I'd be happy to playtest it, though sadly, I'll probably never be able to do it against you directly. I'm totally different timezone to you all, and am busy with full time work, not to mention my site. I've been altering my trainer builds recently, trying to make Mercury quicker, and I'd love to see what could be done here, but as far as playtesting goes, except for maybe having someone at my league building this and testing it against them, all I'm good for would be some build advice for whoever wants to take Mercury against this thing.
TacC said:
Archaic, honestly Mercury would have almost no way of beating this deck.
What I just outlined in my post previous would seem to be a pretty easy way to me, but anyway...
TacC said:
It takes 2 Energy to get free retreat, and at least 2 to pay for retreat if its not free. Here's what happens:
Eventually you run out of Stadiums and can't counter Frontier.
Irrelevant, as far as I see it, seeing as Mercury doesn't need its abilities every single turn here. Significant damage can be done in just one turn without Battle Frontier active, every time Mercury plays a Stadium, and that's all that's needed. Also, this deck's ability to get Battle Frontier isn't rather limited, seeing as it'd have to waste an attack getting the card.
TacC said:
Then they Pow! all of your Energy to the bench until you run out of Energy.
They can only Pow! so many times before it has to start using Minun's attack to get them back, and they can't really afford to waste that time. Also, they have to be losing to use that Pow! What if Mercury is the one down on prizes initially?
TacC said:
Then they obliterate your bench and you can't get anything good Active.
Anything protected by Holon WP on the bench can't be hurt by any attack they'd realistically be able to throw. Not to mention that, as I just pointed out here before, getting rid of the bench (leaving Mercury initially down on prizes, and making Pow! irrelevant), leaving a Pokémon with Holon WP attached as the only active, is an effective counter to this deck.
TacC said:
Any time you attach an Energy, it gets Pow!ed and you're back where you were last turn, still not able to attack and still not in any position to win the game.
And what makes you think energies would be attached from hand to the active? Not to mention that they can only Pow! so many times, and can only do so when they're down on prizes, something no sane Mercury player would let them get until it no longer mattered.
TacC said:
There are a lot of cards/moves that hurt this deck but Mercury only has 1 or 2 of them and no way to search for them. Not to mention the fact that you'd expend all your resources just to attack and all that will do is make Pow! more powerful :frown:
You're just going to have to take my word on this, sorry.
If people are going to throw Pow!'s all over the place like you seem to suggest, it seems more like it's this deck which will run out of its counters, before Mercury does. Oh, sure, they could all end up being eternal, but they still need to waste a whole turn grabbing it, once they've exhausted the deck.
As far as Mercury's searching for the counters for this deck goes....(Holon Tranciever =>) Holon Lass => Holon Energy WP. Wow, how hard was that? Granted, it's not guarenteed, but it doesn't need to be. The same goes for the other counters, Space Center for Wobby (Correct me if I'm wrong, but even if it's evolved, it's still also a basic, not a stage 1, so it's vulnerable), and Warp Point for all-purpose switching. They will all more than likely turn up from an Admin or Porygon2 draw at some point. No need to search specifically for them when you can simply calculate the odds and make sure you include the right amount of cards in your deck.
Both decks are built for long matches which take up most of the timeframe, so that you rarely get more than the initial match in a best out of 3. There will be a lot of jockeying for position, as both sides try to set themselves up, and matches will go down to the wire simply because each side is forced into long periods where they can do practically nothing to the other, for fear of the counters, counter-counters, and counter-counter-counter's coming into play. (I could easily see both sides passing their attacks for long stretches, because Mercury doesn't want to go up on prizes until it can setup a backup attacker for when Pow! hits, and this deck doesn't want to go up on prizes and lose the threat of Pow!) Mercury will not "own" this deck, in the sense that the matches would be quick victories, but it should win the majority of matches between competant players of the decks.
Or so it looks to me on paper, anyway. You would probably say that Battle Frontier is a hard counter to Mercury. I'd say it's a soft counter, and that Mercury doesn't need its PokéPower's for anything more than the few short turns that its own stadium's would be able to buy it, if even that, and that you can't get it consistantly, something which you'd dispute. Likewise, I say that Holon WP on a Gardevoir, with a clear bench (or with only WP attached backup Pokémon) is a hard counter to this deck, while you'd say that I couldn't get them out consistantly, something that I'd dispute. Really, there's only one way for this to be settled, and that's for competant and experienced players of both decks (and right now, with the limited amount of people playing either deck, there's few of those) to playtest them over and over against each other.
Anyway, putting that aside now, I'm interested to know....how has this deck done in metagame testing against the current main US decks? Has it actually been tested against all of them yet, and if so, what are the win/loss ratios? I think that's a lot more important and interesting to most of the people reading this, than yet another long drawn out debate on the merits (or lack thereof, depending on your perspective) of Mercury Vs. the latest deck on the block.
