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Empoleon / Dusknoir (Post - Flashfire)

C

Card Slinger J

Aspiring Trainer
Member
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Pokemon:

  • 4-0-4 Empoleon (Dark Explorers/Plasma Freeze)
    2-0-2 Dusknoir (Boundaries Crossed/Plasma Blast)
    3 Kangaskhan (Plasma Blast)
    3 Miltank (Flashfire)
    1 Landorus EX (Boundaries Crossed)
    1 Exeggcute (Plasma Freeze)
Trainers/Supporters/Stadiums:

  • 4 N
    4 Skyla
    4 Rare Candy
    3 Lysandre
    3 Ultra Ball
    3 Level Ball
    3 Muscle Band
    2 Professor's Letter
    2 Pal Pad
    2 Super Rod
    2 Colress
    1 Dowsing Machine
Energy:

  • 4 Rainbow Energy
    3 Water
Strategy:

Setup a full bench to use Empoleon's Attack Command while also trying to utilize Miltank (Flashfire) as a secondary or primary attacker for Powerful Friends. Dusknoir of course is for Sinister Hand If you're lucky to pull off it's ability without getting locked by Garbodor, while Kangaskhan is to help for early game setup with Call for Family and Landorus EX is in here to help ease this deck's matchup against Raichu (XY).

Any comments, suggestions, and/or advice is greatly appreciated.
 
RE: Empoleon/Raichu/Leafeon (Post - Flashfire)

Through my playtesting experience thus far post-Flashfire release, I have found Lysandre and Pal Pad to be very valuable. And since you no longer run Dusknoir, an opponent's "wounded" or threat can just sit on the bench without any threat from your current deck. So, I'd suggest adding these 2 cards - they could "easily" replace the 2 Max Potions (your Poké will more than likely be 1HKOd anyways, thus rendering your Max Potions ineffective).

Although you play 4 Skyla (to maximize your chances of getting 1), I play only 3 which I find quite sufficient. Should you do so, consider replacing that 4th Skyla with a 4th N which I find to be more helpful than not, especially turn 1 (in many cases). Or another option would be to replace that 4th Skyla with a Muscle Band (you have none listed and there are quite a few good, non-EX attackers in the game). I run 2 Muscle Bands and 2 Silver Bangles in my deck.

In my area (and expected at Nats too), Blastoise-Keldeo continue to have a strong presence due to the increased number of players running fire decks which in turn have decreased the number of players running VirGen decks. But, I would not be surprised at all to see both these decks well represented at Nats.

No counter Stadium?

I hope you find these comments helpful.
 
RE: Empoleon/Raichu/Leafeon (Post - Flashfire)

I do, thanks again for your help TuxedoBlack, it's kind of hard to choose between Muscle Band and Silver Bangle considering that the extra 10 damage can be crucial for a KO. It'd be nice If I had the deck space for a counter Stadium but considering how I don't have any room for one it seems like this is the best this deck is gonna get for now.
 
RE: Empoleon/Raichu/Leafeon (Post - Flashfire)

If you added a 2-0-2 line of Dusknoir, I'd really like this deck a lot more. Maybe take out a Professor's Letter and a few other things? Definitely run 4 Skyla though.
 
RE: Empoleon / Raichu / Leafeon (Post - Flashfire)

But that's the problem with Empoleon right now, Dusknoir doesn't cut it anymore unless you're running 1-2 Tropical Beach in here and even If you manage to stall against your opponent's Garbodor with Startling Megaphone/Tool Scrapper in order to use Diving Draw/Sinister Hand eventually they'll shutdown your abilities again before you have a chance to win the game. This meta is about relying less on abilities and more about high damage output for little cost, where decks like Darkrai/Yveltal pull off very well.

I've had this scenario happen to me before at League Challenge against Darkrai/Yveltal/Garbodor and when I thought I'd manage to score a crucial KO against one of his Pokemon with Sinister Hand he already has a Garbodor on bench with Float Stone attached to stop it from happening when I ran out of energies to attach to Empoleon with all my Startling Megaphone's in Discard since I only run 2 in the deck. The prize difference wasn't too bad since we we're close but that KO by Sinister Hand would've been a game changer for me.

Of course If I had used Lysandre to bring up his Yveltal to KO with Raichu's Circle Circuit with a full bench then the game state would've been entirely different but this scenario was when I was still just running Empoleon/Dusknoir/Leafeon which in the current meta is inferior to Butterfree/Miltank unless you're running 1-2 Tropical Beach. Garbodor can also shutdown Adaptive Evolution If timed well enough thereby crippling their strategy down unless they Rare Candy Caterpie but it wouldn't matter against Archeops/Pyroar though since it locks down Basic attacks and Items being played from hand.
 
RE: Empoleon / Raichu / Leafeon (Post - Flashfire)

It really depends on your local metagame. With lots of Garbodor, Dusknoir might not be the best play, but against most decks I feel like it has a really good matchup. With Dusknoir, this deck can beat anything, I feel.
 
RE: Empoleon / Raichu / Leafeon (Post - Flashfire)

What about Miltank from Flashfire? Maybe it can fill the void Dusknoir leaves in here for Empoleon unless taking Leafeon out for Miltank is the better option. With a mix between Muscle Band/Silver Bangle Miltank can do at least 100-110 damage a turn using Powerful Friends as long as you have a Stage 2 on your bench. So far my only concern with Miltank is going up against Landorus EX or Sawk PLF.
 
RE: Empoleon / Raichu / Leafeon (Post - Flashfire)

That's what I did, I took out Leafeons for 3 Miltanks. I'd still stick with Dusknoir though, dude.
 
RE: Empoleon / Raichu / Leafeon (Post - Flashfire)

Well like I said without Tropical Beach Dusknoir will just slow this deck down, you probably have better playtesting against Garbodor with Dusknoir in Empoleon than I do cause majority of the time he's KO fodder or a dead card against Garbodor.
 
RE: Empoleon / Raichu / Leafeon (Post - Flashfire)

I play the deck without any Beaches and I've found that 90% of the time I can set up an Empoleon T2 to start dealing damage. But that's my playtesting, what have you found?
 
RE: Empoleon / Raichu / Leafeon (Post - Flashfire)

Same here except sometimes I open the game with Duskull or Eevee instead of Piplup and on rare occasions Exeggcute. I only managed to go 2-2 with Empoleon/Dusknoir at my last League Challenge with a 1st round bye and a win against Victini/Virizion with my only losses being against Darkrai/Yveltal/Garbodor and Pyroar/Mewtwo. I should've had a favorable matchup against Pyroar/Mewtwo except that I had terrible starts in both of my games against it for some odd reason where I couldn't get Empoleon and Leafeon setup fast enough to get around his onslaught of Mewtwo's that he charged up with DCE.

Yveltal EX only needs 4 energies (2 Dark + DCE) + Muscle Band and/or Hypnotoxic Laser + Virbank City Gym to consistently one shot all your opponent's Empoleon's with Evil Ball which is relatively easy with Y Cyclone and Dark Patch. The only thing Empoleon has left going for it aside from Raichu for Circle Circuit to help get around Yveltal would be Jolteon (Dark Explorers) with Silver Bangle/Muscle Band but even that's getting rotated out along with Darkrai/Yveltal/Garbodor due to the loss of Dark Patch, Darkrai, and Sableye. Bottom line is that there's no point in playing Empoleon right now If it can't get around Garbodor which is difficult enough as it is by sacrificing 8 slots in your deck for a playset of Megaphones and Scrappers.
 
A few more thoughts:

  • With 3 CfF Kangaskhans, your dependency upon using Level Balls decreases tremendously; but, you don't have an easy way of replacing your active with a benched Poké. So, I'd suggest:
    • -2 Level Ball
    • +2 Switch
  • Since you've included Landorus EX, you also included Rainbow energy to power-up its attack. However, you have no way to actually search for this needed energy. So, I'd suggest:
    • -4 Rainbow
    • +3 F
    • +1 W
    With your 2 Professor's Letters, you now can search for either F and/or W energy which can also be recovered with your Super Rods.
  • In playing decks with Dusknoir, I've found that an opponent's active Garbotoxin can be quite annoying and placed me at times at a disadvantage if I could not counter that threat, especially at critical times in the game. Currently, you have 3 Lysandre which could be used to "Catcher" an opponent's Garbodor for your subsequent KO. However, there may be situations when you may not be able to Immediately KO that Poké when you need to; so, I suggest including another "out" to counter Garbodor:
    • -1 Lysandre
    • +1 Startling Megaphone
  • Given that you have Sinister Hand capability "always," your dependency upon Lysandre is also greatly reduced since you can place damage counters on any of your opponent's Poke. So, consider replacing another Lysandre with a Professor Juniper or Shauna.
 
CfF Kangaskhan might actually slow my deck down than speed it up, so I'm thinking about maxing out on Ultra Ball and Level Ball in here. As for your suggestion on Landorus EX with my energy lineup I agree that Professor's Letter makes the consistency of getting those energies much better than with Special Energies. Startling Megaphone I feel is just a stall tactic against Garbodor until they get another Float Stone/Tool attachment to make that effort minuscule.
 
The difference I've found with using Kangaskhan vs. Balls is that Kang can usually take an early hit or 2 while I setup my bench; as oppose to typically losing some "low" HP Poké early game.
 
It might be a bit better to replawce the Kangaskhan with Emolga, since it has no retreat cost.
 
Emolga would be the better option since it has free retreat unfortunately it has 30 less HP than Kangaskhan does which isn't enough to survive while you're setting up your bench early to mid game. I was going to consider running 4 Ultra and 4 Level but I think I'll stick with the Kangaskhan for Call for Family.
 
^ True, and furthermore, it's weak to Electric, which means it's a horrible start against Plasma because of Thundurus' ability to OHKO the ele-squirrel.
 
i think you need more water energy to make use of empoleons diving draw ability, get rid of some draw supporters for more energy
 
T4ketheShot said:
i think you need more water energy to make use of empoleons diving draw ability, get rid of some draw supporters for more energy
Click to expand...

Actually, he runs Exceggcute for that. You only have to discard a single card from your hand, instead of something like Shiftry, who requires you to discard an Energy from your hand. With Egg, he gets to discard the Exeggcute with Diving Draw, then Propagation to put him back into his hand, where he is free to Diving Draw him once more.
 
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