Discussion Viability of Lycanroc Mid-Night Form (GUR)

ZephyrFox12

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Lycanroc-GX – Fighting – HP200
Stage 1 – Evolves from Rockruff

Ability: Bloody Eye
When you play this Pokemon from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokemon, you may switch 1 of your opponent’s Benched Pokemon with their Active Pokemon.

[F][C][C] Claw Swipe: 110 damage.

[F][C] Death Rogue GX: 50x damage. Does 50 damage times the number of your opponent’s Benched Pokemon. (You can’t use more than 1 GX attack in a game.)

When your Pokemon GX is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 2 Prize cards.

Weakness: Grass (x2)
Resistance: none
Retreat: 2
So to start off i must say i'm am super excited to be here, everyday i think of discussions about Pokemon TCG and now there's a site and an entire community all about it. I hope to express my thoughts and create discussion with the members of the community (in a good way of course xD).

When i first saw Lycanroc-GX I was very unimpressed, to me it seemed like it had potential with its GX-Attack but since it could only be used once it seemed like a card that would only be good once in a game and then become useless immediately after. However a card i thought to be even worse was Lycanroc-GX's midday form. For those unaware, a Lycanroc-GX/Carbink BREAK deck took first place at the Salt Lake City Regionals (which probably left a good handful of Turbo Dark players salty) in the Juniors Division. Now I know the Juniors Division inst looked at as being the greatest Division and some might even go as far to say something in the context of "Meh, who cares? It's Juniors after all", but "Holy Arceus, have you seen these kids!?!". I'll walk into my locals and there are 10 year olds that have more knowledge about this game than I do! (just want to clarify im not trying to rip on juniors or anything while saying this, the fact of the matter is they should get more credibility for knowing as much as people in the masters division do and yet at such a young age, its incredible really).

Anyways, the idea that a deck like this, one based around a card that i fought to be almost utterly useless could do so well made me think, "Well what about the other one, i mean wouldn't they want the better one in the pack?". Now whether or not this is Pokemon's reasoning behind the marketing of these wolves isn't the discussion here (although it could make for a fun one), it's about seeing if this glorified Looney Tune version of a wolf can win in a meta of nightmare cloud things, walking fire hydrants and the feared Spooky Owl.

At first glance its nothing too special, just your plain old GX you happened to pull at a pre-release or toys r us or i don't know wherever i guess, that card you open and say "Ugh I just want a Lele".

The Ability: Bloodthirsty Eyes: Formally known as "Bloody Eye", Lyanroc's ability simply reads "When you play this Pokemon from your hand to evolve 1 of your Pokemon, you may switch 1 of your opponent’s Benched Pokemon with their Active Pokemon." or to sum it up quick "Lysandre upon evolution". The ability isn't particularly horrible for what it is I suppose, as of right now it seems kind pointless "Why bother even playing this deck when i could just play Lysandre, am I right?" . Well lets look at it on the flip side, while Lysandre may read almost exactly the same its also our supporter for the turn. In the same turn we go evolve we not only get a copy-pasted Lysandre effect but we can still dig through our deck with draw supporters to get to needed cards like Choice Band or that DCE you can never find. Our supporter slot could even be something like a Delinquent or another form of disruption, giving us more options than if we just simply used a Lysandre. Every time Rockruff evolves it has the potential to shift the game into your favor, think of all the instances you've either won or lost a game all because either you or your opponent had Lysandre, now imagine almost always having that power throughout the entirety of the game...if there's no Garb or Hex of course ;).

Our only non-GX attack: Claw Slash: There's not much to talk about here one would thing but this is quite literally the focal point of its viability over Midday counterpart. The cost for this attack is a nothing more than 1 fighting energy and a DCE!!! Now although this may seem like a lame argument, one cannot deny the power of the Double Colorless Energy, its the make or break for so many cards. With this attack cost Lycanroc start swinging for 110 in hopefully no more than 2 turns. "But there are better Pokemon that do that so why this one?". Like i said before Lycanroc's ability allows him to quite literally drag out any Pokemon he wants upon Rockruff's evolution, more importantly is his typing, Fighting. Fighting may be one of the most heavy under-used types this game can see right now (and before anyone says "what about lightning?", they have Raikou which has at least some success in tournaments...or at least more than Fighting decks have had). One of the most popular decks right now is Darkrai, its a deck where it's typing is actually one of its strongest advantages which practically gives the deck almost no "bad match-ups". While 110 may be a relatively small number its still enough to 1-shot (or 1-slash in this case i suppose) an opposing Darkrai-EX, even with a Fighting Fury Belt on it. Not to mention with the release of Guardians Rising is the release of Choice Band which boosts us up to 140 against any EX and GX Pokemon, with this we can now 1-shot Manaphy-EX (which can found wherever Water Box decks are sold) and the infamous Shaymin. Keep in mind the turn he hits the board we can drag any one of these tasty treats from the opposing bench and take 2 prizes in the process (now that's a great dinner)

The GX attack: Dangerous Rogue: Formally known as Death Rogue (a much cooler sounding name in my opinion but whatever). The attack is very similar to Zoroak's (who is my favorite Pokemon by the way) Mind Jack which had a base power of a mere 10 damage and would do 30 more for every Pokemon on your opponent's bench. Its a really cool attack and im even currently building a deck around it (or at least trying to), but that's a subject for another time. Lycanroc not only has its GX attack like this, it does it 20 times better. Lycanroc's GX simply reads "Does 50 damage times the number of your opponent’s Benched Pokemon. (You can’t use more than 1 GX attack in a game.)" . With a full bench of five Pokemon Lycanroc shoots out 250 damage into the opposing active zone (were talking about one-shoting a Wailord-EX!!!). Even if you're opponent is under a Parallel City Lycanroc can still hit for 150, where if in the scenario may be all you need.

The Weakness: The Spooky Owl and The Evil Mantis: Like all great superheroes, Lycanroc has a weakness (and its one that really grows on you, im going to be honest that pun came out worse than expected). Lyacanroc's weakness is the unforgiving weeds that is the grass type. The main fear for this is that with the rise of Lapras Box in the upcoming meta Volcanion, the deck that keeps Grass decks in-check may start to shrink in numbers. If this does happen (which it most likely will), Grass would most likely see more play to counter the rising tides of Lapras. This would make decks such as Deci-Plume and Lurantis variants very apparent in the meta game. If Grass actual becomes this big of a threat teching in an eeveelution line with Flareon may become mandatory for the deck to function properly (because the only way to deal with pesky weeds is to burn them to the ground).

Conclusion: A "Dangerous Rouge" Deck: In the end of the day I see Lycanroc-GX as a hit or miss deck. It has the potential to easily take down some of the meta's most popular threats (I'm looking at you Darkrai...with "Blood Thirsty Eyes"), but it has very unfavorable match-ups with Grass decks which may see a rise in popularity with Lapras surfing across the meta game. Lycanroc's Ability to immediately steal knock-outs is something ive never seen in a deck before. I think with the right build and the right meta-game Lycanroc-GX could be a high achieving rogue deck (a dangerous rogue deck that is, even i can tell that's not funny anymore). Lycanroc is a card I'm really looking forward to playing and I hope it is for you too.

Thanks for reading my article, feel free to express your thoughts here too (its a discussion after all), oh and don't feel afraid to criticize, whether its about the writing style or just the arguement in general i want to hear from you :).
 
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