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No Energy Deck (Polwrath / Politoed)

Pipotchi

Pipotchi

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Pokemon (13):

  • 4 Poliwag (Rising Fist)
    2 Poliwhirl (Rising Fist)
    3 Poliwrath (Rising Fist)
    3 Politoed (Rising Fist)
    1 Celebi ex (BCR)
Trainers/Supporters/Stadiums (47):

  • 2 Frozen City
    4 Max Potion
    3 Switch
    1 Escape Rope
    4 Muscle Band
    4 Rare Candy
    3 Startling Megaphone
    2 Professor Sycamore
    4 N
    1 Shauna
    2 Silver Mirror
    4 Roller Skates
    2 Bicycle
    4 Skyla
    1 Lysandre
    3 Ultra Ball
    1 Dowsing Machine
    2 Sacred Ash
Energy (0):

  • -

Strategy:
Hey :) I'm a new battler but I have a small knowledge of common playstyles. I dont think this is particularly competitive or great but I think it would be fun and win at least some battles despite being slow to start up. I am interested to see if you guys think it can work or not, its something I am hoping to use when rising fist comes out.

What this deck aims to do is set up poliwraths to abuse politoed's ability to hit for 60 (80 with muscle band) and 30 to the bench for 0 energy. Due to having 0 energy this means that I can hurt my opponent with frozen city by forcing them to take damage from energy attachments, as well as being able to use max potions to heal to full without hindering my momentum. Poliwrath has a good 140hp meaning it can be hard to take 6 prizes against with a potential 5 max potions (dowsing machine), especially with frozen city hurting you and your energies getting removed by hammers.

Instead of energy cards I have used item-based draw cards to attempt to speed up getting cards out, with bicycle and rollerskates. It also gave me room for 3 megaphones to help deal with garbodor which completely destroys the deck with its ability. Also to deal with team plasma decks who can bypass the frozen city, i have 3 enhanced hammer to get rid of plasma energy. it also helps to deal with decks that will try and get powered up quickly with DCE, as well as being one of the only ways yveltal can quickly build up damage against the deck. In the end this deck is hoping to win in one of two ways: either i can get my opponent to run out of momentum due to having to take damage every single turn, whilst using max potions and knocking off their special energies, OR it tries to burn them up with frozen city limiting their strength and taking knockouts from frozen city damage followed up by poliwrath punching their face.

I only used 2 sycamores here because discarding cards can be hard here since there are a lot of things that will destroy my deck if i threw away the only answer to them, for instance if i throw away megaphones and then garbodor shows up. i use 1 shauna instead of another sycamore because she doesnt require discards.
I can use sacred ash instead of super rod because i dont have any energy to retrieve. these are important because i only have 3 attackers and it is important to get them back for obvious reasons. luckily sacred ash means i can recover a large amount of pokemon. 3 switch + an escape rope because no energy means no ability to discard energy to retreat. This can be bad if jirachi or politoed got stuck in the active so i have a high number of switching cards to counteract this.
4 muscle band is important to get the most damage out of a energyless attack.

Out of this whole moveset I think the least useful cards are the jirachi ex (since i have a 1/5 chance of starting with it... otherwise its a very useful card being able to grab a skyla or w/e and keep the momentum going) and perhaps the enhanced hammers. they make sense in my head because they get rid of plasma energy (which is useful because plasma decks dont get hurt by frozen city) and they get rid of DCE, but perhaps there is a better item to use here in order to slow down my opponent's momentum? i considered hypnotoxic laser but i dont want to use virbank and it only targets the active- where i think the biggest problem i will have is having to hit an active pokemon 3 times to knock it out while a powerful pokemon gets set up from the bench. So if anyone has any suggestions for replacements for the hammers (if necessary) then tell me! This deck will obviously lose to virizion genesect so perhaps there are item cards that work well against them- perhaps i could run a 1-1 drifblim line for free attacks vs both plasma and viriz/genesect decks.

(sorry for wall of text- i figured it would be best to just explain my thoughts behind every card in the deck so you guys can tell me which thoughts are stupid :))


edits made:
1. replaced a jirachi and an enhanced hammer for 2 poliwhirls
2. replaced level ball with celebi ex so set stays legal next cycle
3. replaced enhanced hammers with silver mirror to improve matchup vs team plasma and viriz/genesect


also: here's my rookie opinion on a few matchups (please correct me if they are wrong)-

1. blastoise/keldeo- this favours poliwrath i think since frozen city hurts it a lot + keldeo needs 5 energy attached to ohko poliwrath (which is 100 dmg to itself). Black kyurem destroys itself with a huge energy requirement which is needed every turn- to attack twice with black kyurem ex you have to take 140 damage just from energy attachments which makes it dead weight after a single attack.
2. emboar- favours poliwrath for same reason plus type advantage
3. team plasma- this deck runs silver mirror so it stands a decent chance vs all team plasma decks. depends on if they can get rid of all of the mirrors (3 with dowsing machine)
4. virizion genesect- favours virizion genesect quite heavily, but mirrors will help vs genesect and virizion ex cannot ohko poliwrath with emerald slash, hopefully forcing out repeated g-boosters and wearing them out of energy. red signal to repeatedly bring out and ko poliwhirls will hurt the deck a lot though
5. pyroar- probably favours poliwrath since the deck is full of stage 1 and 2 attackers, pyroar cannot ohko poliwrath and requires 3 energy.
6. yveltal garbodor- can beat non-sableye variations since the deck runs 3 megaphone (4 with dowsing) and sableye is getting rotated. yveltal needs to attach 6 energy to ohko poliwrath with evil ball (120 self damage, can be ohkod by poliwhirl after attaching 3 energy to itself), and y cyclone can't ohko poliwrath.
7. aromatisse/kanga- probably favours aromatisse since they run a lot of stadiums themselves, and poliwrath can't ohko mega kanga. However rainbow energy variations will get shredded by frozen city if I can keep it in play.
 
RE: No Energy Deck (Polwrath/Politoed)

Your thinking is not stupid at all. I like the idea and think it could be better than you give it credit for. I would recomend you put in some poliwhirl because your deck depends on you gettin the stage 2's out. I would also recomend running some energy in case you cant get politoed out and need to attack.
 
RE: No Energy Deck (Polwrath/Politoed)

Oh yea I just realised I need some poliwhirl due to only having 4 rare candies. I will change up my list slightly, I think it would be good to replace the jirachi and a hammer for 2 poliwhirls. As for running energy, I am trying hard to not run any just for the fun value :p i will try and think of a solution for not being able to get politoed out, whether it be more draw cards or w/e that doesn't involve having to run energy!
 
RE: No Energy Deck (Polwrath/Politoed)

yeah those would be good changes, i would also recomend adding a stall pokemon like kyurem ex with outrage.
 
RE: No Energy Deck (Polwrath/Politoed)

Try to add dusknoir sinister hand since you already play rare candies and then you can control the. Damage so i say -4 roller skates +2-2 duskull dusknoir
 
RE: No Energy Deck (Polwrath/Politoed)

yea I originally wanted to add Dusknoir but I doubt there is room for him. i already have to use 2 stage 2 pokemon and 4 rare candies are already pretty stretched out, not to mention that it is already pretty slow to start up and one of the things that helps alleviate this is the item draw-cards like rollerskates and bicycle. I think I should playtest it when it comes out to try out dusknoir though since it is a really good card and it would be good if it doesn't slow down the deck too much.
 
Have you considered running Celebi EX? He allows you to use Pokemon's previous evolution's attacks, meaning you could use Poliwhirl's Finishing Blow and Poliwag's Spiral Current on a Poliwrath. Poliwhirl and Poliwag's attacks aren't that bad, actually, especially the former's "Finishing Blow" attack. Poliwag's Spiral Current is also not bad if you Lysandre something important, like an Emboar or their Float Stoned Keldeo EX on their bench, so you can keep them active and confused until you can KO them.

Thankfully, Celebi is in Boundaries Crossed, meaning the time traveler won't be rotated this September, so you don't have to worry about not getting to play him.
 
Kecleon-X said:
Have you considered running Celebi EX? He allows you to use Pokemon's previous evolution's attacks, meaning you could use Poliwhirl's Finishing Blow and Poliwag's Spiral Current on a Poliwrath. Poliwhirl and Poliwag's attacks aren't that bad, actually, especially the former's "Finishing Blow" attack. Poliwag's Spiral Current is also not bad if you Lysandre something important, like an Emboar or their Float Stoned Keldeo EX on their bench, so you can keep them active and confused until you can KO them.

Thankfully, Celebi is in Boundaries Crossed, meaning the time traveler won't be rotated this September, so you don't have to worry about not getting to play him.
Click to expand...

I thought about it briefly in order to use Poliwhirls attack but I didn't think of the uses behind politag's attack, that sounds like it could be useful! Although how many celebi would be a good idea to run? I feel like my deck would not be able to afford 2, so maybe 1 in replacement for the level ball which will soon be rotated?
 
I would say that taking out the Level Ball might be a good idea considering it will be rotated soon, and that you won't be able to play this in a format that allows both Level Ball and Furious Fists in the same deck. Unless you're playing Extended. But either way, I would only put in one. Two means you're gonna start with him more often than not.
 
Okay, I'll add this in! Thanks :) also a question- are you allowed to post multiple threads at the same time provided they're not spam? Or is there a rule where you have to wait a week or a period of time?
 
You can have as many threads as you want, just as long as the decks in the threads are different! If they're the same as another thread (i.e. repost), or if they're just changes made to your original deck, then they are considered spam.
 
Run quilfish from flf as a starter for his ability. It is basically a built in rocky helmet.
 
Which cards would you advise to swap for qwilfish? I can't think of any card which I can really afford to drop without good reason... perhaps 1 skyla. It would be too much to cut into my main line of cards though i think (supporters, frozen city, muscle band, rollerskates, max potion and switch etc etc) and I can't afford to not use any of the listed pokemon since the list is already very short
 
Pipotchi said:
Which cards would you advise to swap for qwilfish? I can't think of any card which I can really afford to drop without good reason... perhaps 1 skyla. It would be too much to cut into my main line of cards though i think (supporters, frozen city, muscle band, rollerskates, max potion and switch etc etc) and I can't afford to not use any of the listed pokemon since the list is already very short
Click to expand...

Honestly I think 1 N.
 
I'm not really sure if you want Qwilfish in here. It does have it's ability, but aside that it's a dead weight in an energyless deck and is easy to OHKO.

About the Vir/Gen match-up, you could potentially try to slow down the game enough to set up if you added a couple Pokemon Catcher or an extra Lysandre to drag out the Genesect on the bench before Virizion gets off an Emerald Slash. That way, the opponent has to either waste an energy to retreat, or commit to attaching 3 energy to Genesect to attack, which would buy you some valuable time. Or, they play a Switch on their turn and then use Emerald Slash anyways, but there really isn't a great other way to deal with it in this deck and Vir/Gen is still a common match.

To fit room, you should probably take out the Enhanced Hammers because they will be rotated come September (The League Promo is still considered Dark Explorers instead of XY Promo). You could also use the space to thicken the Poliwhirl line if you wanted, it has great synergy with Frozen City and gives you a strong, easy to bring out attacker in case you can't Rare Candy out both Politoed and Poliwrath in time.

Anyways, I like the look of the deck! Glad to see you're trying it, and best of luck at the prerelease if you decide to attend.
 
I feel like the virizion genesect matchup is just not going to be winnable no matter what i throw in. Genesect just walks all over the deck, being able to get ohkos vs all of my pokemon negating max potion, while also ignoring frozen city since its a team plasma poke. It can also target down my politoeds easily which is bad. Unless it has any counters that I can fit into 2 or 3 item cards then I should probably just focus on beating other types of decks more consistently.



edit: The only thing that I can think of doing is running a couple of silver mirror which will help negate genesect's power whilst also improving my matchup against the other team plasma decks that can ignore my frozen city, since virizion can't ohko with emerald slash without a muscle band. G Booster would still kill something in one hit but I have 3 startling megaphones and genesect needs to get at least 5 kos vs my deck since there's a low number of ex pokemon.

Perhaps -2 enhanced hammer, +2 silver mirror? This makes a lot of sense in my head at least.
 
Yeah, it's probably a bit better.

It's still a bit worrying that there aren't more Pokemon that can be put into the deck without them just being dead weight. With only 5 Basics, there is the risk of giving the opponent a lot of free cards off mulligans as well as the chance that new Furious Fists decks will manage a 1st-turn going second donk on you with all the boosts they can get if you are unable to get a card on the bench.
 
Yea that is true. I'm not sure what I can do to counteract this really. I have a lot of item-based draw to get through as many cards as I can first turn (4 rollerskates, 2 bicycle) but I don't think I can do much else to boost my number of pokemon in the deck.
 
This deck is evil and I love it haha! I wouldn't worry about having a slow start you've got a good main line and you have really good draw power. Plus Skyla can help you out so much in a pinch. With Frozen City in play you shouldn't be worried about setting up without energy. While you're doing your best to set up your opponent is killing themselves slowly with their own energy attachments (mwahahaha).

You mentioned being a new player but it seems like you have a real understanding of this game already so you'll know how to best set up, I wouldn't worry about the speed of this deck.

Yeah if you do go to the prerelease let us know if you get to playtest this list in any form! I can't wait to go to my prerelease!
 
Thanks! I am worried about skyla apparently rotating out of the format though because I think the deck heavily relies on it. Also can I ask what the prerelease is? I have heard it a couple of times now but I don't know what it is, and searching the internet didnt give me anything official-looking.
 
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