Jimmy Ballard's Eeveelutions Deck

By Michael Martin

Jimmy Ballard played this deck all season long and worked hard to continually improve it in preparation for the 2006 World Championships. The "Eeveelutions" deck takes advantage of the various Evolution choices that Eevee has, specifically the Pokémon-ex Evolutions that are in EX Unseen Forces and EX Delta Species. Jimmy chose Eevee from EX Delta Species (69/113) with the Call for Family attack to help speed up his game development. While the deck has eight total Stage 1 cards to evolve Eevee into, there are only one or two cards of each Evolution, making it difficult to get the right one to take advantage of good match-ups. To compensate for this, the deck has four copies of Surprise! Time Machine (EX Team Rocket Returns, 91/109), which allows you to switch out the Evolution card you have in play for a different one in your deck. This makes the deck very versatile. Each Evolution also has a Poké-Power that is triggered when it is played from your hand, giving you the option to do lots of things that disrupt or damage your opponent’s plan.

There are three main "Eeveelutions" that have two copies of each in the deck, so let’s take a quick look at them. First is Flareon ex (EX Delta Species, 108/113), which has a Poké-Power that allows you to put both Special Conditions Burned and Confused on your opponent’s Active Pokémon when Flareon ex is put into play. The Stadium card Full Flame (EX Legend Maker, 74/92) combines with this to devastating effect, doubling the damage taken from being Burned and also making the Special Condition a lot harder to get rid of since evolving won’t remove it. Espeon ex (EX Unseen Forces, 102/115) can devolve an opponent’s Benched Pokémon of your choice when it is played. If you follow that up by devolving all of your opponent’s Pokémon with Ancient Technical Machine [Rock] (EX Hidden Legends, 85/101), you can destroy your opponent’s game strategy (which Jimmy did to good effect in more than one of his Championship games). Finally, bringing Umbreon ex (EX Unseen Forces, 112/115) into play lets you switch your opponent’s Active Pokémon with one of his or her Benched Pokémon. This can stop your opponent from developing a powerful Pokémon safely on the Bench, or it can trap a weak Pokémon in the Active Pokémon position.

To help you find the cards that you need when you need them, the deck relies on Pidgeot (EX FireRed & LeafGreen, 10/112) and its Poké-Power Quick Search, which allows you to search through your deck once per turn and put any single card that you need into your hand. Other cards that help you get the right Evolution cards when you need them are Professor Elm’s Training Method (EX Unseen Forces, 89/115), Celio’s Network (EX FireRed & LeafGreen, 88/112), and Pokémon Retriever (EX Team Rocket Returns, 84/109).

The Eeveelutions deck also makes great use of two of the Special Holon Energy cards. Holon Energy FF (EX Delta Species, 104/113) eliminates the Weakness of one of your Pokémon when a basic Fire Energy is also attached to it. And Holon Energy WP (EX Delta Species, 106/113) protects a Pokémon from all effects of an attack other than damage when a basic Water Energy is also attached to it. But watch out! Neither of these cards gives their special benefits to Pokémon-ex! You can only gain their benefits for Eevee itself and the Pidgeot line. But still, both of those Pokémon are well-worth protecting, as they are critical to the success of the deck. Find out for yourself when you playtest Eeveelutions against the other World Championships decks!