Hey there trainers of Pokébeach!
My name is Baby_bi! And I have gotten permission (which I didn't really need, lol) to make a weekly breakdown off a deck you guys choose! the first deck will be one I choose, and that deck is going to be Hammertime, but first I want to explain to you guys what this is all about and why I chose to do such a thing!
So, the whole idea is to make the tournaments more competitive so we all can enjoy the game the way we should. I am going to go in depth with every single card in every single deck you guys choose. This is (hopefully) going to help the new players out by telling them what the should be prepared for when going to a tournament, how good the specific deck is, why the specific cards have been chosen for the specific deck, how to beat the deck, how to win with the deck, and how to tech around and in the deck. I hope you all are going to enjoy this and that you will tell me what I can do better and what I should keep.
Stop! Hammertime!
So! Here we go! The first deck is going to be, Hammertime!
Hammertime is a deck which have seen a lot of play and have proofed that it is one of the BDIF (best decks in format). Hammer time is a tier 1 deck, focusing on hitting hard with Darkrai, and disruption with Crushing Hammer and Enhanced Hammer. Sableye is teched in the deck so that you can use your Dark Patches, Ultra Balls, and of course your hammers, over and over again. this makes a pretty solid deck since it combines two fantastic disruption cards, with one of, if not the, best card in our current format. Here is a skeleton of the deck:
POKEMONS:
3 Sableye. Sableye is your starter, you want to start with it every game. Sableye lets you use Junk Hunt for 1 darkness energy. Junk Hunt lets you search your discard pile for 2 item cards, show the to your opponent, and put them into your hand. This is simply just amazing since you play 50-50 hammers. If you flip tail, you are simply just picking them up again and restarting, and if you flip head, you search your discard pile for them anyway and then you are prepared for your opponents next energy. Junk Hunt can also be used to grab dark patches, to get more energies back for your Darkrai EX, so that it may attack faster. You could also grab ultra ball to discard more energies and find more Darkrai EXs. Every single item can be reused with Junk Hunt so you can also pick up used catchers for easy or important KO's on your opponent's benched Pokémon. This attack alone makes Sableye a fantastic card early-, mid-, and late-game. Its second (actually its first) attack is called Confuse Ray, and for one colorless energy, it lets you do 10 dmg and flip a coin. If heads your opponent's active Pokémon is now Confused. Can be good from time to time but Junk Hunt is your main attack with Sableye.
3 Darkrai EX. Darkrai is your main attacker. Its Night Spear attack lets you, for 2 darkness energies and a colorless, do 90 to the active and 30 to a benched of your choice. Simply insane since dark patches lets you do this as early as turn 1! But this is very unlikely to happen, so your main focus will be to get it up in turn 2. Darkrai hits hard and fast, just perfect for you since you will be able to setup fast AND slow your opponent. Darkrais ability, Dark Cloak, also gives all of your Pokémons, which have a darkness energy attached, free retreat, so all of your energies in play won't get wasted.
TRAINERS:
4 Juniper. Juniper lets you discard your energies so they are prepared for your dark patches. Juniper also hurts you less since you get your items back with Junk Hunt. You also burn through your deck faster with Juniper so you will pretty much always have a good start if you start with a juniper and a Sableye. Keep in mind that if you start with one darkness in your hand and a Juniper, you don't want to attach that single energy, you want to discard it with Juniper and then draw a new one so that you have one in your discard pile for your Darkrai EXs.
4 Dark Patch. Dark Patch lets you attach a basic darkness energy from your discard pile to a darkness Pokémon on your bench. A must in every dark deck, the faster you get energies on your Darkrais, the faster you are going to hit your opponent, which normally equals in drawing a lot of prizes.
4 Crushing Hammer. Crushing hammer says: Flip a coin. If heads, discard a energy which your opponent has in attach to one of his Pokémons. Great for slowing your opponent down. The best thing about Crushing Hammer, is that it gives you a chance against fighting decks, and it sets fire to all the Rayeels decks out there, by removing their fire energies.
2 Enhanced Hammer. Prism, blend, DCE, all gone by playing this card. Klingklang gets an auto lose if you got a sableye, energy and enhanced hammer in your starter hand. it stops Mewtwo EX, Hydregion, and so many other great attacks atm.
4 N N is an amazing supporter it gives you a new hand and disrupts your opponent, if he/she is in the lead.
3 Ultra Ball Ultra ball is a perfect card especially for Darkrai! discard energies and find a Darkrai or a Sableye, then start using dark patch's. If possible use Junk Hunt after. Rense and repeat until you have Darkrai ready.
3 Catcher. catcher out important prizes or easy KO's on benched Pokémons.
3 Energy Switch. Well, it isn't a must but it is just so good in this deck that I consider it a must. Being able to move around energies makes it way easier to get the turn 2 Night Spear going. Also it makes room for some extra techs which I will come around later.
2 Skyla. Skyla is great for this deck since it searches out catchers, hammers, patchs, all that good stuff.
1 Computer Search. Discard energies and find what ever you want, lol. This is going to help you out so much you won't even believe it!
3 Eviolite. Reduce the dmg your Darkrai takes by 20, turns a Night spear from a 2 HKO into a 3 HKO, mewtwo will need one extra energy, and so will Rayquaza. Terrakion will also need a Tool Scrapper or a Plus Power to get the OHKO on your Darkrais.
2 Tool Scrapper. As I said with Eviolite which turns a 2 HKO into a 3 HKO, Tool Scrapper works they other way around, turning a 3 HKO into a 2 HKO, it also saves you from garbador
3 Bianca/Cheren Depending on what works the best for you. Extra Draw supporters so that you won't draw dry mid-/late-game.
1 Switch Switch seems useless because of Darkrais Dark Cloak ability, but what if you are playing against Rayeels with Fliptini? then you are heading into a hard match since you can't use Junk Hunt or Attack with Darkrai until luck comes around, or in the worst case, until your opponent KO one of your Pokémons. only one Switch, since you can junk hunt for it, and since you play Skyla and Computer Search to find it.
9 Darkness energy. Self explaining
55 cards, this gives you a ton of room for techs and I will give you a few ideas of what you could use these last 8 spots for.
1+ Darkrai
Only playing 3 darkrais can hurt you if 1 of them is prized so the extra Darkrai won't hurt you at all. The reason for only playing 3 is that if you don't have one prized the fourth 1 is just a dead card since your opponent only has to KO 3 Darkrais to win. The 4th Darkrai is probably the safest thing you could add in.
This leaves you with 5 free spots, if you chose to add the extra Darkrai, then I personally also would add a max potion or 2, just to heal off your damaged Darkrais and since you play Energy Switch and Dark Patch and the fact that you only play basic darkness, it won't hurt you as much as for many other decks. the last 2 spots would be extra items. Ultra ball and catcher etc.
Mewtwo!
Mewtwo would take up at least 5 spots. 2 Mewtwos and 3 DCEs. 1 more DCE could be added and so could more Mewtwos, but a 2-3 line seems to be standard.
keep in mind that this gives you no extra room for other techs, but it is worth it!
More Trainers!
You could also just choose to speed things up and only add extra items and supporters. This is a solid thing to do, but it will hurt you in the fighting match-up, since you don't have anything to counter it.
Sigi counter
Sigilyph isn't played that often anymore (only Ho-oh pretty much) not in my country for instance, which is Denmark. But it still hurts you alot since you only have Sableye to deal with it. There is an unlimited number of techs you could choose, and this is just a few if them.
Dark Claw and Catchers
More Catchers to come around Sigi and hurt their bench with Darkrai instead is a good choice, but they probably just retreat back to Sigi which forces you to have a catcher every turn. This is where Dark Claw comes in, it gives your Sableye a chance to KO Sigi. Sableye has 70 HP, and only needs 1 energy to do 10 with Dark Claw, 30. The fact that it has 70 HP plays a big deal since Sigi does 50 + 10 for each energy on the defending Pokémon. So unless you for some random reason decided to have 2 energies under your Sableye then Sableye becomes a great counter. Keep in mind that Sableye also have the chance to do 30 more dmg if you are lucky enough to get heads on your Confuse Ray and if your opponent is unlucky enough to hit tails with his/her attack.
Tornadus
A single Tornadus can do 80 to a Sigi, but it needs 3 energies to attack. But whatever! You play Energy Switch and and Junk Hunt! Tornadus is a great counter for Sigi but you have to hit it fast unless it won't be worth it. Personally Tornadus isn't the choice for me, but it works.
Landorus EX
2 Landorus EX and 3 fighting energies, great for the mirror match and the eels, but useless in pretty much every other match, you will come across. Especially if you have to start with it against Keldeo. Then they have 2 free prizes on your field.
My personal favorite
A lot of random trainers and extra trainers! Potion is a god card in this deck! I am not lying when I say that it gave me a second place at a regional earlier this year. going rouge or going with random tech cards have always been my way of playing the game.
This will wrap it up for the first weekly breakdown! I hope you enjoyed it and that you will give me feedback and wish's of decks which you would like to see me do for the upcoming weeks. The 1 with the highest amount of votes will be the deck for the next week. Again, I hope you enjoyed and I hope it help some of you guys and girls! Cya!
My name is Baby_bi! And I have gotten permission (which I didn't really need, lol) to make a weekly breakdown off a deck you guys choose! the first deck will be one I choose, and that deck is going to be Hammertime, but first I want to explain to you guys what this is all about and why I chose to do such a thing!
So, the whole idea is to make the tournaments more competitive so we all can enjoy the game the way we should. I am going to go in depth with every single card in every single deck you guys choose. This is (hopefully) going to help the new players out by telling them what the should be prepared for when going to a tournament, how good the specific deck is, why the specific cards have been chosen for the specific deck, how to beat the deck, how to win with the deck, and how to tech around and in the deck. I hope you all are going to enjoy this and that you will tell me what I can do better and what I should keep.
Stop! Hammertime!
So! Here we go! The first deck is going to be, Hammertime!
Hammertime is a deck which have seen a lot of play and have proofed that it is one of the BDIF (best decks in format). Hammer time is a tier 1 deck, focusing on hitting hard with Darkrai, and disruption with Crushing Hammer and Enhanced Hammer. Sableye is teched in the deck so that you can use your Dark Patches, Ultra Balls, and of course your hammers, over and over again. this makes a pretty solid deck since it combines two fantastic disruption cards, with one of, if not the, best card in our current format. Here is a skeleton of the deck:
POKEMONS:
3 Sableye. Sableye is your starter, you want to start with it every game. Sableye lets you use Junk Hunt for 1 darkness energy. Junk Hunt lets you search your discard pile for 2 item cards, show the to your opponent, and put them into your hand. This is simply just amazing since you play 50-50 hammers. If you flip tail, you are simply just picking them up again and restarting, and if you flip head, you search your discard pile for them anyway and then you are prepared for your opponents next energy. Junk Hunt can also be used to grab dark patches, to get more energies back for your Darkrai EX, so that it may attack faster. You could also grab ultra ball to discard more energies and find more Darkrai EXs. Every single item can be reused with Junk Hunt so you can also pick up used catchers for easy or important KO's on your opponent's benched Pokémon. This attack alone makes Sableye a fantastic card early-, mid-, and late-game. Its second (actually its first) attack is called Confuse Ray, and for one colorless energy, it lets you do 10 dmg and flip a coin. If heads your opponent's active Pokémon is now Confused. Can be good from time to time but Junk Hunt is your main attack with Sableye.
3 Darkrai EX. Darkrai is your main attacker. Its Night Spear attack lets you, for 2 darkness energies and a colorless, do 90 to the active and 30 to a benched of your choice. Simply insane since dark patches lets you do this as early as turn 1! But this is very unlikely to happen, so your main focus will be to get it up in turn 2. Darkrai hits hard and fast, just perfect for you since you will be able to setup fast AND slow your opponent. Darkrais ability, Dark Cloak, also gives all of your Pokémons, which have a darkness energy attached, free retreat, so all of your energies in play won't get wasted.
TRAINERS:
4 Juniper. Juniper lets you discard your energies so they are prepared for your dark patches. Juniper also hurts you less since you get your items back with Junk Hunt. You also burn through your deck faster with Juniper so you will pretty much always have a good start if you start with a juniper and a Sableye. Keep in mind that if you start with one darkness in your hand and a Juniper, you don't want to attach that single energy, you want to discard it with Juniper and then draw a new one so that you have one in your discard pile for your Darkrai EXs.
4 Dark Patch. Dark Patch lets you attach a basic darkness energy from your discard pile to a darkness Pokémon on your bench. A must in every dark deck, the faster you get energies on your Darkrais, the faster you are going to hit your opponent, which normally equals in drawing a lot of prizes.
4 Crushing Hammer. Crushing hammer says: Flip a coin. If heads, discard a energy which your opponent has in attach to one of his Pokémons. Great for slowing your opponent down. The best thing about Crushing Hammer, is that it gives you a chance against fighting decks, and it sets fire to all the Rayeels decks out there, by removing their fire energies.
2 Enhanced Hammer. Prism, blend, DCE, all gone by playing this card. Klingklang gets an auto lose if you got a sableye, energy and enhanced hammer in your starter hand. it stops Mewtwo EX, Hydregion, and so many other great attacks atm.
4 N N is an amazing supporter it gives you a new hand and disrupts your opponent, if he/she is in the lead.
3 Ultra Ball Ultra ball is a perfect card especially for Darkrai! discard energies and find a Darkrai or a Sableye, then start using dark patch's. If possible use Junk Hunt after. Rense and repeat until you have Darkrai ready.
3 Catcher. catcher out important prizes or easy KO's on benched Pokémons.
3 Energy Switch. Well, it isn't a must but it is just so good in this deck that I consider it a must. Being able to move around energies makes it way easier to get the turn 2 Night Spear going. Also it makes room for some extra techs which I will come around later.
2 Skyla. Skyla is great for this deck since it searches out catchers, hammers, patchs, all that good stuff.
1 Computer Search. Discard energies and find what ever you want, lol. This is going to help you out so much you won't even believe it!
3 Eviolite. Reduce the dmg your Darkrai takes by 20, turns a Night spear from a 2 HKO into a 3 HKO, mewtwo will need one extra energy, and so will Rayquaza. Terrakion will also need a Tool Scrapper or a Plus Power to get the OHKO on your Darkrais.
2 Tool Scrapper. As I said with Eviolite which turns a 2 HKO into a 3 HKO, Tool Scrapper works they other way around, turning a 3 HKO into a 2 HKO, it also saves you from garbador
3 Bianca/Cheren Depending on what works the best for you. Extra Draw supporters so that you won't draw dry mid-/late-game.
1 Switch Switch seems useless because of Darkrais Dark Cloak ability, but what if you are playing against Rayeels with Fliptini? then you are heading into a hard match since you can't use Junk Hunt or Attack with Darkrai until luck comes around, or in the worst case, until your opponent KO one of your Pokémons. only one Switch, since you can junk hunt for it, and since you play Skyla and Computer Search to find it.
9 Darkness energy. Self explaining
55 cards, this gives you a ton of room for techs and I will give you a few ideas of what you could use these last 8 spots for.
1+ Darkrai
Only playing 3 darkrais can hurt you if 1 of them is prized so the extra Darkrai won't hurt you at all. The reason for only playing 3 is that if you don't have one prized the fourth 1 is just a dead card since your opponent only has to KO 3 Darkrais to win. The 4th Darkrai is probably the safest thing you could add in.
This leaves you with 5 free spots, if you chose to add the extra Darkrai, then I personally also would add a max potion or 2, just to heal off your damaged Darkrais and since you play Energy Switch and Dark Patch and the fact that you only play basic darkness, it won't hurt you as much as for many other decks. the last 2 spots would be extra items. Ultra ball and catcher etc.
Mewtwo!
Mewtwo would take up at least 5 spots. 2 Mewtwos and 3 DCEs. 1 more DCE could be added and so could more Mewtwos, but a 2-3 line seems to be standard.
keep in mind that this gives you no extra room for other techs, but it is worth it!
More Trainers!
You could also just choose to speed things up and only add extra items and supporters. This is a solid thing to do, but it will hurt you in the fighting match-up, since you don't have anything to counter it.
Sigi counter
Sigilyph isn't played that often anymore (only Ho-oh pretty much) not in my country for instance, which is Denmark. But it still hurts you alot since you only have Sableye to deal with it. There is an unlimited number of techs you could choose, and this is just a few if them.
Dark Claw and Catchers
More Catchers to come around Sigi and hurt their bench with Darkrai instead is a good choice, but they probably just retreat back to Sigi which forces you to have a catcher every turn. This is where Dark Claw comes in, it gives your Sableye a chance to KO Sigi. Sableye has 70 HP, and only needs 1 energy to do 10 with Dark Claw, 30. The fact that it has 70 HP plays a big deal since Sigi does 50 + 10 for each energy on the defending Pokémon. So unless you for some random reason decided to have 2 energies under your Sableye then Sableye becomes a great counter. Keep in mind that Sableye also have the chance to do 30 more dmg if you are lucky enough to get heads on your Confuse Ray and if your opponent is unlucky enough to hit tails with his/her attack.
Tornadus
A single Tornadus can do 80 to a Sigi, but it needs 3 energies to attack. But whatever! You play Energy Switch and and Junk Hunt! Tornadus is a great counter for Sigi but you have to hit it fast unless it won't be worth it. Personally Tornadus isn't the choice for me, but it works.
Landorus EX
2 Landorus EX and 3 fighting energies, great for the mirror match and the eels, but useless in pretty much every other match, you will come across. Especially if you have to start with it against Keldeo. Then they have 2 free prizes on your field.
My personal favorite
A lot of random trainers and extra trainers! Potion is a god card in this deck! I am not lying when I say that it gave me a second place at a regional earlier this year. going rouge or going with random tech cards have always been my way of playing the game.
This will wrap it up for the first weekly breakdown! I hope you enjoyed it and that you will give me feedback and wish's of decks which you would like to see me do for the upcoming weeks. The 1 with the highest amount of votes will be the deck for the next week. Again, I hope you enjoyed and I hope it help some of you guys and girls! Cya!
