Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

4-4 Donphan

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Alex(charm)ander

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First of all 100% of the credit for this list goes to Andrew Lowe who asked that I posted it for him.

Pokemon: 8

Phanpy x4
Donphan x4

Trainers: 42

Cppycat x4
Super Scoop Up x2
Luxury Ball x1
Buck's Training x4
Quick Ball x4
PlusPower x4
Broken Time-Space x2
Great Ball x2
Judge x4
Palmer's Contribution x1
Pokedex x3
Pokedrawer+ x4
Warp Point x2
Expert Belt x3
Looker's Contribution x2

Energy : 10

Fighting x10

I am posting this deck by request so my experience with it is limited. However, it has top cut at every Battle Roads Andrew attended except one with two wins and two 2nd place spots and has proven to be competitive this Battle Roads season.

The strategy is pretty simple, you tank with Donphan. Looker's can be used to dump your hand and tank through VileGar, it's quick enough to avoid Fainting Spell before Gengar comes out a lot of the time. It can be countered by Umbreon UD and Blaziken FB fairly well but like anything a good player can work around them under the right circumstances. EVERYTHING in this deck is to support Donphan and only Donphan as it is the focus of the deck.
 
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With it being a stage one that can hit for 60 with one energy and all of the hand refresh cards getting a Donphan under trainer lock is not that hard and you can one shot Spiritombs. Trainer lock is the hardest match up but it is by no means an autoloss.
 
As someone who plays Donphan, I believe this deck can beat Luxchomp because it's not offering any other targets and its simply very tough to win on prizes if you rely on the 50/60/70/80 HP attacks to kill 6 Donphans. However, if you start belting Donphans, I would think the Luxchomp player could get ahead on prizes and win on time. The Luxchomp deck has so much board control and healing ability that Donphan really only starts to dominate once Luxchomp has exhausted all of their resources. (And there aren't any Reversals or Blowers in the list that would allow you to select a target to disrupt their setup.)

If the SP player plays Dialga G X, once they put that down and warp it out of the way, Exoskeleton goes away and he Donphans are much, much more susceptible to damage.

And I don't see how this stands a chance against Gengar Vileplume. Even if you manage to get 3-4 Donphans set up before Vileplume hits the board, all of the leftover T/S/S become fodder for Poltergeist. And when you KO Gengar back, you have a 50/50 chance of instantly losing your Donphan too (with belt for two prizes?).

Those are the top 3 decks that are being played today, and the matchup doesn't look favorable. I'd guess this deck could beat many other popular decks (Sablelock, straight Machamp) but if you're belting against something like Machamp/Kingdra you're just accelerating their taking of prizes. And watch out for decks that burn or poison...you only have 4 cards (2 warp, 2 scoop) to cure Donphan.
 
losjackal said:
As someone who plays Donphan, I believe this deck can beat Luxchomp because it's not offering any other targets and its simply very tough to win on prizes if you rely on the 50/60/70/80 HP attacks to kill 6 Donphans. However, if you start belting Donphans, I would think the Luxchomp player could get ahead on prizes and win on time. The Luxchomp deck has so much board control and healing ability that Donphan really only starts to dominate once Luxchomp has exhausted all of their resources. (And there aren't any Reversals or Blowers in the list that would allow you to select a target to disrupt their setup.)

If the SP player plays Dialga G X, once they put that down and warp it out of the way, Exoskeleton goes away and he Donphans are much, much more susceptible to damage.

And I don't see how this stands a chance against Gengar Vileplume. Even if you manage to get 3-4 Donphans set up before Vileplume hits the board, all of the leftover T/S/S become fodder for Poltergeist. And when you KO Gengar back, you have a 50/50 chance of instantly losing your Donphan too (with belt for two prizes?).

Those are the top 3 decks that are being played today, and the matchup doesn't look favorable. I'd guess this deck could beat many other popular decks (Sablelock, straight Machamp) but if you're belting against something like Machamp/Kingdra you're just accelerating their taking of prizes. And watch out for decks that burn or poison...you only have 4 cards (2 warp, 2 scoop) to cure Donphan.
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From playing against this deck with Luxchomp at BR's last week it has an extreamly good Luxchomp matchup but it can still get close. Once your Crobats, Promocroak, and Garchomp's are gone it's over for you and everytime I'd poison a Donphan he'd play warp point and slap down energy, a belt, a PlusPower, and a Buck's. If I ever got close to knocking it out he'd scoop it and I'd be back to square one. I tried it at one BR's and I did lose to Dialgachomp, it's a really tough matchup but we have one, maybe two Dialgachomp players here so it's not a huge risk. Against Gengar Vileplume you can play Looker's and dump your entire hand with it and not draw a card. Doing that makes your opponents only option doing 30 damage per turn. I Played against a straight Kingdra deck with this and I almost 6-0'd him. With PlusPower and Buck's I was one shotting his Kingdra's and he couldn't get them out fast enough.
 
I think it could be good but i would run 3 uxie and make it more supporter based than trainer base for against vilegar. It DIES to kingdra. running a blaziken fb tech wouldn't hurt. dont know about oregon but we have good kingdra players here so u need fire.
 
Redados1 said:
I think it could be good but i would run 3 uxie and make it more supporter based than trainer base for against vilegar. It DIES to kingdra. running a blaziken fb tech wouldn't hurt. dont know about oregon but we have good kingdra players here so u need fire.
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A Kingdra deck pops up now and again but it's rare and this deck can still beat it. If you add any more Pokemon to the deck it kills the whole point of it and why it does so well, especially against SP.
 
I see your point of one-shotting Kingdras, but if your Donphan has 3 energies and a belt, the opponent is foolish to send up a fresh Kingdra. They should send up something smaller that weakens your Donphan first so they can finish it off with Kingdra.

Scoop ups do change the equation, and it's awesome to pick up a Donphan with 100 damage on it and start again. But it's flippy, just like other things that make Donphan more effective like reversals.

The point of a fire tech is to keep it on your bench and make Kingdra Prime's attack do 20 instead of 60.
 
losjackal said:
I see your point of one-shotting Kingdras, but if your Donphan has 3 energies and a belt, the opponent is foolish to send up a fresh Kingdra. They should send up something smaller that weakens your Donphan first so they can finish it off with Kingdra.

Scoop ups do change the equation, and it's awesome to pick up a Donphan with 100 damage on it and start again. But it's flippy, just like other things that make Donphan more effective like reversals.

The point of a fire tech is to keep it on your bench and make Kingdra Prime's attack do 20 instead of 60.
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There's always Warp Point. I can Send up a new Donphan and with an energy and a Belt take down anything with 80 HP and there's PlusPower. The last thing I want is to have three Phanpy out against a Luxchomp player and use a Quick Ball to get a Donphan and find a Blaziken FB staring me in the face.
 
Yup, if you rely on Quick Ball that way, I see your point. It's brilliant to use a Collector to get your remaining 3 Phanpy and then a Trainer to find a Donphan.

However, there is a downside to only having 4 basic Pokemon. I'm curious, on average how many times do you mulligan?

And when you get a Phanpy, how often is it your only one?

Because half those times, you'll win the coin flip and go first and subject yourself to being donked by T1 Kingdra, Machamp, Sablelock or even a flexible SP deck.

I guess my point is if you're leaving yourself open to being donked more than half the time, especially by loading up your opponent's hand with mulligans, I don't see how this deck can be consistent enough to win a tournament.
 
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losjackal said:
Yup, if you rely on Quick Ball that way, I see your point. It's brilliant to use a Collector to get your remaining 3 Phanpy and then a Trainer to find a Donphan.

However, there is a downside to only having 4 basic Pokemon. I'm curious, on average how many times do you mulligan?

And when you get a Phanpy, how often is it your only one?

Because half those times, you'll win the coin flip and go first and subject yourself to being donked by T1 Kingdra, Machamp, Sablelock or even a flexible SP deck.

I guess my point is if you're leaving yourself open to being donked more than half the time, especially by loading up your opponent's hand with mulligans, I don't see how this deck can be consistent enough to win a tournament.
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I personally have played the deck at one BR so I've probably played a dozen games with it and surprisingly I only mulligan once most games. I did mulligan eight times in one game but I went second and Judged first turn. I have been Donked twice, once by Dialgachomp and once by an Octilery deck. There are only a couple Machamp players here and no Kingdra but I did manage to almost 6-0 a Kingdra deck with it. Andrew played 50 games with it and said that he only got donked a couple times and only donked with it once.

---------- Post added 10/12/2010 at 02:30 PM ----------
Dark Knight said:
i would add in a 1-1 erl and two rainbow energys
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There was one person who got the list and tried that and from what I saw it didn't work so well for him. I ended up playing him at a BR and I donked him.
 
And how would I get all that out? What if something was prized? Kingdra doesn't make it well here so no one plays it and Umbreon can be taken out by Phanpy. I went against a Shedinja Lock rogue at BR and I was able to tank through it once I got a belted phanpy with 40 damage on it.
 
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