Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

No Hand For You!!! - Updated with first game!

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Thanks for helping my thread by bumping it even more!

Seriously, I could report your post and get it deleted, but I'd rather not.

Prize_Card, many of my threads go un-replied too. Usually, people will reply if the name of the deck catches their attention and they feel a need to. Also, sometimes people will only check out your thread if they recognize your name. I don't like it either, but that is how it is.

All in all, if you have the same idea, then use the comments in this thread to help you deck too. Unless you only want to get fame for posting it "first".

Also, if you haven't counted, your thread has 3 more posts in it than mine, and half of this thread is me replying to others. So none of your claims stand up anyways.

Bullados, any suggestions before your article goes up?

Aggy, I don't really like Lugia. It only removes energy with a flip of a coin. So only have the time will you actually remove energy. And if the opponent's pokemon has any energy on it, Lugia's attack doesn't do much at all. Lugia has synergy with energy removal 2, but the whole deck isn't about removing energy, it's more about removing cards from the opponent's hand.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.
 
Prize_Card said:
I made this deck first :( not fair that this deck gets more comments and regonition. my deck of this is 5 pages back.
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We try to make things fair in this forum for both the experienced, the well-known, as well as the inexperienced and the unknown.

The forum guidelines are 50% designed to keep people from boasting, boosting, bumping and berating concerning their decks.

Prime put it nicely to you... so please don't post a complaint/pointer about your deck in his thread again. Try this: put a link to it in your sig, and make a really constructive 'fix' for his deck.

On the one hand, we want new players to feel comfortable posting their ideas, so we don't want people bashing and rating. The give and take is that people who post decks can't bent out of shape or manipulate things if their post doesn't get the mention they think it deserves. Experienced members of this forum find that tiresome and its makes the place hard to read for them.

Back to this deck:

I'm interested for some playtesting results to come out vs. a deck like this. Personally, if I were playing the deck, I'd want something to make my opponent pay for getting up a big hitter mid game (e.g. Powered Blissey or Salamence ex PK) or board control Pokemon (e.g. Feraligatr ∂)... I'd want something to clear that PKMN off the field, so that Absol and friends can settle back in to hand destruction. An Arcanine might fill that role. Maybe a Likilicky could defer my opponents hitter via some board control.
 
My biggest suggestion? Double Rainbow Energy. The point of this deck isn't to deal insane amounts of damage. It's to deny your opponent their ability to set up. Without DRE and with an Absol start, it's impossible to get a T2 Ambipom going, which really should be your goal with this deck. My version is much more basic than this version, focusing a lot more on overloading the Ball Trainers, especially Quick, and using those to make sure that I get what I need as quickly as possible. Of course, Castaway/CC is too obvious of a combo NOT to use. I might actually try the Beach idea in my version as well. Even though it hurts my DREs, it's not devastating, as you can still power quickly. And, you can be pretty well assured that your opponent will want to Windstorm the Beaches away as soon as possible.
 
I like this deck.
However, i think 4 Castaway is a bit overkill, and you don't have enough TGM.
4 Battle Frontier AND 4 Ces. Crystal? Wayy too much. Take out the BFs for 4 Crystal Beach, they will help against Blissey ans DRE and Scramble in general.
 
Your weakness is Fightning, so may add something Psychic, to counter that weakness? SOmething good Psychic Stage 1 pokémon, with doin' good damage? Banette SW?
 
I'm not too much of an Aimbipom fan. I'm thinking that the general response to him is just to sack a basic or two to get setup and then deal with the discard or not as I see fit ... though I totally realize that your list is designed to make that much harder to do. Essentially it seems like his strategy is a luck based one ... abet one that you can stack in your favor a bit more than the traditional coin flip decks do. Once an opposing deck does manage to get setup Ambipom is just so easy to KO though.

I've thought about a similar concept using Walrein instead. You still have a forced discard with the attack but Wal is just so much more durable. I love Freeze Up too! Even without good hand control I've seen one lucky Freeze up win games by itself.

If you do stick with Ambipom consider some DRE for speed.
 
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I'll just take my loss to fighting, thanks. LOL, it's experimental, and just an idea. I'll try to fix the fighting problem when I decide to play it for a real tournament.

Ambipom is an experiment. I feel Absol will do much of the blunt work in the deck. That is why I don't run 4-4 Ambipom and 3 Absol and instead run it the other way around. Ambipom offers a way to disrupt energy and maybe force cards out of their hand. But it doesn't FORCE cards out of their hand, if you know what I mean, like Absol does. They have a choice with Ambipom, and Ambipom is a stage 1 that takes 2 energy, so it's going to be harder to setup.

Overall, the whole idea of the thread was just to spread the idea. I know it might not be the best list, and I know it might not be the best version of the deck. But I wanted to get the idea out there to the community.

Bugsbite, I only went to 1 Pre-Release and pulled only 1 Absol, which I traded to a friend because he really wanted it. He ended up being the Honchkrow/Absol player I keep losing to. Of course I've beat him plenty of time too, but I'd have to be blind not to see the pure strength of hand denile since it's the only real reason I've lost any games to him.

I've thought about running Mr. Mime to stall so I could setup and maybe limit their hand even more.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.
 
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I've played against the Absol/Honchkrow deck, and it's quite good in the right hands. Honchkrow keys into the Fighting Weakness by providing Resistance. However, the deck then becomes susceptible to good Lightning decks.

I'm so intrigued by the possibility of these decks becoming big that I'm either going to play one like it, or else play the counter to it. What is the counter? hehe...

First, a taste of your own medicine... Absol.

Then, some fun for you... Sableye.

Then... well, we'll show you later!
 
This deck needs MOAR Mudkipz...
Drop the Great Balls for Roseanne's. With only 14 energy, a little more searching can't hurt.
Drop the Battle Frontiers for Crystal Beaches. With Cessation Crystal run in 4's. I dont think you really need much more shut off capabilities.
Looks like fun, enjoy.
 
2 great ball + 2 mentors + 4 quick ball

assuming u'll begin with 1 basic poke, there're like 7 left, mentor grab 3 at once, which means 4 left.
4 basics and 4 evo. 50% chance of getting ambipom. mentor again on second turn will make almost 100% sure. great ball hurts the absol trick, so 2 would be nice imo.
4 mars is a must here also imo
 
*this post might be rude and might offend someone, If u suffer from heart attack, pls skip this, thanks.

4 Mars, for sure.

And, have u actually played this deck? I had played this kind of deck too, and hand disturp doesnt seems to win lots of games for me. Ur opponent might draw into something like copycat or TVR (or even trainer) after TGW or ur attack, and since trainers are getting more and more popular, u might see : TVR, dex, great ball, fast ball, etc ...

u might wanna test this out a lot...
 
Because Ambipom is so weak, I think I'd play this with a backup attacker that maybe doesn't have synergy with Ambipom's attack and disruption, but that is bulky and has HP that will allow it to stick around for a while. I'd try something like Magmortar SW, since it has high HP, is still a stage 1, and can also bench hit, making it more critical for them to keep a hand or get ohko'd by Ambipom. Also, Ambipom's first attack is good itself, and really the success of Ambipom rests on using it's first attack in the right spots.
 
vanderbilt_grad said:
I'm not too much of an Aimbipom fan. I'm thinking that the general response to him is just to sack a basic or two to get setup and then deal with the discard or not as I see fit ... though I totally realize that your list is designed to make that much harder to do. Essentially it seems like his strategy is a luck based one ... abet one that you can stack in your favor a bit more than the traditional coin flip decks do. Once an opposing deck does manage to get setup Ambipom is just so easy to KO though.

I've thought about a similar concept using Walrein instead. You still have a forced discard with the attack but Wal is just so much more durable. I love Freeze Up too! Even without good hand control I've seen one lucky Freeze up win games by itself.

If you do stick with Ambipom consider some DRE for speed.
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I don't like Aimbipom much either. I played Aimbipom with Walrein in the Asheville BR and played more of it at home and it is very inconsistent. Trying some new things with him that look promising. Freeze UP is great.
 
ii say switch the number of mars and wager, i say that because you opponent will play 1-2 wager, and you don't wann shuffle your hand too much because you may have something set up so mars is a better play because if yur opponent is drawing dead, which is what you want, then a steady stream of mars will hurt them more than a wager will

so 4 mars
2 wager
but if you wann kill someones hand a good combo would be

Rhyperior/delcatty
constrain their hand then play mars then evolve rhyperior...
but thats going in a different direction

but i agree with you i am building a hand disruption deck and, it's comming along nicely. PM
 
I really like the idea of hand disruption as well. But as most of the posts that have come earlier the pokemon you have chosen are really weak to fighting and you have no heavy hitter which could cause a problem in getting you the win. When I think of hand disruption I think of Empoleon lv. X. Its poke-power lets you limit their hand even more and it can do a fair amount of damage if you need it to.
 
Wow, I don't even reply and this thread keeps going. Great job folks.

Well I got the Absols in today and the first thing I did was build the deck and test it against an experimental Blissey/Furret deck of mine. Note that I don't see the Blissey deck as being that good, but it's decent enough to get good information from when playing against.

I played a game of Absol/Ambipom versus Blissey/Furret.

The Absol deck started with Absol with an Absol in the hand. The Blissey started with a Sentret (the best start IMHO for the deck). The absol deck went first. I don't remember everything that happened so I will just talk about what I saw. The Absol discarded multiple Blisseys early on, and with the help of TGMars (which I grabbed with Castaway), I was able to keep the Blissey's hand low. Furret helped a bit to setup a Blissey, but I was able to limit the hand enough to two-hit KO it with Ambipom. For many turns the Blissey deck has no hand and was just using the one card it'd draw for whatever use it had. The blissey deck was able to grab a few prizes here and there. The Absol deck didn't get that many prizes because it was focused more on discarding the opponents hand. Around mid-game, Blissey had 3 prizes left, but Absol was definitely winning board-wise. The Blissey had a very small hand, couldn't build another Blissey and just had out a Furret with 2 Chancey. The Absol deck had discarded 3/4 of the Blisseys through various means. The deck looked to be in the bag for the Absol deck until the Blissey deck started to power up Furret and do 40's. Since any kind of offense really messes up Absol (because Absol can't counter with big damage), Furret was able to get a few more prizes and draw into a Night Maintenance. After that single Night Maintenance (shuffling in 3 Blissey), the Blissey deck started to come back. The Absol deck started playing multiple Wagers back to back, and won 2/3 of them and was able to limit Blissey's hand once again followed by Absol's first attack. But 130HP is a beast, and Blissey was able to slowly draw into a good supporter and with Absol's lack of damage, Blissey started rolling once more. It came down to the wire. Blissey was able to KO multiple Absol and won. Both decks only had like 3-7 cards left in them and if the Absol deck could have stalled a little longer, it might have won.

What did I observe in the games?
  • Without a counter stadium in Blissey, Crystal Beach makes all those Boosts useless. It detered Blissey, but didn't really hinder it. Blissey didn't need the Boosts to deal 70 (Absol) or 80 (Ambipom) damage.
  • Team Galaxy's Wager didn't come in use that much at all. When I was able to limit the Blissey's hand very early on, I didn't want to use Wager and risk giving them 3-6 cards. Mars on the other hand was very useful along with Absol.
  • Cessation Crystal is going to be useless in many matchups. Kricketune, many Blissey decks, Banette variants, etc. It might be a better idea to run Strength Charm in it's place.
  • ER2 was useful early on when I was able to flip heads, but didn't really make a big difference in the long run. I think I'll keep it in the deck though.
  • Absol did the blunt of the work with Ambipom getting one KO on a Blissey thanks to it not having much of a hand. It's 2 energy attacks kind of got in the way, especially when I was retreating a lot to activate and abuse Absol's second attack.
  • Absol's second attack was hard to use. I had to retreat a lot. If Absol had free retreat, this would be a mute point, but with only 14 energy in the deck, having to retreat all the time hurt a bit.
  • Steven's Advice was decent, but Copycat needs to go. It definitely doesn't work if the opponent has a small hand.
  • Warp Point was useful late game to disrupt the field, especially with little energy on the opponent's side of the field.
  • Dual Ball worked rather well. Especially with Mentor to back it up.
Overall, I feel the strategy worked. I was able to eliminate the Blissey's hand very quick, but wasn't able to keep it limited, especially with the Blissey deck drawing prizes.

I feel I would probably make the following changes:

-2 Wager
+2 Mars
-2 Cessation Crystal
+2 Strength Charm
-1 Crystal Beach
+1 Holon Circle (to stall, an idea I guess)
maybe -2 Warp Point and +2 something useful (like more draw)
-1 Copycat
+1 Prof. Oak's Visit (maybe)

And I might reconsider the whole Ambipom idea. I don't feel Blissey would with the deck. Blissey doesn't help limit the opponent's hand. And many cards that might work to limit the opponent's hand can't really use dark energy that efficiently. Maybe Honchkrow is the play.

I think for the first game, against a decent deck, Absol/Ambipom did really well. With more tweaks and testing, I think it could do even better.
 
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