Max potion is a problem. But if you ratticate while flygon is already in play they never get the chance to use max potion. And the flygon damage adds up after awhile, letting dusknoir take more prizes. Ill give up my ratticate for 2 prizes off an ex. Maybe a combo with exp share to get an energy on a second ratticate so i can attach dce and fang again
Flygon only works
while Active. If you attack with Raticate and the Defending Pokemon isn't already Poisoned or Burned
, your opponent
will get a chance to heal it. Dusknoir lets you move damage counters around, but remember once you actually KO something all those damage counters are gone. So using Raticate to bring something to the brink means they have that turn to heal, and then you have to not finish it off with Flygon. Assuming a separate deck, you're risking two Prizes to spread some damage while taking down another Pokemon EX. I think
Darkrai EX is much simpler at doing the same thing. :thumb:
I played Liability almost the entire time it was legal; you've got to get your mind into the right place to make it work, and giving your opponent any room to breathe means anyone skilled and not plagued by bad luck
will counter the strategy.
I think you're waaay off about Bicycle being broken. Bicycle is a reprint of Mail from Bill, which was rarely played because it just wasn't good enough in a format with draw cards like Professor Elm and Copycat.
Deck space is tight, I don't think Bicycle is going to be a good utilization of deck space at all. Perhaps in a faster rush deck, it could be good. However, with Junk Arm rotating, it's going to be harder to get hand size down to use Bicycle (Ultra Ball is the only playable card that reliably thins your hand).
Emphasis added by me. Psychup, I played in that format and you need to examine exactly what it was. We had Neo Genesis Cleffa for "shuffle and draw 7", even if it was an attack. We had Professor Elm to "shuffle and draw 7" and while an "Item", it also
blocked you from using
any Trainers the rest of your turn.
Then we got to the next few sets and received
the very first Supporters ever created. During both the previous, the current, and the next several formats decks were built around Evolutions, meaning a lot of cards stuck dead in hand.
So what do we have now? Decks like earliest days of the game, mostly consisting of Items we can play for at least some return the turn we draw them, Basic Pokemon (be they Pokemon EX or not) that can be dropped into play right away (and low Pokemon counts so that spares aren't often an issue), and lastly just enough Energy to get by.
You had better hope most decks can exploit Bicycle, because if not a specific portion of decks just got some amazing support. I'd already been experimenting to make Bianca worth using, and that meant designing a deck that already played its hand down to just one or two cards each turn, even after using a Supporter. Since Bicycle is an Item, you just need to get your hand down to three cards (including Bicycle) to be just as good as Bill was
before Bill was a Supporter. Anything more is like a spare Supporter! Even getting one card means you weren't hurt by running Bicycle, unless you want to argue the lost opportunity of the other card you specifically didn't run in place lieu of Bicycle.
A deck that is being run through this fast has tremendous combo potential, and "in the old days" would basically rack up OHKO after OHKO. With Pokemon EX, that is even fewer turns before the win. Yes Ultra Ball is the only unrestricted source to discard (currently) unplayable cards from your hand, but when you're burning your hand before using Professor Juniper, Biacna, or N, you have really good odds of hitting at least one of your four copies early game. Now tack on Bicycle and even if you don't keep ripping through you're deck, you've gained about half a supporter of advantage... advantage that a deck trying to run anything beyond this restrictive strategy can't match.
Raticate would not go well with Flygon.
Raticate + Amoonguss NXD, with Mewtwo EX and Catcher to deal with any Espeon or Garbodor DRX, now that could be the beginnings of a killer deck. Add Hyper Devolution Spray (to reuse Amoonguss) and Giant Cloak and Aspertia City (to make Raticate a little more sturdy) and you'd be golden.
- Croatian "this deck's a real plague" Nidoking
Keeping alive Raticate seems like a waste. Assuming your opponent doesn't just counter your Giant Cloak and Aspertria City (and obviously ever turn they won't), you've gotten Raticate up to... just 100 HP. That's still a OHKO for many decks. Even if it isn't, they may use Pokemon Catcher to take down Amoongus, since 90 damage is just a bit easier to hit (and anything less pretty much is a OHKO past the first few turns).
You're better off dedicating those slots to what you need to rapidly re-deploy Raticate, and/or to run the disruptive Items you need to keep Raticate alive. Remember, Sporprise + Super Fang = KO, so you aren't trapping something up front unable to attack.
