Maintaining Steam with Volcanion-EX

Since it was released Volcanion has been an incredibly and consistently successful deck. There has never been a time when Volcanion was a deck that was completely underplayed but it has made many changes since it came out to adapt to the format. Today I'm going to be talking about Volcanion in the standard format with a list somewhat inspired by Eemeli Reijonen's from the European Internationals.

The Lists

This is the list that Eemeli Reijonen took to a Top 8 finish at the European International championships.

At first glance this list is very unorthodox because in a way it mixes two variants of the Volcanion deck into one. However, I am now a firm believer that this is the right way to the play the deck going forward.

Turtonator is the main attacker in Eemeli's list being able to do a firm 190 damage and discard some of the energy against Gardevoir-GX to reduce their damage. The Ho-oh-GX is in the deck to combo with Kiawe to be hitting really hard really fast. Finally, the Enhanced Hammers are there to counter Gardevoir-GX.

This is the list that I'm currently playing. I think this list is really strong and consistent and can do well against a lot of the format.

Card Choices

+1 Ho-oh GX +1 Kiawe -2 Enhanced Hammers.

Although I do think Enhanced Hammers can do a lot of work in quite a few match ups I feel like most of the time I prefer to have the consistency. A second Kiawe means I can use it twice during the game which means I'll rarely run out of attackers. I added a second Ho-oh GX because I think it's an underrated Pokemon, it can do 180 damage easily and can when combined with Fighting Fury Belt and Volcanion-EX's Steam Up it can knockout almost anything in the format as early as turn two.

-1 N -1 Guzma -1 Fighting Fury Belt +3 Scorched Earth

Scorched Earth is a surprisingly strong card that adds a lot of consistency to the deck and makes Power Heater and Nitro Tank-GX much stronger and more accessible attacks,

Matchups

Golisopod-GX/Zoroark-GX

This matchups isn't quite as favorable as you might assume. If your opponent decides to play down Golisopod-GX then you have an easy route to victory in taking one hit KO's on them and saving your steam ups for Zoroark-GX.

Otherwise you'll have to set up really well and take knockouts on Zoroark-GXs immediately after they attack you that way you are trading one hit knockouts for two hit knockouts.

Silvally-GX/Metals

This is an incredibly easy matchup, just set up multiple attackers then take some one hit KOs and watch out for Celesteela's GX attack.

Gardevoir-GX

Gardevoir-GX is still a hard matchup. Ho-oh-GX and Kiawe are not cards you want to be using here because it allows your opponent to do big damage with Infinite Force. Your main attacker in the early game in this matchup is the regular Volcanion so that you can set up while knocking out evolving Pokemon. In the mid to late game your attacker is Turtonator GX to take one to two hit knockouts while discard energy to save yourself from being KOed in return.