Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

dark explorers - new top deck?

N

Newb4life

New Member
so I have been playing around with the idea, and it seems like dark deck will be one of the new top contenders. I am currently playing CMT and my sons are playing Zekeel's, and landorus/terrakion. I have play tested against durant many times and against all the decks, and it seems that the new dark pokemon will be likely one of the best. I haven't play tested against the zekeel with the raikou addition, but it has been working amazingly well.
Has anyone else been playing around with it, and what does everyone who has think about it? the biggest problem that I ran into is of course the lack of decent dark pokemon outside of dark explorers. But that being said, I have yet to find something wrong with the way this works. the biggest issue(which will be the case I think with all decks, is the lack of good support cards if and when we get a BW-on rotation)
 
I am trying to remain cautiously optimistic. Of course the talk is all over the place, with newb, random, and vet all seemingly bent on either engaging the hyper-drive or consigning the cards to the abyss.

I see a lot of promise with at least one Darkness-Type deck emerging, maybe two or three (though probably only one will make be a serious contender). The basic things a good deck needs, Darkness-Type decks have or will have. Then again, look at Water decks. Are they still struggling, abandoned, or while I had my head buried in my computer did I miss when those finally figured out a great build and started regularly placing in the top four?

Dark Patch provides that much needed Energy acceleration, but at the same time that's just four Items; up to eight if you chose to burn that many copies of Junk Arm. Any more requires you chance a Pokemon that can do the job as well. The Pokemon I can think of are all but guaranteed OHKOs as they require attacks and Energy, and if they require Energy... you're basically trading one attachment on them to get a few copies of Dark Patch.

Darkness-Types also seem to rely on Stage 1 Pokemon and Darkrai EX. This is dangerous in the current format... but at the same time could hold up.
 
Zoarark and Darkrai ex are definately two very good cards, i've done a mild bit of testing and that Dark Patch really helps the deck out. I actually quite like that Sableye too, i played a 1 of and it can be really clutch for catchering up Eeels and the retreiving Catcher + usually Dark Patch.

The deck needs something not weka to fighting though, which is really slim pickings for dark types. The Madibuzz's and the Honchkrows are sub-par at best but extremely needed.

I've also found that Sableye/Darkrai ex in particular are useful outside of just the Dark decks though. Running 4 Dark Patch and Junk arm and the like allow you to attach a good chunk of energy in a turn and SHaymint hem off to somethign like Mewtwo. Whiel not as directly consistant as Pachi/Shaymin, you don't need the energy in your hand, insted being able to Junk Arm/Juniper them away and then only need to have a Shaymin in your hand by the end. Also to it's benefit, whichever Pokemon you choose has an added benefit, Sablye can retrieve more Dark Patch/Pokegear/Junk arm and Darkrai has 180 hp and gives free retreat. In BLW-on, Sableye is even better with no Junk Arm contending his position.

So yeah, dark pokemon will bring a slight shift to the game, though lightning is still the top seed as of now.
 
Interesting... so do you think we can have a "Dark Mewtwo" deck?

You're not the only one who has told me that Sableye would be important, though the main reason was anti-Durant from what the other person told me... or at least that I could easily accept. ;)

Now what I really want to question is... do you need a Fighting Resistant Pokemon so much as something that is not Fighting Weak? Running the birds (and the not yet released Honchkrow looks the most promising to me) means you have something that isn't an easy revenge OHKO from Terrakion, but... their HP scores are not good, so outside of soaking hits from Fighting-Types, other Pokemon do have a good shot at OHKOing them. It even gives the deck something Lightning-Weak just in case those decks couldn't OHKO you fast enough.

These are my concerns, not observations, so I'd love to hear more about it.
 
from my playtesting, the fighting deck(terra/land) really hasnt been able to keep up. the only wins it has had was when the dark deck couldnt draw into any energy. I have found it all too easy to do 130+ on turn 2 and do it consistantly. and even with the ability to possibly revenge ko with dark patch, setting up another attacker on t3 and continuing hasnt been an issue. Again I am looking for others input but it seems to be going relatively well. I seem to be about 70/30 in playtesting against the fighting deck. The best chance it has had was being able to catcher around pokemon while it got powered up and the dark deck not have supporters or energies. I havent even tried it with shaymin and mew2. do you feel that it helps the deck enough to lower the dmg of zoroark and chance starting with them?
 
@Otaku

Dark Mewtwo is overall kind of a pre rotation ZPST idea working out of the discard, and while it can work, we'll have to see if we get better dark types along the way before it trumps any Eel decks.

Sableye is just going to be a very decent card post Junk arm, but they needlessly robbed him of his resistance to (C) which really hurts his chances.

And it is more just a dark type not weak to fighting, something that can take an attack from Groudon ex/Terrakion and not go belly up. Otherwise, fighting decks with mewtwo answers will be fashinoed to beat Eel decks and Dark decks with little resistance.

Just how i see it from a little testing and a lot of projection. I think Darkrai opens up a lot of dark patch options but something with a bit more direct support would be ideal.
 
On the subject of Dark Explorers, I found something pretty interesting.

There is a Japanese blog that I am aware of that sometimes posts the Top 4 lists from some tournaments in Japan. The latest post in which lists were posted was near the end of January, so before the Dragon sets, and the results were pretty interesting. I've closed the windows now (which was dumb of me), but I went through the lists and the Top 4 decks were:

1st: Darkrai EX/Tornadus EX (this is super weird, not going to lie)
2nd: Tornadus EX/Eels ( it only had 1 Zekrom and mostly focused on Tornadus EX. Again, really weird. Also ran 1 Raikou EX)
3rd: Empoleon/Terrakion/Verizion (another weird, but kinda cool, choice. The most interesting parts of the list were the inclusion of Max Potion, and the use of FOUR Ultra Ball, which is crazy)
4th: Zoroark/Darkrai EX (this one makes sense, I've been hyping this card up for ages. It ran 2 Darkrai EX, though, and didn't use any DCE, just Darkness energy and 4 Dark Patch, which is kinda odd).

On the subject of Sableye, only the 1st place deck used him.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top