Discussion Sceptile-EX Viability

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Exploud

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Sceptile-EX – Grass – HP170
Basic Pokemon

[G] Sleep Poison: 10 damage. Flip a coin. If heads, your opponent’s Active Pokemon is now Asleep and Poisoned.
[G][C] Assassin Claw: IF your opponent’s Active Pokemon is affected by a Special Condition, this attack does 70 more damage.

Weakness: Fire (x2)
Resistance: none
Retreat: 1
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What is the community's opinion on the viability of Sceptile-EX from the upcoming Ancient Origins set? Toad, while already being nerfed by the XY-on rotation, hates this thing. Wailord decks will see more usage due to its success at Nationals, albeit the loss of Suicune may be a death sentence for these decks. The Primal decks are weak to Grass as well.

Sceptile has a low energy cost for both of its attacks, with added effects to both of them. Sleep Poison does miniscule damage but for one energy and the 50-50 chance to poison and sleep, I believe this could be useful to set up a next turn KO. Assassin Claw has good synergy with Sleep Poison and Ariados AOR. Is the synergy between Ariados and Sceptile enough to warrant running a deck centered around these two pokemon?

The addition of Giant Plant Forest and Level Ball allows for Ariados to be in play quickly and allow for high damage output from Sceptile EX in the early game. Ideally, you'd have a Sceptile-EX active hitting for 130 (or 150 with Muscle Band) on turn 2. This may be dwarfed by M Ray's output, but it sets up faster than M Ray-less Metal decks.

Thanks for the read, I'm hoping that Grass decks can become top tier decks in the next format.
 
I do think Sceptile EX has very good potential and will see play but it'll be more like Cmobustion Blast Charizard EX, which would be supremely good but will probably be the assistant to the bigger card, (most likely M Sceptile).
 
The difference between Charizard-EX and Sceptile-EX is that Sceptile has a much, much cheaper attack. It is not too difficult to inflict a special condition through Aridaos, meaning it is quite easy to consistently hit the high numbers.
 
I definitely think it's a viable combo. For two Energy and a Muscle Band, plus the Ariados poison, Sceptile can do 170 damage coming back into your turn, enough to 2HKO everything in the game, and hit P-Groudon for Weakness.
 
I feel this card is overhyped. Don't take what I'm saying the wrong way. I think it'll definitely be a Tier 1 deck. The problem is, I don't see any good defense against others decks like M Rayquaza with Hoopa EX or Vespiquen. You're giving up 2 prizes just for 130 damage if your opponent's Active is affected by a Special Condition. Maybe I'm missing something here. Delta Evolution negates the Special Condition and you're good enough to finish of Sceptile-EX for 2 easy prizes. Assuming Sceptile isn't paired with Item lock, someone can power up another M Rayquaza in one turn with a combination of Winona, Shaymin, Hoopa, Mega Turbo, etc.
 
If a card is actually going to be a Tier 1 deck, then it very well should be hyped :p

Most of the time you can do 160 damage each turn (base + addition + band + poison). Coming back into your turn (which is often a very good thing), you can get a KO on a lot of the metagame. I could imagine this paired with bats for more KOing ability. Unless you can stream the evolving attackers (Vespiqueen, Raichu) it could be quite difficult to consistently KO Sceptile, as Unseen Claw virtually always does enough to KO. M-Ray and M-Man are perhaps the worst matchups, of course.
 
This card actually has me excited for the new set, if only there was another pokemon to pair with all the options seem a bit weak. Maybe its greedy to pair it with manectric but something to counter rayquaza would be nice. Why is everyone prioritizing the grass stadium over virbank city gym?
 
The reason for favoring the grass stadium is because Virbank is being rotated out this coming rotation, so I'm looking ahead to grass decks without Hypnotoxic Laser/Virbank City Gym. In my opinion the biggest killer of this card and deck would be M Ray who can set up in your face and wipe quickly. I'm not sure what the best fix would be, splashing in two Manectric doesn't seem like enough to counter M Ray.
 
I think the fears of M Rayquaza are unfounded.

Right now Sceptile EX has more potential than M Sceptile EX. Toss in Ariados AOR and Dragalge FLF because why not. Struggling to think of a non-EX attacker to toss in. Plus, keep them on hand for when M Sceptile EX becomes good down the road.
 
crann777 said:
I think the fears of M Rayquaza are unfounded.

Right now Sceptile EX has more potential than M Sceptile EX. Toss in Ariados AOR and Dragalge FLF because why not. Struggling to think of a non-EX attacker to toss in. Plus, keep them on hand for when M Sceptile EX becomes good down the road.
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Why not just not toss a non-EX in? It will perhaps be clunkier with one compared to without one.
 
I think MRay is the natural counter to Sceptile. MRay streams as fast if not faster that M Sceptile would and hits a hell of a lot harder.

Against regular Sceptile? Again, sets up faster, hits harder.

I would also put Eeveelution Raichu as a big contender against Sceptile. Flare Effect Raichu only needs 5 on the bench to KO regular Sceptile, 5 and a Muscle Band to KO M Scep or M Ray.

Not saying M Sceptile wont be used. But I feel Sceptile is ultimately a set up/support Pokemon, not a main attacker.
 
I think Sceptile might have a chance against M-Ray if you could get Vileplume up and running by turn 2 (with Giant Plant Forest and Wally), which could slow down M-Ray enough so that you could get your strategy set up. (this is still assuming your playing Ariados too.)
 
TheStrictNein said:
Not saying M Sceptile wont be used. But I feel Sceptile is ultimately a set up/support Pokemon, not a main attacker.
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Yeah like a suckier version of Virizion/Gensect if there ever is one.

GhostMaster365 said:
I think Sceptile might have a chance against M-Ray if you could get Vileplume up and running by turn 2 (with Giant Plant Forest and Wally), which could slow down M-Ray enough so that you could get your strategy set up. (this is still assuming your playing Ariados too.)
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What would Wally be for? You can use Forest of Giant Plants to evolve Oddish to Gloom then Vileplume in one turn. Wally also can't be used on EXs.
 
What would Wally be for? You can use Forest of Giant Plants to evolve Oddish to Gloom then Vileplume in one turn. Wally also can't be used on EXs.

What are the odds that you'll have oddish, gloom, vileplume, and Giant Plant Forest all in your starting hand/turn 2 hand. You'll need level ball and wally. You also might need to play Trainer's mail if you don't have GPF. Maybe the idea is a bit far fetched, but the deck would be revolved around it. And maybe the main deck would be Vileplume/Ariados and then like others were saying, have Sceptile has a support attacker.
 
Grass decks seem to be a worthy contender for early XY-on. Ariandos/M-Sceptile EX/Lugia EX maybe a pretty good deck. It has 3 viable attackers, energy acceleration, and a good utility card. How pressed for space the deck is is an issue.
 
GhostMaster365 said:
What would Wally be for? You can use Forest of Giant Plants to evolve Oddish to Gloom then Vileplume in one turn. Wally also can't be used on EXs.

What are the odds that you'll have oddish, gloom, vileplume, and Giant Plant Forest all in your starting hand/turn 2 hand.
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There are cards called Shaymin EX maybe Acro Bike as well. Play down your hand as much as you can then use Set Up and if you have to, a Supporter to get even more cards. That way, you can possibly complete the evolution in that turn and draw additional cards instead of using your Supporter for the turn just to get out Item lock.
 
asdjklghty said:
There are cards called Shaymin EX maybe Acro Bike as well. Play down your hand as much as you can then use Set Up and if you have to, a Supporter to get even more cards. That way, you can possibly complete the evolution in that turn and draw additional cards instead of using your Supporter for the turn just to get out Item lock.
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Have you tested this? I know from my testing with Stage 1 and Stage 2 lines that there are countless occasions when my hand is too clunked up to play enough cards for a Shaymin, which may only bring 1 more droppable card in the first place.
 
bbninjas said:
Have you tested this? I know from my testing with Stage 1 and Stage 2 lines that there are countless occasions when my hand is too clunked up to play enough cards for a Shaymin, which may only bring 1 more droppable card in the first place.
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Not yet but Im gonna test with proxies Shiftry/Forest of Giant Plants/Skyfield. With the plant Stadium, you can probably play your hand down because you can evolve Grass Pokemon instantly.
 
asdjklghty said:
Not yet but Im gonna test with proxies Shiftry/Forest of Giant Plants/Skyfield. With the plant Stadium, you can probably play your hand down because you can evolve Grass Pokemon instantly.
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Ah, so we're theorymoning then :p
 
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