Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Absol SW counters! -Baleful Wind

Mew*

Mew*

Active Member
That new Absol is becoming VERY popular, in fact too popular! So, how does one go against something so unpredictable and deadly at wrecking setups/hands? That is the question. Now I need help.

I have a few ideas right now. One is to play Prof. Birch since it can let you comeback a quite a bit from being hit hard if you are lucky enough to draw into it, or not have Absol discard it with his first attack! I know Prof. Birch is traditionally not a great card, but in the right format, it may be useful! The next idea is to play some Sableye CG since it can disable it's attack! A temporary solution that can give you the time to get a powerful Pokemon built up so that you can start OHKOing and sweeping the rest of their deck.

Please help me with more solutions! (And yes, I know it is ironic that I am playing some in my deck :lol:. But even if you play them, they STILL hurt you when your opponent uses them! If you can't beat 'em, why not join 'em?)
 
Smeargle: fill your hand with nrg = less overall impact of losing cards and energy in discard can be helpful.
 
Basically you need to either play trainers that help you recover from small hand size (Prof. Birch, Rowan, Oak's Research, Copycat, and Possibly Steven's Advice and Team Galactic's Wager). You can also play Ball Trainers that you use quickly when you draw into them, but this seems situaltional at best. Other possibilities include using a starter that outdraws what Absol will do to you (Smergle, Spinda, Lickitung d) or use pokemon that allow you to come back from low hand sizes (Mime Jr., Delcatty, Magneton). Lastly, playing something that can quickly KO Absol (Lucario, Wormadam, Banette) can limit the damage he can do to your hand.
 
Look in the other topic for some of my general suggestions.

Card-wise, here are some of the more standard (and some of the weirder) options against Absol:

-Fighting basics/heavy damage basics. Riolu, Machop, Voltorb, Magmar, etc all laugh at Absol, and the beautiful thing is that once you get out their stage one's, you're good to go.

-Mew*. Baleful wind right back at them! Because your opponent runs Mars as its main draw card, his/her hand will likely be low, so your wind will be even _more_ vicious than theirs is against you. the only issue with this, though, is that it only works in the right deck.
 
Digglet/Dugtrio SW; draw and heavy damage with that fab free retreat when it evolves so it can come back to damage when fighting weakness is there once again.
 
Magic_Umbreon said:
Smeargle: fill your hand with nrg = less overall impact of losing cards and energy in discard can be helpful.
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Interesting idea. The problem that I see is that it kind of wastes your attack, and he doesn't have a free retreat cost.

Darkwalker said:
Basically you need to either play trainers that help you recover from small hand size (Prof. Birch, Rowan, Oak's Research, Copycat, and Possibly Steven's Advice and Team Galactic's Wager). You can also play Ball Trainers that you use quickly when you draw into them, but this seems situaltional at best. Other possibilities include using a starter that outdraws what Absol will do to you (Smergle, Spinda, Lickitung d) or use pokemon that allow you to come back from low hand sizes (Mime Jr., Delcatty, Magneton). Lastly, playing something that can quickly KO Absol (Lucario, Wormadam, Banette) can limit the damage he can do to your hand.
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Thanks! Copycat is a good choice, unless you also are playing Absol diminishing their hand.

empoleonperson said:
or you can donk them rith riolu hehehe
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Absol kinda has 70 HP..

Cyrus said:
Look in the other topic for some of my general suggestions.

Card-wise, here are some of the more standard (and some of the weirder) options against Absol:

-Fighting basics/heavy damage basics. Riolu, Machop, Voltorb, Magmar, etc all laugh at Absol, and the beautiful thing is that once you get out their stage one's, you're good to go.

-Mew*. Baleful wind right back at them! Because your opponent runs Mars as its main draw card, his/her hand will likely be low, so your wind will be even _more_ vicious than theirs is against you. the only issue with this, though, is that it only works in the right deck.
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Great point about Mars!

Magic_Umbreon said:
Digglet/Dugtrio SW; draw and heavy damage with that fab free retreat when it evolves so it can come back to damage when fighting weakness is there once again.
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But sometimes it is hard to get a stage one out when you don't have much to work with in your hand >_<

SPARTA said:
Don't we already HAVE one of these threads?
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:confused: Where? I haven't seen it. If I had known, I wouldn't have created this thread.


Thanks for the support everyone! :smile:

Back to back posts merged. The following information has been added:

Sparta, I guess you are referring to the How to cook a Duck thread? I considered that to be about Honchkrow, not Absol. I made this thread just as a general way to take Absol on in any of the decks it may be played in.
 
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DarthPika said:
Hurrican has a fairly easy time due to nrg draw + high nrg/pkmn count.
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Hurricane is good against everything, so that was a no brainer. :tongue: But in all honesty, I don't know about this. You shuffle energy into your deck, reducing your hand. When you use Energy Draw, you are essentially adding two cards to your hand. Now, you are tempted to use them. It can be difficult to set up Delcattys when you're trainers are lost. I don't know about this one. For some reason, I find your opinion to be a bit biased, but I don't know why... :tongue: sorry for picking on you.

Back to back posts merged. The following information has been added:

oh, and sometimes Energy Draw can just get you into more trouble by drawing three supporters or something >_<
 
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The only counter to Absol is to not have any cards in your hand. If you don't have any cards in your hand, they can't get discarded...Broken!

People, if you build your deck around overcoming Absol, you will lose to everything else.
 
The key to beating Absol is to go aggro as soon as you can. If you take that Absol out quickly, and don't sacrifice everything nessesary to do so, A slow deck might have more trouble doing this, but don't forget, your other pokemon have attacks of their own. Since no one payed attention to my earlier bit of advice, I'm not going to bother repeating it =/.
 
SPARTA said:
The key to beating Absol is to go aggro as soon as you can. If you take that Absol out quickly, and don't sacrifice everything nessesary to do so, A slow deck might have more trouble doing this, but don't forget, your other pokemon have attacks of their own. Since no one payed attention to my earlier bit of advice, I'm not going to bother repeating it =/.
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The deck runs four absol. Not to mention Honchkrow.

You make it sound as if the deck is so easy to beat. There is a reason DWD is doing so well. It isn't easy to beat.
 
Duh it isn't to easy to beat, thats why its winning so much =/. How should I have phrased that, your only hope for not dying horribly? Please, I'd rather give people hope than let them cling to a minor scrap of faith.
 
Mew* said:
Hurricane is good against everything, so that was a no brainer. :tongue: But in all honesty, I don't know about this. You shuffle energy into your deck, reducing your hand. When you use Energy Draw, you are essentially adding two cards to your hand. Now, you are tempted to use them. It can be difficult to set up Delcattys when you're trainers are lost. I don't know about this one. For some reason, I find your opinion to be a bit biased, but I don't know why... :tongue: sorry for picking on you.

Back to back posts merged. The following information has been added:

oh, and sometimes Energy Draw can just get you into more trouble by drawing three supporters or something >_<
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I have actually bin testing the matchup ever since my bro. beat a Honchkrow deck in top 2.

What I have found, is that Gatr d spells death for Honchkrow, and the high pkmn/nrg cound in Hurricane makes it hard to mess up their hand with Absol. Stantler makes it so they can get any supporter they need, and it can be hard to discard if they have a decent hand size. It's suprizeingly easy to set up a Delcatty by t3, and Magneton soon follows. Once you get those two in play, and a few of Croconaws power, it's pretty much game.
 
This is just my testing, but it seems that Absol hurts both players. It hurts the person playing against it by discarding their hand and it hurts the player playing Absol because Absol does no damage as long as it keeps using that one attack. You can destroy an opponent's hand, but if your not doing any damage, you might run into a problem.
 
while absol is not doing damage, you're setting up your bench while your opponent has not setup. Once you're set up, your rip through your opponent's bench
 
Yeah, really. If it looks like you really need to be doing damage, pull back the Absol and start hitting. You are allowed to make choices...
 
Yea, the key to beating absol is getting out your main attacker fast. If that happens, your opponent probably can't do enough damage cause they've spent most of their time focusing on taking out your hand. I know that's always the strategy, but that's just about all you can do.
 
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