From Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.
Durant Mill, also known simply as Durant, was a competitive deck archetype in the Pokémon Trading Card Game. Unlike most decks, it focuses on using Durant's Devour attack to cause the opponent to lose by being unable to draw any more cards. Although a heavily modified version of the deck was created for the 2012-2013 Organized Play season, the loss of critical cards such as Pichu and Twins due to format rotation kept it from seeing much success.
Strategy
The strategy of this deck is to cause the opponent to lose by "decking out," or running out of cards in their deck. The deck's favored lead is Pichu, whose Playground attack permits both players to fill their Benches with any number of Basic Pokémon from their decks. This allows the player to immediately put all four Durant into play. Because Durant's Devour attack discards the top card of the opponent's deck for each Durant in play, this maximizes the number of cards discarded each turn.
The Durant Mill deck is equipped with many disruptive Trainer cards that can slow the opponent down and ruin their setup. This is to prevent them from taking all six Prize Cards before their deck is depleted.
Cards
Pokémon
- Durant - The central Pokémon of this deck, which depletes the opponent's deck by using its Devour attack. Ideally, four Durant are to be in play at all times so as to be able to discard 4 cards from the opponent's deck every turn.
- Pichu - This Pokémon is ideally used at the start of the game. Its Playground attack is used to set up the Bench, searching the deck for as many Durant as possible, as well as Rotom if needed.
- Rotom - Its Mischievous Trick Poké-Power swaps a face-down Prize Card with the top card of the player's deck. This is useful if any Durant are prized.
Trainers
- Revive - Moves a Basic Pokémon from the discard pile to the Bench. This allows any Durant that are Knocked Out to be quickly put back into play.
- Alph Lithograph - Allows the player to look at all of their face-down Prize Cards, which helps the player utilize Rotom efficiently.
- Junk Arm - At the cost of discarding two cards from their hand, lets the player search their discard pile for any other Trainer card. This enables the player to reuse cards like Revive, Lost Remover, Pokémon Catcher, and Crushing Hammer.
- Crushing Hammer - Has a 50% chance of discarding an Energy card from one the opponent's Pokémon. If successful, this can effectively buy the player more turns to mill the opponent's deck.
- Lost Remover - Moves a Special Energy card from one of the opponent's Pokémon to the Lost Zone, eliminating the Energy card from play.
- Pokémon Catcher - Switches the opponent's Active Pokémon with one of their Benched Pokémon. This could be used to stall by forcing a Pokémon with a high Retreat Cost into the Active Spot.
- Eviolite - A Pokémon Tool card that is used to reduce damage taken by Durant, making it more difficult to Knock Out.
- Twins - Allows the player to search the deck for any two cards, provided they have more Prize Cards remaining than their opponent. Because Durant Mill isn't focused on Knocking Out Pokémon, the Durant Mill Player will almost always be able to play Twins.
Typical decklist
The deck list appearing below is not official; it is meant to represent an average build of the archetype, not specifically constructed for any regional metagame. Being that this is merely an archetype, a player may wish to change any part of this deck when building their own version.
E
E
