Hello everyone! This is Elena from Gaia Storm TCG and welcome to another article here at CCG Castle. Now that Vivid Voltage is officially available we are going to start covering some of the most interesting strategies and Coalossal VMAX is certainly a very strong card for the upcoming meta. Let’s see why.

This fighting type Pokémon has a massive 330 HP and some solid attacks. The most used one will always be Eruption Shot, which is able to accelerate energies if they are on the top of the deck and can deal up to 130 damage. Not bad for just one energy! Then, if you are able to completely power-up a Coloassal, it can also use G-Max Boulder and do 240 damage, which comes in handy to finish some big VMAX Pokémon.

If you look back, pure Fighting decks from the past like Buzzwole or Lucario used to be hyper aggressive strategies so it is quite funny to see that Coalossal takes a very defensive approach. Instead of focusing on getting attackers powered-up quickly, it basically focus on setting up a combination of Oranguru on the bench (to always ensure the energy on the top of the deck) and evolving a couple of VMAX. To have the resources to do so, the deck “hides” behinds Snorlax from Vivid Voltage. This recently released card (to me, one of the best in the set) is amazing because it receives attacks by being on the active position during the first turns and draws a lot of cards.

Once you have your Coalossal ready, the idea is to skyrocket its HPs with Buff Paddings (which gives it 380 in total!) and use some of the new special fighting energies to reduce the damage it takes by -20.  This means that trying to take Coalossal down in one hit is almost impossible and the healing of Mallow & Lana makes can give nightmares to the opponents. So, as you can imagine, once you reach mid-game, the idea is to rotate between different Coalossal until you kill everything. Additionally, Coalossals decks typically run one copy of Galarian Sirfetch'd to deal with some menaces like Zamazenta V and to pull off surprise attacks.

Even if it is still soon to know what is going to happen, one of the reasons that makes Coalossal a solid candidate is its typing. It hits Eternatus and Pikachu Zekrom for weakness, very popular decks in the format. Also, there is a very low presence of good grass-type strategies right now except from Vivid Voltage’s Orbeetle and, perhaps, Rillaboom Box.  

I think Coalossal VMAX is a very unique deck in the format that combines a bit of control with steady aggression and it can certainly have a decent placement in some of the upcoming tournaments. Give it a try if you want to try another style of playing. Thanks for reading!