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Standard Duskmane/Magnezone Lacking Consistency

PokeBowl

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hi, I'm fairly new to the game and have really enjoyed playing the duskmane/magnazone deck. Currently this deck seems like a coin flip. When it runs, it goes off very smoothly, but I wanna try to make this deck more consistent for pokemon league challenges. Thanks for the help in advance.

Pokemon
2 Dusk Mane Necrozma GX UPR 90
1 Dialga GX UPR 100
3 Magnemite UPR 81
3 Magnezone UPR 83
1 Mew FCO 29
1 Octillery BKT 33
1 Remoraid BKT 31
1 Magearna EX STS 110
2 Tapu Lele GX GRI 60
1 Solgaleo ♢ UPR 89

Trainers
4 Mt. Coronet
2 Field Blower
1 Float Stone
2 Pal Pad
4 Rare Candy
2 Choice Band
1 Rescue Stretcher
2 Brigette
1 Skyla
1 Fisherman
3 Ultra Ball
2 Cynthia
3 N
2 Professor Sycamore
3 Guzma


Energy
11 Metal Energy √

Mew- added him for a nice non-gx burst attack when I Duskmane is on my bench.
Magearna EX - For Espeon and Greninja matches(got annoying ha; but not sure if it's reasonable to keep it)


All help is appreciated!
Thanks again!
 
Hello @PokeBowl ! First of all, looks like a pretty solid list to me. The archetype as a whole is very powerful, but inherently relatively inconsistent. That being said, I like playing this type of deck, and I think its worthwhile to try to optimize the lists that you like, as opposed to just copying what other people are playing/winning with...it helps you grow as a player/deck builder, so let's get into it!

First thing is that in my experience with setup decks, getting turn 1 brigette is of utmost importance for getting your stage 2's out against all the aggressive decks in format like buzzwole and zoroark. A 3'rd brigette would clunk up your deck in the mid/late game since you don't have an easy way to discard it. So I think a 3rd tapu lele as well as a 4th ultra ball are musts...you'll notice it helps with both consistency of setup and also closing out games for that last guzma or sycamore into energy or whatever you need to finish things off. For these, I'd be ok dropping the 11th metal energy and the fisherman. No other decks are playing more than 4 field blowers/stadiums right now, so your mt coronet should stick and that should give you adequate energy recycling.

The other thing that is really important for consistency is a draw engine to carry you through the mid/late game. In my personal testing, I've been underwhelmed by pal pad in this regard. Maybe its different with zoroark to draw into stuff you just shuffled in, I just have been finding it hard to sequence properly. It's potentially really good mid-game, but you need the right supporters in the discard pile, and I've found it smoother to just play more supporters in general. So I'd scrap the pal pads and add an N (super good in setup decks, especially with octillery out) and a cynthia. Keep your 2 sycamore and try to use them at the right times, discarding energy is really good in this deck, but discarding guzma or multiple draw supporters is really bad, so just be careful with it.

Last thing is to make sure you don't over-tech. I like mew as a free retreater/utility attacker, and magearna ex helps against all of plea gx, espeon ex, and shadow stitching so I like keeping that as well. Just don't tech anything else and you'll be fine.

So in summary, I'd recommend:

+1 lele, +1 ultra ball, +1 cynthia, +1 N
-2 pal pad, -1 fisherman, -1 metal energy

This should improve your consistency without sacrificing too much late game potential (which this deck has a lot of built in to its basic strategy in my opinion)

Other things I might play around with would be an extra skyla and trying out professor's letter to help get things rolling...first cuts for me would be the 10th metal energy (since professor's letter is a searchable version of it) and the 3rd magnezone (skyla acts as a way to search this out via ultra ball, and you don't technically need more than 1 magnezone out at a time anyway). Might even go so far as to play 2 or 3 professor's letter and 7 or 8 metal energies, since finding multiple at once is so important on the right turns, and mt coronet is so broken at letting you recycle them, but that's pure speculation on my part, and could very well bomb spectacularly. I gave up on this archetype early in testing as it felt too inconsistent for my taste, but I'd love to see other people try to optimize a list, as I think it is a very fun style of deck once it gets set up!
 
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