B_F: This is an old thread, written before LM's release, but it's a great article, and a good read.
Hiya peoples.
In this thread I'd like to discuss one of the coolest cards coming out in Legend Maker. One that will no doubt see some play after the set's release.
I'm talking about ... Dustox ex =D
I always had this card in the back of my mind as one of the better cards coming from LM, and after Abhorsen brought it up the other day, I thought it'd be a great card to discuss. Please read through the whole post. I dont want to have written all this just so everyone can skip half of it. =P
Anyways...Here's the card description:
Dustox ex - Grass - HP140
Stage 2 - Evolves from Cascoon
Poke-Body: Safeguard
Prevent all effects, including damage, done to Dustox ex by your opponent's Pokemon ex.
[G][C] Silver Wind: 40 damage. During your next turn, the Pokemon that was damaged by Silver Wind takes an additional 30 damage from all attacks.
[G][C][C] Cutting Wind: 70 damage.
Weakness: Fire/Psychic
Resistance: none
Retreat: 1
(thanks to pokebeach.com for the spoiler)
So. What's good about this card?
Well, firstly, it has a great Poke-body.
Safeguard will protect you against the ex pokemon that some of the top decks play. The likes of ZRE, SMP, Blastoise/Steelix/Lugia, Medicham and even Dark Dragtrode will have to change their attack strategies just to get past you.
It also has something that other safeguard pokemon dont have. Huge HP and decent attacks.
When you look at the likes of Wobbuffet, Ninetales, Shuckle, Dewgong and Altaria, you dont see a pokemon that can withstand big blows. Even a sub-par attacker could take care of these things in 2 hits.
Also, look at the damage they can do. None of the previous Safeguard pokemon can go past 50 damage with 3 energy. That means a 3HKO on a lot of stage 2 pokemon, and 2HKOs on stage 1 pokemon.
Now look at Dustox ex. Dustox ex has a huge 140 Hit points, and can attack for 40 for only 2 energy, and 70 for 3, which makes it undoubtibly the most powerful safeguard pokemon to come out yet.
In fact, being able to 2HKO stage 2 pokemon, and 1HKO a lot of stage 1 pokemon makes Dustox ex a viable pokemon to build a deck around. Whereas the previous safeguard pokemon have been left to be techs, this pokemon can handle things as a main attacker.
Then there's something that makes this Pokemon even better.
- Its pre-evolutions
Wurmple from Deoxys
It's a pretty standard basic, with 50 hp and 1 to retreat, but gets its merits from a move called Ascension, which allows you to evolve it into Cascoon (if you play dustox, or of course, silcoon for Beautifly). Thus, it is possible to get a turn 2 Dustox ex from a Wurmple start.
Turn 1 ascension - evolves wurmple to cascoon
Turn 2 evolve to Dustox ex.
What makes a Turn 2 Dustox ex even more attainable is the new Cascoon which is to be released.
Cascoon - Grass - HP70
Stage 1 - Evolves from Wurmple
Poke-Power: Emerge
You can use this Power once during your turn, if Cascoon is your Active Pokemon. Flip a coin. If heads, search your deck for a Pokemon that evolves from Cascoon, and place it on top of Cascoon (this counts as evolving Cascoon). Shuffle your deck afterward. This Power can't be used if Cascoon is affected by a Special Condition.
[C][C] Tackle: 20 damage.
Weakness: Fire
Resistance: none
Retreat: 2
Okay, so tackle may not be the best move ever; but it's power is very useful. On a flip of heads, you can search your deck for a pokemon that evolves from Cascoon (eg. Dustox ex) and evolve Cascoon.
Thus, it is possible to get a turn 2 dustox ex, playing no supporters or any other trainers, and having no evolutions in your starting hand. All you need is a Wurmple and an energy, and you have a 50% chance of getting your Dustox ex turn 2!!
Brilliant? Yes I think so. Especially since most of the time you will have a supporter etc. in your hand, which increases the chances of getting turn 2 dustox ex greatly.
Well, now that I've pointed out the speed and strength (Dustox ex isn't really that strong, but it definitely does a decent amount of damage) I'll dicuss the cards weakesses.
Firstly, it has a weakness to fire and psychic, which means Slowking/Dark Slowking could give it a run for its money. SMP could do some major damage if Metagross gets set up, and then there's Typhlosion/Pidgeot, which has been growing in popularity. Also, Magcargo from UF hits this thing pretty bad, and being an means it's hurt by Desert Ruins.
Luckily, Dustox ex does not have a weakness usually associated with Stage 2 pokemon. You probably wont have to worry about ATM Rock. Cascoon has a decent 70 hp, and you dont have to run candies in a Dustox ex deck, so you should be safe against ATM rock if you play it smartly.
Lastly,(for the weakness part of things) Dustox ex does not seem to have as much of a hold on decks that do not play ex. The current non-ex decks that are out there are Ludicargo, MetaNite, Rocklock and Queendom. 2 of those decks have a slight weakness to grass, which is extremely helpful. Queendom should get OHKO'd most of the time by Dustox ex, and if you get up against rocklock quickly, you can turn the match into a Dustox ex VS Amphy battle, in which they'd probably run out of lightning to discard.(not that I've tested matchups. This is all theory) Ludicargo, will probably lose its strength when Giant Stump gets released, but may stay among the top tiers. MetaNite will be a tough matchup.
So knowing this, the challenge is to come up with a useful combo to counter Dustox ex's weaknesses, and make it not just a viable deck, but one of the best in the format.
So. What are Dustox ex's weaknesses. Bascially we're going to look at countering fire and psychic pokemon. The first thing that pops into my head is the eeveelutions (mainly because I had been thinking about them a couple of days ago) and they seem to fit in very very nicely. You get the type variation from playing different eeveelutions, and their coming-into-play powers (esp. Umbreon) are good enough to give Dustox ex a boost in power that is needed with its damage cap'd at 70 for 3.
Also, much like Dustox ex, Umbreon/Vaporeon has a useful pre-evolution. Eevee. Having Eevee and Wurmple will ensure you have a decent start every single game, unless you dont have an energy.
Just so you know, here are the eeveelution cards that I'm thinking of including in the deck.
UMBREON EX
Pokebeach doesn't currently have a scan for this, so I'll post the spoiler.
Umbreon ex (D) - 110 HP
Stage 1: Evolves from Eevee
PokePower - Dark Ring
This Power can be used once during your turn when you play Umbreon ex from your hand to evolve one of your Pokemon. Choose one of the opponent's Bench Pokemon and switch it with the Active Pokemon. (Your opponent chooses the Active Pokemon to switch.)
[C] Dark Cry - 20 damage, and the Defending Pokemon can't retreat or use PokePowers during the opponent's next turn.
[DCC] Night Fang - 60
Weakness - Fighting
Resistance - Psychic
Retreat - (C)
So here's a possible decklist I've come up with of a Dustox ex/Umbreon ex deck, which may give other decks a run for their money.
Pokemon: 21
4 Dustox ex
4 Cascoon
4 Wurmple DX
2 Vaporeon ex
3 Umbreon ex
4 Eevee DS
Trainers: 23
4 Strength Charm
4 Giant Stump
2 Rocket's Admin.
3 Copycat
3 Steven's Advice/Field Worker
3 Great Ball
4 Prof. Elm's Training Method
Energy: 16
8 Grass Energy
4 Water Energy
4 Darkness Energy
Here's the basic reason for each card.
Dustox ex - stated before
Umbreon ex/Vaporeon ex - covers weaknesses
Giant Stump - Counter gym, also helps with Ludi/Possibly MetaNite matchup. I may change it though.
Strength Charm - Maxed out for the greatest chance of doing turn 2 50 damage with silver wind, or doing 80 damage with cutting wind.
Admin/Copycat/Stevens - Draw. Admin for slight disruption.
Energy - basically self explanitory.
I'm thinking of maybe -2 Charms +2 Shards, or sticking in LunaRock
Anywho. Here's how this deck works theoretically against everything else (known archetypes)
SMP - Dustox ex takes away your scizor ex problems, and can cause a stalemate until someone switches. The trick is to use Umbreon to gust out their beldums for the KO, or lock down their Metagross with Dark Cry. I'm not really sure which way this matchup will go. Sounds 50/50 to me. Depends on the build.
ZRE - Dustox ex pwns them. Ray ex cant hit you. Zappy cant hit you. Trode cant hit you. Magmar gets OHKO'd. Cargo gets OHKO'd with a strength charm. They're be lucky to get 6 prizes off you. (unless for some reason they played the UF Magcargo, but I havent seen anyone playing that yet)
Queendom - Dustox OHKOs any queens they send out, unless they play Protective orb or holon fighting w/fire energies. Both are hard to fit into a queendom deck, so I think you should be safe with this matchup.
Ludicargo - A hard matchup... kind of. Limiting your bench helps a lot against Ludi damage, and Giant Stump gets rid of their bench space, and also their setup. With only 4 pokemon in play, the ludi player can't set up more than 1 ludicargo search, and will probably have to have one spot for their tech Lanturn/Cargo UF/Weezing etc. Vaporeon can OHKO Magcargo with 2 energy, which is useful, and Umbreon's pokepower can stop the odd tech pokemon from getting set up. But this is a hard matchup.
Medicham - Medicham can't touch you. Neither can their tech Espeon ex. Houndoom can OHKO you, but I think you'll see it coming, and can prepare to KO it back, or use Umbreon's power to KO it. This Matchup shouldn't be too hard. But then again, there are a lot of good Medicham players out there.
Blastoise/Lugia/Steelix - Can't touch you. Well, they can. But Wartortle isnt going to do enough damage to be threatening.
Dragtrode - Sneasel ex is partially taken out of the equation, but watch out for drag off. You could run into trouble also, If they get a proper Dark Electrode swarm going. Dark Dragonite has resist to grass, but you should play shards if you think you'll run into dragtrode. I dont know which deck would win. But Dustox ex definitely has a chance to.
Rocklock - Can't really get up a proper rock-lock because of the OHKO factor on Sand Damage ttar. They may not need to though, as Spinning Tail ttar does do a lot of damage, and hurts heaps. My advice would be to ko all the larvitars you possibly can, then hope to win the AmphyVSDustox ex matchup. I'm not too sure though. Rocklock is a good deck.
MetaNite - MetaNite wins basically. I can't think of much else. If you can KO them quick before they set up, then you win. If you cant, then their resistence to Dustox ex, and their effectiveness against Vaporeon leaves you to attack with Umbreon, who wont beat MetaNite single handedly.
And that's the matchups.
If you know of any other matchups, or think there's another way to play a certain matchup feel free to add your comment. I'll probably end up editing this a bit.
And that's it basically. Remember, this is a post about Dustox ex and ways to use it. It is not about Dustox ex/Umbreon ex/Vaporeon ex, so feel free to post a different strategy involving Dustox ex which we can discuss if you want to. The Vap/umb deck was what I feel works best with Dustox ex at the moment, but my feelings towards it are subject to change. I will be accepting any help on my current decklist though.
Thanks for reading. I might post another card discussion soon if you guys want me to. I just want to see who's interested in this type of discussion on the pokebeach forums at the moment.
Anyways, It's been fun writing.
~Secretsmeargle
P.S the pictures came out HUGE. Sorry if they take up too much room. Anyone know how to shrink them?
Hiya peoples.
In this thread I'd like to discuss one of the coolest cards coming out in Legend Maker. One that will no doubt see some play after the set's release.
I'm talking about ... Dustox ex =D
I always had this card in the back of my mind as one of the better cards coming from LM, and after Abhorsen brought it up the other day, I thought it'd be a great card to discuss. Please read through the whole post. I dont want to have written all this just so everyone can skip half of it. =P
Anyways...Here's the card description:
Dustox ex - Grass - HP140
Stage 2 - Evolves from Cascoon
Poke-Body: Safeguard
Prevent all effects, including damage, done to Dustox ex by your opponent's Pokemon ex.
[G][C] Silver Wind: 40 damage. During your next turn, the Pokemon that was damaged by Silver Wind takes an additional 30 damage from all attacks.
[G][C][C] Cutting Wind: 70 damage.
Weakness: Fire/Psychic
Resistance: none
Retreat: 1
(thanks to pokebeach.com for the spoiler)
So. What's good about this card?
Well, firstly, it has a great Poke-body.
Safeguard will protect you against the ex pokemon that some of the top decks play. The likes of ZRE, SMP, Blastoise/Steelix/Lugia, Medicham and even Dark Dragtrode will have to change their attack strategies just to get past you.
It also has something that other safeguard pokemon dont have. Huge HP and decent attacks.
When you look at the likes of Wobbuffet, Ninetales, Shuckle, Dewgong and Altaria, you dont see a pokemon that can withstand big blows. Even a sub-par attacker could take care of these things in 2 hits.
Also, look at the damage they can do. None of the previous Safeguard pokemon can go past 50 damage with 3 energy. That means a 3HKO on a lot of stage 2 pokemon, and 2HKOs on stage 1 pokemon.
Now look at Dustox ex. Dustox ex has a huge 140 Hit points, and can attack for 40 for only 2 energy, and 70 for 3, which makes it undoubtibly the most powerful safeguard pokemon to come out yet.
In fact, being able to 2HKO stage 2 pokemon, and 1HKO a lot of stage 1 pokemon makes Dustox ex a viable pokemon to build a deck around. Whereas the previous safeguard pokemon have been left to be techs, this pokemon can handle things as a main attacker.
Then there's something that makes this Pokemon even better.
- Its pre-evolutions
Wurmple from Deoxys
It's a pretty standard basic, with 50 hp and 1 to retreat, but gets its merits from a move called Ascension, which allows you to evolve it into Cascoon (if you play dustox, or of course, silcoon for Beautifly). Thus, it is possible to get a turn 2 Dustox ex from a Wurmple start.
Turn 1 ascension - evolves wurmple to cascoon
Turn 2 evolve to Dustox ex.
What makes a Turn 2 Dustox ex even more attainable is the new Cascoon which is to be released.
Cascoon - Grass - HP70
Stage 1 - Evolves from Wurmple
Poke-Power: Emerge
You can use this Power once during your turn, if Cascoon is your Active Pokemon. Flip a coin. If heads, search your deck for a Pokemon that evolves from Cascoon, and place it on top of Cascoon (this counts as evolving Cascoon). Shuffle your deck afterward. This Power can't be used if Cascoon is affected by a Special Condition.
[C][C] Tackle: 20 damage.
Weakness: Fire
Resistance: none
Retreat: 2
Okay, so tackle may not be the best move ever; but it's power is very useful. On a flip of heads, you can search your deck for a pokemon that evolves from Cascoon (eg. Dustox ex) and evolve Cascoon.
Thus, it is possible to get a turn 2 dustox ex, playing no supporters or any other trainers, and having no evolutions in your starting hand. All you need is a Wurmple and an energy, and you have a 50% chance of getting your Dustox ex turn 2!!
Brilliant? Yes I think so. Especially since most of the time you will have a supporter etc. in your hand, which increases the chances of getting turn 2 dustox ex greatly.
Well, now that I've pointed out the speed and strength (Dustox ex isn't really that strong, but it definitely does a decent amount of damage) I'll dicuss the cards weakesses.
Firstly, it has a weakness to fire and psychic, which means Slowking/Dark Slowking could give it a run for its money. SMP could do some major damage if Metagross gets set up, and then there's Typhlosion/Pidgeot, which has been growing in popularity. Also, Magcargo from UF hits this thing pretty bad, and being an means it's hurt by Desert Ruins.
Luckily, Dustox ex does not have a weakness usually associated with Stage 2 pokemon. You probably wont have to worry about ATM Rock. Cascoon has a decent 70 hp, and you dont have to run candies in a Dustox ex deck, so you should be safe against ATM rock if you play it smartly.
Lastly,(for the weakness part of things) Dustox ex does not seem to have as much of a hold on decks that do not play ex. The current non-ex decks that are out there are Ludicargo, MetaNite, Rocklock and Queendom. 2 of those decks have a slight weakness to grass, which is extremely helpful. Queendom should get OHKO'd most of the time by Dustox ex, and if you get up against rocklock quickly, you can turn the match into a Dustox ex VS Amphy battle, in which they'd probably run out of lightning to discard.(not that I've tested matchups. This is all theory) Ludicargo, will probably lose its strength when Giant Stump gets released, but may stay among the top tiers. MetaNite will be a tough matchup.
So knowing this, the challenge is to come up with a useful combo to counter Dustox ex's weaknesses, and make it not just a viable deck, but one of the best in the format.
So. What are Dustox ex's weaknesses. Bascially we're going to look at countering fire and psychic pokemon. The first thing that pops into my head is the eeveelutions (mainly because I had been thinking about them a couple of days ago) and they seem to fit in very very nicely. You get the type variation from playing different eeveelutions, and their coming-into-play powers (esp. Umbreon) are good enough to give Dustox ex a boost in power that is needed with its damage cap'd at 70 for 3.
Also, much like Dustox ex, Umbreon/Vaporeon has a useful pre-evolution. Eevee. Having Eevee and Wurmple will ensure you have a decent start every single game, unless you dont have an energy.
Just so you know, here are the eeveelution cards that I'm thinking of including in the deck.
UMBREON EX
Pokebeach doesn't currently have a scan for this, so I'll post the spoiler.
Umbreon ex (D) - 110 HP
Stage 1: Evolves from Eevee
PokePower - Dark Ring
This Power can be used once during your turn when you play Umbreon ex from your hand to evolve one of your Pokemon. Choose one of the opponent's Bench Pokemon and switch it with the Active Pokemon. (Your opponent chooses the Active Pokemon to switch.)
[C] Dark Cry - 20 damage, and the Defending Pokemon can't retreat or use PokePowers during the opponent's next turn.
[DCC] Night Fang - 60
Weakness - Fighting
Resistance - Psychic
Retreat - (C)
So here's a possible decklist I've come up with of a Dustox ex/Umbreon ex deck, which may give other decks a run for their money.
Pokemon: 21
4 Dustox ex
4 Cascoon
4 Wurmple DX
2 Vaporeon ex
3 Umbreon ex
4 Eevee DS
Trainers: 23
4 Strength Charm
4 Giant Stump
2 Rocket's Admin.
3 Copycat
3 Steven's Advice/Field Worker
3 Great Ball
4 Prof. Elm's Training Method
Energy: 16
8 Grass Energy
4 Water Energy
4 Darkness Energy
Here's the basic reason for each card.
Dustox ex - stated before
Umbreon ex/Vaporeon ex - covers weaknesses
Giant Stump - Counter gym, also helps with Ludi/Possibly MetaNite matchup. I may change it though.
Strength Charm - Maxed out for the greatest chance of doing turn 2 50 damage with silver wind, or doing 80 damage with cutting wind.
Admin/Copycat/Stevens - Draw. Admin for slight disruption.
Energy - basically self explanitory.
I'm thinking of maybe -2 Charms +2 Shards, or sticking in LunaRock
Anywho. Here's how this deck works theoretically against everything else (known archetypes)
SMP - Dustox ex takes away your scizor ex problems, and can cause a stalemate until someone switches. The trick is to use Umbreon to gust out their beldums for the KO, or lock down their Metagross with Dark Cry. I'm not really sure which way this matchup will go. Sounds 50/50 to me. Depends on the build.
ZRE - Dustox ex pwns them. Ray ex cant hit you. Zappy cant hit you. Trode cant hit you. Magmar gets OHKO'd. Cargo gets OHKO'd with a strength charm. They're be lucky to get 6 prizes off you. (unless for some reason they played the UF Magcargo, but I havent seen anyone playing that yet)
Queendom - Dustox OHKOs any queens they send out, unless they play Protective orb or holon fighting w/fire energies. Both are hard to fit into a queendom deck, so I think you should be safe with this matchup.
Ludicargo - A hard matchup... kind of. Limiting your bench helps a lot against Ludi damage, and Giant Stump gets rid of their bench space, and also their setup. With only 4 pokemon in play, the ludi player can't set up more than 1 ludicargo search, and will probably have to have one spot for their tech Lanturn/Cargo UF/Weezing etc. Vaporeon can OHKO Magcargo with 2 energy, which is useful, and Umbreon's pokepower can stop the odd tech pokemon from getting set up. But this is a hard matchup.
Medicham - Medicham can't touch you. Neither can their tech Espeon ex. Houndoom can OHKO you, but I think you'll see it coming, and can prepare to KO it back, or use Umbreon's power to KO it. This Matchup shouldn't be too hard. But then again, there are a lot of good Medicham players out there.
Blastoise/Lugia/Steelix - Can't touch you. Well, they can. But Wartortle isnt going to do enough damage to be threatening.
Dragtrode - Sneasel ex is partially taken out of the equation, but watch out for drag off. You could run into trouble also, If they get a proper Dark Electrode swarm going. Dark Dragonite has resist to grass, but you should play shards if you think you'll run into dragtrode. I dont know which deck would win. But Dustox ex definitely has a chance to.
Rocklock - Can't really get up a proper rock-lock because of the OHKO factor on Sand Damage ttar. They may not need to though, as Spinning Tail ttar does do a lot of damage, and hurts heaps. My advice would be to ko all the larvitars you possibly can, then hope to win the AmphyVSDustox ex matchup. I'm not too sure though. Rocklock is a good deck.
MetaNite - MetaNite wins basically. I can't think of much else. If you can KO them quick before they set up, then you win. If you cant, then their resistence to Dustox ex, and their effectiveness against Vaporeon leaves you to attack with Umbreon, who wont beat MetaNite single handedly.
And that's the matchups.
If you know of any other matchups, or think there's another way to play a certain matchup feel free to add your comment. I'll probably end up editing this a bit.
And that's it basically. Remember, this is a post about Dustox ex and ways to use it. It is not about Dustox ex/Umbreon ex/Vaporeon ex, so feel free to post a different strategy involving Dustox ex which we can discuss if you want to. The Vap/umb deck was what I feel works best with Dustox ex at the moment, but my feelings towards it are subject to change. I will be accepting any help on my current decklist though.
Thanks for reading. I might post another card discussion soon if you guys want me to. I just want to see who's interested in this type of discussion on the pokebeach forums at the moment.
Anyways, It's been fun writing.
~Secretsmeargle
P.S the pictures came out HUGE. Sorry if they take up too much room. Anyone know how to shrink them?
