Standard Fruitbats (Sceptile-EX/Ariados/bats)

[dwarfstar]

I couldn't think of a better name involving bats and Grass-types.

Pokemon: 21

• 4 Sceptile-EX AOR
• 2 Spinarak
• 2 Ariados
• 4 Zubat PHF
• 4 Golbat PHF
• 3 Crobat PHF
• 2 Shaymin-EX

Trainers: 31

• 3 Professor Sycamore
• 2 N
• 1 AZ
• 1 Pokemon Fan Club
• 2 Lysandre

• 4 VS Seeker
• 3 Muscle Band
• 3 Level Ball
• 4 Super Scoop Up
• 4 Ultra Ball
• 1 Super Rod
• 1 Startling Megaphone

• 2 Sky Field

Energy: 8

• 8 Grass Energy

Strategy: The Sceptile-EX/Ariados combo has been the core of all my primary decks since AOR rolled around, but it falls just shy of hitting the OHKOs it needs to keep up with the modern metagame. I figured I'd remedy that by throwing in a line of bats, since Sceptile-EX with a Muscle Band equipped, poison damage, and one Golbat drop can hit 180 damage. The resulting deck has not disappointed me - in the month or so that I've been testing it, matchups seem to be neutral or better against most common deck archetypes (it only really falters against Fire decks, and to a lesser extent the rare M Manectric and Metal Ray), with pretty solid results against Night March in particular. Little bit of a rundown on why I chose some of the cards I did:
-A 4-4-3 line of bats, while occasionally a little clunky, seems to be the most consistent setup out there. I'm not entirely happy with how much deck space they take up, but so far it's mostly worth it.
-There is no backup attacker to deal with Regice. I've looked through every card out there, and none of the good non-EX Basic attackers fit in a Grass deck. Even that promo Jirachi isn't reliable enough for my purposes, since most of the Regice I see are in M Manectric decks (and thus don't care about Stardust). I have to rely on bat damage and careful use of Lysandre to maneuver around it most of the time.
-Pokemon Fan Club is nice to have in case we're up against item-lock decks or I have a thin opening hand, allowing me to get a couple of crucial mons out in a hurry.
-I'm so glad N is returning to Standard. Judge and Birch just don't give me the same consistency, so N is taking shuffle-draw duty as soon as Fates Collide rolls around.
-Sky Field is the Stadium of choice for this deck instead of FGP. While having to wait a turn to evolve Spinarak is occasionally annoying, the extra Bench space gives me the room I need for Ariados, a backup Sceptile-EX ready to move to the active position, a bunch of bats, and both my Shaymin-EX. I kinda wish I could afford to drop a card and put one more of these in there.

So there's the deck, folks. I get pretty solid results with it and it's got style for days. If you've got any suggestions to improve it, give me a shout!

 

[AhoyTroy]

I see people just thinking throwing Bats into a good deck makes it better, not say that is what you're doing, but this deck without the bats frees up room for some good stuff.

 

[dwarfstar]

I see people just thinking throwing Bats into a good deck makes it better, not say that is what you're doing, but this deck without the bats frees up room for some good stuff.

Not really the case here. As I mentioned in the OP, the bats are needed in order to compensate for Sceptile-EX's lack of OHKO potential. In a metagame this fast, an offensive deck needs to be able to take out opposing Pokemon-EX in one turn, and Sceptile-EX can't reliably do that without the extra damage from bats because Virbank City Gym is out of the format. In addition, the bats are largely responsible for how well this deck performs against Night March (the best deck in the entire format, and normally at an advantage against Sceptile-EX decks on account of a favorable Prize trade for them) and Vespiquen/Vileplume decks. No other cards can do as much to back up the Sceptile-EX/Ariados combo as bats can.

 

[Gabking5458]

Why do you run sky field over Forest Of Giant Plants? FGP is much better in Sceptile/ariados. I understand the bench space issue but fit some max elixir and FGP in and it'll make a ton of matchups easier.

 

[dwarfstar]

Why do you run sky field over Forest Of Giant Plants? FGP is much better in Sceptile/ariados. I understand the bench space issue but fit some max elixir and FGP in and it'll make a ton of matchups easier.

Already answered in the OP, but I'll elaborate a little more. It's about consistency and general setup speed. I'm not gonna need Ariados till turn 2 anyway, so the lack of an immediate evolution isn't the end of the world. Having extra space on the Bench is a major benefit to this deck because I need room for a spider, a backup Sceptile-EX, Shaymin-EX (for setup purposes), and enough bats that I can chain KOs on consecutive turns. Having enough space to put multiple Shaymin-EX down while still leaving room for everything else makes setup a LOT faster in my experience, and that's pretty important to the deck's success. If I have room for multiple bats on the Bench instead of just one, that increases the chance that I'll be able to pull off KOs as quickly and reliably as I need to in order to compete with the really explosive offensive decks I see so often.
Regarding Max Elixir, I'm hesitant to put that in there for a couple of reasons. That card isn't all that reliable with only 8 Energy in the whole deck, and besides, we're very low on available space for swapping cards out on account of the bats. The second part is especially important because Max Elixir really isn't workable as a 1-of tech - you need several in there to make it worth the space, and I'm not seeing a way to remove enough cards to put a couple of Max Elixir in without damaging the consistency of the deck.

 

[ImmortalDarkrai]

I actually tried out this deck before with some moderate success online. Here's the list I used.

Pokemon: 19

• 2 Spinarak (AOR 5)
• 2 Ariados (AOR 6)
• 3 Sceptile-EX (AOR 7)
• 3 Zubat (PHF 31)
• 3 Golbat (PHF 32)
• 2 Crobat (PHF 33)
• 2 Shaymin-EX (ROS 77)
• 2 Virizion (AOR 12)

Trainers: 33

• 3 Ultra Ball (FLF 99)
• 3 Muscle Band (XY 121)
• 2 Level Ball (AOR 76)
• 3 Max Elixir (BKP 102)
• 4 VS Seeker (PHF 109)
• 2 Trainers' Mail (ROS 92)
• 2 Super Rod (BKT 149)

• 2 Lysandre (FLF 90)
  
• 4 Professor Sycamore (XY 122)
  
• 1 Xerosic (PHF 110
• 2 Professor Birch's Observations (PCL 134)
• 1 Brigette (BKT 161)
• 2 AZ (PHF 117)

• 2 Faded Town (AOR 73)

Energy: 8

• 8 Grass Energy

So, I never really refined my version of it, and I didn't stick with it long, but hopefully it'll help out some.

Basically I was thinking this. With poison and a Muscle Band, Sceptile-EX will be able to hit for 160 damage. Just a Golbat is enough to bring that damage over to the magic 180. I felt like not too many stadiums would be beneficial, but I chose Faded Town because after an attack on a Mega, either your opponent retreats or they get KO'd between turns, there's no middle ground there. With the inclusion of Max Elixir though, Forest of Giant Plants works really good though, since you then have the power to get a Sceptile powered up on turn 1, so you'd ideally want an Ariados at that time.

The other thing about this list that isn't blatantly obvious is the inclusion of Virizion. So, depending on your local meta and where you stand in the game, this little guy can be pretty useful. With Ariados' poison augmenting your damage, and a Muscle Band, he can one-shot Garchomps. I played a different variant of Sceptile for a little while, and I ran into some real trouble with Regice, Virizion can take down one of those in one-shot also, if you're behind in prizes.


I know this list isn't too particularly good, it needs a lot of work, but hopefully it'll give you some things to think about.