Best Nihilego deck in Pokémon TCG Pocket

Pokémon TCG Pocket’s latest themed pack, Extradimensional Crisis, introduced the Ultra Beasts, Alola’s signature Pokémon species. One of the most popular deck builds in today’s meta is the one centered around a squishy but annoying Ultra Beast, Nihilego.

Nihilego, a Dark-type Pokémon card, has an ability called More Poison that amplifies the effect of the Poisoned special condition.

A poisoned Pokémon takes 10 damage at the end of each player’s turn, which means that if you used Nihilego’s ability, the affected Pokémon will take a total of 20 damage at the start of your next turn.

While there are several variations of the Nihilego deck, this post will share a non-ex build that can be used for clearing specific Battle Missions in Solo Mode.

This deck build uses Nihilego and Salazzle, two Pokémon that excel when they Poison the opponent’s Active Pokémon.

Your main goal for this Nihilego deck is to inflict the Poisoned special condition as often as possible. Both Nihilego and Salazzle can poison their foes by attacking, but nevertheless, you can always force the condition with a couple of Poison Barbs.

As long as your opponent’s Active Pokémon is Poisoned, they’ll always get 30 damage instead of 20 every time you start your turn, thanks to Nihilego’s ability. Salazzle and Turtonator are your best bets for dealing damage to your opponent, with Salazzle giving another special condition, Burned.

A Poisoned and Burned Pokémon, combined with Nihilego’s ability, can deal an extra 70 damage, assuming your opponent fails their coin toss and the Burned condition remains active at the start of your turn.

You can use Turtonator as a finisher, relying on its 90-damage move to eliminate the remaining HP of a Poisoned and Burned Pokémon.

A bunch of Trainer cards support Nihilego and Salazzle, disrupting the opponent and letting the two Pokémon wreak havoc on the field.

Iono and Cyrus are your main cards for annoying your opponent, and the Kiawe cards help a lot in accelerating Turtonator’s effectiveness.

The rest are pretty much useful for specific situations, like the Pokémon Center Lady for some heal and the usual Professor’s Research-Poké Ball combo for getting those Nihilego and Salandit.

The Nihilego deck in Pokémon TCG Pocket can overwhelm several decks in Solo Mode. The slowest Pokémon here so far only requires three Energy, so it’s faster than most decks in the meta, especially those that rely on Energy-hungry Pokémon ex.

Oricorio deck users are also helpless with Salazzle and Turtonator, as this deck doesn’t rely on any Pokémon ex.

Nihilego is the only Dark-type Pokémon here, and the rest are Fire types. To prevent this deck from bricking, you only need to use Fire-type Energy, making Nihilego useless as an Active Pokémon.

Watch out for any switch cards like Cyrus and Sabrina, as they might force you to waste an Energy to retreat your Nihilego.

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