I am tweaking my PikaRom deck to include some defensive cards as PikaRom while being a prize taking machine can also become a prize liability if it is not charged and attacking quickly. When I first made my deck I was inclined to include defensive cards like Aether Conservation Center and Acerola, but quickly cut them out as I opted to focus solely on offensive strategy of powering up PikaRom as quickly as possible. Looking at the lists used by many of the players at Collinsville and Cannes, it seems that having some defensive techs is a very smart idea. I am including one copy of Aether Conservation Area and one copy of Weakness Policy. My question is weather to go with Acerola or Max Potion? In my Jolteon Zapdos deck Max Potion is clearly the better option, but with PikaRom I am unsure. If PikaRom is in play and in unable to quickly attack it is a big prize liability and it might be better to get it out of play rather than just heal it. Also, the energy cards that are attached are not discarded, even though with all the energy switches you can likely just move them to other pokemon in play. What is the opinion of other players? Is Acerola or Max Potion a better defensive tech for PikaRom? All opinions and comments are greatly appreciated.
Discussion Acerola or Max Potion for PikaRom
- Thread starter Geist1848
- Start date
Both Acerola and Max Potion will slow your deck down some, which probably is a net negative. I'm not sure why you'd play with either in Jolteon/Zapdos, but it seems to me in PikaRom like you need those energy in the deck, not your hand, so it depends on how you can get them there.
Acerola will mean you can't Cynthia to get them back in _that_ turn, but maybe you can next turn; with Max Potion you could Energy Recycler the energy back, so perhaps that's the better strategy. Obviously you could just ignore the energy and get more from the next PikaRom hit, but you'll run out eventually going that route.
All in all max potion might be best, because it's not going to clog your hand up with a bunch of energy - but not if your plan is to use it a lot.
Looking at the Collinsville decks, Pablo's deck for example uses zero of these - no weakness, no aether, no acerola, no potion. Others have one or two cards for this purpose. I can tell you from my testing that there are times when they help, but they definitely slow your hand down some also. Honestly, if you're playing in smaller settings where you won't necessarily play against top meta decks, my feeling is that having one or two is okay - but in Collinsville the best one I played against had none of them, and Pablo also had none. My testing with them is more mixed, but mostly because I'm testing in Versus on PTCGO which is much slower.
Side note: next time you post I recommend paragraphs, it makes it easier to read! Good luck!
Acerola will mean you can't Cynthia to get them back in _that_ turn, but maybe you can next turn; with Max Potion you could Energy Recycler the energy back, so perhaps that's the better strategy. Obviously you could just ignore the energy and get more from the next PikaRom hit, but you'll run out eventually going that route.
All in all max potion might be best, because it's not going to clog your hand up with a bunch of energy - but not if your plan is to use it a lot.
Looking at the Collinsville decks, Pablo's deck for example uses zero of these - no weakness, no aether, no acerola, no potion. Others have one or two cards for this purpose. I can tell you from my testing that there are times when they help, but they definitely slow your hand down some also. Honestly, if you're playing in smaller settings where you won't necessarily play against top meta decks, my feeling is that having one or two is okay - but in Collinsville the best one I played against had none of them, and Pablo also had none. My testing with them is more mixed, but mostly because I'm testing in Versus on PTCGO which is much slower.
Side note: next time you post I recommend paragraphs, it makes it easier to read! Good luck!
Max potion is probably the best option. There are too many disadvantages of Acerola. You can't lillie with that much energies in hand, you can't play any other supporter etc. Max potion discards energy which sometimes can be a plus with raikou and Tapu koko prism star
My vote is for Acerola. I think if you play Max potion, IMO you necessarily need a way to grab energy from your discard pile. Most deck lists run 1 Tapu Koko Prism Star, but that's only 2 energies. I think a realistic scenario is that you have a damaged Pikarom that has used its GX attack and you want to heal it -- I think losing 6 energies to discard would be devastating. It's true that Max potion is probably better on Zapdos/Jolteon, but I would argue this Pikarom scenario outweighs that benefit.
I say acerola. If your not getting one shot and can get the full blitz off before taking a hit then put the three energies on another pikarom and then acerola if it doesn’t get knocked out. Then you can either put I back on bench for manual attachments or use the new pikarom to build it up again depending on the number of energies left in deck