News Giratina 'Pokemon Card Gym' Promo!

I think people are hyping this card up a little too much. For me, particularly in Standard, it's only going to go in a deck that has a auto-loss to a BREAK deck with abilities (does anything actually auto-lose to Greninja?). Otherwise, I'm not sure I'd waste a space for it. It's a little different in Expanded, since some decks really do brick hard against Trevenant.

Depends upon what you mean by "hype" and "auto-loss". The former can be hard to properly gauge on a message board; actually glad you brought that up because (for better or worse) I prefer to quash excessive hype. Thanks. I do need to delve into the rest of what you said. Let us begin by defining "auto-loss"; I understand it as "an incredibly difficult match-up, especially one where victory would mostly be a matter of the opponent's bad luck, your good luck, or both." as opposed to literally being a match-up where your opponent's victory is assured no matter what.

Volcanion-EX decks suffer an autoloss when facing Greninja BREAK decks; Volcanion-EX decks have a strong enough damage output to still have a fighting chance against Water Type attackers. They also have solid enough baseline damage coupled with attack based Energy acceleration to handle the loss of the damage buffing "Steam Up" Ability. Losing both, however, hurts quite a lot and not is that what happens when the deck faces Greninja BREAK, but add in Ability based bonus bench hits. @_@ Volcanion-EX decks fascinate me because of how dominant they ought to be... except there are so many overly potent Pokémon in the card pool that (while still clearly a fraction of overall cards release), they create this insanely fast, hard-hitting metagame.

I finish by reminding you of the concept of TecH; a card run as a single to counter a problem match-up. The full definition is a bit more complex, but this seems adequate for our discussion. Anyway, effective TecH works because it the hit you take to reliability and flow from having this oddball card floating around in your deck is offset by the increase in wins by improving that problem match-up. :)
 
I realize that a lot of the focus on the card is the impact it has on Greninja in Standard, but I honestly think this will have a lot of impact on the deck in Expanded as well. My favorite deck to run right now is a DRX Ray / Eels deck. It struggles pretty hard against Greninja. It also struggles hard against Trevenant. Giratina isn't going to be a "fix all" for those struggles, but it gives my deck a fighting chance against those two the same way Karen has become a complete staple in the deck to handle Night March / Vespiquen + deck out insurance (I burn cards pretty hard in that deck). They are still tough outs, but one card changed an auto loss to a 50/50.

Maybe I am overly optimistic about the impact of this card, but it sure *seems* like the impact is going to be felt pretty far and wide.

I do have a question though. So Wobbuffet PHF. When in active, it cancels abilities. Giratina when active cancels break abilities. Which trumps when both apply? Is it a "whichever happened first" kind of thing?
 
I think people are hyping this card up a little too much.
...actually glad you brought that up because (for better or worse) I prefer to quash excessive hype.

Just for clarification purposes, I hope these two sections of your posts aren't in direct relation to my various posts about the card. If so, I'm only attempting to find potential uses to the card. If not, then ignore this part completely. ^^;;

Volcanion-EX decks suffer an autoloss when facing Greninja BREAK decks; Volcanion-EX decks have a strong enough damage output to still have a fighting chance against Water Type attackers. They also have solid enough baseline damage coupled with attack based Energy acceleration to handle the loss of the damage buffing "Steam Up" Ability. Losing both, however, hurts quite a lot and not is that what happens when the deck faces Greninja BREAK, but add in Ability based bonus bench hits. @_@ Volcanion-EX decks fascinate me because of how dominant they ought to be... except there are so many overly potent Pokémon in the card pool that (while still clearly a fraction of overall cards release), they create this insanely fast, hard-hitting metagame.

Volcanion reminds me of Naya Blitz from MTG back in 2013 (during Innistrad Block if anyone remembers). It was this extremely hyper aggressive deck that could literally kill someone in 4 turns with the correct set up, but was EXTREMELY reliable on things like a great hand, good match-ups, etc. Now, while Volcanion isn't nearly as reliant on having a great hand (nor is nearly as aggressive a concept as Naya Blitz), I feel like both decks have done (for their respective times) something extremely similar: Top in more tournaments than they theoretically should have.

Volcanion is an oddly unique concept that combines consistency in two different forms: one being energy acceleration and the other being damage output. Typically, decks that do something along these lines have some sort of negative setback. For example, the damage output of these decks may be low or the Energy Acceleration may be there, but not massive in comparison to other cards. Volcanion, however, has solutions for both of these issues while also having these issues all at the same time. "Baby" Volcanion only does 20 damage when it uses Power Heater and technically only attaches 1 Fire Energy to a Pokemon per attack, but Volcanion-EX allows it to bypass its low damage AND "Baby" Volcanion chooses 2 different Pokemon instead of just 1. These little additions have allowed this consistent deck to become much, much more as a strategy because it allows it to do what most other consistent decks do not: Fight back with a "Strong Force" (in this case, damage output). Because of this, Volcanion decks can set up over and over and over and not lose momentum, which is insane in a deck that seems to be based around consistency.

At least, on paper it is.

Now, as we all know, Volcanion is not THE best deck right now. It's definitely one of the "Four Kings" as I like to call them (Yveltal, Volcanion, Greninja, Gardevoir), and personally, I believe it's the second best deck in this Format (people will argue, however). That said, it has flaws. While it attempts to thrive on consistency, it has natural consistency issues outside of normal "bad draws" in regards to Energy Management, proper set-up, etc. This makes the deck harder to play than it looks and I personally believe this is one of the two main reasons the deck hasn't topped more. The other reason I believe this deck, while very successful, isn't closer to being an argument for "Best Deck" is because while its damage output is great (especially for a deck that accelerates Energy), it is both situational (it needs Volcanion-EX to function properly) and the damage output it still not enough for that argument. Yveltal simply outscales it (and we are not getting in to the whole Garbodor discussion here, but obviously that plays another huge factor in this discussion).

Sorry about derailing that. It just reminded me of a discussion I had with my friend about why Volcanion was doing as well as it had been.

Back to the topic of Giratina, however, I feel that it will be a very niche card. As I said earlier, it will be played by people who feel that it is necessary. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if Trevenant BREAK players teched it for the Mirror Match. After all, while it sounds silly, it becomes an answer to those who are able to accelerate in to Trevenant BREAK first. For example, if I watch you go in to Trevenant BREAK while I'm still at Trevenant, I can drop Giratina, get my items back, and watch you stay under Item Lock while slamming my Tree Fists in to your Trunk. It's a rather subtle idea, but it's an idea nonetheless. Also, Giratina is Psychic, so that makes it even less useless overall in that specific scenario.

I hope you guys are enjoying all the information. It would be pointless typing/sharing all this, otherwise. Still, keep discussion ideas and maybe we can think of more ways to utilize this card.

Take care, ya'll.

-Asmer
 
I do have a question though. So Wobbuffet PHF. When in active, it cancels abilities. Giratina when active cancels break abilities. Which trumps when both apply? Is it a "whichever happened first" kind of thing?
Wobbuffet only applies to non psychic type pokemon which is precisely what Giratina is, so Giratina's ability would stay intact.
 
Depends upon what you mean by "hype" and "auto-loss". The former can be hard to properly gauge on a message board; actually glad you brought that up because (for better or worse) I prefer to quash excessive hype. Thanks. I do need to delve into the rest of what you said. Let us begin by defining "auto-loss"; I understand it as "an incredibly difficult match-up, especially one where victory would mostly be a matter of the opponent's bad luck, your good luck, or both." as opposed to literally being a match-up where your opponent's victory is assured no matter what.

Volcanion-EX decks suffer an autoloss when facing Greninja BREAK decks; Volcanion-EX decks have a strong enough damage output to still have a fighting chance against Water Type attackers. They also have solid enough baseline damage coupled with attack based Energy acceleration to handle the loss of the damage buffing "Steam Up" Ability. Losing both, however, hurts quite a lot and not is that what happens when the deck faces Greninja BREAK, but add in Ability based bonus bench hits. @_@ Volcanion-EX decks fascinate me because of how dominant they ought to be... except there are so many overly potent Pokémon in the card pool that (while still clearly a fraction of overall cards release), they create this insanely fast, hard-hitting metagame.

I finish by reminding you of the concept of TecH; a card run as a single to counter a problem match-up. The full definition is a bit more complex, but this seems adequate for our discussion. Anyway, effective TecH works because it the hit you take to reliability and flow from having this oddball card floating around in your deck is offset by the increase in wins by improving that problem match-up. :)
Err that was, all-in-all, quite a patronising post to be honest haha. Hype is hype, lots of people talking about how game-changing it is. Auto-loss is what it is - a match-up you cannot win. And I disagree, Volcanion doesn't auto-lose to Greninja. It's a horrible match up for sure, but it isn't an auto-loss by my standards. And I didn't need reminding about what a tech card is, I wasn't expecting people be running 4 copies of this thing hah!
 
Err that was, all-in-all, quite a patronising post to be honest haha.

It has been two weeks since my previous post; please pardon for not remembering my exact frame of mind while making the comment. I tend to over explain things, which means even if I am not trying, I come across as condescending. Re-reading my own post... that isn't me trying to be condescending. It was me bringing up several terms that I frequently see defined differently by posters on this message board (and on many others, past and present). Now, if you find that annoying... well it is. Sorry. At the same time, I think you also just proved why it was necessary: we define auto-loss differently.

Unless you mean there are no autolosses at present for serious decks. Or if I really am misunderstanding you. >_< A few decks I think are viable have what are auto-losses by my standards, but not yours. A win is possible, but heavily (if not entirely) reliant upon luck (your good, your opponent's bad); a win is still a win if I understand you correctly, that still means it wouldn't be an autoloss, right? That was my own definition for the term for a while, but as it made autolosses almost non-existent, it wasn't as useful as I would hope. Oh, forgot best two of three; that skews things as well, but even then those lucky wins and unlucky losses can still happen.

I haven't been running Volcanion-EX lately; what I remember is that my only real hope of winning against Greninja BREAK was my opponent having a noticebly bad setup and/or luck throughout the matchup. Plus I had to have a pretty good one myself. Anything more than that for them or less than that for me, and even if I was racking up KO's, they'd take the win at the very end. Yes, I could just be playing it entirely wrong.
 
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It has been two weeks since my previous post; please pardon for not remembering my exact frame of mind while making the comment. I tend to over explain things, which means even if I am not trying, I come across as condescending. Re-reading my own post... that isn't me trying to be condescending. It was me bringing up several terms that I frequently see defined differently by posters on this message board (and on many others, past and present). Now, if you find that annoying... well it is. Sorry. At the same time, I think you also just proved why it was necessary: we define auto-loss differently.

Unless you mean there are no autolosses at present for serious decks. Or if I really am misunderstanding you. >_< A few decks I think are viable have what are auto-losses by my standards, but not yours. A win is possible, but heavily (if not entirely) reliant upon luck (your good, your opponent's bad); a win is still a win if I understand you correctly, that still means it wouldn't be an autoloss, right? That was my own definition for the term for a while, but as it made autolosses almost non-existent, it wasn't as useful as I would hope. Oh, forgot best two of three; that skews things as well, but even then those lucky wins and unlucky losses can still happen.

I haven't been running Volcanion-EX lately; what I remember is that my only real hope of winning against Greninja BREAK was my opponent having a noticebly bad setup and/or luck throughout the matchup. Plus I had to have a pretty good one myself. Anything more than that for them or less than that for me, and even if I was racking up KO's, they'd take the win at the very end. Yes, I could just be playing it entirely wrong.
People do define things differently, obviously, but I just didn't see why it warranted a wall of text discussing that in a wordy way I guess.

I definitely didn't mean that no decks have auto-losses currently, they probably do, but I just don't think that Volcanion necessarily does automatically lose to Greninja. My original point was, I'm not sure anything does auto-lose to Greninja, hence why I don't understand people buzzing over this card (for Standard).
 
...I'm not sure anything does auto-lose to Greninja, hence why I don't understand people buzzing over this card (for Standard).

  1. Different definition for "auto-loss" (see above)
  2. Different personal experience
  3. Different metagame (related to #2)
  4. Different timeframe (remember when this thread began)
I haven't been able to get what I need at the right price to run a Greninja BREAK deck, but I have tried to make a Volcanion-EX deck work more than once. The Greninja BREAK match-up was a major reason why I abandoned it. Obviously, other people have made it work. Still, I am hard pressed to explain how or why in the face of my personal experience. So maybe people like myself are mistaken, or maybe you are, or maybe neither of us have a proper appreciation for the match-up.

As for decks that suffer an auto-loss (by my definition, FYI) against Greninja BREAK, I only am capable of beating Greninja BREAK with BRaH - Bunnelby (Ancient Trait)/Raticate (EVO)/Houndoom-EX - due to a combination of bad luck on my opponent's part, bad plays on my opponent's part, and good luck on my part. Even if my opponent suffers bad luck, as long as he or she doesn't panic and I don't have great luck (like all Frogadier being Prized or already milled), I'm going to lose. Of course, BRaH seems to be borderline competitive at best, so that might be another thing.
 
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