Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to another article here at CCG Castle. Today, I really wanted to talk about one of the most different decks in the Standard format: Night March…eeeer, I mean, Mad Party! This unique strategy is able to deal massive amounts of damages in a very simple way but struggles to keep pace with some of the big guys in standard. Let’s see why!

To begin with, Mad Party is an archetype based on the narrative of Alice in Wonderland that is formed by 4 Pokémon (Bunnelby, Dedenne, Polteageist and Mr. Rime) containing the “Mad Party” attack. This attack deals 20 damage per every “party-going” Pokémon in the discard pile. Does it ring a bell? I must confess that I always refer to Mad Party as Night March -what can I say, Night March was my all-time favorite deck from the XY era- because the dynamic is identical: both decks focus on one prize attackers that use double colorless energy. However, note that unlike Night March, Mad Party has 4 different members and that means it can hit for more bigger numbers, potentially dealing 300 damage. Not bad for a small Bunnelby coming out of the blue.

Now, we all know that Night Match was the dominating deck of its era and probably the undisputed tier S strategy of the format but I am afraid that Mad Party has two big issue that prevent it for having a similar success. The first one is the lack of discarding cards like Battle compressor or Ultra Ball. Mad Party has to rely on Super and Quick Balls to find the set up, which sometimes make the deck a bit slowi during the first turns. The second problem is called Arceus Dialga Palkia Tag Team. Altered Creation and the capacity to take two prizes with every attack makes Mad Party’s prize exchange less effective.  

But even with that in mind, I can ensure you that a solid Mad Party deck has all the necessary tools to give a lot surprises to every deck right now. I just mentioned that the deck can have some speed issues in the first turns but once Mad Party has set up a couple of Polteageist, it is virtually impossible that it misses anything. Another great advantage of this deck is precisely that every energy can be traded for an attack and that’s something that no other deck can say. Speaking about the build, the most popular version focuses on benching a couple of Sinistea in the first turns and runs Professor Research and Roxie as drawing supporters. You can even add a thin line of Dewong to spread some damage across the board and then reach numbers against Tag Team Pokémon.

So all in all, if you are looking for a different deck (and a very funny one!) to play the remaining format before Vivid Voltage arrives, give mad Party a try. You won’t regret it!