Winning With 0 Cards in Hand! NEW Slowbro & Thievul from Abyss eye! (Pokémon TCG News)

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]Good morning, or depending on when you're watching this, good afternoon, good evening, or good night. My name is Ross and as always told out of voice to radio. So today we need to have a look at some new cards from Abyss I, THAT DARK CRY SET. WELL, we do have some new cards to talk about. You know what else we got to talk about? Slowbro. And while we're here, Slowpoke. Now Slowpoke has actually got a very interesting attack.

[00:00:29]It's not two energy 20, nobody cares about that. It is single energy, you may discard as many cards as you like from your hand. Doesn't do anything else, doesn't draw you any, doesn't do anything else. It just lowers your hand size as much as you possibly want.

[00:00:48]Why would you want to just randomly be discarding your hand? Well, have a look at Slowbro. Once again, it is not the free energy 110, nobody cares, but for one psychic energy you do 50 damage.

[00:01:05]But if you have no cards in your hand, if your hand is completely empty, then you get to do 210 damage instead.

[00:01:16]Oh!

[00:01:17]That, ladies and gentlemen, is not too shabby. Now, we have seen this work in the past. In the past, I was a rather large fan of Granbull. Single energy, 30 damage, but if you had no cards in your hand, it did 130 more. This is still a stage one.

[00:01:38]This is still for a single colored energy, it was fairy last time, it's psychic now. So it's largely the same attack, it's even got a free energy 110.

[00:01:47]It's even got a retreat cost of free, it's even got 130 HP. It's new Granbull.

[00:01:53]The difference is, last time it did 160 and now it does 210.

[00:01:58]Of course, HP has also gone up quite substantially in the intervening period, but if you're hitting for a weakness, you will actually KO like anything here.

[00:02:07]Oh, what's that? Mega Lucario? Easy, mate.

[00:02:12]Easy.

[00:02:14]And the fact that it's psychic does help.

[00:02:16]So, yeah. Not terribly shabby. The thing is, when we had Granbull before, we needed two things, and they're the same two things we need for Slowbro now.

[00:02:30]We need to be able to empty our hand, and we need to be able to refill our hand, and that's really important. We need to be able to get cards out of our hand, and we need to be able to get cards back in. So we're going to need some kind of draw engine.

[00:02:49]Now, obviously this would be a situation where what we really want to do is look at Mew from 151.

[00:02:56]Draws two, you got three cards in your hand, so you go down to zero, draw one, use Mew to go up to three, or maybe play it and then you You know what I mean.

[00:03:03]Like this this this is a hand filler.

[00:03:05]It's a basic hand filler. Would be great in a Slowbro deck, but it's not because it's rotated.

[00:03:12]But this seems like the kind of situation where Dun Dunsparce could do some good.

[00:03:18]Because that's a card where you put it on the bottom of your deck and you draw three cards.

[00:03:24]And the cool thing here is it's not when you play it, it is whenever you feel like it while it's on the field.

[00:03:33]So the theory here is that you just have this sitting on the bench, have this waiting, use Slowbro, >> [snorts] >> and then use Dunsparce to draw three cards. And the advantage here is you draw one per turn, you can still just draw three with Dunsparce. It's really nice. As for discarding, I mean, we've still got stuff like Ultra Ball.

[00:03:56]There are still some things out there. I don't think it's as easy to discard cards from your hand as it has been in the past, but we've still got a bunch of things out there like Ultra Ball that can help. And obviously what you really want to do here is you want to build your deck in a way where you are naturally playing a lot of your cards.

[00:04:16]And that basically means more items, fewer supporters, cuz supporters become dead cards in your hand, whereas most items can always be played.

[00:04:26]And then things like Ultra Ball, where you can essentially just discard things, but the thing about Ultra Ball is you can discard for nothing, or you can discard for a Pokémon and then immediately play it. There are different ways of going about this, and this is the kind of thing you're looking for.

[00:04:44]That is the dream here. And obviously items that discard cards from your hand, that is the absolute dream here when you can make that work.

[00:04:56]It's not the easiest, I grant you, I'm sorry, but you know, if you can find stuff like that, and of course it has a fun little interaction here that, you know, with so many people playing Unfair Stamp at the moment to try and put you down to a two-card hand, this can actually work really nicely in your favor. So this this is fun, ladies and gentlemen, this is very very fun. So yeah, it's a little bit awkward to try and get your hand low, I grant you, and yes, you have to refill it, but essentially we're just looking for Pokémon draw. Pokémon draw that can sit on the field and work later. Dunsparce is obviously perfect, but you are relying on getting a Dunsparce down essentially every turn, so that you can use it the following turn, but outside of that, it is looking at any Pokémon draw that could be kind of fun. You know, even something like a Drakloak could absolutely work here. Get a bunch of them, and they're a bunch of stage ones. And the really really nice thing about Drakloak, and it's why I do think it could work here, Drakloak lets you grab the cards you want out of the top two. So let's say you've got three or four Drakloak on the field, not only are you drawing an extra three or four cards during your turn to make up for the fact that Slowbro's, you know, making you discard your hand, but you can deliberately choose a card that is easiest to play to make it easier to go down in terms of your hand size. Yes, it's awkward, I grant you. Yes, there are some hurdles we have to overcome and all of that, but it's also single energy 210 on a one-price stage one Pokémon. I do think this is worth experimenting with.

[00:06:47]But along very similar lines, we've got Feebas. We also have Nickit, no translations needed. Single energy 10, two energy 30, let's move on with our lives. Now Nickit's got a free energy 80 that nobody cares about, but we've also got another attack. For two colorless energy, that only works if you have no cards in your hand, very much like the Slowbro we just looked at, but it lets you choose one of your opponent's Pokémon's attacks, and use it as this attack. Now this is a card where I double-checked with the lovely Antoine Bellais' translation, and I had a very good look at the card.

[00:07:31]It doesn't say active or anything like that. It just says opponent's field Pokémon, i.e. Pokémon that your opponent has in play, attacks that they've got, choose one and use it. Basically, this works from bench Pokémon as well. And remember the rule in Pokémon, if you have to have the energy, it will explicitly tell you you have to have the energy. Thing Mewtwo and Mew, the tag team, that one.

[00:08:04]If it doesn't specifically say you have to have the energy, you don't have to have the energy.

[00:08:12]So you can copy any attack from anywhere on your opponent's side of the board without needing to have the correct energy to copy it. And this is where things get extremely fun. Just take a a lovely little example here. Everyone's playing Fess and Deipity. Everyone is playing Fess and Deipity, that card is broken, everybody should be playing that card due to the aforementioned brokenness.

[00:08:41]But it's actually got a really nice attack, free energy 100 to anywhere on your opponent's field.

[00:08:47]Well, if your opponent's got some low HP basics, you can just whack this up and KO one of them. Job's a good'un. Lovely.

[00:08:57]I really like this. Not to mention, of course, you know, we've got obviously a lot of good Pokémon out there like Dragapult, you can copy that attack to do 200 to the active and drop six damage counters onto the bench. Obviously, you can copy any attack from your Pokémon, but you can do really fun things and copy attacks that they themselves might not be able to use. I was saying on the stream in Prague this weekend that I believe one of the most underrated Pokémon in the entire game right now is the fighting type Greninja V X.

[00:09:30]Now you can copy the single energy 120 search for any card, absolutely, but you can also copy Mirage Barrage to discard two energy and do 120 to two of your opponent's Pokémon.

[00:09:42]That can absolutely be used. Any And even if it's not active. If your opponent is trying to sit behind a Bidoof, for instance, while they build up Pokémon, build up energy on the bench and all of that, you can still BE COPYING THAT GREAT ATTACK that they've got on that Pokémon on the bench. This has the potential to be a little bit broken. Love this card. Love this. Love Slowbro. Yes, you do have to have a zero card hand, which means you have to build your deck to get your hand size down, and then you have to build it in a way that you can get it back up again. All I'm saying is it worked for Granbull in the past, and maybe it can work again now. BUT I'VE TOLD YOU WHAT THESE cards do, now it's over to you guys. Tell me how hyped you are. Tell me if you think it could work, or tell me if you think I'm trying a little bit too hard to convince myself. GO NUTS IN the comment section, but be nice. AND THEN MAKE SURE YOU LIKE THIS VIDEO, subscribe to this channel, follow me on Twitter at the Wossy. That's where we talk about Pokémon and a whole bunch of other card games. And please do consider checking out patreon.com/ptcgradio, where you can support the channel, get some bonus podcasts, and all kinds of fun things.

[00:10:57]And get shout-outs on the channel like the lovely Martin Cornwall, who's been a supporter of ours for a while now, and seems to be a very lovely person. And I know he is, cuz he's been following since we were a podcast back in 2012.

[00:11:08]So, shout-out to Martin for the support and the loveliness. But by far the most important thing as always, look after yourself. Till next time, would ya?

[00:11:18]Thank you very much for watching.

[00:11:20]Money's Ross, and you've been watching PTCG Radio.