How are donks unpreventable?
How are they preventable?
I know not that long ago I was making a point about how you can improve your consistency by changing your list, and that's true, but consistency isn't number of basics you start with. In a normal match playing oh I don't know Gyarados, starting Sableye + Collector is gold to me. That's awesome consistency right there, nothing else needs to be said. But, that doesn't do ANY good against a donk. To defend against a donk, I would need to start with a Mesprit in hand (which is a one-of tech for me, so 12% chance) AND something with more than 70 HP to prevent Belt/Pluspower shenanigans, which even then still can overwhelm me.
In a conventional deck, even by this format's lopsided standards, you run 4 "starter Pokemon" maximum (of which Smeargle is not one, by the way. Smeargle is more of a midgame/recovery Pokemon than a starter.) sheerly because too many more is just wasted space. And you're going to say that I should stop whining because I can waste space to avoid donks?
Yeah... no.
And I'm not saying 4 Call/Tomb/Smeargle; I'm just saying that some of these are quite common. Maybe taking out a Sableye or 2 and adding in some Smeagles can help you not to get donked in Gyarados. Maybe Calls would have helped your deck anyways. Spiritomb may just be added if needed.
Smeargle doesn't do you any good against getting donked in Gyarados, really. It's a whole 10 HP difference, and in exchange, you lose a huge amount of your speed by starting Smeargle.
Suppose I ran 4 Spiritomb and 4 Call, because I play Vilegar. It's worth noting that it is still possible to donk a lone Spiritomb start, particularly with your good friend Beedrill G (start with a Collector and a Bat or Beedrill in hand, you can get Q, two Bats and a Beedrill in total, retreat for the drill, energy, two bites, GG). There are better ways to model this, but I'm going to just be simple about it. The odds (and I mean I went through and calculated them... even though I should have it memorized by now) of starting with one of my four Tombs is about 40%. The odds of starting with both Tomb and Call are significantly less: 16%. So that means against a donk-oriented deck, only 40% of the time will I have even a half decent defense against the first turn win, and only 16% of the time I will have a strong one? What else would you suggest I run?
Let's also not forget that first-turn KOs, even if they don't lose you the game, are severely disorienting and no deck in the format is really prepared for it. Luxchomp can handle turn 2 or 3 KOs with excellent grace, but in their initial setup they might be relying on whatever they have active right now - having to go back and dig it up again after it's been knocked out slows it down, making it easier to keep plowing through them because
your deck is designed to perform for just the first few turns, but by pumping out 80-100 damage each time. Starting with Call Energy against an opposing donk deck is not that helpful for two reasons - firstly, the aforementioned disruption (sure, you got two extra Pokemon before they could really hurt you, but then they knocked out that first one and left you without an energy attachment... and they'll knock out whatever you promote, too!!!), and secondly, SOME decks can take out multiple Pokemon on the first turn. See Uxie or Jirachi.
It's one thing if I lead Garchomp + DCE against my opponent's 50-hp Oddish or something, and I scramble for the double bat for KO. This occurrence is very rare, but it is a natural part of the format right now: with things that can do 30-50 on the first turn, you need to be very careful picking your Basics to avoid those KOs. I have no problem against this kind of donk. Last year, I kept telling people that if they didn't want to get donked with Jumpluff, they shouldn't be playing Jumpluff - Hoppip's low HP was an inherent weakness to the deck, it was part of the deck's DESIGN. (You can also be awesome, like me, and run 2 bats so you lead with one every game. /kid) This is the kind of donk that Top Cut is designed to avoid.
My problem is with donk-oriented decks, ones that are designed to capitalize off of the fact that I simply cannot reliably lead strong against you at all. There is no deck in this format that can say it is undonkable. And I doubt there ever will be such a deck!
Well, for me, I don't really want to donk my opponent. That;s just my opinion.
You don't want to donk your opponent so you play Beedrill G donk.
??????