Hammers or no hammers?

KadyShack707

KadyShack707

Cubone's Gavel
Member
With new decks using a load of special energies, which become crucial for certain pokemon (eg, mewtwo with DCE and darkrai for a 100 attack instead of 90), Do you think that either Crushing hammer or Enhanced Hammer will see more play now-a-days?

I use 2 of each in my deck and I can see it's pros and I can see it's cons, especially against eels and other engines which can retrieve energies from the discard, but then again, they can't retrieve the special energies, and if they arn't eels, then a well flipped crushing on just an energy could be detrimental to their loss. Just wondering what the community thinks.
 
Enhanced hammers are definitely worth running. Maybe not so much Crushing hammers, seeing as how we have Dynamotor and Dark Patch around, but losing a double colorless can really slow your opponent down and losing a special dark can turn some 1/2hKOs into 2/3.
 
Sorry, I meant to also write up top how many of them do people think you should run? But you're right about the enhanced, it's too good to pass up.
 
Enhanced Hammers are definitely going to get popular when Blend Energy becomes a thing. I would run 2-3, because I feel four would ruin consistency. Three even sounds a little too much for my taste. Enhancing a DCE off a Tornadus EX always feels wonderful, because you just stalled them a couple turns and it gives you time to set up. While some decks that are more aggressive (such as ZekEels) should probably not run these to keep consistency, they are definitely options worth looking at.
 
...Why wouldn't you just use Lost Remover instead? It says now-a-days, so I assume you mean for nats. If you mean in the future, after nats, I apologize :p

But to answer your question, yes either Lost Remover or Enhanced Hammer are worth running for nats. They are Junk-Armable, so you shouldn't need more than 2 of either. 1 even might be fine.
 
Neither should really be used unless the deck's strategy is mainly disruption, like Darkrai/Sableye/Weavile. The only popular Special Energy at the moment is DCE, and the occasional Special Dark/Prism.

They take up valuable space for consistency cards, and generally aren't worth it.
 
Why is it that now that Esa used Enhanced Hammers instead of Lost Removers everyone goes "Oh, Enhanced Hammers should replace Lost Remover because it's so much better!" It's not. Enhanced Hammer isn't even just as good as Lost Remover, it has a disadvantage. That disadvantage could actually cost you if for some reason you found yourself playing against a rogue with Steelix or something. There is no reason whatsoever to run Enhanced Hammer instead of Lost Remover, just because one respected player used it does not mean that it somehow just jumped above Lost Remover in terms of usefulness. Enhanced Hammer is worse than Lost Remover, and that is just a blatant fact.

Sorry, this has just been aggravating me for a while now.
 
alexmf2 said:
Why is it that now that Esa used Enhanced Hammers instead of Lost Removers everyone goes "Oh, Enhanced Hammers should replace Lost Remover because it's so much better!" It's not. Enhanced Hammer isn't even just as good as Lost Remover, it has a disadvantage. That disadvantage could actually cost you if for some reason you found yourself playing against a rogue with Steelix or something. There is no reason whatsoever to run Enhanced Hammer instead of Lost Remover, just because one respected player used it does not mean that it somehow just jumped above Lost Remover in terms of usefulness. Enhanced Hammer is worse than Lost Remover, and that is just a blatant fact.

Sorry, this has just been aggravating me for a while now.
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Completely understandable, as it sends things to the lost zone, which is a place people can hardly get things back from. I meant as in these days, (so lost remover should be here too), and especially with sableye (such a dirty dirty little junk searcher... in the best way possible). in my Zeels deck, I do run 2 of each, which I sometimes feel like crushing is useless (if you flip badly, there goes a card :S) but then again, the smallest disruption is great for anyone. As for consistency, I could use a Junkarm on the Enhanced hammers in a Zeels, but sadly I started playing when NXD was coming out, so i never got a chance to get them, and since the rotation is upon us, I thought I'd just go BW-on.
 
Honestly, I think playing Crushing Hammers/Enhanced hammers or not depends on what deck you're playing and how you prefer to play it. The only deck that I can honestly see any Crushing Hammers/Enhanced Hammers/Lost Removers in are Darkrai/Tornadus varients and other Dark Varients because Sableye allows you to reuse them. Personally, though, I don't like Hammers in my lists. This is because playing cards like the Hammers can really cut down your overall consistency and room for other cards such as Pokemon Catcher and Junk Arm.
 
Enhanced Hammer/Lost Remover is surely excellent in many decks, with Special Energy being very very popular in many different decks, its practically as great as Energy Removal in the old Base Set days!! I've personally used it in my time to knock off DCE from Mewtwo EX, Tornadus EX, any of the EX Unova Dragons, (this card is even popular when my opponent has his own energy acceleration...) and let's certainly not forget all those Special Darks being put to strong use with Darkrai EX! It practically always comes to play in every battle. Perhaps I'm over-praising this card, but the only popular decks in tournaments I couldn't use this card on was Empoleon/Donphan. Definetly run 2-3.

As for Crushing Hammer, I don't bother with it because of the coin-flip.
 
KadyShack707 said:
Completely understandable, as it sends things to the lost zone, which is a place people can hardly get things back from.
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Yea, it's quite hard xD
¨
Anyway, unless your main strategy is to disrupt I feel like these cards are luxury cards. They don't really help yourself towards your own setup and in a lot of situations you can't use these cards for good anyway.
I rather be sure to have my setup as safe as possible. So unless I felt like "oh man, this setup is way to easy. Don't need these cards. What should I use instead?" then I would think "Disruption cards!"
 
Teapot said:
...Why wouldn't you just use Lost Remover instead? It says now-a-days, so I assume you mean for nats. If you mean in the future, after nats, I apologize :p

But to answer your question, yes either Lost Remover or Enhanced Hammer are worth running for nats. They are Junk-Armable, so you shouldn't need more than 2 of either. 1 even might be fine.
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*Worlds

Anyway, the Hammer takes up space, withe decks like Dark.dec, they have the Dark Patch (I know it can't get S Darkness Energy), and they have Dark Claw. You should just focus on making your deck faster
 
KadyShack707 said:
Completely understandable, as it sends things to the lost zone, which is a place people can hardly get things back from.
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Just as a quick aside, you'll never be getting them back from the Lost Zone haha. That's like the whole point.

I think only certain decks can run both kinds of 'Hammers' effectively. Durant has obviously made a name off that kind of disruption in the past and Quad decks like Terrakion also were known to fit in Lost Remover at least but if you made space you could fit in Crushing Hammer. We're seeing similar things in the format now with the Hammer Darkrai deck and I think that deck has the highest possibility of using the Hammers to the best extent simply because of Sableye from Dark Explorers where he can get back the Trainer cards and it doesn't use a Junk Arm to do so.

It remains to be seen if other decks can really use these cards that well. Personally, I don't think they can and if they can fit in a Lost Remover tech, that's about all the space they can afford and still stay consistent. After the Rotation, I'm still not sure if we'll be seeing more decks with Hammertime or not to be honest.

dmaster out.
 
I say it varies by list. If your list is pretty tight, then it's probably best not to bother with any Hammers or such. If your deck is setting up in a reasonable amount of time and you still have 1 or 2 slots left, go ahead and add in a Hammer or 2. Most matches you probably won't need them and you can use them as Junk Arm Fodder but, it those other games when your opponent seems to think Basic Energies are illegal, you can just as easily JA for your 1-2 Hammers and really ruin their day. And, unless your decks main strategy is disruption, then I def wouldn't run more then 2 of any Hammer.

Just my opinion.
 
dmaster said:
Just as a quick aside, you'll never be getting them back from the Lost Zone haha. That's like the whole point.
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I started when Next Des came out, and never got the older cards. I never knew the lost zone was like "bye bye forever zone" (as I've played card games since the ages of old and the "out of play" area sometimes got played with).

Alright, so in Zekeels it's more important for constant speed instead of having maybe a few disrupts. I've hardly ever opened with more than a hammer in my hand, and yea it sucks to juniper it out if you are going first. I just find that with Zeels it's going to take it's course most likely, with getting eels and setting up fast attackers, why not add a little disruption. What would be better than taking off energies and getting ahead in that sense? (I'm sorry if this is off topic)
 
No, that's fine that you didn't know. I was just clarifying, not trying to be rude.

The problem with decks like Zeel is that the lists are just so tight on space. Even fitting in one Hammer is honestly tough, and to be honest, it just doesn't need disruption. The consistency is especially important for Zeel because it is a slower setup deck (Stage 1 accelerator vs Basic/Trainer) and it prides itself on keeping up with prize trades. So the payoff ends up just not being worth it at least for me IMO.

dmaster out.
 
The thing about running 1 Enhanced Hammer in any deck is that it's already a situational card, but if you make it a 1-of, your odds of having it when you need it are incredibly slim. Unless you're running Durant or Sableye, it's hard to justify running it, and it's even hard to justify it as just a 1-of in those decks.
 
Yeah, that's essentially what I was saying. Because of that, anything more and the deck's overall consistency goes down which becomes a no no. But yeah.

dmaster out.
 
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