GHJamesGH said:
Gothitelle is terrible. Absolutely atrocious. It is never going to be good every again, because every deck that matters runs a card that can OHKO it. In addition, Raikou can snipe Reuniclus so OHKOing doesn't matter for that matchup.
Well, it's not absolutely atrocious, and you seem to harbor some sort of hatred for the deck outside of the game itself. It has it's faults, and it's definitely going to face, essentially, an uphill battle every game, but it's not
that bad.
I can tell you, I've also had ideas on whether or not I wanted to test it myself, and I decided to experiment with a few builds and a few games on PlayTCG. Here's what I've found:
After a lot of deliberation and pure theory-moning (what I do before I actually build the deck), I've found that Gothitelle/Reuniclus isn't the way to play Gothitelle. As many have said, the "magic number" of 130 isn't that out of reach, now that we have tremendously powerful EX cards. Furthermore, even if you don't get one shot, you'll be getting hit with such a high amount of damage every turn that you just won't be able to keep up. That being said, I opted to instead go for the "aggro" version of it, using Gardevoir instead of Reuniclus.
Running Gardevoir instead of Reuniclus actually presents you with a fighting chance (as you hit for 110 with two psychics, and with three, you two shot an Eviolite'd Darkrai) to do some serious damage really quickly (potentially, if you're drawing broken, then T2, but generally around like, T3-4). Gardevoir also allows you to run your own swarm of Mewtwo, and with two psychic, you can OHKO any other Mewtwo (through Psyburn), and then you're reduced to having a double attached, so they'll need to present a return Mewtwo/Double/PlusPower (more, if you're eviolite'd). This way, you really streamline the deck into getting up and swinging as fast as possible, and allows for some really fat late game Mewtwos.
Experimentally (about 10 games on PlayTCG), I've had this for the Pokemon line (or something very similar to) :
4-2-4 Gothitelle
3-1-2 Gardevoir
3 Mewtwo
3 Emolga
= 22 Pokemon
Having such a big Gothitelle line allowed me to evolve the active and just use it to block trainers and buy myself a turn or two (with Tropical Beach in high counts, it actually worked pretty well) to set up my actual attackers. Then, when the active finally died, I had plenty of resources and energy on the board to go swinging in with Gothitelles and Mewtwos, and the constant trainer lock allowed me to whittle them down until I won.
There is also something I've discovered with any Gothitelle variant.
Exp. Share is amazing with Gothitelle. Absolutely amazing. Having multiple Exp. Shares spread across Gothitelles (with Gardevoir in play) essentially allows me to transfer two psychic instead of one, and allow me to keep the attacking Gothitelles coming. Attaching Exp. Share to Mewtwo also helps, because I can just drop another psychic and then begin beating head (or KOing another Mewtwo). The Exp. Share also allows me to drop a psychic down on something else and know that I'll still have a Gothitelle ready to go. With 4 energy on a Gothitelle (3 turns of attaching if Exp. Share is involved), you one shot anything in the game right now (except for an Eviolite'd Darkrai, who survives with 30 HP left.
Granted, this may be not what you're asking about. If you're asking about if Gothitelle/Reuniclus is viable, my answer is, sadly, no. The damage output is much higher now than it was before, so Gothitelles won't survive many hits. However, Gothitelle/Gardevoir (GG, dawg!) is much more solid than it, as it provides Gothitelle with some real hard hitting power and the potential to actually keep up with big EXs. I know that 10 games isn't enough to get a real solid understanding of a deck's match ups, but from just using those 10 games to essentially gold-fish/test to see if the deck's consistent, I can say that, yes, in fact, it is fairly consistent, if you've got a high number of Tropical Beaches (3 of them is what I play) and plenty of Supporters (mine ran 14, I think), you should be able to pull through. Good luck testing!
