It seems that Pokemon TCG prereleases just keep getting better and better. After last saying Twilight Masquerade was my favorite prerelease to date, I have to say Stellar Crown did not disappoint. It offered an incredible variety of deck and unique mechanics that were very distinct from past sets.

The deck I built this prerelease has to be my favorite prerelease deck to date. Somehow, through some twist of fate, I pulled everything I needed to build a Hydrapple ex deck directly out of my Stellar Crown Build and Battle Box. Hydrapple ex is easily one of the most hotly anticipated deck archetypes coming out of Stellar Crown, and to get day one experience handling this powerful new attacker felt like an honor and a priveldge.

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Below, I’ll take you through my Stellar Crown prerelease deck I built around Hydrapple ex.

Stellar Crown Prerelease Deck Overview with Hydrapple ex

Getting the Hydrapple ex evolution line and Grand Tree ACE SPEC in the same Build and Battle is crazy good luck. The moment I realized I had all the pieces to actually evolve and play Hydrapple ex I knew I had to go all-in on the Hydrapple ex build. That meant tossing out my spare Drifblim pieces and going hard into Ledyba, Ledian, and Hydrapple ex.

Of course, in a prerelease format running with a one-one-one line of a Stage 2 is not entirely ideal. After all, these forty card decks feature far less card search than what you get in a typical competitive Pokemon deck.

I knew I would have to build added card search into this deck, and that’s just what I did. In fact, Alcremie was the most predictable way to access Hydrapple ex and get it to start dominating the field.

Color Confection helped me quickly set this deck up

Essentially, Alcremie’s attack lets you search for any five Pokemon so long as they are the same type as the energy attached. Basically you just get the entire Hydrapple line into your hand this way then start evolving it while your Ledian takes pot shots against weak Pokemon. In the two games I won, Alcremie’s Colorful Confection was the tool that got me set up and able to win.

While having the Grand Tree in the deck felt insane during the deck building process, getting it is pretty much entirely up to luck. I did get it into play once, but only when I had bricked so hard at the start that it was a lost cause at that point.

While those were the spiciest inclusions I had to my deck, I also managed to pull two Joltik’s which worked perfectly for my grass deck.

Stellar Crown prerelease deck matchups

While Hydrapple ex might be the star of this deck (and the main reason I won my battles), Ledian was a powerful supporting attacker, helping me stay in pace with the prize race while waiting for my Hydrapple ex to get up to speed. Here’s how my matchups against other prerelease decks and kits whent.

Against Crabominable/Kofu decks

When I first saw the Stellar Crown prerelease promos, I called Ledian as being the most effective for its ability that lets you choose your opponent’s active Pokemon from the bench.

While this was an insanely broken ability in prerelease format, I found it to be of limited use in certain matchups, such as against the Crabominable/Kofu deck where none of the basics are actually beneath 90 HP.

To make matters worse, in this matchup my opponent (a guy who once placed in the top eight of a children’s Pokemon TCG regional and makes sure everyone remembers), managed to play a Kofu every turn from the beginning (he was smart enough to include a total of six supporters in his deck). This made keeping pace impossible after a very faulty start.

Here’s a fantastic example of a strong Crabominable prerelease deck built around Lapras ex shared via my Discord server by Jon Mosher.

Against Drifblim decks

Meanwhile, against Drifblim, Ledian is killer. While your opponent works to build up their supply of Drifloon on the board, you just switch them to the active and easily knock them out with Swift.

Against Bouffalant

Bouffalant presented something of a challenge early on. Ledian couldn’t knock it out easily. However, the turn it took in between attacks served as a great stop-gap to charge up my Pokmeon with energies via Joktik. These additional energies were vital in getting Hydrapple up to speed with insane damage output. Soon I was able to knock out a Bouffalant taking 60 less damage from attacks while also attached with a Brave Charm.

Against Ledian

The Ledian matchup was a bit of a mirror other than the fact my opponent wasn’t running the Hypdrapple ex line and strategy. Instead he had a Drifblim deck paired with the Ledian. The most important thing here was to stay ahead of the prize race via Ledian. I knew that Ledian was his best move to KO my benched Pokemon so I priorized benched basic Ledyba’s via Glittering Star Pattern. The most important thing to do in this mirror is just make sure you always have more Ledyba’s benched to evolve than your opponent.

Stellar Crown was a phenomonal prerelease

Stellar Crown’s prerelease did not dissapoint, delivering just as many interesting mechanics to try as Twilight Masquerade. This was probably my personal favorite of all the many prerelease tournaments I’ve been to, simply because of how exciting it was to evolve a Sage 2 Pokemon ex and battle with it.

Overall, the decks turned out to rank largely how I thought they would after seeing the promos, with the exception of Crabominable. That deck can be insane as along as you pull extra Kofus from your packs, or get lucky enough to draw Kofus at the right time.

Stellar Crown prereleases are a great way to get your hands dirty with the newest cards from what is shaping up to be a landmark expansion for the Pokemon TCG.

Get ready for the full set to launch everywhere on September 13, 2024, and don’t forget to preorder the best Stellar Crown products today!

My Hydrapple ex Stellar Crown Prerelease Deck is Fire