Help Problem vs Lurantis
- Thread starter Darius
- Start date
Following are some comments for your consideration:
- Glaceon EX (Crystal Ray attack) could be used to "wall" both Lurantis GX and Solgaleo GX.
- Tauros GX (and Ninja Boy) could also be used; either its Rage or Mad Bull GX attack can be quite useful. You may also want to run some type of healing card to prevent your opponent's 2HKO'ing this Pokémon.
- Interestingly enough, I prefer using Espeon GX with Flareon (AOR) to counter Lurantis GX and Solgaleo GX. Also, if you include a Jolteon (AOR) too, you can heal your Espeon GX too via Rough Seas Stadium. Energy management can be a bit challenging, but worth it in this match-up though.
None of the above help the quad lapras vs lurantis match up but personally I've always felt quad lapras was to much of a one trick poney using glaceon ex is a solid way to counter many decks that lapras would have an issue with however and if your using glaceon you would likely end up evolving your deck to a water toolbox deck
For now i wanted to use lapras gx and sableye (GR), but yeah, i have problems with lurantis because it can get energy back with its 1st attack, so i wanted to add something to mitigate that matchup. Ninja boy+tauros was my first idea, but usually can be revenge killed easily.
my 2nd idea was the eeveelutions, but they will rotate on september (not the gx ones, sure) but perhaps at that time there is some good mon that can check that deck.
my 2nd idea was the eeveelutions, but they will rotate on september (not the gx ones, sure) but perhaps at that time there is some good mon that can check that deck.
Sometimes you got to accept that there is an auto loss out there. I took M Mewtwo to a tournament today with 70 players, and much to my luck, I didn't see a single M Gardevoir or Espeon GX deck in the entire room. There was a lot of Ray, Darkrai, Yveltal, and especially VD, who ended up in the seat across from me the first two rounds. A few weeks earlier, there were 3 Espeon in top 8 and a League Cup. Not what M Mewtwo likes to see. Some days you luck out, and sometimes you feel like half the room is out to get you. It comes down to knowing the meta and making a smart choice. Every deck has a terrible matchup, and you got to accept it and hope for a miracle. No matter what deck you choose, if you go to big enough of a tournament, your auto loss will be out there some where.
All the decks out there have a terrible matchups
Turbo Darkrai loses to Lycanroc
Dark Dragons loses to Lycanroc
M Ray loses to Parallel City + Garbodor
M Mewtwo loses to Despair Ray
Volcanion loses to M Mewtwo and M Ray
Deciduplume loses to Garbodor and Volcanion
Laparas loses to Grass
Solgaleo Lurantis loses to Volcanion
All the decks out there have a bad matchups, and a few of them are unwinnable, asuming your opponent does not dead draw.
Turbo Darkrai loses to Lycanroc
Dark Dragons loses to Lycanroc
M Ray loses to Parallel City + Garbodor
M Mewtwo loses to Despair Ray
Volcanion loses to M Mewtwo and M Ray
Deciduplume loses to Garbodor and Volcanion
Laparas loses to Grass
Solgaleo Lurantis loses to Volcanion
All the decks out there have a bad matchups, and a few of them are unwinnable, asuming your opponent does not dead draw.
I honestly think this is just an awful match up for Quad Lapras and I think about the only thing that might help would be an aqua patch (next set) to get set up a bit faster or add a Glaceon EX, but I don't know how much that is going to help you in this particular match up.
Not sure how much others know about Lurantis / Solgaleo, so I will spell out the issue.
Basically, Quad Lapras is a heavy energy denial deck that slowly builds Lapras GX up to the point of being able to take KOs. It is a slow deck that typically forces other decks to play at its pace by hitting multiple hammers / team skull grunt / team flare grunt while slowly stacking energy / drawing 3 cards every turn. Different variations can be built to increase the speed of energy additions through Max Elixir + Energy Switch, but typically the deck is looking to slow the opponent's set up to a crawl.
Lurantis / Solgaleo is a deck that relies on a stage 1 pokemon (Lurantis) to stack energy onto a stage 2 pokemon (Solgaleo) in order to recharge Solgaleo's attack which does a whopping 230 damage. Against most decks, Lurantis / Solgaleo is hoping to survive a couple of early rounds while getting a Solgaleo up, then using Solgaleo's GX attack to charge up a benched Lurantis + 3 to active Solgaleo + 1-3 on another benched pokemon. It is also a slow deck to set up and struggles even more against item lock decks like Deciplume if Deciplume hits the Vileplume early enough.
So, why is this a struggle? Both Lurantis and Solgaleo are capable of 1 shotting a Lapras GX even with a fighting fury belt on it. Lurantis due to weakness and Solgaleo due to overwhelming power. Further exacerbating this is the fact that it only takes 1 energy on Solgaleo GX for it to use its GX attack and stack 5 energy on the board. It frequently does this as early as turn 2 and almost always by turn 3 in my experience with / against the deck. Basically, this energy hitting the board this quickly is too much for quad lapras to pick off to slow the game down + Lurantis also has an attack that replenishes energy from the discard pile onto 1-2 pokemon.
Overall, this is a disaster of a deck for Quad Lapras to run into and short of finding a way to get set up faster or teching something like Glaceon EX (as @TuxedoBlack suggested), there isn't much Quad Lapras is going to do to counter this. As others have pointed out teching in Glaceon starts to move this deck into water box territory (barely). I am of the opinion that the more important tech card is probably Wobbuffet for other match ups. You can add Glaceon as an additional tech option, but I am worried that once you start down that path with this deck, you start to take away from what it does so well in every other match up. Basically though, I think Glaceon EX is truly your only answer for Lurantis / Solgaleo.
Once Aqua Patch comes out, I feel like Quad Lapras won't be necessary, since Turbo Water will (assumingly) take its' place, and actually be able to keep up with, and outspeed most decks. I think it can even outspeed Mega Ray.
It isn't technically necessary now. Water box Lapras is pretty powerful in its own right currently. Yeah it will get more powerful, but I don't think the current water box Lapras (featuring Palkia EX) will be the future water box Lapras anyway. If I had to guess, there will actually be two variants. One will remain a water box similar to today with the additional item support (kinda sorta similar to a Volcanion / Xerneas Gardevoir deck currently) and the other will be Turbo Lapras (no one calls the expanded version of Turbo Darkrai w/ Keldeo + 1 copy of the BW Darkrai EX "Dark Toolbox") and will probably consist of Lapras GX + Manaphy EX + Shaymin, be fast as heck, and pretty nasty overall.
The primary reason why Quad Lapras won't go anywhere is because it is a deck that can stand up to Deciplume due to the energy denial where water box / turbo lapras cannot (and won't even post aqua patch).
I disagree with you there. Post-Aqua Patch means post-Tapu Lele. That means you can get a T1 Hex easily, which you currently can't really do. It will still be a hard matchup, but not as hard as they could have made it.
Just how many copies of Lele are you planning on running to hit that T1 Lele > Hex consistently under item lock? That sounds like a full on 3 copies of Lele + 2 copies of Hex to consistently make that happen T1 and then you have no draw support from Shaymin / another draw supporter. You get 3 cards with your attack, but you flat out won't see enough cards T1 to get a speed water box deck up and running T1 if you use Lele to Hex or Hex to "other item cards" because you can't hit the Shaymin. Furthermore, the main reason Quad Lapras works (outside of functioning inside of item lock) is because it denies energy from Deciplume.
I get that this discussion is about how Lapras can work against Lurantis / Solgaleo and we aren't technically talking about Deciplume, but Turbo Lapras and Quad Lapras are going to be different decks with different outcomes. Turbo Lapras *might* be able to outpace Lurantis / Solgaleo early enough to take the game before Lurantis / Solgaleo gets set up. Quad Lapras never will. However, Turbo Lapras is going to struggle against Deciplume and there really isn't any way to argue against that point because Turbo Darkrai in expanded struggles against Deciplume in expanded and you are basically talking about the exact same concept (Big Basic that gets energy accelerated via Patch + Elixirs to hit hard T1/T2). They both rely on extreme speed to set up and that speed is predicated on item use. If item use is shut down, both struggle. Turbo Lapras happens to have the added bonus of getting hit by Decidueye for weakness meaning once they get that item lock set up and take down the first Lapras with energies stacked on it, the game is probably done because it will just proceed to one shot Lapras till everything is over. It can't really do that to Darkrai.
Long story short, there is a place for both Turbo Lapras and Quad Lapras. They both will be good, but against different decks and with very different strategies. I personally think Deciplume will be as close to an auto loss for Turbo Lapras as anything in the game.
Yeah, I have nothing else to say other than, you're right.
And don't get me wrong. I think Turbo Lapras is going to be awesome LOL! I am actually gearing up to play it
I am currently planning to build a Lurantis-GX/Golbat deck and try it out. I feel that it could be good to play in a Water-heavy meta. I also probably will add Choice Band once they become Standard legal. If the Golbat variant fails I will simply go for the Garbodor variant, or for an Eeveelutions build. I tried a Vileplume build but that is not exactly the kind of deck I want to play.And don't get me wrong. I think Turbo Lapras is going to be awesome LOL! I am actually gearing up to play it
Speaking of Garbodor, depending on how popular the GRI Garbodor deck will get, we may have to reconsider the way we build decks (example: running Skyla and other cards instead of Trainers' Mail). I think someone will bring up that card in a thread very soon.