BW-on Garchomp/Landorus EX for Cities '13

[Gelatin]

It seems like everyone has written Garchomp off as the biggest disappointment of the new format and the poor guy dropped off of the map. But I never felt that it was Garchomp's fault. It was a pretty solid, consistent, and energy efficient card. It was just paired up with the wrong dudes.

For a while, I had a Garchomp/Mewtwo/Stunfisk deck sleeved up for my younger brother based on the list of the deck that lost out to the Garchomp/Altaria deck that everyone flocked to. I felt it was better than GarTaria because: A) It didn't rely on Stage 1 bench warmers with 70 HP, B) Could still OHKO the Garchomp mirror with a Pluspower and can OHKO Hydreigon with a little help from Stunfisk, and C) It had Mewtwo which is still an incredibly strong card in the format.

Before BRs, I was testing my Darkrai/Hydreigon against the list and the Garchomp deck managed to keep a close lead as far as win percentage goes but I ended up going with the HydRai deck in the end (taking 2nd at Honolulu's BR so hey).

Now, with the advent of Landorus EX, my brother wanted me to actually play this list for him at our CC, I wanted to revisit the deck replacing Stunfisk DRX with a very powerful Pokemon in Landorus. Apparently I wasn't alone to think this since a Garchomp/Landorus EX/Mewtwo EX won a Cities in Northern California.

Enough talk, have a list that I was messing with at League today.

Pokemon
4-4-3 Garchomp (Mach Cut)
3 Landorus EX
2 Terrakion NVI

Energy
7 Fighting
4 Blend WLFM
1 Water

Supporter
4 Juniper
4 Skyla
3 N
3 Cheren

Items
4 Catcher
3 Switch
2 Pluspower
2 Exp Share
1 Pokemon Communication
1 Level Ball
1 Heavy Ball
1 Gold Potion ACE SPEC
1 Max Potion
1 Tool Scrapper
1 Energy Search

Strategy: Beat on things with Landorus EX and Garchomp until they go away. Terrakion also pops in on occasion for a healthy dose of Retaliate.

Most of the early game is spent using Landorus EX to spread damage on enough things so that Garchomp will have an easier time taking them down with low-energy attacks. Landorus EX's second attack, Land's Judgment, is also a very lethal attack that can handle much of everything. Without "over-charging" the attack, he can KO a Darkrai EX that has any damage from T1-2 Hammerheads.

Garchomp can handle Rayquaza and his EX iterations fairly well, too. With Landorus taking out Tynamos and Eelektriks with ease; Garchomp can come in for the kill without (as much) worry.

A few things you'll notice:

-No Rare Candy
I feel like with Gabite, even when I did have Rare Candy in the list, I would be manually evolving through Dragon Call chains a lot. Of course this means I lose out on a T2 Garchomp but I feel a T3 Garchomp is just fine. Especially with Landorus softening up everything for Chompy or just outright smashing everything on his own.

-1 Water Energy
I don't like Enhanced Hammer and I seem to see it a lot anymore. The single Water energy at least lets me get a Dragonblade off without having to worry about being Enhanced Hammer'd. It can also be searched out with Energy Search which can be pretty helpful.

-A butt-load of 1-ofs and max Skyla
This is where things get a little techy. Running 4 Skyla gives me a little leeway as far as tech-Trainers go. However, I'm not sure if this is really the way to go or not. I haven't run into too much trouble so far with all those 1-ofs but I probably would like a second Tool Scrapper.

The single Level Ball searches me the Gabite I need. Once I have a Gabite, I can easily get another Gible/Gabite who can net me another and so on and so forth. With that kind of searching power I find myself using Dragon Call more than using actual search-items.

The main issue I am having is dealing with Mewtwo. Once he shows up, I seem to lose all momentum as the opponent can just pile on the energy and start sweeping faster than I can attach. And since a lot of my attacks hit for fairly low damage, an Eviolite on the Mewtwo just makes it that much harder.

My question now is to rework the Mewtwo back in and get rid of Terrakion, or leave it how it is and hope I can dance around my Mewtwo problem. If I did bring back Mewtwo, I'd probably cut Terrakion altogether and alter the Energy line up to facilitate a bit more DCE.

5 Fighting
4 Blend WLFM
3 DCE

My only concern there is that I'd still have that fear of Enhanced Hammer just raining on my parade.

Comments and critique are welcome.

Honolulu's City Championships are on the weekend following Thanksgiving so I'd be really thankful if I could iron out the issues I'm having with this deck in time

 

[cabd]

Having watched the entire match while sitting less than 6 inches away from the table, let me tell you this. He ran water energies AND blend energies. There were multiple level balls. Mewtwo was a two of. There was NO terrakion.

 

[Gelatin]

Did you catch if he played DCE at all? I was thinking I could instead just pop in some Energy Switch and leave my original energy line-up mostly the same.

I'd really love to work out all of those 1-ofs but honestly, I really like having those options and outs through Skyla.

 

[cabd]

Yes. There was DCE. He ran a total of four types of energy.

 

[baby mario]

1 Comm
1 Heavy Ball
1 Level Ball

That is just not enough Pokemon search. I know you have Gabite, but first you need your Gabite.

 

[Ace-]

surprisingly 3 searchers work, but i use 2 communication and 1 level ball. ( i dont like heavy ball because it only searches a landorus ex). also you have skyla and CPU search so you have 8 searchers which is fine.

 

[baby mario]

surprisingly 3 searchers work, but i use 2 communication and 1 level ball. ( i dont like heavy ball because it only searches a landorus ex). also you have skyla and CPU search so you have 8 searchers which is fine.

So you rely on Skyla to search the 3 search cards? I'd rather just run more search and use a draw Supporter. It's not really 8 searchers, it's 3 plus the opportunity to spend your Supporter getting one of them.

The OP's list runs Gold Potion, not CPU.

 

[Gelatin]

Yes. There was DCE. He ran a total of four types of energy.

I'll try to tweak my energy line to incorporate that then. Would 15 energy be an okay number? I know 12-13 seems to be the norm.

That is just not enough Pokemon search. I know you have Gabite, but first you need your Gabite.

So far it hasn't been a problem but I do feel like it will come back to nip me on the behind.

+2 Level Ball
-2 ???

 

[CHOMPA]

i've been trying this deck but the biggest problem ive found is its lack of energy acceleration.

does anyone know more details of Mike Wang's deck that won a cities? like what ace spec he ran and more details on his trainer supporter lines?

 

[shuffledraw]

Hi everyone, here's the list I used at Cities in Cameron Park, California.

Pokemon - 17

4 Gible DRX 87
4 Gabite DRX 89
4 Garchomp DRX 90
3 Landorus EX
2 Mewtwo EX


Trainers - 30

4 Cheren
4 N
3 Skyla
2 Professor Juniper

4 Level Ball
4 Pokemon Catcher
3 Max Potion
3 Switch
1 Energy Retrieval
1 Tool Scrapper

1 Computer Search


Energy - 13

6 Fighting
3 DCE
2 Blend WLFM
2 Water


Just some notes:
Garchomp isn't amazing, but the consistency provided by Gabite is very helpful in general. Rare Candy is not worth the space in my opinion, since chaining Dragon Calls would leave you with no Gible to Rare Candy. Being able to trade prizes favorably with EXes is always helpful and 2 energy for 100 damage is just good enough to rely on without energy acceleration. Mach cutting DCE and Blend energies is situationally useful.
Landorus EX is useful in all matchups, even against Keldeo. Dark Deino and Tynamo are both OHKOed, Squirtle can be 2HKOed if you go first. 30 splash to a Mewtwo EX means it can be KOed with only 4 total energy. 30 splash to a Keldeo leaves it with 140HP, it just so happens that Keldeo needs 5 energy to OHKO a Garchomp, and that Mewtwo EX with a DCE attached does 140 to that Keldeo. 30 damage to a benched Deino means that if it is evolved to a Hydreigon, I can simply Catcher then Mach Cut with Garchomp for a KO. Worst case scenario, I'm usually okay with my opponents using Max Potion just to heal 30 damage.
Mewtwo EX is obviously broken. Mach Cut is not enough to deal with opposing Mewtwo, especially with Eelektrik, Hydreigon, and Blastoise in the format.

Supporter count is a bit low, I generally rely on dragon call thinning my deck to compensate.
Low count of Juniper is because the drawbacks of discarding resources outweigh the advantages of drawing 7 new cards, at least for this list. Alternatively it could just be due to my playstyle. I tend to be fairly conservative, especially when Junipering a tool scrapper, catcher, or max potion could cost you the game later on.
Max level ball because you want as many Garchomp as early as possible.
Skyla is incredibly good. Searching level ball early game is very helpful to get that Gabite to start a dragon call chain. Even with 4 gabite and 4 level ball in this deck, it's still better to Skyla for a level ball than it is to try and draw into one with a supporter (this comes from personal experience, just imagine how often you manage to mulligan in a deck with 8 basics and apply that to whiffing a turn 2 gabite). Having more outs to Pokemon Catcher, Switch, Max Potion, and Computer Search is also very helpful.
I'm not a fan of using Bianca in a deck without Ultra Ball.
The single energy retrieval is very useful and serves as a way to search energy with Skyla. Early game I can generally draw into energy, lategame I'm basically guaranteed to have the energy I need in the discard. This also helps ever so slightly against Hammertime.
Max Potion is self explanatory; every pokemon can attack with a single energy attachment.

My energy line is rather unusual but it works well enough for me. I run more DCE than Mewtwo because I can bench Mewtwo when I draw into it if absolutely necessary, but I have no search for DCE other than Computer Search. It also helps more to have an extra energy for retreating or Land's Judgement.


I'm not too sure how good the deck really is. To be quite honest I drew very well during the entire tournament, around 3 matches in swiss were won because I did not have Tool Scrapper or Energy Retrieval prized when searching for it with Skyla, other matches were far easier than they could have been when my opponents drew poorly. I only won Ro8 (Hammertime variant) because I eked out a win match 1 and then time was called, in Ro4 (Darkrai Mewtwo Bouffalant) I won the first match and was lucky enough to win when time was called in the second match. I only won finals against Kian because he was unable to draw into Blastoise; in general I'd have to put the matchup at around 40/60 in favor of the opponent. The only Blastoise matchup I had all day was in finals, if there were more I'm not sure if I could have done as well.

Feel free to ask any questions. There might be some subtleties with this deck that I forgot to mention here.

 

[Gelatin]

Thanks for posting. My latest version of the deck actually came pretty close with me shaving down on my minor cards like Pluspower and Exp Shares in favor of more Level Ball and some DCE.

What do you think about Gold Potion? I love that it's a nice slap to the face against Darkrai since I expect to see a fair bit of him. Or is the utility of Computer Search just too good to give up?

 

[shuffledraw]

You can afford to max potion because the attackers are so low energy. I'd go with Comp Search.

 

[t0pram0s]

Congrats Mike! Who knows what would have happened if my friend didnt misplay that first game jk great win!

Also 3 max potions? How is that working for you since a lot of your pokes can get OHKOed by keldeo,hydreigon,rayquaza etc.

 

[shuffledraw]

Rayeels isn't really a problem because Landorus EX (along with 8 outs to catcher) is so devastating to Eelektriks.

Opponents are typically hesitant to leave Hydreigon active when I hit for weakness with Garchomp.

Keldeo needs 5 energy to OHKO Garchomp, which makes revenging with Mewtwo much easier. You really shouldn't be benching Landorus against Blastoise decks at all outside of turn 1.

 

[Gelatin]

Right now I'm testing with:

4 Juniper
4 N
3 Cheren
3 Skyla
...
2 Max Potion

There have been a few times where my second Pot would be in the prizes when I really needed it to save some dudes from snipe KOs. Considering cutting a Juniper for a 3rd one.

And I was a little skeptical about Energy Retrieval but it's actually been working a lot better for me since it's more of a late game card as opposed to my single copy of Energy Search.

So far the deck seems solid and the only problem I see is facing Blastoise decks, which I kind of knew already. Hopefully M2+DCE is enough to stop them in their tracks (or no one plays it lol)

Thank you very much for sharing your experience with the deck

 

[Hunter2hitman]

your deck looks awesome. wouldnt change anything about it with the exception of your abovementioned supporter changes. id go with 3 max potion and 3 juniper. other than that, looks great! going to be testing this tonight at league

 

[Gelatin]

Took second with it at Honolulu CC.

Pokemon - 17
4-4-4 Garchomp
3 Landorus EX
2 Mewtwo EX

Trainers - 30
4 N
4 Professor Juniper
3 Skyla
3 Cheren

4 Pokemon Catcher
4 Level Ball
3 Switch
2 Max Potion
1 Tool Scrapper
1 Energy Retrieval

1 Computer Search ACE SPEC

Energy - 13
6 Fighting Energy
3 Double Colorless Energy
2 Blend Energy WLFM
2 Water Energy

Really pleased with the deck. The only thing I would consider changing to the list would be to add a Ultra Ball or Heavy Ball. A lot of the games that I lost, I feel I could have done better if I could get the Landorus out and attacking on T1.

 

[JandPDS]

Ny daugter went 3-1 with this in her first cities with it and took home 30 championship points. She was uncertain about it when I put it together for her but she really likes it now.