Alt. Format Mad Bull (Malamar / Giratina / Tauros / Tauros GX)

[Dark Espeon]

MAD BULL

Pokémon (14):

• 3 Giratina SM7b (beatdown)
• 3 Tauros SM9 (beatdown)
  
• 2 Tauros GX (beatdown)
• 3 Malamar (accelerate)
• 3 Inkay (evolution)

Trainer (32):

• 2 Erika's Hospitality (draw)
• 3 Guzma (control)
• 4 Cynthia (draw)
• 4 Lillie (draw)
• 4 Mysterious Treasure (search)
• 2 Rescue Stretcher (retrieval)
• 4 Spell Tag (beatdown)
• 3 Ultra Ball (search)
• 3 Nest Ball (search)
• 3 Shrine of Punishment (beatdown)

Energy (14):

• 4 Double Colorless Energy
• 10 Psychic Energy

STRATEGY:

The main idea is to bench two Inkay and evolve them into Malamar turn two. In the first few turns focus on Giratina and bench some Tauros to take the damage from Giratina. This forces the opponent to either hunt down the benched Tauros or to deal with Giratina itself. Once the benched Tauros have taken a hit each switch over to Tauros and swarm with rage.

SPOILER:

Tauros
Basic Colorless Pokémon
HP 130
[C][C] Raging Swarm: 10+
This attack does 10 more damage for each damage counter on all of your Tauros (including Tauros GX) in play.
Retreat Cost: CC
Weakness: F

Erika's Hospitality
Trainer - Supporter
If you have more than 6 cards in your hand (including this one), you can’t play this card. Draw a number of cards up to the number of your opponent’s Pokémon in play.

 

[Audiofreak19]

I don’t think the tauros will last long enough with damage on it. That would be the first thing I would go after since Giratina can come back from the discard

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi Audiofreak19,

Thanks for the review. At first I would like to outline that I did not test this deck thus far. Instead I based in on existing Malamar decks with an exmphasis on a specific tactic. The idea of this deck is to open up a dual mill in the ideal situation. In the ideal case there would be two Malamar with Spell Tag on the bench in addition to two to three Tauros and a fully charged Giratina in the active. Attack with Giratina to deal 130 damage to the active which ohkos most non-GX attacker other than Alolan Exeggutor. Hit one of the benched Tauros with Giratina. Now the opponent has several choices to respond:

Choice one: Let us assume the opponent has access to Guzma. (S)He could Guzma out a Tauros and knock it out. However, this will leave the fully charged Giratina on the battlefield to attack next turn and take another prize.

Choice two: Again, let us assume the opponent has access to Guzma. The opponent could Guzma for Malamar and knock it out. (S)He would take the damage from Spell tag in this case assuming the opponent did not use either Field Blower or Lysandre's Lab on the same turn. this leaves me with a damaged Tauros and a fully charged Giratina to attack next turn.

Choice three: The opponent could simply knock out Giratina. This leaves me with the damaged Tauros and Malamar to refuel Giratina once I revived it from the discard.

None of the three options is without a limitation. This is exactly what the deck wants to do. The basic idea is ensure that each and every option available to the opponent comes with a drawback that helps me to advance my board position in terms of prize trading. As noted above I did not test the deck thus far but I had this idea in my head when Tauros was revealed yesterday and it seemed intriguing to me.

 

[Audiofreak19]

No worries at all. If you did combo it with mill then I think it would help the deck. I think you could cut down on the psychics a little as all of your attackers require 3 or less to attack. If you have 2 Malamar and once the first Giratina is set up then your recycling the same energies. I would think to drop it to 7 psychics which will allow you to add in crushing hammer or plumeria(help get psychic in discard pile) and possibly enchanted hammer. You could probably cut the nest ball down to 2 also. You have a lot of draw support and with the mysterious treasure and ultra ball, you shouldn’t have any issues getting set up

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi Audiofreak19,

No worries. Mill is intended to mean mill such as in the game merels. In a nutshull the idea is to provide the opponent with several option but to make sure that each of them is linked to a serious downside as outlined in the three example scenarios above. Such situations are often refered to as dual mills, which is just another way of saying that no matter which choice the opponent makes it is intended to be a suboptimal one in the mid-term. I still want the deck to be beatdown focused instead of running the opponent out of resources but to swarm them with potentially easy to use and recylce attackers that are able to knock them out in return. This should lead to a situation where no mater what the opponent does it will cost them a lot. Since the charm of this deck resides in playing mind games with the opponent you need to keep your own board position in mind. It is seldom that you want more than 160 damage on your own side of the board to ensure that an opposing Tapu Lele Promo is unable to knock out two attackers at once. Sorry for the confusing language but I am not a native speaker as you might have been able to tell .

 

[TuxedoBlack]

As a Buzzwole/Buzzwole GX player, I would attempt to 1HKO your Bulls.... As a counter to Buzzwole decks (which still seem to be quite popular as main and secondary attackers throughout a variety of decks), I'd suggest you integrate a few Weakness Policy to help preserve needed damage counters in play.

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi TuxedoBlack,

Thanks for the review. I do not like the idea to run Weakness Policy for a single match. While Buzzwole is still relevant and seems to remain so the deck also runs Giratina to deal with Buzzwole and you could provent to bench Tauros GX in that match when needed.

 

[John InCENAroar]

Here's another thought for deck, but with a different secondary type, or at least a basic outline of one. Dragon Majesty's Gyarados has an ability that states whenever it is damaged by an attack, it does 20 damage to each of your benched pokemon. With this, you can basically wall behind one or two (getting 20 extra per Tauros instead of just 40) until your Tauros have enough damage, and then you can swing. You don't have as clean of an answer to Buzzwole, but after a while you're trading anyway, so it shouldn't matter too much in that respect anyway.

 

[Dark Espeon]

Hi John InCENAroar,

Thanks for the review. That sounds like a nice idea. Maybe combined with some Articuno from the next set to enable Gyarados to attack faster.