Roaring Moon ex had pretty much fallen off the meta before its triumphant return at the Pokemon TCG World Championship where it took second place out of over one thousand of the world’s best Pokemon TCG players.

2nd Place World Championships 2024 – Seinosuke Shiokawa

Pokémon: 11
4 Roaring Moon ex PAR 124
2 Pecharunt ex SFA 39
2 Squawkabilly ex PAL 169
1 Roaring Moon TEF 109
1 Fezandipiti ex SFA 38
1 Radiant Greninja ASR 46
Trainer: 40
4 Professor Sada's Vitality PAR 170
2 Judge SVI 176
1 Boss's Orders PAL 172
4 Dark Patch ASR 139
4 Earthen Vessel PAR 163
4 Nest Ball SVI 181
4 Ultra Ball SVI 196
4 Trekking Shoes ASR 156
4 Pokémon Catcher SVI 187
2 Pokégear 3.0 SVI 186
1 Prime Catcher TEF 157
1 Night Stretcher SFA 61
1 Pal Pad SVI 182
4 PokéStop PGO 68
Energy: 9
9 Darkness Energy SVE 7

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Roaring Moon ex Deck – key cards

Roaring Moon ex is going to be your strongest attacker. And while it’s a great card to use against many of the top meta decks right now, in this deck list it’s also gets paired with a solid secondary attacker – another Roaring Moon.

Released in Temporal Forces, this one-prize Roaring Moon hits extraordinarily hard for a single-prize Pokemon. Of course, you aren’t going to be able to use it right away as you’ll need plenty of Ancient Cards in your discard first. That being said, baby Roaring Moon makes a fantastic late game attacker or a solid early game pawn to force your opponent to expose their two-prize Pokemon first.

Although this latest and greatest version of Roaring Moon ex doesn’t use Radiant Greninja’s Moonlight Shuriken attack, it certainly takes advantage of its one-of-a-kind “Concealed Cards” ability. Once again, because this deck relies heavily on accelerating energies from your discard pile onto your Pokemon, you are going to want to get as many basic energies into your discard pile as possible. Concealed Cards lets you drop an energy to draw two cards. But first, you need to get those energies into your hand.

Here’s where Earthen Vessel comes in handy. It’s an extraordinarily strong card for getting any kind of energy from your deck into your hand. And, because you have to discard a card in order to use it, you can use it to discard a darkness energy, and then pull extras from your deck.

Additionally, this deck runs one copy of Squawkabilly ex from Paldea Evolved. With Squawkabilly, you can discard your entire hand on your first turn and draw new cards. This can also be paired with Earthen Vessel to get several darkness energies into your discard straightaway that you can then later accelerate onto your Pokemon using a combo of Sada’s Vitality and Dark Patch

With plenty of darkness energies in your discard pile, it’s time to start accelerating them onto your Roaring Moons!

Sada’s Vitality helps get your Roaring Moon ex up and running much, much quicker than would otherwise be possible. With Dark Patch and this card, you can feasibly get Roaring Moon ex powered up to take knockouts in a single turn. Not only does this supporter function as one of the primary ways to accelerate energies, it’s also your primary draw support card, enabling you to draw three cards each time you play it.

You’ll be looking to play Sada’s for the first several turns which means that you won’t always be able to play a Boss’s Orders. Luckily you have five other cards to help you switch out Pokemon from the bench.

Pokemon Catcher and Prime Catcher

This player made the astute decision to play four Pokemon Catchers in his deck. This is actually more important than you’d think as it helps Roaring Moon ex take the most advantageous knockout possible which isn’t always which Pokemon happens to be in the active spot.

As mentioned, when you play Roaring Moon ex, most of your turns you will be playing a Sada’s Vitality supporter, meaning you won’t be able to pop a Boss’s Orders whenever you want, making Pokemon Catcher even more necessary. Because it is an item, it doesn’t take up your Supporter slot for the turn. The only problem? The 50/50 shot it will fail.

Pecharunt ex

Lastly, Pecharunt ex adds a surprising level of mobility to this deck. One challenge about Roaring Moon ex is that you will often need to keep it on your bench in order to power it up with both Sada and Dark Patch. But how then do you ensure you get your Roaring Moon ex into the active spot so it can actually take that vital KO?

Instead of running a bunch of Jet Energies and/or Switch cards, this deck simply runs two copies of Pecharunt ex. Pecharunt Switches your Roaring Moon ex for you. All you have to do is have it benched to take advantage of this powerful effect.

But Pecharunt isn’t just here for the ability – it also has a strong attack that can save the game for you later on, swinging for as much as 300 damage if your opponent has taken enough prize cards

Roaring Moon ex is your primary attacker

Now that you know what your key cards are and how they function in your deck, let’s get into how your primary attackers fit into your strategy.

Roaring Moon ex is a one-stop-shop attacker, enabling you to take select knockouts against weaker one-prize Pokemon pretty easily – two prize basic Pokemon as well – with Calamity Storm or even take OHKOs against the bulkiest two-prize/three-prize Pokemon.

Of course, the OHKO Frenzied Gouging attack does come with a glaring downside – it nearly KOs your Roaring Moon ex.

Is Roaring Moon ex a strong Pokemon TCG deck?

Yep. One of the strongest. Being a basic Pokemon and having the ability to OHKO anything out there as early as turn one is unparalleled in the format right now. In many ways, the cards that have come out in Shrouded Fable have only made Roaring Moon ex stronger, not weaker as many had feared after losing Galarian Moltres V.

Does Roaring Moon ex have any weaknesses?

Besides the obvious answer to this question (Roaring Moon’s main weakness is to grass type Pokemon), there are a few counters you’re going to want to look out for against his deck archetype.

Roaring Moon ex can be countered by removing stadiums

First of all, Roaring Moon ex benefits greatly from having a stadium in play. Without it, Roaring Moon ex has trouble taking knockouts against many Pokemon, especially against single prize decks. Without a stadium in play, Roaring Moon ex is forced to use its Frenzied Gouging attack, causing its HP to drop drastically low. Once that HP is low, you can quickly take it out.

Lost Vacuum is a powerful card to use against this deck as it removes stadiums without having to replace it with another stadium. And because this deck list runs just three stadiums, getting rid of those three is a pretty powerful way to get Roaring Moon ex to start using its Frenzied Gouging on everything just to get a KO.

Frenzied Gouging is a double edged sword

The double-edged sword nature of Roaring Moon ex’s attack is its other main weakness. There aren’t a lot of great ways around this weakness, however giving Roaring Moon ex just a little more HP via one of the tool cards included in this deck can be quite helpful in letting it get taken out unnecessarily.

A reliance on one supporter

Lastly, Roaring Moon ex takes a lot of energies to get its attacks off, and is heavily reliant on Professor Sada’s Vitality. While Sada’s Vitality is a really strong and versatile card, needing to play it frequently removes the opportunity to play other supporters that are strong, like Iono.

Similarly, a reliance on one supporter can also reduce consistency, meaning some games no matter how hard you try you just won’t be able to pull Sada’s Vitality when you need to.

Bad Regidrago matchup

Gouging Fire ex has solid matchups against most decks with one glaring weakness: it’s not good against Regidrago ex. How a Roaring Moon ex beat a field largely dominated by the deck it doesn’t do so great against is beyond me, but yeah. Regidrago VSTAR has a lot of tools at its disposal to set you back as a Roaring Moon ex player to say the least.

Decent matchups against everyone else

Despite not fairing very well against Regidrago VSTAR, Roaring Moon ex is a compelling deck in the current format as it does reasonably well against everything else.

Final thoughts on this Roaring Moon ex deck

Bringing Roaring Moon ex to a tournament hyped over Regidrago was a gutsy move that absolutely panned out. Getting second at Worlds is a huge achievement and now the whole world is believing in the true power of Roaring Moon ex. Like the best decks out there, this one has only gotten stronger with age, and I doubt we’ve seen the last of it at the highest levels of Pokemon TCG competition.

Roaring Moon ex Deck List – 2nd at Worlds 2024

Roaring Moon ex Deck – key cards

Radiant Greninja

Earthen Vessel – Paradox Rift 163/182