Garchomp/Feraligatr deck - any suggestions appreciated

[srdabney]

Pokemon:19
3 Ekans GE
2 Arbok GE

3 Totodile MT
2 Croconaw MT
1 Feraligatr MT

3 Gible MT
2 Gabite MT
1 Garchomp MT

1 Manaphy DP
1 Lugia SW
1 Suicune SW


Trainers:20
1 Speed Stadium DP - Lets both players roll and keep drawing till you get tails.
1 Lake Boundry MT - Doubles weaknesses for everyone.

2 Quick Ball MT - Lets you keep drawing till you get a pokemon.
2 Leftovers GE - Tool lets you shed 10 damage at end of each turn.
2 Rare Candy GE - Lets you evolve.
2 Warp Point DP - Switches both you and your opponent.
1 Plus Power SW - Tool adds +10 to each attack before applying weak/resist
1 Energy Switch DP - Switches energy tween active and any benched pokemon.

4 Roseanne's Research - Search deck for any two pokemon or energy.
2 Team Galactic's Mars - Draw 2 cards, discard one of opponent's hand.
1 Professer Rowan - Choose 1 card, shuffle it back into your deck. Then draw 4.
1 Team Galactic's wager - Each player shuffles hand into their deck. Rochambo. Winner draws 6, loser 3.

Energy:21
5 Psychic -- For Lugia and Ekans/Arbok
10 Water -- For the Feraligatr chain.
1 Electric -- For Garchomp. It adds +40 if the defending pkmn has weak. to the attached enrgy card.
1 Fire
1 Dark
1 Grass
1 Metal
1 Fight

--

Rationale for the deck:

1) Keep energy flush to fuel strong attacks (100+ with right cards) from Garchomp & Feraligatr -- The Suicane (Aqua Recover) & Croconow (Evo Vitality) should help here. Then, use this energy with Feraligatr's energy cyclone, which is 20X # of energy cards you take from your hand and put back in the deck. The Gabite and Suicune let you retrieve energy from the discard pile, which should help also.

2) Keep drawing cards, especially cards I need, hence the heavy Roseanne's, Speed stadium, etc.

3) Use Lugia at the right time to decimate if opponent gets into energy trouble.

4) The Ekans/Arboks are there cause I've had great experiences getting strong defenders stuck and drained down with the poison/paralyze combo. But, I'm not married to them. Same with Manapy. It was added for Call to Family and free switch attack, but there could be better choices.

The other rationale for this deck is to neutralize a strong fire deck.

Any advice is much appreciated. I am fairly new.. just started playing when the kids got into it. But, I love it, and hope to learn/play as much as possible.


-Scott

 

[hamsandwich]

I'd like to start off by saying welcome to the pokemon tcg and hope you enjoy your stay :thumb:

From what you typed, I think you need to go back and look at Leftovers, Roseanne's, and Suicune. Leftovers heals at the end of YOUR turn and Suicune's power returns 3 water pokemon, not energy, to your hand. Also, Roseanne's is basic pokemon, not any.

The numbers of your pokemon lines could be better. For example, the Feraligatr line. You have a 3-2-1 line (basic-stage1-stage2). Since he is one of your main attackers, you would want more of him in your deck. What if he is prized? What if you have a bad start, so he has a lot of damage on him when you evolve into him? Because of rare candy, people tend to run X - (X-1) - X lines. EX. 3-2-3 line, 1-0-1, etc.

# of Starters (pokemon used whose main purpose is to set up your game) To maximize the chance that you draw into the starter when setting up, you would generally want to run as many of them as possible. Your current list has 19 pokemon with 1 Manaphy as a starter. The odds of you getting that pokemon in your starting hand is much lower than if you had say 4 Manaphy out of 19 pokemon.

Manaphy - I would consider replacing manaphy with any of these pokemon, Pachirisu (GE), Tauros (CG), Absol(SW) (doesnt set up but slows opponents set up), Corsola (SW) if you run multiple lines, Lapras (GE) if running water, or one of many others. Note, there is GREAT debate over starter pokemon and I advise you look at what your deck needs and try out different starters to see which you like for that deck. http://pokegym.net/tower/ <---to look through the legal cards and a great resource.

You have a lot of different pokemon types here and multiple attackers. Personally, I would drop the arbok line and the lugia and concentrate on the feralgatr and garchomp. I also think that garchomp as a main attacker is very expensive in terms of number of cards required in the deck to make it work, with the majority of it in the form of the different energies.

How about teching in a 1-0-1 line of garchomp for countering :lightning pokemon? This way, the only energy's you need for garchomp would be :fighting: Then, you would only need :water: and some :fighting: enegry in the deck.

I don't like speed stadium. My reasoning is firstly that it is coin based, but to make it worse, it allows your opponent to use it too. So, in the worse case you draw nothing, then your opponent uses it to draw into things they need. So you have now played a card that didn't even benefit you but helped your opponent out

Since I've already spent a pretty good amount of time typing this out (and it's long :smile Here is what I would do with it if you want to use garchomp and feraligatr together( This is off the top of my head)

Pokemon 18

4-3-4 Feraligatr (MT)
1-0-1 Garchomp (MT)
2-2 Mantyke (DP) Mantine(SW) (free retreat for all your pokemon except gible)
1 Suicune (SW) (get water pokemon back from discard)

Trainers 24

2 Roseanne's Research (SW) (basics/energy or both)
3 Celio's Network (CG) or Bebe's Search(MT)(SW) (search for pokemon)
2 Professor Oak's Visit (SW) (draw)
2 Professor Birch (PK) (reload your hand the turn after Energy Cyclone)

3 Rare candy (GE)
3 quick ball (MT)
3 master ball (PK) (thins top of deck so you can draw into more energy)
3 pluspower (DP)(SW)
1 night maintenance (MT)(SW)

2 lake boundry (MT)

Energy 18

16 :water:
2 :fighting:

Or you could drop garchomp all together, put in 2 glacia's stadium (PK) and use better supporting pokemon like claydol(GE) to draw or other pokemon with different abilities. Also, take a look at the Hurricane deck.

 

[Dennis Hawk]

First of all, huge props to hamsandwich for writing the previous post. Your attitude towards newer players is something many people should learn from.

Second, here's my version of the deck list. If OP is a beginner, he shouldn't have to search for older (HP-PK) cards to build a deck, as they're propably rotating out in the end of august. So here's what I'm thinking to be relatively good, based around easy-to-get -cards.

Pokémon (20):
4-3-4 Feraligatr MT
1-0-1 Garchomp MT
4 Stantler SW (Common in Secret Wonders and newest POP set, POP7)
1 Suicune SW
1-1 Porygon 2/Claydol (To speed up your setup a bit, easy to get out via Stantler and searching supporters)

Trainers (25):
4 Roseanne's Research
4 Bebe's Search
4 Professor Oaks' Visit
1 Team Galactic's Wager
1 Professor Rowan

2 Lake Boundary

4 Rare Candy
2 PlusPower
2 Warp Point
1 Night Maintenance

Energy (15):
11 Water Energy
2 Fighting Energy (for Garchomp to tackle those lightning pokémon)
1 Psychic (For Garchomp to tackle Gardevoir)
1 Basic Energy of your choice (Use this spot to exploit the weakness of the deck you tend to lose)

There you go!

 

[srdabney]

Hamsandwich and Dennis...

Thank you both for all the insight. I really appricate the time you've taken not just to help my deck, but give me principles to consider for any deck I make (starters, for instance). This is exactly what I needed, and I hope it pays dividends.

Dennis... It tuns out I may have the master balls and prof Birch (kids bought some PK starter sets). Should I play those over your suggested deck if I have the cards?

Thanks again!