo, Dark Cloak gives it free retreat and it essentially serves as a Switch when ever you need it. Especially against status condition like Paralyzing and even now, poisoning. Another function it could serve is to act as a Landorus EX counter being able to two shot the very popular contender.

As it looks right now, Darkrai isn't going anywhere anytime soon and no matter what get's thrown his way, he will remain a dominant force in the format until he gets rotated out. Now I will leave you the other two lists the had success tournament.

Landorus EX/Mewtwo EX/Tornadus EX/Bouffalant 

 
Pokemon 10
3x Landorus EX
3x Mewtwo EX
2x Tornadus EX
2x Bouffalant

Supporter 15
4x Professor Juniper
4x N
4x Cheren
2x Colress
1x Skyla

Item 22
4x Poison Hypnotic Beam
4x Pokemon Catcher
4x Switch
2x EXP. Share
2x Max Potion
2x Ultra Ball
2x Energy Switch
1x Enhanced Hammer

1x Scrambled Switch [ACE SPEC]

Stadium 2
2x Virbank City Gym

Energy 11
7x Fighting Energy
4x Double Colorless Energy

 Landorus EX/Mewtwo EX/Bouffalant

Pokemon 7
3x Landorus EX
2x Mewtwo EX
2x Bouffalant

Supporter 13
4x Bianca
4x Professor Juniper
2x N
2x Skyla
1x Colress

Item 25
4x Poison Hypnotic Beam
4x Pokemon Catcher
4x Switch
3x Energy Switch
3x EXP. Share
2x Enhanced Hammer
2x Max Potion
2x Ultra Ball
1x Computer Search [ACE SPEC]
 

 Stadium 2 

 2x Virbank City Gym
Energy 12
 9x Fighting Energy
 4x Double Colorless Energy

So as you can see both deck are very similar and seem to be modeled after the Terrakion/Mewtwo/Bouffalant lists that performed very well in their last Battle Carnival.

One thing I like in the list with Tornadus was the use of Scramble Switch instead of Computer Search. I can certainly see Scramble Switch working very well with Mewtwo. 

A few other things to note is that Colress was played in low counts, this is probably due to these kinds of decks not having a full bench very often. Draw supporters were also more popular than the search capability provided by Skyla. And one last thing to note is that Plasma Klinklang didn't perform very well. One would assume it would given these results but as it has been proven time and time again, speed and consistency prevails once again.

Big thanks to RestlessBob of Pokegym.net for provided the results and to Pokebeach.com for supplying the images.