Hydrapple ex, Stellar Lapras ex, Briar, and More Revealed from “Stellar Miracle!”

flariados said:
Ogrepon ex: am I a joke to you?

Gardenia's Vigor: am I a joke to you?

Bug Catching Set: am I a joke to you?

EDIT: Completely baffled by people's reception to Hydrapple EX. The ability stacks. So if you had three in play, and you charge up one Pokemon, you're also healing 90 damage from it. You're getting the Sada+Orgepon combo via Gardenia. Bug Catching set + earthen v to get the energies into your hand. Plenty of ways to shuffle them back in.

Sadly, I don't think it's viable to go Twilight Masquerade Dipplin, and run a Festival+1-1 Thwackey engine. I think you just run Pidgeot EX as a partner, go heavy on Rare Candy and just run a single copy of the new Dipplin.
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Why would you run Hydrapple Ogerpon over Blissey Ogerpon though? That deck isn’t even particularly good as well. It just seems outclassed to me. The only thing I can think of is keeping most of the energies after being KO’d, your main attacker having more HP, and Bug Catching Set being more effective, which actually are pretty nice benefits, but you lose out on the Munkidoris and have worse consistency. Maybe someone can make the deck work, but I seriously doubt it will be BDIF material. I’m also not sold on using Gardenia’s Vigor, but maybe with Bug Catching Set it will actually be an OK card for once in its life. I’m probably gonna test with it just because I like Hydrapple and I hope it will be better than I think it is lol, but the reality is that it’s probably just a worse attacker than Toedscruel ex
 
Holy crap the glass trumpet. Both terapagos and also raging bolt will be even stronger with a few of those
 
Grim Thoughts said:
I seriously doubt it will be BDIF material.
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it really shouldn't need saying, but a card doesn't have to be in a BDIF list in order to be a good or useful card. reevaluate your priorities when it comes to analyzing new cards, and examine the game through a more reasonable lens. it's a much healthier way to engage with a children's card game, i find. there will always be "bad cards", no one is denying that, but some folks seem to approach news posts like these with staggering levels of pessimism and dismissiveness around anything that doesn't serve a direct use to whatever the top 6 decks on limitlesstcg are at a given moment, and that's really just not even useful or insightful analysis from a meta-oriented perspective either.

(they aren't suggesting one run Hydrapple Ogerpon, by the way)
 
LOTTEN said:
it really shouldn't need saying, but a card doesn't have to be in a BDIF list in order to be a good or useful card. reevaluate your priorities when it comes to analyzing new cards, and examine the game through a more reasonable lens. it's a much healthier way to engage with a children's card game, i find. there will always be "bad cards", no one is denying that, but some folks seem to approach news posts like these with staggering levels of pessimism and dismissiveness around anything that doesn't serve a direct use to whatever the top 6 decks on limitlesstcg are at a given moment, and that's really just not even useful or insightful analysis from a meta-oriented perspective either.

(they aren't suggesting one run Hydrapple Ogerpon, by the way)
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Like this post. I’m not even interested in the top decks because everyone is playing them and I don’t want to. Like how boring can you be. Try something beside Charizard please
 
Digg07 said:
Holy crap the glass trumpet. Both terapagos and also raging bolt will be even stronger with a few of those
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Why would raging bolt need trumpet? If you have played raging bolt, you know the deck consistently hits any number you want it to.

You will actually make the deck worse by playing trumpet and more colorless pokemon you really don't need. Just play trekking shoes and consistency cards.
 
I really wish that Hydrapple-ex would have a better combo with Festival Lead, but it certainly interesting with Ogerpon-ex !
 
LOTTEN said:
it really shouldn't need saying, but a card doesn't have to be in a BDIF list in order to be a good or useful card. reevaluate your priorities when it comes to analyzing new cards, and examine the game through a more reasonable lens. it's a much healthier way to engage with a children's card game, i find. there will always be "bad cards", no one is denying that, but some folks seem to approach news posts like these with staggering levels of pessimism and dismissiveness around anything that doesn't serve a direct use to whatever the top 6 decks on limitlesstcg are at a given moment, and that's really just not even useful or insightful analysis from a meta-oriented perspective either.

(they aren't suggesting one run Hydrapple Ogerpon, by the way)
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A card needs to be good to be playable in a game like pokemon because everything is so affordable. Low level locals have a selection of the best decks, people is barely trying suboptimal strategies.

I have even seen this in kitchen level pokemon where people starts with a battle league or worlds deck and that means that no level is appropriate for subpar decks anymore because losing isn't fun.

If this was magic or yugioh where BIDF's are really expensive, so people look for alternatives, your narrative might have some validity, but not in pokemon where everyone has access to meta decks for cheap.

There is absolutely nothing wrong in calling out subpar cards. It saves people time, money and energy. This hydrapple is a waste of time for anyone wanting to have a good time at locals and above as it is way too slow and what is proposing, is better done by better cards. You are playing a suboptimal deck for the sake of playing a suboptimal deck.

Only way this works is if your opponent agrees to play underpowered decks too, but at that point you are making yor own fun hy playing an alternate format where some decks are not allowed.
 
Grim Thoughts said:
Why would you run Hydrapple Ogerpon over Blissey Ogerpon though? That deck isn’t even particularly good as well. It just seems outclassed to me. The only thing I can think of is keeping most of the energies after being KO’d, your main attacker having more HP, and Bug Catching Set being more effective, which actually are pretty nice benefits, but you lose out on the Munkidoris and have worse consistency. Maybe someone can make the deck work, but I seriously doubt it will be BDIF material. I’m also not sold on using Gardenia’s Vigor, but maybe with Bug Catching Set it will actually be an OK card for once in its life. I’m probably gonna test with it just because I like Hydrapple and I hope it will be better than I think it is lol, but the reality is that it’s probably just a worse attacker than Toedscruel ex
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I think being Stage 2 is very helpful. Seamless integration of Pidgeot EX.

The ability is similar to Gardevoir EX. The drawback is that it's from the hand so you need to a) find the energy and b) find a way to get it back from the discard to the hand, but instead of adding damage counters as a side effect it's removing them.

The obvious problem is that Gardevoir has a full set of one-prize attackers to load up, and for grass basic pokemon we're clearly lacking.

So, to conclude with a point, I'm going to wait to see if we get any powerful grass partners from this set, and would invite anyone reading this comment to chime in with suggestions. Judging by how hard it was to counter Charizard EX in SV-TF, I think it's going to be a challenge.

And, for clarity, I'm not trying to suggest this is BDIF, but rather something sitting in between tiers 2-3 - I definitely think it's playable.
 
tol89 said:
Like this post. I’m not even interested in the top decks because everyone is playing them and I don’t want to. Like how boring can you be. Try something beside Charizard please
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This mentality is very unhealthy as a player. It limits growth.

People likes to compete, therefore they play decks that can do that. There is no incentive to put yourself in an unecessary disvantage by playing suboptimal cards. You don't gain anything extra from winning with palafin vs winning with gardevoir: rewards are the same.

Is extra funny as i play casual ladder at least once a day to complete the daily and quit, and i see meta decks mostly. I don't agree with people playing gardevoir, chien pao, bolt, lugia or stallax in unranked, but i can't control what they do.

And that's my point: suboptimal strategies have no place in the game anymore as there isn't a single space where those kind of decks can be evenly matched against similar strategies. They are outclassed, even at kitchen level where all it takes is someone deciding to play a league battle deck or buy a meta deck with them being so cheap.

In local leagues, you will see meta decks mostly. So that isn't a good place to play bad decks anymore, as you will lose a lot.
 
afr1234 said:
And that's my point: suboptimal strategies have no place in the game anymore as there isn't a single space where those kind of decks can be evenly matched against similar strategies. They are outclassed, even at kitchen level where all it takes is someone deciding to play a league battle deck or buy a meta deck with them being so cheap.

In local leagues, you will see meta decks mostly. So that isn't a good place to play bad decks anymore, as you will lose a lot.
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i think if i called this a "loser mentality" it would come across as a personal attack, but this is some advanced defeatism for someone who by their own admission doesn't even play in ptcg live's non-casual ladder. if you can't win with any so-called "suboptimal strategies" that might just be a you problem, whether it's at a deck construction or attitude level. you don't really even have to be exceptionally good at the game to take rogue to arceus rank in ptcg live, and it doesn't come down to dumb luck either.

pokemon is a game of matchups and how you play them.
 
flariados said:
So, to conclude with a point, I'm going to wait to see if we get any powerful grass partners from this set, and would invite anyone reading this comment to chime in with suggestions. Judging by how hard it was to counter Charizard EX in SV-TF, I think it's going to be a challenge.

And, for clarity, I'm not trying to suggest this is BDIF, but rather something sitting in between tiers 2-3 - I definitely think it's playable.
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Tier 2 is stuff like charizard EX, stallax or dragapult atm. Sure, those decks might become tier 1 suddenly again, but the decks considered tier 1 would take their place instead (Garde, Lugia, Bolt, etc.). Theese decks eat on a table of their own as they usually counter each other and the placements change with predictions of the meta and newer sets (zard is tier 1 in Japan again for example).

Tier 3 is stuff like future, chien pao, miraidon, Tina, pidgeot control, ancient box, etc. Which are decks that on a good day, can do well but they have multiple bad MU's vs top dogs.

Viable rogue decks is stuff like gholdengo, Blissey, greninja, arceus piles, dialga, roaring moon and i can barely think about anything else worth fitting here.

This hypotetical hydrapple deck is very far from the power level presented by the above decks and it will even have issues trying and fitting into the viable rogue deck category as everything there seems better.
 
LOTTEN said:
i think if i called this a "loser mentality" it would come across as a personal attack, but this is some advanced defeatism for someone who by their own admission doesn't even play in ptcg live's non-casual ladder. if you can't win with any so-called "suboptimal strategies" that might just be a you problem, whether it's at a deck construction or attitude level. you don't really even have to be exceptionally good at the game to take rogue to arceus rank in ptcg live, and it doesn't come down to dumb luck either.

pokemon is a game of matchups and how you play them.
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I never said i don't play ladder. I just play unraked daily for unrelated reasons. And play is something that is not even true, i just do the ridiculous daily and immediatly surrender the game, i'm not actively trying to complete games there, i just don't want to change decks in ranked for specific missions.

Also, that has nothing to do with the argument; that won't transform subpar decks into good ones. It has nothing to do with what you assume my skill level is: hydrapple is terrible. You need a stage 2 in a deck with 15 or so energies for an attack that can hit over 300. Just play raging bolt, it is the same strategy, but better in every way possible.

That has nothing to do with being 'narrow minded' or 'BDIF' attitude. If i have to work extra for the same output, i'm doing it wrong. You don't get anything special from winning with bad decks like hydrapple or palafin. You get the same rewards at any level.

Also, if winning with rogue decks is so easy, why aren't top players all on rogue? They aren't because suboptimal decks or suboptimal cards put you in unecessary disvantage and you don't get anything extra from winning with bad cards.
 
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LOTTEN said:
Teal Mask Ogerpon ex only attaches energy to itself, Hydrapple ex attaches energy to anything. Syrup Storm scales with energy anywhere on your board instead of just actives.
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i can't believe i'm about to yap this hard about a childrens card game ... my bad lol

this might sound nice on first impression but the reality is that it's a stage 2 pokemon, and that severely hampers its ability to be effective.

it's historically very difficult to get multiple stage 2 pokemon onto your board. needing to find multiple rare candy combos, while putting yourself at the risk of tm devolution, means that at best you're able to typically have a board state of two stage 2 mons.

that's why hydrapple's ability is not worth it at all. only accelerating one extra energy is absolutely limiting, and is strictly inferior to every other viable form of energy acceleration in the metagame. ogerpon's ability might only accelerate to itself, but it also is on a basic pokemon that helps you draw a card, so it's significantly more versatile. regidrago vstar decks, several of which got high-level results at NAIC, proved that with energy switch, ogerpon's self-acceleration limitation isn't nearly as much of a problem when the ability is on a basic pokemon. there's also no denying that charizard ex, gardevoir ex, sada's vitality, mirage gate, baxcalibur, and even xatu are all far better forms of energy accel.

hydrapple's attack is also bad. again, for a stage 2 pokemon that is already hard to set up, you need significant setup to make this attack actually do significant damage. darkrai vstar, who shared the same attack but on a stage 1 vstar, had more reliable acceleration to boost its attack (dark patch, galarian moltres v, and single-prize galarian moltres). and even then, it failed to ever be more than just a rogue deck, only getting 1 really notable result. that same attack, which has already been deemed to generally not be strong enough, is now on a stage 2 pokemon.

i hope i'm wrong! i would love for hydrapple ex to be a viable card, so i'm hoping someone can prove me wrong. but hydrapple ex seems really really bad.
 
There's quite a few points of bickering going on in the comments. Just to break down some thoughts:

If you are breaking down how a deck plays out from newer cards, I definitely recommend doing a rough idea of how the deck plays out in its first few turns, how that stacks up as a deck, and what can be done to impede the deck along the way. Koala cub comparing the deck's output to Darkrai, and afr breaking down what you need to hit a damage benchmark, are the closest things to reasonable that were drawn up for Hydrapple here. You don't have to invent a competitive deck, but you can still take the idea to learn up fundamentals and teach others where a card or deck might fall short by playing it out. Saying "Card is good" or "Card is bad" without much other reasoning is not helpful if your audience in talk doesn't understand why, and then that ends up helping no one in the long run or even the short run of it.

You also have to acknowledge that the set it is involved in is incomplete info, and you should value how much time you put into the idea at hand. There is use in doing this if you want to learn or teach what to look out for in cards, but it also isn't the best practice to treat it like a defacto format. Prioritize the format you are focusing on, and leave other or incomplete formats secondary for if you have the time to discuss.

Saying you don't want to play a deck strictly because it is part of the incrowd is, like mentioned before, not a healthy mindset. That's like saying you don't like a vegetable without ever tasting it. More specific reasons that people often bring up are something like:
"I don't want to play this deck because the mirror isn't good or fun"
"I don't want to play this deck to locals because it has a bad matchup against X and I see X all the time at locals"
"I cannot play this deck because it is outside what I budget for the game"
"I don't want to play this deck in a competitive environment because I don't have experience playing this type of deck yet"
"I want to play a deck featuring my favorite pokemon"
"I want to play this deck because I feel it is favorable into my locals"
"I want to learn this deck, but let me stick to online with it until I get a better understanding of it."

You need to adjust your mindset for what location and level of play you want out of the game. Saying "I don't want to be a meta sheep" is a pretty poor reason for eliminating a deck from what you might find fun... because it doesn't actually say anything other than you don't want to follow what other people you see on the internet do. No one cares about that except you. You won't be judged except by people with just as poor or poorer mindset about that. Keep your options open until you learn what you want. You can build to a less successful idea if you enjoy that particular pokemon; you can build to a deck that is less common that might have an advantage over specific decks; you can build to a standard successful deck and make slight adjustments to give you an edge. The purpose no matter how you add it up is to get better overall, learn, and have fun doing it.
 
Alll I'll say is that some people do have in fact fun even when losing. I see this claim that "not winning=no fun" all the time in all sorts of different games. Not everyone takes losing the same way, not everyone considers/defines what's fun the exact same way as you do
 
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