Yeah why not SWINUB VMAX?!?
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Yeah why not SWINUB VMAX?!?
Who cares about Eternatus when you have an easily splashable roadrunner a.k.a. Galarian Zapdos V that does the work for you? In the same set too.
People seem to understate the cost in deck space and consistency of including an ever increasing number of "techs" in every deck. I think Zapdos will be more of a thing in decks that are already dedicated to that sort of plan of "trying to tech for every deck in the format", namely those Aurora energy tollbox-y decks. Other decks that have nothing to do with fighting probably don't want to include random counts of fighting energies or start running aurora themselves just so they can run Zapdos. Especially not in Shadow Calirex, where you want nothing but basic psychic energies to search with Crystal and attach with the ability. I think Calirex will just have to accept that it will have a pretty awful matchup against Eternatus. And one could say "but if more decks, even if not that many, can now play Zapdos, Eternatus tends to be pushed out, indirectly benefiting Calirex, right?", well, technically yes, but I don't believe it will push it out anymore than Urshifus already do. Then again, Calirex will scare Urshifus out a bit...you see, the interesting thing is I think what will matter the most at the end of the day is just how "rock-paper-scissor-y" the format seems to be, rather than a tech that will be played here and there. I don't get all the blind criticism and drama we see going around, format looks pretty interesting to me...
Oh, how I miss the days of God Damn Punch...
Definitley agree with the deck space part, esspecially and notably with the current format given that your typical four-of's needed to make your deck as consistent and flexible as possible will take up sooo much space (4x Quick Ball, 4x Switch/Escape Rope, 4x Metal Saucer if you're playing anything metal, 4x Rare Candy if you're playing anything stage 2, Researches, Marnies, & Boss's Orders, quantity depends on the deck, that's already like half the deck!). Additionally, yeah the more techs that you put in your deck the less consistent your deck can become and it's more dead cards against other match-ups. Definitley a reason why, say for example, some people wouldn't put Aegislash V in their ADP Zacian deck just to beat DAA Decidueye because not only does that card suck in every other match-up, additionally Decidueye isn't nearly as popular as all the other decks (Though it did recently win a huge tournament with Battle Styles / BST in the card pool, so that might give it enough attention to it for people to start teching for it again).
All that being said, I still think there is at least a slight exception with Galarian Zapdos in a deck with SR Calyrex as the main attacker. The definite downside is being forced to run the Aurora Energy, as not only is SR Calyrex unable to attach it with the ability, but there's never good search for special energy cards. Specifically before everything rotates, there is Guzma & Hala, but that would add more unnecessary deck space, the whole counterargument we're talking about against playing the Zapdos. So in terms of playing Galarian Zapdos in a SR Calyrex-based deck for the sake of beating Eternatus, it's still just 2 cards you need to get out, the Zapdos and the Aurora Energy (Unless the Eternatus player somehow manages to only get 2 V's out but I feel like that would mess with consistency a lot with nothing like Crobat V's). Attach and attack, that's it. The Zapdos is already easily searchable with the search cards that are available, not just the 4x Quick Ball, but for pre-rotation I could see that deck playing 4x Pokemon Communication to shuffle back the VMAX's that could otherwise get discarded with cards like Dedenne-GX and Professor's Research. Aurora Energy, while not as easy to access, I feel can still be drawn easily. Specific quantities on Aurora Energy depends on preference but you have the option to play draw supporters and a draw engine with SR Calyrex, and while I shouldn't call it the next Zoroark-GX, whereas that card can use/discard any card in order to get a draw engine going, having a bunch of psychic energies for SR Calyrex to attack with was already going to be a thing. I'm thinking somewhere around 10-12x Psychic with the 4x Fog Crystal, which the deck will play anyway to get out the basic SR Calyrex turn 1 as consistently as possible, and that's excluding cards like Training Court and Energy Retrieval. Aurora Energy can still be your manual attachment, something that is going to happen regardless if we're playing any other energy than basic Psychics so in that aspect it changes nothing. That just depends on how much you're able to draw through your deck, it just seems really doable. If you can turn an autoloss to Eternatus into an autowin, which I totally think Zapdos does change because you just need to take out 2 Eternatus VMAX's, the only pokemon they really attack with, in my opinion that's worth it.
I mentioned Aegislash V previously to draw comparison to the Galarian Zapdos. Whereas a card like Aegislash V is just so niche and awful against other matchups, Zapdos looks to be a much more versatile card. I think it does 3 things for SR Calyrex other than knock out Eternatus and other Dark-type Pokemon:
-Take out opposing Crobat V's & Dedenne-GX's (when there's enough V's on the bench of course)
-Takes the role as an energy efficient attacker, at moments when it's not best to use Calyrex
-Is a 2-prizer in comparison to SR Calyrex VMAX's 3. If you can play the prize game going into your first SR Calyrex, then into Zapdos, and then into another Calyrex, your opponent has to take out 3 Pokemon instead of just 2.
As for opinion on the format, definitley better than previous format (ULP-on). I don't hate Tag Teams, but they should've never been just main attackers to make for very dull, simple, inconsistent decks that just involve them beating face for a bit until someone wins, that's how I viewed it anyway.
A whole college essay on Shadow Rider Calyrex, I know. I like to think about everything when making a list for competitive PTCG, even matchups I shouldn't really prepare for so that's why this post makes it look like I had nothing better to do with my life.
Yeah...I dunno, man, still not sold on Zapdos as a reliable tech outside fighting decks or full-on aurora decks like Bronzong box. It's just too unreliable. And I don't think the comparison with Aegislash is apt at all. I play one in ADP because it's pretty much free, the deckbuilding cost is virtually zero, you don't have to change your energies, your trainers, nothing, it's just...there, instead of, say a fourth Zacian for instance. It can be charged in the same way that a Zacian would, with Saucer or ADP, you just have to have it there in your deck and you're done, an otherwise unwinnable matchup turns into a walk in the park. It's not like Zapdos in Calyrex, where you'd have to go out of your way to include it. Still think people are overselling Zapdos as "the end of Eternatus", I think it will be used mostly in decks that already are primarily fighting, meaning that Eternatus would have a hard time winning against those decks anyway.
I believe that the most of the balancing will be achieved through weaknesses, with techs and answers just adding extra layers to the whole thing. You can already see it happening in this format, with the fighting>dark>psychic decks, fire decks being good, bringing water decks into the fold (Inteleon started seeing play again, and Lapras even won a tournament), with water seeing play, Pika becomes kinda good again, specially since it can use Mewtwo so easily and have game against fighting decks, even Koko won a tournament as well. Chilling Reign apparently will reinforce that dynamic further. And I don't think this is random, in fact, if I recall correctly, TPCi even specifically said, when they overhauled the types and weaknesses SW&SH onwards, that one of the goals they intended to achieve with it was precisely that: to make weaknesses a bigger part of balancing again. Since, I assume, they work on sets years in advance, just like WotC does with MtG, it makes sense that it would take time for their goals to actually start manifesting themselves in the game, and I believe it's finally here, I believe that is what we're experiencing in BTS and what hopefully we'll continue to experience for a long time, because I personally love the format, and despite some age old debates about weaknesses not being a particularly "elegant" tool for balancing the game, I think it doesn't have to be, if it works - and it clearly does - I don't care if it's a sledgehammer, as long as it gets the job done. All this to say that I don't think they actually want for people to be easily shoving techs into every other deck, I believe decks having some very well defined 80/20 matchups is by design, and that whole philosophy will probably become even more cohesive once rotation happens and decks can't simply shove a MewMew into their lists, just to use the most obvious example.
The amount of discussion a set that hasn't even come out has already generated speaks volume to how exciting things are right now for the game.
In that sense, yeah Aegislash V doesn't require other cards in order to get it's attack going since we already play everything else we need to get it going. It honestly never dawned on me that it took less cards than the Zapdos example I talked about, I was focusing more on other minor things, like if you opened up Aegislash V as your only Pokemon and aren't against a Decidueye deck (Someone could even use Mawile-GX to bring it to the bench, but that's definitley stretching it). Should that happen, that's an extra bench space completely wasted, as not only does it not OHKO Dedenne-GX's & Crobat V's, but with 3 retreat it's not too viable with Air Balloon, something that typically every other Pokemon in an ADP deck can use. There's always the small chance to lead with it, and in my opinion that situation I think is actually worse than leading Dedenne or Crobat, because you can at least Air Balloon onto the active liabilities should you lead those. Bench space is just super important to ADP Zacian, any chance to use Crobat/Dedenne to unbrick your hand and get the Boss's Orders you need to close out the game is gold.
I feel like how people look at the format is much more about preference. It could just be me when trying to make a deck and beat as many matchups as possible, even if it means making a super crazy list, because I personally despise auto-loss matchups created mostly because X type of main attacker beats Y type of the opposing deck. I get why it happens, no one wants to fix those specific matchups because it screws with the consistency of said deck a lot. Back in BKT-on for example, no one decided to play something dumb like Gardevoir-GX / FTC Delphox, a deck that never existed ever, the ladder partner made literally just to beat Metagross-GX, because that's so much slots dedicated to one match-up whereas you'd want to have anything else, mostly consistency, against any other deck. Utilizing weaknesses is completely fine to me, unless it ends up like that scenario, where there's not even a point to playing the matchup and it would just be better to literally scoop against the deck you autoloss to, unless the ladder deck has a horrible, and I mean horrible opening, possibly both games in a best of 3 no less. I just think there has to be multiple better ways to handle weakness like that, something like setting up a Pokemon to KO another pokemon via weakness at the right time, or just not make weakness so drastic to the point of determining whole games, but this paragraph is mostly opinion and preference than it is objective so to each their own.
In terms of weakness involving the current format, TEU-on, if I was playing ADP Zacian, I could care less about whatever Pokemon gets thrown in the active assuming 2 liabilities total are played and I can go GX -> Boss -> Boss -> Game, so that card's gotta go first before weaknesses are even a thing. Felt like that tidbit was necessary.
Absolutely agree with that last statement. A lot of interesting cards have either been in format already and are really fun to use like BST Bronzong, or revealed for the next set sparking as much discussion as people desire. I feel the need to state that I like this kind of discussion and have no desire to try and make anyone feel wrong (I don't think I'm doing that anyway), what I think we're doing is considering the options we have available for the format and asking why or why not they work or don't work into as much specifics as possible. Thinking about Pokemon TCG in a theory sense never gets old.
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It can (potentially) hit Crobat, Dedenne and other benchsitters for weakness for the KO, but 3 energy is a bit much
You can use RSE? One of those plus the energy for type you want and bam.
Of course it essentially becomes a twin energy, but that's still only 2 energy attachments, if you got energy excelleration you can get this powered up turn one, if I'm not wrong.
You could use Powerful Energy as well to boost it.
Unified minds Uxie paired with this could be a fun meme deck, hitting 360 damage for possibly any type
Sure it can use the energy, but it doesn't become both Water and Fighting type, as RSE isn't a basic energy, which defeats the point in its ability.
Omg I was just thinking abut this. What if you paired Kecleon with your Uxie and AR Jirachi? So in theory you T2 accelerate however many basic energies (presumably the MAIN ones will be psychic (for Urshifu/Mew3), dark (for ShadowRex), fighting (for Eternatus) when this comes out, as well as the ones necessary for Jirachi to attack) and smack everything in the game for weakness.
If it could use Aurora and benefit from it this would be super fun. I hope they release a special Kecleon energy just for this one card and make him ludicrously overpowered.
N's Rhyperior
Aspiring Trainer
- Kecleon - Chilling Reign leaks starts off with a very bland card. 2
obviously it is, it's for one of those japanese video things
Good to see Kecleon revealed. That just leaves Single Strike Lycanroc (Midnight) [and Rockruff] left to revealed from that promotional artwork of Single Strike vs Rapid Strike.
purp kecleon from mystery dungeon is finally here
ya! i like blue too