Guide: Best Deck for the Cresselia ex Drop Event in Pokémon TCG Pocket

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Pokémon TCG Pocket’s got a new solo battle event to celebrate the release of the Space-Time Smackdown expansion, this time focused on Cresselia exand other Psychic-type cards. Psychic-type cards can be powerful – Mewtwo ex has long been at the top of the meta – and Cresselia is no different, with a lot of annoying healing capabilities and a surprising amount of support.

There aren’t any clear answers for dealing with the Pokémon TCG Pocket Cresselia ex Drop event, thanks in part to the limited capabilities of Darkness-type cards, but we do have a few options. In this guide we’ll go over the best decks for the Cresselia ex Drop event in Pokémon TCG Pocket, including the best deck for all levels of difficulty in the event and the best low-rarity deck for the missions.

Pokémon TCG Pocket Cresselia ex event: Best Darkness deck

The best Darkness-type deck for the Cresselia ex event in TCG Pocket focuses on one of the new cards added in Space-Time Smackdown, Weavile ex. Here’s the full decklist:

• Sneasel x2
• Weavile ex x2
• Spiritomb x2
• Rocky Helmet x2
• Potion
• X Speed
• Leaf
• Poké Ball x2
• Professor’s Research x2
• Pokémon Communication
• Giovanni x2
• Sabrina x2

Weavile ex deals extra damage if the opponent’s active Pokémon is already damaged, so this deck is all about doing small amounts of damage ahead of Weavile ex hitting the field. Spiritomb has a low-energy attack that deals 10 damage to all of your opponent’s Pokémon – in the active spot and on the bench – and combined with a Rocky Helmet, a Pokémon Tool that deals damage to the opposing Pokémon when it attacks the equipped Pokémon, getting damage onto the whole field should be easy.

When the time comes, you can switch in Weavile ex and start sweeping through the opponent’s team. This deck can be tweaked slightly if you’re finding that you can’t damage Cresselia enough to offset its healing ability — consider swapping out the Spiritomb for a dedicated bench attacker, like Honchkrow. You’d need to remove a couple of cards to fit in the requisite Murkrow, in which case we’d suggest scrapping a Rocky Helmet and Leaf to make space. This can help with the harder difficulties if the AI opponent is refusing to switch Cresselia into the active spot.

Pokémon TCG Pocket Cresselia ex event: Best low-rarity Darkness deck

Like other Drop events, the Cresselia event has missions at the Advanced and Expert levels that reward you for defeating their decks using only cards of ♢♢♢ rarity or below. This means excluding ex cards from your deck, which can be devastating when up against a self-healing Cresselia ex with Gardevoir support.

You’ve got a few options here, depending on how you want to play it. The first is to use the Weavile ex Rental Deck from the Space-Time Smackdown set, or the Genetic Apex Koga Rental Deck. They’re not top-tier decks but the autobattle AI knows how to use it mostly effectively, and as long as you get good RNG, you should be alright.

The other option is to use a the following deck, all of which are cards that are readily available:

• 2x Venipede
• 2x Whirlipede
• 2x Scolipede
• 2x Koffing (Mythical Island)
• 2x Weezing (Genetic Apex)
• 2x Poké Ball
• 2x Professor’s Research
• 2x Leaf
• 2x Koga
• Sabrina
• Cyrus

This deck is essentially a streamlined version of the Koga Rental Deck with a few extra tricks thrown in for good measure. Mythical Island’s Koffing lets you summon another Koffing to the field, while Genetic Apex’s Weezing has an ability that lets you Poison the opposing Pokémon for no energy if it’s in the active spot — just make sure you’re using the base set Weezing, and not the full art variant.

Scolipede acts as somewhat of a pseudo-ex card in this deck, taking advantage of Weezing’s Poison to deal 120 base damage, which is boosted to 140 with the weakness bonus, enough to knock out a Cresselia ex in a single swipe. The drawback to this deck is the high retreat cost, which is where Koga comes into play, as it lets you scoop Weezing into the hand without having to build up energy or burn a Leaf. This is also quite a complicated combo, so don’t expect the auto-battle AI to win with this deck.