Durant Mill (TCG)

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Durant Mill
Durant and Pichu Types used Major cards Durant, Pichu, and Rotom Era 2011-2012

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 be unable to draw any more cards, causing them to lose. 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 lose by "decking out", or running out of cards to draw. The deck's favored starter is Pichu, whose Playground attack permits both players to fill their benches with any 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 final Pokémon, Rotom, allows the player to retrieve any Durant which are in the Prize Cards, which can be checked using Alph Lithograph.

Once set up, the Durant Mill player would attempt to slow the opponent using various Trainer cards in order to prevent them from taking all six prize cards before running out of cards.

Cards

Pokémon

• Durant depletes the opponent's deck by using its Devour attack. Four Durant in play are used for a decent amount of the opponent's cards to be discarded each turn.
• Pichu lets the Durant Mill player set up the necessary Basic Pokémon using its Playground attack.
• Rotom is used to let the player swap a face-down Prize Card with the first card in the player's deck, using its Mischievous Trick Poké-Power, in case a Durant card is one of the Prize Cards.

Trainers

• Revive moves a Basic Pokémon from the discard pile to the bench. This allows any Durant which 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, and helps the player utilize Rotom effectively.
• Junk Arm lets the player search their discard pile for a Trainer card (besides Junk Arm) at the cost of discarding two cards. This enables the player to reuse discarded Revives, Lost Removers, Pokémon Catchers, and Crushing Hammers.
• Lost Remover moves a Special Energy card from one of the opponent's Pokémon to the Lost Zone, eliminating the Energy card from play. This slows down the rate at which the opponent can power up attackers.
• Pokémon Catcher replaces the opponent's Active Pokémon with a Benched Pokémon. This could be used to stall by trapping Pokémon with high retreat costs.
• Crushing Hammer has a 50% chance of discarding one of the opponent's Pokémon's Energy.
• Eviolite reduces damage taken by the Basic Pokémon that the Eviolite card is attached to. It is used to make Durant more difficult to knock out.
• Twins allows the player to search for any two cards and put them into the player's hand, 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 his or her own version.

Quantity	Card	Type	Rarity
4×	Durant
1×	Rotom
1×	Pichu
4×	Revive	I
1×	Alph Lithograph	T
4×	Junk Arm	T
3×	Lost Remover	T
4×	Pokémon Catcher	I
4×	Crushing Hammer	I
4×	Eviolite	I
4×	Twins	Su
4×	Pokémon Collector	Su
2×	Flower Shop Lady	Su
4×	Professor Oak's New Theory	Su
4×	N	Su
4×	Metal Energy	E
3×	Rescue Energy	E

This article is part of Project TCG, a Bulbapedia project that aims to report on every aspect of the Pokémon Trading Card Game.