Raindance (TCG)

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Raindance is a deck archetype for the Pokémon Trading Card Game. It was most commonly used when the Base Set was popular.

Strategy

The strategy of Raindance is to take advantage of Blastoise's Pokémon Power, Rain Dance, which allows the player to attach Water Energy cards as often as they like to their Water-type Pokémon. Aside from Blastoise, many other Pokémon are included which also benefit from having large amounts of Water Energy available to do additional damage, such as Lapras and Seadra, which each have a Water Gun attack which increases in power with the number of Water Energy attached. Trainer cards used to supplement this strategy generally include cards which aid in the retrieval and play of Wartortle and Blastoise (such as Pokémon Breeder and Pokémon Trader) as well as cards to aid in obtaining more Water Energy in the player's hand (such as Bill and Energy Search). Ideally, with the use of Trainer cards, a player could have Blastoise in play by their second turn.

Typical deck list

The deck list appearing below is not official; it is meant to represent an average build of the archetype, not specifically constructed for any regional metagame. Being that this is merely an archetype, a player may wish to change any part of this deck when building his or her own version.

This deck list is for the Base-Fossil format.[1]

Quantity Card Type Rarity
Blastoise    
Wartortle    
Squirtle    
Articuno    
Pokémon Breeder T  
Professor Oak T  
Bill T  
Maintenance T  
Computer Search T  
Item Finder T  
Energy Retrieval T  
Lass T  
Super Energy Removal T  
Gust of Wind T  
PlusPower T  
Super Potion T  
Switch T  
14× Water Energy   E


Restriction

Most of the cards in Raindance are currently illegal in Play! Pokémon organized tournaments.

Popularity

The Raindance archetype proved to be very popular until Play! Pokémon began to rotate older cards out of play. Several variations of the archetype include Rain Dance, Fossilized Rain Dance, Raindance, Misty's Raindance and Rain of Tears.

References

  1. More on 1999: Playing Pokémon with the Fossil Expansion on Jason Klaczynski's blog (archived on archive.org)


  This article is part of Project TCG, a Bulbapedia project that aims to report on every aspect of the Pokémon Trading Card Game.