My attempt at Raticate/Amoonguss

[pokedan24]

Here's my rough draft.

Pokemon 19

-4-3 Rattata Raticate
-3-3 Foongus Amoonguss.
-4 Emolga
-2 Sableye

Trainers 30
-4 N
-4 Juniper
-2 Skyla
-2 Cheren
-4 level ball
-4 catchers
-3 devo spray
-3 energy switch
-2 superrod
-1 tool scrapper
-1 computer search

Energy 11
-7 dark
-4 DCE

The ideal start is to begin with Emolga, attach, call for family. Then on your next turn, get out amoongus retreat to raticate. DCE, energy switch and KO. I put 4 emolga to have better odds of starting with him. Sableeye can recover items such as devo spray and superrod that can keep the deck going.

I don't expect the deck to be great. At least until poison hypnotic beam comes out (free up a lot of space), but for a fun TCGO deck, I could see this getting a few wins. Of course I have to test it first, but once I get the right cards that won't be a problem.

EDIT: Forgot about the catchers.

 

[AlexanderTheAwesome]

With the Hypno-toxic laser coming out, that will be optimal and easier to pull out. Maybe sableye, raticate lasers??

 

[pokedan24]

Hell yeah. I'm switching out the amoongus once that becomes available.

 

[Regirocket]

I tried running a similar version of this deck to no avail. And the problems I was having were: Raticate takes 3 energies, to do a near KO, but poison takes care of that. Issue is consistency with poison. Along with that is getting 3 energies on raticate before he gets KOd himself, 60hp hurts, 80 hp with aspertia or cape, 80 with both, still horribly inconsistent. What all of this has taught me is that Raticate will be ready for the competitive scene on February 6th, when Plasma Storm comes out. Hypnotoxic laser (HTL) and scramble switch make this deck much, much more viable. However, they radically alter the deck, and it goes from being raticate amoonguss to raticate hammers. Then you can use sableye as your lead, throwing hammers around while you set up two or 3 raticates on your bench, then being able to attack. Another amazing card for this deck, from Plasma Storm, is scramble switch. Using this allows you to use the dark energy you attached to sableye, as well as the DCE you put on raticate in order to get off a lucky turn 2 KO on anything. Then free retreat during the next turn, attach a dark energy to sableye, and junk hunt, getting back a HTL and a hammer, or the scramble switch, and attacking again and again. In short, I <3 raticate, but he's not ready to kill err'body yet. he needs a couple more weeks. I hope I was of some help to you.

 

[pokedan24]

Raticate/hammers is an interesting idea. I don't like the hammertime deck on it's own (too flippy) but since they're not the main focus of the deck, flipping tails won't hurt too much. Sableye should be really good in this kind of deck. I play it in my ninetails amoonguss deck, but I think it would be even better here since you have even more items to work with.

And while it's not anything great, the latest team plasma is giving us a Rattata with 40HP, so landorus will only be able to donk one. That should help the decks survivability.

 

[Mora]

What are you going to do about Cresselia :O You'll need Virbank when it comes out.

 

[Regirocket]

What are you going to do about Cresselia :O You'll need Virbank when it comes out.

I think this deck will be rogue enough that Cresselia won't see a huge surge in play just to counter it. I could be massively wrong, but it would surprise me. And aspertia with giant cape is just too important to raticate. Being able to survive a night spear is a really big deal (yeah I know dark claw), and even though keldeo kills it anyways... actually, i suppose playing either virbank or aspertia depends on a players area meta. so either would work, it just depends on if darkrai is bigger than keldeo in your area.

 

[Teal]

Not only Dark Claw... your opponents will have HTL too...
Anyway. Why tool scrapper. Why no catchers?

 

[Mora]

People wouldn't be playing Cresselia just to wall a lower tier deck; it's sometimes teched into Darkrai/Hydreigon lists. It just bothered me that there is a Pokemon that is somewhat common that can completely wall your deck, and there's litterally nothing you can do about it. One of my friends had a similar list where he used Toxicroak BC to get rid of Cresselia, but he also ran Ditto so that it could come out of nowhere. Since the Hypnotic Laser would replace Amoongus, you would certainly have the space to do that if you choose.

 

[pokedan24]

Not only Dark Claw... your opponents will have HTL too...
Anyway. Why tool scrapper. Why no catchers?

I forgot to add the catchers to the list for some reason. Of course I put them in when I built the deck, I just forget to add them to this decklist.

Tool scrapper is tech against garbodor.

As far as cresselia goes, I'd probably have to catcher around it. Either that or take it out with sableye's confuse ray (assuming they don't retreat). Decklist will change for the better once the new set is released, but for now this will have to do.