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HGSS-on SerpBuck (Serperior + sawsbuck)

T

tigel

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hey guys, so I've decided to try and have a discussion about my B&W grass heal deck. I used to run a similar deck the past month consisting of serperior's, ninjask's (circling dive), and yanmega (sonic wave). It was undefeated locally but was just too good. With the recent talk about the HGSS-on rotation, I took it apart and feel I've found a very nice flow of healing and heavy damage.

I'm looking for advice, recommendations, and anything you all see wrong. I've only been playing pokemon for a month now, but this deck this weekend hasn't lost to anything HGSS-on (my friends, and locals switched early outside of sanctioned events). There's a few things I'm still not very sure about and would love some advice on specifically:

1. Potions. I enjoy having potions. It really helps with burst healing when I need too. However, being a heal deck and everything heals should I replace this with a different trainer? I just can't find a reason too, or a good replacement.

2. Team Rocket's Trickery. I really like this card. Old school bill + a discard for the opponent. Really nice. Does it apply to my deck though? With sage's Training I feel I get close to decking myself given my deck is slow and powerful over time. Take out?

3. Energy count. I've toyed with this number for awhile and feel 16 is right. My deck is about building up my pokemon on the bench so sawsbuck can dish out some insane damage (I've been one hitting Zekrom's easily in these matches). However, I know 16 is "a lot" compared to the current rotation and was just curious if this is a bad thing.


On to the list. I've bracketed core attacks and put in parenthesis the set numbers.

Pokemon (22)
4-2-4 Serperior [Royal heal] (2,4,6 respectfully)
3-3 Lilligant [Leaf Storm] (9,10 respectfully)
3-3 Sawsbuck [Nature Power] (13,14 respectfully)

Trainers (22)
2 Rare Candy
3 Sage's Training
3 Team Rocket's Trickery
3 Potion
3 Energy Retrieval
4 Professor Elm's Training Method
4 Pokemon Communication

Energy (16)
16 Basic Leaf



Thoughts:
The core idea of this deck is to heal any damage output the opponent is dishing out. The only drawback is low hp on sawsbuck(90) and Lilligant(80). However, the best way to counter this for me is to have Serperior tank that big hit if I know the next round will be hitting for 80+. With a full bench Sawbucks Nature power hits for 100+ making him a huge part of the deck. Any damage that doesn't kill my pokemon will be healed off by their next turn, while I'm dishing out damage. Even just hitting for 60 a turn is fine because I have lasting power.

The stacking power for healing this deck has is incredible. Especially with my energy count I can risk retreating as all are 1 cost. If my active comes close to dying, retreat, use royal heal between turns, and my options are pretty good. I can potion for a quicker heal, bring Lilligant and do Leaf Storm, or just let it sit there and by the next turn said pokemon is back to no damage. This is a perfect situation with no bench harass etc. The point is, even if the opponent is pushing steady damage but not one shotting me I'm fine by the next round.

Along with retreating, bringing out Sawsbuck I've really started to notice his hitting power. He hits hard for a grass, and can heal. If he's my active by turn 2 for 2 energy I'm pushing 40 damage. By turn 3, 60. I try and get Lilligant out first so I can build her up, but also sawsbuck on my bench so by the time I retreat I'll be hitting for 70+ with nature power. My energy is never ending with my options/combos with trainers:
1. large energy count
2. Energy Retrieval in hand - Sage's Training. Discard 2 energy - use ER. Or Sage's training anyway and get an ER while discarding 2 energy.
3. Team Rocket's Trickery - draw 2 (luck)
It never fails for me to have a large quantity of energy at any time.

I like sage's and TRT because it really pushes my deck to get past my stage 1's and basic pokemon and get to those energies I need. I keep an eye out on my deck size and those combos fade, as I don't want to risk decking myself. But in general I like draw cards.


Comments, recommendations, and tips highly recommended! I'm extremely new and open to anything. I just know this deck is doing quite well vs zoroark/mandibuzz/zekrom/reddude decks. I haven't attempted to play against non HGSS-on mostly because I still feel those sets are overpowered and to judge my deck based on those is tough for me to want to do. Especially with them hitting so hard.
 
If you don't like team rocket just put in collectors to help get some basic. This helps you use communications for stage ones or twos. But it's up to you. Good luck
 
I like that idea, I'll keep it in mind. I'm still not sure about my 3 questions.
 
It definitely wants 4 collectors, and personally I don't trust Sage's Training. My thoughts:
-3 Potion
-3 Sage's Training
-3 TR Trickery
+4 Prof Juniper
+4 Pokemon Collector

I'd also consider 4 energy retrievals to thin your deck and give you more consistent draws. How much energy do you expect to want in play in a normal game?
 
Is prof Juniper really that good? wouldn't Oaks theory be better when comparing? I'm curious the reasoning behind that (I'm just not aware, not arguing!)

I understand about sage's training. It's usually good, but consistency is what I'm striving for and I want to get the luck out of my deck. I think I will take your advice fully.

In a given match I would say it would depend on if I lost no pokemon (which happens a lot). In that case 9 with a bench of 3. Does that help?
 
Hey there! I'm trying to build a similar deck for my girlfriend involving Serperior, however I just don't have the right cards. This list gives me hope, though! :D

Assuming you haven't made any changes to the original list, here are my thoughts:

-3-3 Sawsbuck
-1-1 Lilligant
(or vise versa)

+3-2-3 Torterra

Reason being, you need to have some sort of a chance against Reshiram/Emboar/Typhlosion builds. Torterra has enough HP to survive a Zekrom Wild Bolt and a weak Reshiram Outrage, and can counter with a Land Crush + Pluspower (for Zekrom). Unless Serperior is going to be your main attacker, your going to need a tank with enough HP to stand a chance.

Next up:

-3 Potion
-3 Energy Retrieval
-3 Team Rocket's Trickery
-3 Sage's Training
-1 Professor Elm's Training Method
-5 Grass Energy

+2 Black Belt
+4 Pluspower
+2 Rare Candy
+2 Pokemon Collector
+4 Judge
+4 Double Colorless Energy

Potions are somewhat supplemented by the Black Belted/Pluspower'd "drain" attacks. At least with the latter, you'll have some extra power to KO stronger threats. Rare Candy is pretty essential if you do decide to run Torterra, of course. Pokemon Collector isn't totally necessary, but some is good, as you only really have 3 different basic Pokemon. Using a Judge on turn one against a faster deck, I feel, would be more beneficial than using Pokemon Collector...which brings me to Judge. Judge is, in my opinion, essential to ANY stage 2 deck. It helps on startups and can slow your opponent from setting up early game, which is why I maxed it at four. Double Colorless Energy will help speed up the Sawsbuck (if used), while being Torterra's main source of energy.

I hope this helps. I'm really interested to see how your deck turns out and if my suggestions help improve its' flow. Good luck! :D
 
Thank's aaron for the in depth post. I do understand and appreciate what you're saying. Especially judges. I have to agree I think they're great, and would have helped a ton but just have been so successful with the current list I never knew what to take out (lack of experience and knowledge in general: reason being why I made this thread!). So I will be getting some judges here soon.

I think my biggest problem with my newly arrival of pokemon is when I thought of this heal deck, that's all I thought of it as. I became bias of my main goal, to heal. Does that make sense? I've been aware of this, and again why I needed guidance and advice on here to make sure it's a heal deck, but at the same time, balanced.

I really like sawsbuck's synergy in this deck so I'm really okay with taking out Lilligant. She's good, but really relies on luck if I want to hit, and if I want to heal with her (leaf storm) It really doesn't do much damage. So it was more a filler.

As for the rare candy, I do agree I need more and will be getting 2 more asap (their cheap at my local hobby store). Black belts/plus powers I also agree with. They will allow for me to really be able to get that burst damage per round that I need in order to ultimately draw out rounds to survive so to speak.

Now, my one disagreement or more; needing more reasoning behind said suggestion:

I understand getting a higher pokemon that can withstand zekrom's drain. My haymaker deck (zekrom, Reshiram, throh, sawks) beats this deck quite often with just those attacks. Zekrom was actually what I meant when I said "if I got one hit" in my original post haha. However, my only concern is that list you gave me to rationalize getting torterra was "Reshiram/Emboar/Typhlosion builds-zekrom". Torterra is grass, making him take double damage to fire (all of those builds but zekrom). Torterra is a nice pokemon, I've never seen him before. However, I was doing a quick look before I leave here and thought I'd request either A) a different replacement given he's grass and really only helps me with zekrom now. B) why you suggest Torterra (if I'm missing something) and C) What do you think of scoutland as a replacement? He hits hard, has a lot of hit points and his first ability is very nice.


Thank's aaron for the help! I will be working on getting some cards in that list today and seeing what happens.
Ultimately I like the idea of the trainers, and I think I'll just do -3-3 lilligant, -1/-1 sawsbuck because I really like sawsbuck. I think he's underrated in a grass deck. Also what do you think of putting in a zoroark? I know he's a stage 1 and I'd have to replace, but zoroark is so powerful, AND would still flow with the deck and help with sawsbuck synergy of grass energy (or DoCo). Just a thought I had. I mean, I do have 7 zoroark's now. ha
 
Not a problem. I'm glad I could at least help in some way. When I suggested Torterra, it was kinda off the top of my head. My criteria was basically something that could survive a Reshiram/Zekrom attack. If it could survive one of those hits, with your deck being a "healing/tank" deck, you'd be able to recover quickly and survive again. My options for suggesting a different Pokemon boiled down to who can tank the best. Self-healing wasn't really taken into consideration because you have maxed Serperiors. However, a tanking, self-healing Pokemon would help greatly.

Tangrowth, while pretty strong, would of course die to a Zekrom Wild Bold while wasting all energy used to build up the Grind attack. I believe Sawsbuck would handle Tangrowth's role a ton better in this deck.

Next up, there was Torterra. Out of all the Grass tanks, this is the only one who can really take a Zekrom Wild Bolt and live to smack it back. I decided to go with this one because of that reason alone. Your deck, as you said, is weak to haymaker variants. Zekrom and Reshiram are the driving forces behind those builds.

The top decks in the next format, in my opinion, will be Donphan, Blastgatr, Zekrom, and then a bit behind...Reshiram builds. Donphan and Blastgatr can be 2HKO'd provided you have some healing going on, while Zekrom can be revenged by Torterra after sustaining a pretty huge hit. Reshiram, however, is almost an auto-win against grass decks. Which leads me to your suggestion...

Zoroark would be spectacular in your deck, but I think it would mean the loss of Sawsbuck. While not a huge blow, it does change the mechanics of your deck a bit. I think adding 2 Special Dark Energy and taking out 2 Grass Energy, would be beneficial, but would also be the final nail in the coffin for Sawsbuck's potential. The Special Dark Energy would allow it to OHKO Zekrom or Reshiram, but would also make your Donphan match up slightly tougher. Granted, you don't HAVE to take out Sawsbuck and the Grass Energies, but at first glance, it may make the deck too clunky. Try it out, though, see how you like it. :) All in all, I think Zoroark would be worth it for this deck, though.

Stoutland has an appealing first attack, but really can't do too much afterwards. It'll most likely die on the turn after it uses Giga Impact if your opponent has something set up. I just don't think this is the correct deck for Stoutland.
 
I had 3 stoutland's laying around so I put them in as you suggested but with sawsbucks and it works well most of the time. Basically the few games I played against a beefy reshiram/zekrom/samurott deck. One game I had a stoutland out with 2 DOCO, and by turn 4 had 2 serperior's out from using stoutlands first ability to get back Professor elms and rare candies. It has really nice synergy in a stage 2 deck for that very reason. Stoutland became a huge wall for me to build up serperiors and finally a sawsbuck for the easy KO's. I did see trouble with his second attack because once I was set up all I'd have left to do was just use his main attack, making him worthless the second turn, and having to waste DOCO's to retreat. But it worked out, won all my games.

I can see trouble with stoutland. Maybe just putting him out to do his main attack to set up my bench but I don't know if its worth it. The deck was fairly good at setting up the bench before hand, stoutland just made it extremely more easier.

After playing some fire decks (reshiram builds) I have realized it's nearly impossible to out heal fire burst. Being new to pokemon I'm curious if EVERY deck has a weakness and is nearly impossible to beat? Or is heal decks (grass) sort of the only type of deck that just can't beat a certain other deck? It makes me want to change up my mechanics and just use serperiors as my heals, and pump zoroarks and maybe mandibuzzes (and whatever has good synergy in legends, I'm not familiar with those cards).

I like the idea of torterra, and understand now why you picked him, despite off the top of your head :p I think maybe rearranging my deck to be more of a heal support then run X for my attacks would be best. It makes it complicated given I really don't know what's out there and what to base a deck off of. Coming into black and white I can tell there's good cards in legends that I've been looking at but I just don't know how to give my serperiors synergy with those decks. I'm all about consistency, I ran a haymaker deck back in the day of the first sets and loved it because of it's consistency.

Possibly taking out sawsbuck, despite my love for them and replacing with zoroark and maybe playing torterra or even tangrowths (since sawsbuck would be replaced) might be a good idea?

Thanks again for your help, I appreciate it. My friends are old school pokemon players and these new cards really throw us in a loop. I'll take all the advice I can get!

Edit: Plus powers work really well with this deck so far. I'm really enjoying it. I need to get my hands on black belts and pokemon collectors.
 
Okay, I didn't really think of this at first, but since your deck does suffer against Fire-based decks...how about a 1-1 or 2-2 line of Metapod? Fire decks really have no way of sniping at the moment, so it could work. Only issue I see is that if it's prized, you're in trouble without Zoroark.

Here's my suggested decklist so far:

3-2-3 Serperior
3-2-3 Torterra
2-2 Zoroark
1-1 Metapod

4 Rare Candy
4 Pluspower
4 Pokemon Communication
1 Alph Lithograph 4 (this will help with prized necessities)

4 Judge
3 Professor Elm's Training Method
2 Pokemon Collector
2 Black Belt

10 Grass Energy
4 Double Colorless Energy

I cut the Serperior down 1 to help with bench space. Try this against a Reshiram build and see how much better it'll do. If success is still very minimal, I would scrap the Metapod line and Alph Lithograph 4 for your 4th Serperior line again.
 
Aaron said:
Okay, I didn't really think of this at first, but since your deck does suffer against Fire-based decks...how about a 1-1 or 2-2 line of Metapod? Fire decks really have no way of sniping at the moment, so it could work. Only issue I see is that if it's prized, you're in trouble without Zoroark.

Here's my suggested decklist so far:

3-2-3 Serperior
3-2-3 Torterra
2-2 Zoroark
1-1 Metapod

4 Rare Candy
4 Pluspower
4 Pokemon Communication
1 Alph Lithograph 4 (this will help with prized necessities)

4 Judge
3 Professor Elm's Training Method
2 Pokemon Collector
2 Black Belt

10 Grass Energy
4 Double Colorless Energy

I cut the Serperior down 1 to help with bench space. Try this against a Reshiram build and see how much better it'll do. If success is still very minimal, I would scrap the Metapod line and Alph Lithograph 4 for your 4th Serperior line again.
Click to expand...

Thanks aaron I really like the idea of metapod. I never knew about him. I'll work on getting him and those torterra's. judges, collectors, belts and alph too. heh
 
Just a suggestion in that taking out a royal heal serperior for a normal. Reason being it can do 60 and heal 20 from all grass with no retreat cost. I know you lose that stacking of healing with the royal heal but it does help in a quick heal or two while doing damage. Just a thought.
 
I think you're right Revyolution. I was actually thinking about doing that. Still trying to get cards to put this together. If anyone has some trades PM ME :)
 
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