Magnezone Plasma: Possible Strategy

[Fox_Master51]

As I looked over some of the Team Plasma cards we will have in the future, I noticed something rather interesting. Some of the more notable Team Plasma cards have some disruptive qualities as well as the usual draw support. It made me think of N for its "help or flop" tactic for both players.

Any way the cards that stood out most to me were Magnezone Plasma and Ghetsis. Here are the translations to clarify:

Magnezone – Lightning – 140 HP
Stage 2 (Team Plasma) – Evolves from Magneton

Ability: Double Brain
You may play 2 Supporter cards per turn instead of 1.

[L][L][C] Gyro Ball: 80 damage. Switch this Pokemon with one of your Benched Pokemon. Then, your opponent switches the Defending Pokemon with one of his or her Benched Pokemon.

Weakness: Fighting (x2)
Resistance: none
Retreat: 3

Ghetsis – Trainer
Supporter (Team Plasma)

Look at your opponent’s hand. Your opponent shuffles all Item cards there into his or her deck. Then, draw from your deck the amount of cards your opponent shuffled into his or her deck.

You may play only 1 Supporter card during your turn (before your attack).

You see, what I saw here was a disruption deck possibility. But these 2 cards alone are not the only part of the possible strategy. Other cards such as Hugh, Hammers, Tool Scrapper, etc., may also be in the mix. Let's look at an example:

Say you are setup around T3 with Magnezone as your Active. Play Hugh to equalise your hands (draw or discard). Since you can choose what to throw away, your opponent probably won't toss any Items they need. Then, through the use of Magnezone's Ability, play a 2nd Supporter, Ghetsis, to make them shuffle away their Items while you reap the benefit of draw support. Play whatever else is desired, then use Gyro Ball for 80+ damage and built-in Warp Point (Escape Rope) for a little cherry on top.

Other Pokemon to use here would probably be Mewtwo and Raikou EX along with the obvious Eels. Even a 1-of Eelektross DRE could work.

I'm still researching this but I think it would be fun to play around with. Any thoughts on the subject?

 

[MrScaryMuffin]

Double Hooligans!

 

[Tash]

First play Ghetsis to get rid of the items, then use a Hoolagins to get rid of anything else that might still be in their hand.

 

[Shino Bug Master]

The problem is it's a 1 time use. As soon as you use ti once, your opponent will never play the same to your Hugh, making Ghetsis near useless.

The fact is, N still wrecks Magnezone too much for it to be useful, and fighting weakness with Magnemites OHKOed by Landy will put the nail in the coffin.

That said, I think Skyla would be thebest pairing with this card. Skyla allows you to get the Candy/Ultra Ball to get Zone into play, then gives you access to any Supporter in your deck that you can play int he same turn. This will allow you to use Ghetsis, Hugh, Cheren/Bianca, Juniper, N and Colress to their full potential, allowing you to use smaller amounts of them. However, you would probably want a way to get these cards back, hopefully we'll have a better option than Recycle or Excadrill DEX by that point, but they are options.

 

[Otaku]

First things first, no I haven't been able to deck test this stuff yet; pretty busy with real life at the moment... and someone also was kind enough to give me a redemption code to snag Plants Vs. Zombies. ¬_¬ So much fun!:biggrin:

So the following is Theorymon; speculation in my case added by my long time with the game, and exposure to similar mechanics and or techniques over the years.

The problem is it's a 1 time use. As soon as you use ti once, your opponent will never play the same to your Hugh, making Ghetsis near useless.

Ghetsis has something significant going for it; the best decks are very Item heavy and several decks like Junk Hunt, which would guarantee a two card draw off of Ghetsis. Every Ghetsis you use means the rest of your opponent's deck is even more Item heavy. Your opponent either has to spam whatever Items they have (an effective loss in strategic value), hope that they draw everything they want but Items until the exact turn they can unleash a handful for adequate gain... or allow you to pull of Ghetsis for solid draw power and disruption.

Assuming the translations are correct, Ghetsis at worst shows you your opponent's hand (if your opponent has no Items). A bit of a waste, but since Magnezone is allowing you to drop a second supporter, it usually shouldn't be a game killer. Even if Ghetsis causes a format wide shift in deck building, Items are just too important for them to be played especially low. If anything, we have new Items coming that are going to force players to really get creative, because there isn't a lot I would want to drop, but there is a lot that is important to add, even if only as TecH.

The nature of Double Brain basically takes all the hand disruption cards and reduces their drawbacks. N can be followed by disruption such as Ghetsis or Hooligans - Jim & Cas, which early game matters in order to cover your bases; if your N helps your opponent, this gives you a decent shot at nerfing that help, provided you draw into such a card. Risky, but maybe we are supposed to run Magnezone with something that draws well?

The fact is, N still wrecks Magnezone too much for it to be useful, and fighting weakness with Magnemites OHKOed by Landy will put the nail in the coffin.

With regards to N, N only "wrecks" it when you somehow fail to draw into a useful Supporter. I know N is powerful, but it has been a powerful card for quite some time; it can wreck a lot of set-ups. Given that Magnezone decks can afford to run Supporter heavy (and play one after their own N), I would think them a bit more resilient to N. Feel free to explain more since it wouldn't be the first time I missed the obvious.

As for the fragility, you only need a single Magnezone to use the Ability, spares are just that since it doesn't stack. The deck seems to have been planned around heavy disruption, so while you might get knocked down a Prize or two by an aggressive Landorus EX, as long as you can keep a single Magnemite alive long enough to Evolve, your opponent's own Ability at disruption should be limited. Landorus EX doesn't score two OHKOs in a turn.

Please don't get me wrong; Landorus EX will be a definite threat, but the trend has been that the premier Pokémon-EX debut and are amazing, then after each successive set become a little less dominant as other equally impressive Pokémon-EX are released. I won't write this off completely unless Landorus EX becomes and remains the top deck. Even if it is just an extremely good deck, counters happen. It isn't Mewtwo EX, capable of amazing damage and fast damage with any Energy type and able to access pretty much all Energy acceleration in the format.

That said, I think Skyla would be thebest pairing with this card. Skyla allows you to get the Candy/Ultra Ball to get Zone into play, then gives you access to any Supporter in your deck that you can play int he same turn. This will allow you to use Ghetsis, Hugh, Cheren/Bianca, Juniper, N and Colress to their full potential, allowing you to use smaller amounts of them. However, you would probably want a way to get these cards back, hopefully we'll have a better option than Recycle or Excadrill DEX by that point, but they are options.

You know, with the eye on disruption (and Colress coming out at the same time), I think Bianca will be bypassed for Hugh. Definitely going out on a limb by saying that, but I think that the need for disruption is strong enough to make it the better choice. Of course, neither might see play. Colress, Ghetsis, N, Professor Juniper, and Skyla will probably be more important.

Excadrill has shown some potential in deck testing, but my opponents often favor as eclectic of decks as I do, so as stated: potential, not proven power. I don't think I'd use it for the combo; I think I would just run enough Supporters not to worry about recycling them.

 

[Shen]

I've been thinking a lot about Magnezone and he opens up tons of possibilities. Supporters weren't designed to be used twice in one turn so they create interesting scenarios. I think disruptive supporters like Ghetsis would work especially well with him because (even though you still draw for Ghetsis) they don't support you that much. Magnezone would let you both support yourself and disrupt your opponent.

The problem is it's a 1 time use. As soon as you use ti once, your opponent will never play the same to your Hugh, making Ghetsis near useless.

You may not always use Hugh. You may play Ghetsis without the aid of Hugh. Ghetsis isn't a very reliable draw card and the cool thing about Magnezone is that you can scout/disrupt your opponent's hand and still be able to use another supporter (Cheren/Bianca/Juniper/Skyla) to draw what you need. This is important because even if your Hugh to Ghetsis strategy hardly ever worked, a standalone Ghetsis strategy might. Consider, if you assumed that a Hugh to Ghetsis strategy never worked, would you still run Ghetsis? I mean, you would have to. If your opponent discovered you didn't run Ghetsis then they would always discard for Hugh without fear of a followup Ghetsis. That in itself fairly disruptive.

Also, your opponent may choose to discard only 3 of 4 items but keeping the last in hopes that you don't Ghetsis (but instead use another supporter) because you believe you wouldn't draw anything. Yes it is improbable that you would have so many supporters available to you at one time to choose from, but they would usually prepare for best and worst-case scenarios in this manner. They may also hang on to supporters like Catcher or Max Potion because it is better to have them shuffled away than discarded for good.