How to beat ChandePlume

B

Balboa

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hey guys, I've recently realized that ChandePlume is not far from being the best deck in format - actually I'm sure as hell, but I don't want to let OT discussions start.
My issue is: how can a deck win against it? For Magnezone and Zekrom we have Terrakion and Landorus, for Reshiram we have Kyurem, but what about Chandelure? I'm thinking about Absol, but you need at least 2-3 of them with lots of darkness energies to make them work. I'm thinking also about Spinarak, but do you really think it could be the best and most effective way out?
Let the discussion begin!
 
IMHO, you just have to outspeed it, kill the Oddishes or the Doduos. It really gets annoying once the Plume hits the field.

Absol is the only one that surefire kills off Chandelure but it's not playable for all decks. Chandyplume is also more prone to bad hands compared to the other top decks but it has the most upside once setup as well.
 
Magnezone can beat it, though the matchup is very equal in my opinion. You just need to make sure you KILL THE ODDISH. If you get a decent setup with Eelzone I don't think it's impossible. Rescue Energy is very annoying to say the least, but I think it can be worked around. It's all about taking cheap prizes early with this matchup. I strongly suggest not discarding Magneton (learned from experience) when you play this deck. It is a struggle, and it comes down to who can set up most quickly.
 
Riskbreakers said:
IMHO, you just have to outspeed it, kill the Oddishes or the Doduos. It really gets annoying once the Plume hits the field.

Absol is the only one that surefire kills off Chandelure but it's not playable for all decks. Chandyplume is also more prone to bad hands compared to the other top decks but it has the most upside once setup as well.
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Because it can use Twins to get Tropical Beach, Cursed Shadow damage counters on their Pokemon, and draw up to seven, end turn, rinse and repeat. Dodrio is your best friend against ChandePlume because once they Status lock you with Burn and Confusion you better find some way to bail your Active out and Retreat Aid can help a ton.

The problem with Absol is that you have to LZ a Pokemon to do 140 to Chandelure for Vicious Claw and most of the time they will have Rescue Energy attached to Chandy so that they can play it again unless they Seeker their own Vileplume to Rare Candy Litwick into Chandelure without having to play Lampent. So yeah it's a good deck that can be beaten but like Durant it's annoying to play against.
 
Well, all of our counters would have a counter plan for it. Chandelure is just that annoying to face. I'd say target the Oddish or Doduo at best but if I were playing ChandePlume, I would never drop a Doduo unless I got a Plume up so there's that lol.
 
Chandelure is doing well because it is very difficult to play against. Obviously, you have Absol Prime, which is a decent counter, and out-speeding and KOing basics with Pokémon Catcher is great, but doesn't always work. From my experience, you just have to play very carefully against Chandelure, watch what you bench. Try to refrain from benching things with high retreat costs, and if you do, make sure that you have a plan to get them out of your active later in the game, a well placed Luring Light can be a total game changer. I'd also try not to bench things that are going to be easy kills late game, such as Shaymin, I think that is pretty obvious though. Another thing worth testing would be early game disruption, I doubt many Chandelures are going to play well after an early game Judge.
 
Riskbreakers said:
Well, all of our counters would have a counter plan for it. Chandelure is just that annoying to face. I'd say target the Oddish or Doduo at best but if I were playing ChandePlume, I would never drop a Doduo unless I got a Plume up so there's that lol.
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Yeah tell me about it, one of my friends top cutted with ChandePlume at a Cities in Nebraska last weekend. I remember trying to beat it one time with CaKE (before I tore the deck apart) and I had the most difficulty getting energies or popping Electrodes at the right time to get around it, let alone any kind of recovery as I wasn't running a proper decklist of it at that time.
 
CoKE should do well against Chandelure. You outspeed it and you deny his Twins. Must've been bad luck from popping trodes.


As VY said, Chandelure has one of the worst startups so disrupting it early is a key. Whether it be hand disruption or bench disruption, Chandelure hates that.

You could also wait till Next Destinies and wait if Chandelure would die out from 170HP basics dealing 150 a turn on it.
 
If you can take out the Vileplumes and Dodrios, you're in really good shape, but if they stay on the field, you're going to have to fight an uphill battle the rest of the game.

Recently, I took ChandelPlume to a local tournament (living in Australia, we get very few City Championships, so our TO decided to host some small comps in City season) and did poorly, losing twice to The Thunderdome in ridiculously close games, and I think that gave me some insight into how to play against it. Even when ChandelPlume gets setup, if a Magnezone gets into play, a huge amount of pressure is put on you, because it can punch straight through your Chandelures. Spreading damage around the field and using Jirachi to take KOs is the most powerful counter to a fully set up field, but that takes time. In that time, the opposing player NEEDS to take KOs.

Another strategy that turned out to be very successful was defaulting to the Durant strategy, of loading up Zekroms and swinging, not putting Magnezone into play, preventing it from being Luring Light'd into the Active spot before its ready, or being Devolved by Jirachi. Zekrom also has the advantage of being really, really bulky, taking 2 Turns of concentrated Curse Shadowing to knock out, and being able to attack back for a lot of damage. If Blissey can be prevented from reaching the field (KO the Chansey early?) then spreading damage onto the Chandelures with 1 Zekrom, and then following it up with a 2nd (this is probably the only situation I'd recomend playing 2 Zekroms in The Thunderdome).

Also, if the games go into Sudden Death, hope they start Doduo.
 
Sudden death is Chandelure's enemy though. The deck runs on Twins and takes three turns minimum to give significant amount of damage on the board. Most decks can damage by Turn 2.
 
vareki said:
Recently, I took ChandelPlume to a local tournament (living in Australia, we get very few City Championships, so our TO decided to host some small comps in City season) and did poorly, losing twice to The Thunderdome in ridiculously close games, and I think that gave me some insight into how to play against it. Even when ChandelPlume gets setup, if a Magnezone gets into play, a huge amount of pressure is put on you, because it can punch straight through your Chandelures. Spreading damage around the field and using Jirachi to take KOs is the most powerful counter to a fully set up field, but that takes time. In that time, the opposing player NEEDS to take KOs.

Another strategy that turned out to be very successful was defaulting to the Durant strategy, of loading up Zekroms and swinging, not putting Magnezone into play, preventing it from being Luring Light'd into the Active spot before its ready, or being Devolved by Jirachi. Zekrom also has the advantage of being really, really bulky, taking 2 Turns of concentrated Curse Shadowing to knock out, and being able to attack back for a lot of damage. If Blissey can be prevented from reaching the field (KO the Chansey early?) then spreading damage onto the Chandelures with 1 Zekrom, and then following it up with a 2nd (this is probably the only situation I'd recomend playing 2 Zekroms in The Thunderdome).
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I think your first paragraph there was a great summary. I don't agree with the second, though. Magnezone is how Eelzone beats Chandelure. You have to take early prizes with Thundurus or Zekrom so that Magnezone can clean up the last couple. If you can't OHKO them, they can prevent you from taking prizes. As you say, you need to take prizes against Chandelure even after it's setup, or you will lose. Magnezone also offers a good draw source for a few turns after they get out Vileplume.
 
Riskbreakers said:
CoKE should do well against Chandelure. You outspeed it and you deny his Twins. Must've been bad luck from popping trodes.
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Here's the problem though, I couldn't draw out my Electrode's in time to pop them and he takes my Voltorb's out too quickly with Cursed Shadow before I have the chance to pop a Trode. I would go as far to say that ChandePlume has almost as strong of an early game setup as ZPST.

Infact ZPST probably has the best matchup against ChandePlume depending If they get that donk going with a 1st or 2nd turn Collector with 3 Lightning, a Zekrom, Pachirisu, and Shaymin with Catcher in hand If they have Oddish on their bench which they most likely will.
 
The only experience I have playing against it was a version without tropical beach

I was playing Kingdra / Cincinno and I just rushed as fast as I could pretty much 1 KO a turn from turn 2 onwards catchering oddishes e.t.c
We always play best of 3 here, I ended up winning 2 - 1
Won first, lost second, won third
 
Card Slinger J said:
Here's the problem though, I couldn't draw out my Electrode's in time to pop them and he takes my Voltorb's out too quickly with Cursed Shadow before I have the chance to pop a Trode. I would go as far to say that ChandePlume has almost as strong of an early game setup as ZPST.

Infact ZPST probably has the best matchup against ChandePlume depending If they get that donk going with a 1st or 2nd turn Collector with 3 Lightning, a Zekrom, Pachirisu, and Shaymin with Catcher in hand If they have Oddish on their bench which they most likely will.
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That's just bad luck which has been the prevalent factor in this format (I still like the format, I just hate my luck). My trodes always come T2-T3. I only lose to Chandelure when I get nothing from the pops. Chandelure is also slower than most decks so it's just bad luck there. Notice how everyone here is saying that one should just overrun Chandelure to have a fighting chance against it.
 
Kingdra_fan said:
The only experience I have playing against it was a version without tropical beach

I was playing Kingdra / Cincinno and I just rushed as fast as I could pretty much 1 KO a turn from turn 2 onwards catchering oddishes e.t.c
We always play best of 3 here, I ended up winning 2 - 1
Won first, lost second, won third
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You probably would've lost If the version of ChandePlume you played against was
running Tropical Beach. It's a staple card in that deck and If you're running ChandePlume without Tropical Beach then there's no point in playing the deck cause there isn't anything currently as consistent as Tropical Beach for ChandePlume, maybe Juniper and Sage's Training but they don't cut it.

Riskbreakers said:
Notice how everyone here is saying that one should just overrun Chandelure to have a fighting chance against it.
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I only lose to Chandelure when I get nothing from the pops.
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Overrun it? How? There's very few decks in this format that do that and they are mostly Basic/Stage 1 decks. I'm taking it that the reason why you had problems getting energies with Electrode was because your CaKE build didn't have more than 14 energies in it. More energies would've increased your odds of getting the setup you needed.
 
I run 17. It was really a streak of bad luck as I ran the same deck before the New Year and averaged 3 energies per pop. Last Sunday I took it out for a spin again and went like

1-1-2-0 (4 pops in 5 games)

Yes, overrunning it is hard, but it is the only way you're going to win if you're not EelZone.
 
Most of the best candy decks revolve around twins so unless you are a really good player or they are very bad, killing is not the best option, IMO.

I think it may be best to either mildly nerf it using Eviolite, or yes, getting drudigon set up.

I played a chandelure deck using a weird druddigon deck and I killed him because he couldn't retreat and I could 2 hit KO with plus power.
 
^I just want to second this post before people flame him. I'm running Druddigon in my Stage 1 deck just so I can beat Chandelure. It prevents them from hiding damaged ones on the bench, and it reduces how much damage they can do a turn very significantly.
 
I should try that with Donphan-Dragons next time. I'm planning to revive that deck again because Lightning is so prevalent in my meta. It also should act as a nice Chandy counter lol.
 
Celebi23 said:
I think your first paragraph there was a great summary. I don't agree with the second, though. Magnezone is how Eelzone beats Chandelure. You have to take early prizes with Thundurus or Zekrom so that Magnezone can clean up the last couple. If you can't OHKO them, they can prevent you from taking prizes. As you say, you need to take prizes against Chandelure even after it's setup, or you will lose. Magnezone also offers a good draw source for a few turns after they get out Vileplume.
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True enough, but using Zekroms and Thundurus aggressively certainly worked for my opponent; even when Trainer Locked, charging and attacking with both Zekrom and Thundurus is fairly easy, and the damage on Chandelures means they can't stay in the active without being revenged. Jirachi can't KO them, and it takes a bit of time for Chandelures to Cursed Shadow them to the discard.

Of course, I would rescind that advice if you know that the ChandelPlume player uses Blissey Prime (I personally did not, and since then my list has incorporated it; Blissful Nurse is a lifesaver). 2HKOing them isn't practical when they can just heal it all. Once Chansey comes into play, you know that Magnezone is going to need to do the work from that point on, Jirachi threat be damned.
 
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