First, let me say, I'm going to refer to the deck as "ADF", because I have seen people running
just Flygon/
Dusknoir, or running it with an alternate component.
It's the best deck because it's ridiculously hard to beat. Flygon punishes you for setting up and Accelgor stops you from doing anything once you do. Mr. Mime blocks Night Spear and attacks like it, and Dusknoir prevents you from building up threats on the Bench. It's nuts and I love it.
I
used to love such kind of decks myself, but then I remembered its a 2-player game. Whether due to an intricate lock
or raw power steamrolling my opponent or some other permutation that results in what is effectively a game of solitaire where my opponent is left waiting for me to win and/or hoping and praying I misplay so they have the tiniest of chances. The caveat is that I am okay with this kind of thing
if the player uses it has to
earn it; that means a perfect lock takes the time and skill to implement that by the time it happens, both players have still had the opportunity to enjoy the game.
ADF might be the kind where you can still have a good game before you lose, and where it seems like my opponent has earned it
however the PTCGO interface still makes the combo painfully slow.
None of this affects its status as BDIF,
unless being slow starts costing it wins.
It's rarely seen because 4x Tropical Beach is required, and my guess is not a lot of (Legacy) players have them.
I didn't bring up how rarely it was played to claim it was
not the BDIF, but to explain why I couldn't
confirm it.
ADF is ridiculously hard to beat when it
- Is well built
- Sets up properly
- Is played well
- Isn't facing a natural counter
These are some of the data points we must consider and really rely upon, or at least those like myself that don't have a lot of experience facing the deck and
none running it.
I have faced it, however, even beaten it. With so little data, however, it is hard to tell which of the above four points deserve the credit. A poor build can be obvious, but sometimes it is subtle like running the wrong count of a particular card or cards. It is hard to tell if an opponent lost because a particular card was Prized or just
refused to show up at the right time. This can easily be confused with a misplay, as the end result looks similar
unless you know the contents of the opponent's hand/deck/etc. Finally, there
are things that ADF doesn't want to see,
but with it being so rare, I only can tell by the happenstance that I am running those things when I bump into
@wilyfungi.
Speaking of which, that happened at least twice yesterday. The first time I was running CML -
Cobalion-EX/
Mewtwo-EX/
Landorus-EX/
Garbodor (DRX). I lost, but I was on my last Prize when it happened, both players had low deck sizes, and I forced wilyfungi to play a 7-Prize game. I don't know if it was because I had good luck, locking down Abilities before he had much of a setup, because he had badluck, not getting a fully setup until I had enjoyed a few turns with Abilities locked down. Could be I made the right choices and didn't have a chance of winning, could be I made the wrong choices and could have won. Could be we both made right/wrong choices and luck was with him a little more than me. If need be, I can share more details, but the main thing is I brought out big, Basic attackers with low Energy costs
and bounce to the match-up while
also locking down Abilities for a time.
The second match I won via concession, so almost all the same applies
except I was running FluffyChomp -
Altaria (DRX) with
Garchomp DRX 90. The concession happened a few turns in, so I don't know if he thought the
Flygon would struggle too much with Dragon Weakness, but
probably something important on his end was Prized, he made a misplay I didn't notice, or he just had to leave. Still, this both of these bring up possible examples of number four. I've seen other top decks need a break because the metagame shifted to
temporarily counter them, so it is possible that would happen with ADF. It
also means the format might never truly stagnate; become cyclical, but not stagnant.
