Will the New Format Revolve Around Pokémon Catcher?

What is your opinion on the realese of Pokemon Catcher?

  • Total voters
    78
catutie said:
Why hold onto it when they could play a Judge? Or why hold onto it when you can pull up some 50-80 HP tech that you can OHKO? Or why hold onto it when you could pull up something with 4 retreat and you can set up somewhat? Or why hold onto it when you can just get it from the discard with JA next turn...I don't see why holding onto a Catcher helps :p
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Not all decks play Judge. Mostly just those with Yanmega. I mean who the heck would play Judges in TyRam? xD
 
catutie said:
Why hold onto it when they could play a Judge? Or why hold onto it when you can pull up some 50-80 HP tech that you can OHKO? Or why hold onto it when you could pull up something with 4 retreat and you can set up somewhat? Or why hold onto it when you can just get it from the discard with JA next turn...I don't see why holding onto a Catcher helps
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If your opponent doesn't have anything too useful on his bench to Catcher, it would be a waste. Like in ZPS– with some fairly useless Pachi and Shaymin on the bench, maybe a Zekrom that you couldn't OHKO anyways, you'd probably wait until your opponent played something like Yanma where you would get the KO and disrupt at the same time.
 
Zhaituki said:
Not all decks play Judge. Mostly just those with Yanmega. I mean who the heck would play Judges in TyRam? xD
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Anything with Magnezone and/or Yanmega play it...so ya alot of the meta does :p

^In that case I would still play it just to get that lead in prizes.
 
Why do you need a lead in prizes that instantly? Better to get a free prize on something that could be useful to your opponent, right? See, this is what I mean– the more skilled players will see beyond "this gives me a free prize if I use it now" to "this gives me a free prize no matter when I use it, so I might as well use it when it hurts my opponent as well."
 
If your running 4 catcher and 4 junk arm then it's a good bet you will have that Catcher you need when the time comes so it would be fine to use it for the prize lead. It's never to soon to get a lead :p
 
If you want to hate on a card hate on Max Potion. Imagine Yanmega who doesn't even need energies using that card? And what about donphan? Who is already a PAIN to kill. Just play Max Potion, attach a new energy and all it does is help the Donphan player.

Now on topic I think that catcher will actually make decks MORE consistent as a crucial prize won't be decided on a coin flip.
 
Max Potion is just as bad as Pokemon Catcher, without Trainer Lock from Vileplume that makes decks running Yanmega Prime and Donphan Prime almost unstoppable and it also makes 2HKO's obsolete in this format. Why bother trying to 2HKO unless you Trainer Lock with Vileplume cause If you don't then they will just heal back up the damage then Fisherman and/or Energy Retrieval to re-attach the energy from the Discard Pile and attack again.

Pokemon Catcher does help make decks more consistent by getting crucial prizes but regardless of that it still takes alot of luck and skill away from the game. Vileplume is going to be popular post-Emerging Powers and my prediction was right in terms of games being decided by who draws their Catcher or Plume first. If Chandelure/Metagross becomes more popular that might change actually cause it can bench snipe and a Jirachi tech wouldn't hurt for Time Hollow either.

The problem with the "4 Junk Arm and 4 Catcher" analogy is that not every deck is going to have space to run all 8 of those cards mainly decks running Vileplume tech's like in some MewBox variants and BearPlume. If you are running Vileplume and you're playing competitively then you won't need to run Junk Arm and Catcher since you are going to be Trainer - Item locked most of the time unless you run some Seekers which I wouldn't recommend because it takes up your Supporter for turn and that one Supporter you could be playing over it can be crucial for winning the game.

Now for decks that don't run Trainer Lock with Vileplume, In theory "4 Junk Arm and 4 Catcher" sounds consistent but the problem I see with it is hand recovery cause of the steep 2 card discard from Junk Arm and you need to play out your Trainers first then Juniper then play out your Trainers again unless you want to save it for next turn and then Juniper again. Your best bet If you're running a deck that doesn't Trainer - Item lock is by running 4 Junk Arm and just 2 Catcher cause the extra 2 cards could be something else important and with 60 cards you're limited on deck space and consistency is key.

Magnezone Prime does help get around Junk Arm's discard cost however Magnezone is easy Catcher bait for Donphan Prime (2 PlusPowers for the KO) so it will likely see less play post-Emerging Powers given it's retreat cost of 3 as well. Same with Emboar (Ability) which could decrease Fire's popularity to the point where Typhlosion Prime will most likely replace Emboar in Reshiram decks since it has 2 less retreat than Emboar does and can Fisherman/Energy Retrieval back the energies or just Afterburner on Reshiram to fuel Outrage. I can still see Fire making a comeback but it's small given how much Catcher is abused where no bench sitter is safe from it's wrath.
 
^I don't really see a reason to not play Junk Arm anymore. Now that Bebe's is gone, we NEED those Pokemon Communications more than ever. The discarding is less painful, now that we're getting a Judge to the face pretty much every turn regardless. There's plenty of good trainer splashes, too. A single Lost Remover for the Rescue Energies can go a long way in a lot of decks.
 
But the funny thing is that Trainer Lock from Vileplume makes Pokemon Communication less useful to play but for the Vileplume player it does help before you achieve your lock early to mid game. What can Plume players still play after they get Trainer Lock going? Professor Elm's Training Method's and Draw Supporters to get what they need.

Getting a Judge to the face every turn, you mean the new N Supporter? That card's only good in LostGar and MewGar cause since you never have to draw prizes and your Opponent does that is amazing hand disruption, combine that with Judge and they'll have more difficulty making a comeback unless they play their own Draw Supporters in response or use Magnezone Prime to get a hand of 6.
 
I see that everyone talks about Vileplume trainer-locking, but why doesn't anyone consider Gothitelle? Sure, Gothitelle needs to be active but it locks only the opponent's Items, not yours. And it has a semi-reliable energy acceleration (Shaymin/Jirachi) and stackable damage (depending on {P} energy).
 
The problem is that Gothitelle needs to be Active in order to disrupt your Opponent's Trainer - Items while with Vileplume it allows you to use any attacker while disrupting Trainer - Items from the bench, Gothitelle doesn't since it needs to be Active in order to disrupt and it's attack Madkinesis only does 50 damage at best without taking 3 turns to attach Psychic energies which by then Gothitelle would already be knocked out.

Restricting your main attacker in order to disrupt is not a very good strategy at all and Gothitelle is by no means a solid attacker for a Stage 2 Pokemon. Unless you run Emboar for Inferno Fandango with Gothitelle I don't really see it working all that well, and you're wasting bench space If you're utilizing Shaymin and Jirachi to get more Psychic energies attached to Gothitelle sooner and even that is decided by a coin flip no thanks to Stardust Song. Vileplume is just more consistent.
 
Scizorliscious said:
If your opponent doesn't have anything too useful on his bench to Catcher, it would be a waste. Like in ZPS– with some fairly useless Pachi and Shaymin on the bench, maybe a Zekrom that you couldn't OHKO anyways, you'd probably wait until your opponent played something like Yanma where you would get the KO and disrupt at the same time.
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I think you're missing out on one of catcher's major features: leaving a pokemon with retreat active. Running 4 catcher and 4 Junk Arm, I would absolutely play down one of the before mentioned to force a pachi active while I set up. If nothing else, at least it forces your opponent to waste his/her nrg-attachment for the turn on retreating, meaning that Zekrom number 2 will be slightly postponed.
 
Gothitelle is the far superior locker IMO. Why? Because it is a LOT easier to get out. Since it doesn't lock your items, you can use rare candy on it. If you do that with vileplume you'll have all of the rest of the rare candies as dead draw. More importantly, however, Gothim has 60 HP while Oddish only has 40. That means Yanmega can't eat it without the aid of a catcher. Its still not ideal since you can't drop it out of nowhere like in D/P-PL, but Gothitelle is so much easier to get out than vileplume its not even funny.

As for energy, Psychic has the option of jirachi + mismagius for energy accel.
 
amisheskimoninja said:
Gothitelle is the far superior locker IMO. Why? Because it is a LOT easier to get out. Since it doesn't lock your items, you can use rare candy on it. If you do that with vileplume you'll have all of the rest of the rare candies as dead draw. More importantly, however, Gothim has 60 HP while Oddish only has 40. That means Yanmega can't eat it without the aid of a catcher. Its still not ideal since you can't drop it out of nowhere like in D/P-PL, but Gothitelle is so much easier to get out than vileplume its not even funny.

As for energy, Psychic has the option of jirachi + mismagius for energy accel.
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Well killing your opponents Catcher and still being able to play your own you can still catcher up the high retreat/low HP for easy KO's/time to attach energy
 
amisheskimoninja said:
Gothitelle is the far superior locker IMO. Why? Because it is a LOT easier to get out. Since it doesn't lock your items, you can use rare candy on it. If you do that with vileplume you'll have all of the rest of the rare candies as dead draw. More importantly, however, Gothim has 60 HP while Oddish only has 40. That means Yanmega can't eat it without the aid of a catcher. Its still not ideal since you can't drop it out of nowhere like in D/P-PL, but Gothitelle is so much easier to get out than vileplume its not even funny.

As for energy, Psychic has the option of jirachi + mismagius for energy accel.
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You might be right about Gothitelle being the better locker than Vileplume. I'm definitely going to consider getting some Gothitelle's at the upcoming Pre-Release as well as it's other forms. As for the Mismagius you're referring to it's the Unleashed version with
Magical Trans. So yeah it could work really well especially with Jirachi and for some reason I wanted to find a way to make him work well in my MewBox deck and now I can.
 
I'm pretty sure the Plume argument is kinda non-existing here. Every deck in the format needs his fast setup to survive the turn 2 Donphan/Yanmega onslaught, you don't really have time to waste a stage 2 for just a lock until mid-late game. Also Catchering an Oddish HURR DURR. Yeah.
 
I dunno, I've been testing my MewBox deck with Vileplume and Pidgeot against my friend's ReshiBoar deck and it's pretty solid. I think when it comes to using Trainer - Item lock you're better off with Vileplume since you'll have a different Pokemon attacking instead of having to setup with Gothitelle to attack and Trainer lock simultaneously. This format is all about speed and OHKO's/Donks and Vileplume ensures the speed better judging from my playtesting.

If they Catcher your Oddish, have at least 1 or 2 extra Oddish on the bench from Collector and hope for the best by getting Plume out ASAP through draw supporters like PONT and Copycat. Even then If they KO Oddish it isn't game over unless you Rare Candy the other Oddish on the bench into Vileplume. It's not that hard and you make it sound like it's impossible to recover after something like Yanmega Prime bench sniping an Oddish for no attack cost with Insight. This isn't theorymon people.

I do see MewBox having problems against TyraniBuzz If it doesn't get a Rainbow Energy on Mew Prime to use Mass Attack after getting your bench filled with Basics and such. Otherwise you're going to be stuck attacking with Zoroark tech's for Foul Play to copy
T-Tar Prime's Megaton Tail and Headwind like crazy with Mew Prime til you lose. Darkness Howl also hurts Oddish and Mew Prime, then again MewBox is good in alot of matchups but it has problems against TyraniBuzz and possibly Yanmega variants.
 
Don't forget oddish can be sniped by yanmega thanks to its low HP. Gothitelle is a better lock on that basis alone.
 
I already addressed that, you didn't read what I said in my last post on here did you? Sure Gothitelle is better on that basis alone however it still restricts you from attacking with your other Pokemon while you need to have Gothitelle Active to Trainer Lock.
 
Catcher is going to make Vilelock popular once again..... so I will be useful but vileplume can stop it and everyone knows that so.... everyone is gonna try to lock it -.- with vileplume or the new gothettla (sp?)
 
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