Deck Discussion #15: Donphan

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Futa

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OK, so some of you might remember this deck discussion thing. You know, when BT posted a thread about a deck and members would just come in and talk about the deck in general? Those threads did well, but BT just got lazy when posting them. I'll try to post a new Deck Discussion every week as long as I have enough time and I remember.

So, this weeks deck discussion is on Donphan from the new Legends: HGSS set. Donphan is being seen as the donk deck of the format, being granted with the ability to do 60 for one energy. Even more, using damage boosters such as Expert Belt and PlusPower would increase that 60 damage, making it much more easier to donk/score KO's (especially against SP's.) With it being a stage-1, it is a lot easier to get out in that matter (you don't have to look for a Rare Candy, just a BTS to donk.) What's more, with Donphan's Exoskeleton Poke Body all damage done to Donphan is reduced by 20. This means Donphan is fast, can do pretty some pretty high damage, and can stay in the match for quite some time. It's downside, however, is the water weakness. Feraligatr and Gyarados both hit it for x2 weakness. With Exoskeleton, they need to do a base of 70 damage just to KO Donphan's 120HP.

Discuss!
 
It's ok but if it's playing a good deck that can do good damage or get an early lead then it's going to lose. It's nothing that I plan on playing anytime soon.
 
^^Get an early lead on Donphan? The thing is a fight type Kingdra dude. Add like Manectric or queen to your bench, add SSU, Bat, Pluspower, turns, belt, and so on, and like 3 BTS, and the thing will just monster your face. I personally love this card. Its great. What is better? Crobat. Lol.
 
I see this deck doing very well at states. Its defensive, has a lot of tech room, and is really fast. It also has type coverage over luxray, but a weakness to palkia and kingdra(which aren't exactly the most popular decks).
 
It has a few obvious downsides, most are in its type.

First off, its weakness. Gyarados ain't gonna die out anytime soon (Why hello there Blissey Prime, fancy seeing you here), Kingdra still pops up left and right and Feraligatr will also be played, which means that theres plenty of stuff that can shred straight through Donphan.
However, its typing can also be a problem. Fighting is often resisted (Although not usually by the best of Pokemon), the most notable at the moment being Jumpluff, who barely avoids the 2HKO, while it can fire back 100 damage for 1 energy. With its 4 retreat, Donphan will not easily rotate around hiding behind Nidoqueens, and Jumpluff could easily run Expert Belt/Crobats to ensure the OHKO (Whilst Donphan will never be able to easily OHKO a Pluff). In the same vein theres Charizard, who once it gets past the initial flurry of attacks will start dishing out powerful hits while not even being 3HKO'd by Donphan.
Then there's Dialga decks who will tank out Donphan's hits while dishing out plenty of damage due to shutting down Exoskeleton.
Low flying Mr. Mime techs will also frustrate Donphan as due to its retreat cost it isn't easy to just drop a Luxray or anything. Sure it can resort to Pokemon Reversal but theres only so many you can run, and so many heads you can flip.

In the end, Donphan is fast and dangerous but it does have a couple of setbacks. The fact that it utterly crushes Luxray, however, is well appreciated.
 
I actually don't see Donphan as an attacker as much as I see it as a tech for SPs. By itself, it loses to anything Water-type (Palkia G plain owns it). With an Expert Belt attached, it knocks out any SP that isn't Dialga/Palkia. Luxray, Garchomp, Blaziken.... all fall to it. And, unlike Machamp, Unown G does nothing to Donphan. Therefore, I feel that Donphan is better used as a tech in something like Flygon, maybe, to knock out SPs incredibly quickly. Plus, Flygon already techs Queen. The synergy between the two is great.
 
Seth1789110 said:
^^Get an early lead on Donphan? The thing is a fight type Kingdra dude. Add like Manectric or queen to your bench, add SSU, Bat, Pluspower, turns, belt, and so on, and like 3 BTS, and the thing will just monster your face. I personally love this card. Its great. What is better? Crobat. Lol.
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My point exactly... except it doesn't have the 20 snipe. So uh, see Poke Turn, Super Scoop, hit&run+Mr. Mime, Blissey Prime and high HP/Expert Belt. So no, it's not impossible to get a lead on it.
 
I think I'll see him sliding in as a backup for my FlyChamp deck here in the near future, and that, is honestly a welcome thing.

I see him filling in as a secondary attacker in any deck that has an excuse to run Fighting Energy and be a lot of fun in that respect. Other than that, until I get killed by it, I really doubt it as a full on deck. (I'll eat my words later, more than likely)
 
He will fail miserably during states as his hype is the only thing holding him together. Donphan does 60 for 1 it's hyped. Rampardos does 80 for 1 it was hyped and failed too. It just doesn't hold together that much. People say they will run nidoqueen for the damage the do to themselves. Stallgon/blaziken FB will bring it up and wreak havoc. Gyarados/palkia G X/feraligatr prime all kill it.
 
#1weavile said:
He will fail miserably during states as his hype is the only thing holding him together. Donphan does 60 for 1 it's hyped. Rampardos does 80 for 1 it was hyped and failed too. It just doesn't hold together that much. People say they will run nidoqueen for the damage the do to themselves. Stallgon/blaziken FB will bring it up and wreak havoc. Gyarados/palkia G X/feraligatr prime all kill it.
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The big important difference with Rampardos here is that Rampardos is hard to get out and hurts itself even more, whereas Donphan can take the backfire and use a Memory Berry for Flail. Also 140 virtual HP if you go for an OHKO, 160 if you go for a 2HKO.
 
Gliscor said:
Those threads did well, but BT just got lazy when posting them.
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=/. The Deck Discussions stopped mostly because there were....about 2 new viable decks from SV and AR? (You should have seen some requests I received around August...Walrein RR? Seriously?) Adding into the fact that I lost some interest into competitive TCG, and my forgetfulness is why they stopped coming.

Anyway, Donphan will probably turn out to be one of these do-or-die cards in the meta-game. It looks solid, but Stage 1s have a disadvantage in this format. (What Stage 1 has been successful since Blissey MT/Honchkrow MT (and that was only for a short while)?) Despite that, it seems to be Kingdra-esque, with similar bulk and damage output. With Nidoqueen, I could see it performing decently. However, with Palkia and (likely) Feraligatr in the meta, it will have some issues.

I'm going to guess it will end up as Tier 2.
 
#1weavile said:
He will fail miserably during states as his hype is the only thing holding him together. Donphan does 60 for 1 it's hyped. Rampardos does 80 for 1 it was hyped and failed too. It just doesn't hold together that much. People say they will run nidoqueen for the damage the do to themselves. Stallgon/blaziken FB will bring it up and wreak havoc. Gyarados/palkia G X/feraligatr prime all kill it.
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Rampardos is a fossil. Right when SPs came out along with Dialga, there was no way Fossils were going to win against Dialga. Donphan is totally different. One, it's a Stage 1, making it quicker. Two, it's not a fossil, so you shouldn't be donked.

Blue Thunder said:
(What Stage 1 has been successful since Blissey MT/Honchkrow MT (and that was only for a short while)?) Despite that, it seems to be Kingdra-esque, with similar bulk and damage output.
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One word: Gyarados. Yep, you can't beat that.

Ok, so back to Donphan. I like it. Especially with Nidoqueen for tanking with that Body. The 60 for one Energy is good but along with Expert Belt can get even better. I hope it will be a good deck and not just overhyped. But it is a little too early to tell.

dmaster out.
 
Yeah, Gyarados just slipped my mind. Then again, it does have a bit better recovery than most decks, possibly explaining why it got to the top despite being a Stage 1.

Nevertheless, I'm unsure about Donphan. After seeing things hyped up set after set after set, I don't like hyping cards up anymore. It seems that all the hyped turns out to suck, while previously-low cards tend to be the big guys. However, with Nidoqueen, I think it might do OK.

We'll just have to see...
 
I like Donphan, but I definitely see it much differently than most other people seem to be. Instead of wasting your deck space on things like Queen, Manectric, etc. you should just drop it all for a much more compact and deadly version. With the re-introduction of Pokémon. Reversal, the idea of selective destruction becomes much more common. With 4 Blower, 4 Warp Point, and 4 Pokemon Reversal, it is quite easy to take 3 or so prizes later in the game just by feeding off of Uxie, Claydol, and weakened attackers. Early in the game it is Donphan's focus to take a couple of prizes by Koing the bigger attackers that they send up, and wait for later in the game to start taking down the weaker Pokemon. The backlash from Donphan's attack is laughable, as Exoskeleton nulls that, and if you use Uxie as your drawpower, you can just toss them back to the bottom later.

It is true that certain decks will give Donphan some trouble, but I do not see Palkia or Kingdra too often, nor do I fear Gyarados. All three of the decks rely on too many extra Pokemon for Donphan to feed off of, and as long as you are able to hamper their setup with your speed, you should be fine.
 
I'm hoping to try out an Exploud SV tech with Donphan, removing that Water weakness. I'm just not sure if it'd be worth having and 4-4 Donphan Prime, and 1-1-1 Nidoqueen and Exploud, along with some other Pokémon to help with proceedings.

With no weakness you've got a good shot at beating Gyarados and Feraligatr. All you need is some Plus Power and an Expert Belt or Memory Berry to do some big damage, then set up another Donphan in the meantime. I think Donphan might just do as well as a lot of people think it will.
 
^^This and what dmaster said. Instead of 4 blowers+4 pokemon reversal, you could do like 2-1 Luxray, and some Lucario GL. That way, if you encounter a water deck, you can shoot right back with Luxray, but mainly, his purpose, was, as DoX put it, selective destruction. Using an Uxie engine, like 3-1, you could do just fine. Just 4-4 Donphan, 2-1 Uxie, 2-1 Luxray(its good for its power, but can also make a great attacker, just put in like 3 electric energy and your good to go), and an azelf, your fine. Add crobats, poketurns, ssu, plus powers, and belts, you do great.
EDIT: Ninja'd. I was referring to DoX and dmaster's posts.
 
Yeah, a mini-SP deck could work with Crobat G+Poke Turn obviously. There's more than just adding Nidoqueen/Manectric in there just to stop damage.

dmaster out.
 
Luxray is hard to work in Donphan though because it has no free retreat, nor does Donphan instantly obliterate benchsitters like Gyarados can.
 
Well, I've been running Donphan for 4 months now and Oh my goodness does this card rock!!! I went from running only one to dishing out four. Exoskeleton is amazing and so is 1 energy cost for 60. I havent donked as much as I would have expected but the sheer brute force of this card, especially when it attacks in hordes is amazing!! i tech nidoqueen and flygon for great balance. Imagine coming close to killing off a dreaded pokemon just to have it return to the bench to heal and even power up to 90. Sp match up is amazing, Dialga G Lv X does present some major problems however especially with poketurn usually run in sets of four. Overall, I am in love with this card :D
 
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