I know that Greninja is the main deck that can function w/out Lele, but are there any others that don't need, or could function at a tournament level w/out it?
Discussion Decks without Tapu Lele?
- Thread starter crowfeather4
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Nope, even Greninja decks play one Tapu Lele GX right now.
The only deck I can think of that Lele wouldn't improve is Quad Sylveon. As for wether or not Sylveon is a tournament level deck, I'm not so sure.
When you're talking about decks without Lele, you're immediately venturing into rogue deck territory, so don't get hung up on whether a deck is "tournament level" or not.
The truth is no deck really NEEDS Lele, but Lele makes just about every deck better, because Lele provides consistency.
IRL, my daughter, @softy0001, and I still only have 1 copy of Lele, so we've learned to adapt our decks accordingly by playing higher supporter counts and much fewer tech cards. Decks based around basic Pokes, like Volcanion, tend to work better without Lele than say Gardy, but you can still play Gardy without Lele. Will you lose some games and matches you shouldn't because you don't have Lele? Yup. Is a deck like Gardy still powerful even without Lele? Yup. When deck building, my daughter and I try to focus less on why the deck we want to play won't work because we don't have the Leles and we try focus more on honing our Lele-less decks to be as consistent and powerful as possible.
But yeah, Greninja is probably the easiest to pull off without Lele. Volcanion too.
The truth is no deck really NEEDS Lele, but Lele makes just about every deck better, because Lele provides consistency.
IRL, my daughter, @softy0001, and I still only have 1 copy of Lele, so we've learned to adapt our decks accordingly by playing higher supporter counts and much fewer tech cards. Decks based around basic Pokes, like Volcanion, tend to work better without Lele than say Gardy, but you can still play Gardy without Lele. Will you lose some games and matches you shouldn't because you don't have Lele? Yup. Is a deck like Gardy still powerful even without Lele? Yup. When deck building, my daughter and I try to focus less on why the deck we want to play won't work because we don't have the Leles and we try focus more on honing our Lele-less decks to be as consistent and powerful as possible.
But yeah, Greninja is probably the easiest to pull off without Lele. Volcanion too.
Sylve is semi-tourney level, depends on how you play it.
Do you play it this way out of necessity or just chose not to include Lele in the deck? I play a turbo lapras deck in expanded with 3 Lele and find it to be critical to the deck's success, especially when you can't get a manaphy on the bench and need to pull a guzma to rotate your Lapras and keep hitting every turn.
No not out of necessity, I just find with Lapras draw ability that Lele not an absolute requirement, plus when I was running one or two vs 4 Lapras it seemed like every game I played I started with one of my Lele which was very frustrating. So I removed them from deck.
I feel that you can play any deck without Tapu Lele if built correctly. You will need to increase your setup supporter count so you can get higher chance of using them. But at that point its better to play lele so you can get any card instead of running more supporters. The extra supporters will clog your hand many times.
A few tips:
1. Lele is almost essential in Standard, and thus very few tips go without it. You could just play Expanded until you pull yourself some Leles, because in Expanded you can play Shaymin-EX and Jirachi-EX from Plasma Blast (which has Lele's ability but doesn't have the attack and only 90HP). Both of them are MUCH cheaper than Leles.
2. If you decide to continue playing Standard without Leles, try gravitating towards the "Budget Decks". Much like in PrC-on, where "Budget Decks" were decent decks with no Shaymins, now they're decks with no Leles. A few good examples include Sylveon as previously mentioned, Passimian though it's not the best deck, or perhaps my favorite, 4 Guzzlord 56 Dark Energy.
3. Depending on whether or not you're talking about TCGO or IRL events, on TCGO you could just play Expanded while buying non stop GR from shop, hoping for the Lele pulls. I'm not too sure about IRL events though, cause I only play TCGO.
4. This is by no means a substitute, but Random Receiver could be used here. It's in no way consistent, but it gets you the Supporters you need. Thing is that it could get you a Guzma when you're dead drawing.
5. Though Leles are substitutable, you're still pretty much never going to get to the same level as those who play Leles. Leles are simply an amazing card that is either very hard to replace or irreplaceable in certain decks (e.g. Shining Genesect + Venusaur).
1. Lele is almost essential in Standard, and thus very few tips go without it. You could just play Expanded until you pull yourself some Leles, because in Expanded you can play Shaymin-EX and Jirachi-EX from Plasma Blast (which has Lele's ability but doesn't have the attack and only 90HP). Both of them are MUCH cheaper than Leles.
2. If you decide to continue playing Standard without Leles, try gravitating towards the "Budget Decks". Much like in PrC-on, where "Budget Decks" were decent decks with no Shaymins, now they're decks with no Leles. A few good examples include Sylveon as previously mentioned, Passimian though it's not the best deck, or perhaps my favorite, 4 Guzzlord 56 Dark Energy.
3. Depending on whether or not you're talking about TCGO or IRL events, on TCGO you could just play Expanded while buying non stop GR from shop, hoping for the Lele pulls. I'm not too sure about IRL events though, cause I only play TCGO.
4. This is by no means a substitute, but Random Receiver could be used here. It's in no way consistent, but it gets you the Supporters you need. Thing is that it could get you a Guzma when you're dead drawing.
5. Though Leles are substitutable, you're still pretty much never going to get to the same level as those who play Leles. Leles are simply an amazing card that is either very hard to replace or irreplaceable in certain decks (e.g. Shining Genesect + Venusaur).
May I link you to here?:
http://www.pokebeach.com/forums/thr...ndard-budget-decks.143924/page-4#post-2908994
http://www.pokebeach.com/forums/thr...ndard-budget-decks.143924/page-4#post-2908994