Rogue in the Base-Fossil Format

Decks in Base-Fossil: Rogue

"Rogue decks" is kind of a catch-all term for decks that don't quite have the chops to be included in one of the main categories. These aren't the decks you bring to a tournament you're planning on winning, but they are strategies you might see from time to time. Note that I'm not going to discuss rogue cards unless they fit into a specific strategy.

For example, Charizard occasionally sees play in some Haymaker builds and I would definitely say it's a rogue choice for the deck, but that doesn't make those variants of Haymaker "rogue."

MewDactyl

Mew actually sees play even in meta decks (often as a single copy) because it's a functional counter to Promo Mewtwo, one of the most powerful cards in the format.

But this strategy cares more about Devolution Beam. This attack returns one of your opponent's Evolution Cards to their hand, which could even knock out their 'mon if it has more damage counters on it than the previous stage can handle. Normally this move is a sad meme, since the opponent is immediately given a turn to put their Evolution back in play, but that's where the real star of the deck comes out to play...

Aerodactyl. This is the real bread and butter of the MewDactyl combo. Prehistoric Power keeps your opponent from ever evolving. If you slap this guy down early enough then you might not even need Mew!

We do have to discuss the elephant in the room, though. This deck exists to counter Evolution Cards, in a format where most of the powerful cards are big Basics. Even against those evolution decks, you don't get a free win.

After all, both of these key cards are a one-shot for Blastoise or Wigglytuff. It's a cool concept, but this just wasn't the right format for this combo.

Mysterious Fossil isn't a terrible card, but MewDactyl plays this card because it has to, not because it wants to. You can't get to Aerodactyl without it.

Mysterious Fossil does sometimes see play without any of its Evolution Cards though. It can be used to block one attack with 100% certainty, or can be splashed out onto your bench to fill out slots for a Wigglytuff build.

But generally speaking, it's pretty safe to assume that a deck running Mysterious Fossil will be holding an Aerodactyl in the back pocket, so always be ready for Prehistoric Power when you see this card.

Rage

Rage is a surprisingly viable strategy, as far as rogue decks go. The idea isn't exactly groundbreaking. You take damage, then hit back harder. You can make a Fire build with Promo Arcanine (Flames of Rage), a strange Water build with Kingler (Flail), or just mix a couple of traditional haymakers in with Tauros and Dodrio.

Tauros is my personal favorite. At 60 HP, he just barely missed the cutoff for meta-relevant haymaker cards. But Stomp is technically the best turn 1 attack in the game, assuming you can get a DCE onto Tauros. It's also a lot more plug and play than other Rage-style cards, being a Basic with respectable stats.

Instead of highlighting Dodrio again, let's talk about Promo Arcanine. Flames of Rage can do absurd damage if you can get just a few Fire Energies into play.

You can bluff a Base Arcanine by leaving your Growlithe in play and hiding any cards that would give away your strategy, then surprise your opponent with a massive Flames of Rage before they even know what you're up to. Do note that these strategies are all high-risk, since you're likely going to be exchanging KOs instead of snowballing, but that's the price we pay for fun sometimes.

One of the more interesting aspects of Rage is that you actually want your cards to take damage. This makes Revive, a card that's almost never worth playing, a premium option for charging up your attacks and keeping your bench full.

I personally like to spice it up by putting a few Wigglytuff in my Rage decks, since it benefits from the extra board stability provided by Revive, but it does compete with Tauros and Dodrio for your precious DCE attachments, so I'm not going to claim that my funny little pet build is the right way to play this deck.

Hyper Beam

Hyper Beam, Duck Drought, Removal. Whatever you want to call it, the bottom line is that this deck loves denying resources to your opponent.

The key card of the deck is Golduck, despite it looking like the worst of the three removal attackers on paper. The reason is that it evolves from Psyduck. Psyduck can keep your opponent from playing any Trainer Cards, which gives you something to do on the first few turns. Note that all three removal attacks we're going to cover are essentially turn 3 attacks, so this is not a fast deck. But once it gets rolling, it's miserable to play against.

The second of the energy removers is Dragonair, but I would argue it's the worst of the three. Its pre-evolution, Dratini, is an awful card that contributes nothing to the deck, aside from being obligatory if you want to run its Evolution. Still, Slam is a legitimately decent turn 2 attack with DCE in the format, so I can't bring myself to hate this card.

You can actually make do with a single copy of Golduck and play the deck primarily as stall with a splash of removal, which is probably the better way to play the deck in the long run.

If you want to really commit to the bit, then your big removal option is Poliwrath. Being a Stage 2, this card is inherently less consistent than the Stage 1 options, but it can also start hitting for 40 damage and removal on turn 3. This can make for a more fun and aggressive mid-range build, and is actually my preferred way to run the deck.

Do note that it competes with Dragonair for your DCE attachments. It might be better to choose one or the other, unless you're just determined to make it work with all three of these 'mons for some reason.

Big Eggsplosion

Do NOT make the mistake of looking at this card as a Grass-type or a Venusaur partner. I can't stress this enough. The real best deck to use this in is a Psychic deck. This allows you to use Sleep Powder and Teleport, and only locks you out of the relatively useless Leech Seed.

Sure, you miss out on Energy Trans, but the real strength of Exeggutor doesn't come from Basic Energy. It comes from Double Colorless Energy. Also, one of the biggest mistakes players make is spamming every Energy Card onto Exeggutor. Build up a decently powerful Exeggutor, but then start building a second palm tree. Don't wait until he goes down to start working on your backup plan. It should be a constant consideration.

Double Colorless Energy is the true bread and butter of the deck. Exeggutor doesn't care how many cards are attached to it, just how many energy are attached to it.

This means that Basic Energies have miserable scaling, at an average of 10 damage per energy when accounting for luck. But a single DCE gives you two coin flips, adding up to an average of 20 damage per attachment! Base Electrode can accomplish something similar, but at that point you're operating  a real glass cannon of a deck, so don't be surprised if it backfires and shatters.

When you run out of Double Colorless Energies, this whole deck clots up like an artery after Thanksgiving dinner.

That's where cards like Fossil Gastly and Promo Mewtwo come in. This is a rare example of a deck that actually wants to use Energy Conversion, and it benefits from all the other great things about Gastly just as much as any deck would.

This should be the first pivot you add to this deck, although I'm certainly not against a few copies of Scyther if you have the space for it.

MediCate

I bet you weren't expecting Raticate to be the face of a deck. Make no mistake though: This is a meme deck. It is not good, not consistent, and barely playable. But the concept is really cool, so I'm going to cover it anyway, despite the low power level of the deck.

The big appeal of the deck is that it can theoretically one-shot almost any card. Super Fang can cut a Blastoise down to half HP, and then Meditate (which scales with damage counters) becomes a guaranteed KO. But in a format with so many Psychic resists and low HP 'mons, this wallbreaker-style deck really fails to shine outside of that one cheeky win that you'll never forget.

Mr. Mime is the backbone of the strategy, and is required for the killing blow. As a bonus, Invisible Wall largely prevents an easy revenge kill. Unfortunately charging up Super Fang and Meditate in this format takes time, and that's time that your opponent is probably using to set up a better, stronger deck.

You also NEED some way to switch around. Dodrio's Retreat Aid can give you free retreat on both of these attackers, and you might want to tech in some extra copies of Switch just to be safe. This deck takes long enough to get charged up without wasting any Energy Cards on retreating, so make sure you brew with this limitation in mind.

You can use Jynx in this deck if you're desperate to find a place to use her. Note that can doesn't mean should. Even in the context of this one specific deck that's theoretically perfect for Jynx, I'd probably still choose Promo Mewtwo instead.

And after you do that, you might as well cut all the Raticate nonsense out and play a more standard Psychic deck instead. But if you're married to the gimmick, then you might as well really commit to it and sprinkle in a few copies of this pack filler nobody for good measure.

EeveeTron

Please note that not all Base-Fossil tournaments allow Black Star Wizards Promo #11, the notorious Black Star Eevee. It's not banned for power level reasons or anything. It just wasn't released in the right time frame, so many players feel it's not "officially" a Base-Fossil card.

This Eevee's Chain Reaction is the backbone of the deck. If you're stuck only using Base Set's Eevee, then do not run a deck based on Eevee (although you could use the individual Evolutions in type-relevant decks if you really want to for some reason).

Jolteon is my personal favorite of the Evolutions available, but I should mention that you'll be heavily reliant on Quick Attack when using multiple Eeveelutions.

The beauty of the deck is that it lets you build up a bench of multiple types to hit for weakness, but it can be hard to get the energy you need when you need it. I would personally advocate for focusing on a single energy type and accepting that two of your Eeveelutions are the backup dancers of your deck. The backups can hit for weakness when you need them, while your headliner gets to embrace its full power.

It's unfortunate that none of the Base-Fossil Eeveelutions can hit for Fighting or Psychic damage, but at least Vaporeon gives us a way to drench Magmar. If you're not going to run all three types of energy, then Water is the first one I would cut.

Vaporeon's Water Gun demands that you go all-in on the Water type, which doesn't suit the intended playstyle of the Eeveelution cards at all. There also aren't any Water-type 'mons that scream, "Pair me with Eevee."

This is still a necessary inclusion, though. If you're not running at least one copy of each Evolution, you're not doing what the deck wants to do.

I've been restricting myself to highlighting three cards per deck so far, but that just doesn't work here, for obvious reasons.

Flareon is your Scyther-killer. It does also hit Venusaur for decent damage, but Venusaur only needs Solar Beam and one Pluspower to delete Flareon completely, so don't go thinking you'll always win that exchange.

It has my favorite artwork of the three, but I honestly think it's the worst one, since Scyther is usually just going to switch out anyway. Being a soft counter to a card that doesn't even stick around is a hard pill to swallow.

Closing Thoughts

It may feel like we've only covered a handful of cards over and over again in these articles, but that's just how the Base-Fossil format is. It recombines a relatively small card pool into a surprisingly high number of decks. Keep in mind that there are only ~200 cards to discuss in the first place, so it's pretty impressive that so many of them have a place in the format somewhere.

And we still didn't cover some of the really niche cards, like Mankey or Hypno or Gengar. It's weird how diverse this tiny card pool actually is, and I think that's a testament to the solid work done by the original design team. Sure, they screwed up when designing a handful of cards. (Super Energy Removal is the reason Arceus has forsaken us.)

But on the whole, Base-Fossil is fondly remembered for a reason, even if it wasn't exactly the most balanced format in the game's history.