Igglybuff - The Forgotten Fluff?

Aaron

Aaron

Aspiring Trainer
Member
So...I've been playing around with some new lock-type decks because they're so much more fun than your traditional metagame decks. I've got two builds down, so far. One is a Sharpedo hand disruption variant and the other, well...my starter is Igglybuff if that says anything.

44-igglybuff.jpg


So what can this monstrosity do? Well, for one, it's a bit disruptive. Being a baby Pokemon, you'll want to go first, but going first means you could be forcing your opponent to retreat, burn energy they can't spare. Meanwhile, you just bought yourself another free turn of setup and maybe a strange look from your opponent. :D It can also serve as a late-game stall tactic.

What happens on turn two that we could capitalize on? Well, there's your stage 1 Pokemon we could play, or perhaps some Rare Candy'd stage 2 Pokemon we could play. The real question is "which one"?

I wrote an article about Ampharos a long time ago. It's seriously one of the most underrated cards in the game. It's a stage 2 Pokemon, so it's not always easy to bring out. However, it's stats are not something to be underestimated. It can OHKO Yanmega and Blastoise with a good coin flip, or discard energy on a "bad" coin flip.

105-ampharos.jpg


Next up, we have our main attacker, Gyarados HGSS.

4-gyarados.jpg


Packing 130 HP and a pretty awesome second attack, this thing will spell doom for the likes of Donphan, Reshiram, Typhlosion, and Emboar. Oh, I forgot to mention it discards energy. Pretty important.

I'll post a skeleton list of the deck so you can all critique/fix it.

Energy Lock:

4 Igglybuff
3-2-3 Ampharos
3-3 Gyarados
2 Zekrom

2 Revive (Your basics are lunch meat.)
4 Defender
2 Rare Candy
1/2 Energy Exchanger
0-2 Lost Remover

4 Double Colorless
4 Electric Energy
4 Water Energy
2 Rainbow Energy

It's an interesting idea, nonetheless. Thanks for reading! Crits welcome, of course! :D
 
I think Smoochum might be better for this deck than Igglybuff because Igglybuff just makes them take 1 more turn to set up, meaning only 1 more damage counter if you have ampharos, and only 1 more turn needed to set up. Smoochum's effect is probably better because they will lose an energy as long as they have a benched every turn, which means racking up multiple damage counters with ampharos. It also means that with some lucky sleep flips you can stall for longer.
 
I love the idea of using igglybuff as a stall AND disruption tactic but you have only a 50% chance of doing it twice in a row. can't think of anything else to say
 
I like Smoochum as well. So much annoyingness, although I suppose Igglybuff could do okay as well.

You know what really rips through this deck, though?
Yanmega.

And you know what takes up about half the meta?
That's right, Yanmega again.

Ampharos can do alright, but 2HKOs aren't going to do great when your opponent gets that Magnezone out. And Kingdra hurts as well.

Actually, on that same note, why isn't Kingdra being played instead of Amphy? The only matchup Amphy places more damage counters on is in ReshiBoar, which isn't going to be played after Catcher (and ZPS, but counters on Pachi are pretty useless). Kingdra at least has the same type of energy as Gyara if need be.
 
Or, if you really ARE going to run Amphy, just do Pidgeot Ampharos. It's the only viable option, and it locks everthing except Emboar and Feraligatr decks, and Catcher can deal with that. Yup, forcing your opponent's Zekrom to use 4 Lightning energy for 1 Outrage is definitely good.

And it totally defeats Yanmega's purpose.
 
I would probably use something other then Gyarados as an attacker, main reason being that if it gets knocked out, it takes at least 3 turns to set up. I think either a quicker attacker with high damage output (like Cinccino) as well as a Yanmega Counter (Thundrous), would work better, and then include trainers like Crush Hammer (when it's released) and possibly Lost Remover to remove energies.

I've tried getting a deck with Ampharos, which was actually kinda similar to the one above, to work just after the rotation was announced and to be honest, it wasn't really that good. Mabye with new cards from Emerging Powers it'll be a bit better but with Emboar losing popularity and Yanmega gaining it instead.....I donno. It'll be a fun deck to play anyway which is always a good thing xD
 
blaZofgold said:
And it totally defeats Yanmega's purpose.
Click to expand...
Yanmega's attacks still cost 0 no matter what you do to them, so long as the hands match. Besides, your opponent could just retreat the Yanmega either way.
 
You: I use Graffiti and increase your energy cost! MWAHAHAHAHA
Me: *Retreats*
You: FUUUUUUUU

Seriously though, this won't work in a competitive environment because people can always just retreat/play a switch.
 
I have a feeling you just happen to have a lot of gyarados and igglybuff and are trying to hype them so their value goes up.
Butyeah, Sillykyle pretty much summed up my argument as well.
 
whenever this topic of increasing energy/ energy manipulation comes up, it always pains me to see pidgeot mentioned without his prevolution pidgeotto recieving no love. the possibility to discard two energies off your opponents pokemon is some serious denial, possibly more serious than increasing the cost. and this chance improves when fliptini is released. overall, the pidgey line is similar to the gyarados, and still compatible with the DCE. maybe dropping the amphy and focus on the energy control portion of the game would work better?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top