Hello fellow Beach bums - over the past month or so, I have done a small and fairly unscientific study on Shaymin - maybe the results below will give you something to mentally chew on.
So what I can definitely tell you is that in 50 matches in which Shaymin was played, I came across a total of 65 Shaymin. Shaymin were played from the hand 61 times and started turn 1 four times.
Of those 4 Shaymin that were started as active pokemon turn 1, I knocked out all 4.
10 times, I Lysandred Shaymin and knocked him out. 4 times I did this to win the game. There was one game in which Shaymin started active turn 1, and I knocked out another Shaymin to win the game.
Of the 61 Shaymin played from the hand, they generated an average of 3.85 cards each time played from the hand.
I won 27 of the 50 matches - this is where it's especially fuzzy. I have been testing post rotation decks during this time frame, and I have only been playing post rotation (or mostly post rotation) decks. Meaning, if my opponent's active pokemon is Joltik, Phantump, or Seismatoad, I automatically hit the concede button. So take what you will of the lowish win percentage - I'm sure it would have been even lower if I had included Night March or Water Shuriken decks.
Also, I think it's fair to say that if you have Shaymin, then you probably have a lot of other really great cards as well and that you know what you're doing. A novice, infrequent player probably won't have Shaymin available to him. I've been playing very seriously online for more than 6 months, and I just finally pulled my first Shaymin out of a Roaring Skies pack.
And, of course, I promptly built it into each of the 12 post rotation decks I'm working on.
So what I can definitely tell you is that in 50 matches in which Shaymin was played, I came across a total of 65 Shaymin. Shaymin were played from the hand 61 times and started turn 1 four times.
Of those 4 Shaymin that were started as active pokemon turn 1, I knocked out all 4.
10 times, I Lysandred Shaymin and knocked him out. 4 times I did this to win the game. There was one game in which Shaymin started active turn 1, and I knocked out another Shaymin to win the game.
Of the 61 Shaymin played from the hand, they generated an average of 3.85 cards each time played from the hand.
I won 27 of the 50 matches - this is where it's especially fuzzy. I have been testing post rotation decks during this time frame, and I have only been playing post rotation (or mostly post rotation) decks. Meaning, if my opponent's active pokemon is Joltik, Phantump, or Seismatoad, I automatically hit the concede button. So take what you will of the lowish win percentage - I'm sure it would have been even lower if I had included Night March or Water Shuriken decks.
Also, I think it's fair to say that if you have Shaymin, then you probably have a lot of other really great cards as well and that you know what you're doing. A novice, infrequent player probably won't have Shaymin available to him. I've been playing very seriously online for more than 6 months, and I just finally pulled my first Shaymin out of a Roaring Skies pack.
And, of course, I promptly built it into each of the 12 post rotation decks I'm working on.
