Gholdengo ex Deck List and Strategy Guide
Remember when Gholdengo ex was considered something of a rogue deck in the Pokemon TCG?
Well…not anymore! After overachieving at the 2025 Sacramento Regionals and even claiming third place, Gholdengo ex is very much a bonifide meta deck.
In this guide, we’re going to be breaking down Gholdengo and everything you need to know about this deck from the basics to some of the more advanced plays you can take advantage of.
Let’s dive in!
32nd place at the Sacramento Regionals by Panji Lewauddin Daeng Malewa
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Pokémon: 14
4 Gimmighoul PAR 88
4 Gholdengo ex PAR 139
1 Origin Forme Palkia V ASR 39
2 Origin Forme Palkia VSTAR ASR 40
1 Fezandipiti ex SFA 38
1 Manaphy BRS 41
1 Radiant Greninja ASR 46
Trainer: 35
3 Irida ASR 147
2 Ciphermaniac's Codebreaking TEF 145
2 Boss's Orders PAL 172
1 Professor Turo's Scenario PAR 171
1 Iono PAF 80
4 Superior Energy Retrieval PAL 189
4 Buddy-Buddy Poffin TEF 144
3 Nest Ball PAF 84
3 Earthen Vessel PAR 163
2 Night Stretcher SFA 61
1 Hyper Aroma TWM 152
1 Hisuian Heavy Ball ASR 146
1 Canceling Cologne ASR 136
1 Letter of Encouragement OBF 189
1 Counter Catcher PAR 160
1 Pal Pad SVI 182
1 Energy Retrieval SVI 171
1 Switch SVI 194
2 PokéStop PGO 68
Energy: 11
7 Water Energy SVE 3
4 Metal Energy SVE 8
Breaking down Gholdengo ex
So what actually makes Gholdengo ex so strong? I mean, a lot. For starters, let’s look at that powerful Coin Bonus ability.
Gholdengo ex is actually the only attacker in the Pokemon TCG meta right now that enables card draw. While drawing one or two extra cards may not really seem like a lot, using this ability turn after turn or multiple times in a turn opens up some significant card draw potential.
Of course, to be a strong attacker you need a solid attack. So what’s up with Gholdengo ex’s attack? One of the things that’s most attractive about Gholdengo ex is the fact that you can scale its attack indefinitely. There’s no power cap to how hard this guy can hit, and that’s an anomaly in the current meta.
Sure, there are other attackers who are capable of adding incremental damage, but none can be pulled off in such a limitless manner as Gholdengo ex. With Gholdengo ex you aren’t limited to the energy attached to Pokemon, as damage is going to be calculated via the number of energies you discard from your hand.
Extending the power of Coin Bonus
We’ve talked a bit already about how effective Coin Bonus can be. However, this deck has one powerful way of extending the reach of Coin Bonus. That card is the often overlooked but incredibly powerful Ciphermaniac’s Codebreaking.
When combined with Coin Bonus, Codebreaking becomes insanely broken. Basically, all you have to do is pick the exact two cards you need from your deck, put them on top of your deck, then Coin Bonus into those cards. This kind of crazy consistency renders the need for a ton of additional draw support Pokemon void. Now you have plenty of room for other powerful cards you can use to bolster your main strategy.
Bolstering the power of Make It Rain
Realistiically this combo can be used to make Make It Rain much more effective, especially if the cards you put ontop of your deck are cards that help you get more energies into your hand (or just energies themselves).
Meanwhile, this deck offers a smorgasbord of cards to help make Make It Rain great.
Below, we’ll go over each card that this deck has on offer to help you scale your Make It Rain to whatever heights you need to take the KO in front of you.
Earthen Vessel
It’s almost hard to believe that I can remember a time when the best unniversal energy search out there was literally Energy Search – a card that let you search out just one basic energy from your deck. Earthen Vessel – and the corresponding capability to search for any two energy from your deck – is infinitely stronger.
Superior Energy Retrieval
Of course, Gholdengo ex’s attack “Make It Rain” doesn’t happen for free, and you won’t be able to pull energies from your deck forever. Eventually, you should have a fat stack of metal and water energies in your discard pile. To bring those back, this deck runs four copies of Superior Energy Retrieval, one Energy Retrieval card, and two Night Stretchers.
Letter of Encouragement
The most interesting tech to me in this deck is in fact the Letter of Encouragement card. I’ve found this mechanic to be interesting since the time I tested it in my Obsidian Flames prerelease. However, the meta never had much of a use for it.
For Gholdengo ex, though, it’s a strong play, letting you bring any three energy to your hand without so much as discarding a card. The fact that you need to have had a Pokemon knocked out the previous turn puts a hard limit on this card’s usefuleness but still I think having one of these in your deck is a strong play.
Setting up the board for success with Gholdengo ex
One important thing to note with Gholdengo ex is the fact that this is no basic Pokemon deck. This means that you will have to put a lot of effort into setting your board up for success up front. What this means with Gholdengo ex is having several Gimmighouls on the bench. This is, of course, imperative as you will want to evolve Gimmighoul turn two into Gholdengo ex so you can take advantage of additional draw and take big knockouts.
Getting your board set up should be pretty easy to do and happen consistently given the sheer number of Gimmighoul and Gholdengo in this deck (a four-four line is somewhat rare these days in decks that like to run a lot of different attackers). However, to make sure you get the ideal set up you need to win you have plenty of search tools.
Buddy-Buddy Poffin is your strongest play as you will get much of what you need to ensure success including two Gimmighoul onto the field.
Nest Ball is helpful for getting Radiant Greninja onto the field – a card which is very helpful in this deck for helping you see more cards and ultimately load up your hand with energies to power up Make It Rain.
Hyper Aroma is a choice ACE SPEC in this deck
You have to love the inclusion of Hyper Aroma in this deck. It’s absolutely dynamite as it lets you get all of your evolution Pokemon in a single swoop as opposed to running a bunch of Ultra Balls that would discard cards you really can’t afford to be discarding in this strategy.
Get your board set up with the basics you need and drop this card turn two and you have a completely set up board that will be very hard to retaliate against.
What makes Hyper Blower even more effective in this deck is the fact that it can be easily searched out via Irida.
Apart from grabbing Hyper Aroma or any other item you may need, Irida is a fantastic option to bring water Pokemon like Radiant Greninja, Palkia, or Manaphy to your hand. Manaphy is a very effective defensive measure for this deck, helping stop opponent’s from destroying your board before you can evolve your little pieces to much bigger and stronger Pokemon.
The Palkia VSTAR play
Finally, let’s talk a bit about Palkia VSTAR. This powerful Pokemon has emerged as the main counterpart to Gholdengo ex and that’s largely due to convenience. Not only does Palkia offer you a powerful back up attack in the form of Subspace Swell, this Pokemon works very well when paired with Greninja ex, granting you added access to bench sniping to stay ahead of decks that especially rely on having one or two low HP Pokemon in play.
Using Star Portal you can easily accelerate the energies that you discard using Make it Rain to help Greninja come firing out the gate with Moonlight Shuriken.
In my mind, these two Pokemon are closely linked in this deck strategy as more often than not Moonlight Shuriken will be the play you’re looking to pull off via Star Portal
Gholdengo ex matchup guide
Let’s look at a few of your matchups against other matchup decks.
Charizard ex: Favorable. You can relatively easily scale to take out Charizard ex in one hit while your Radiant Greninja can take out two low HP Pokemon and deny board set up.
Raging Bolt ex: I would put Raging Bolt in the favorable spot for this one just because it can hit hard and faster, enabling it to take knockouts. Your best bet here is to deny a two-prize knockout and be the first to swing for the two Prize KO. This might mean not benching Palkia turn one so you have no two Prize Pokemon to be KOed.
Regidrago VSTAR: Relatively unfavorable as Phantom Dive can stop your momentum early on.
Gholdengo ex is a powerful deck in the current Pokemon TCG meta with answers to most decks it will face. It’s exciting to see this deck peaking so late after it first came out, but as we’ve seen from the likes of Regidrago VSTAR – you never know when a strategy may come back to take the Pokemon TCG by storm!
