Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

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

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I seriously think that you should run Honchcrow over Ambipom. Main reason is that Ambipom is giving your opponent a choice and obviously they are going to pick whatever suits them better. Especially if you are going up against a Bannette deck, they'll discard then take no damge from Charity Tail, and Ambipom has fighting weakness while Honchkrow has resistance. And Honchkrow dosent give them a choice and its an automatic discard (shuffle back to opponents deck, but its less cards in thier hand.) He also has the LvX which I think its really handy, it can hit Lucario LvX when he uses stance and it can also hit his pokemon on the bench or use its other attack to get back something like Mars from your graveyard. Just saying Ambipom < Honchkrow
 
But if the deck runs Honchkrow, it can't run all the disruptive cards like Cessation Crystal (or it can, but not be used that often), Battle Frontier (see Cessation Crystal), or Crystal Beach (many times, a DRE is needed in the beginning to quickly power Honchkrow).

I plan on testing Honchkrow, but I still need 1 more (already have the lv.X) and 2 MT Murkrow before I can adequately test that.

You are welcome to test it yourself and see if it's better. That's half the battle, learning what cards are better than others.
 
Looking at your other alternatives for Ambipom, I think a 4-2-2 Weavile line could work ok. SW one powers up Absol and DP Weavile, then you move in for the massive damage with DP Weavile when you can. Then again, since your strategy is mainly hand disruption, perhaps a 4-3-1 Weavile line could work better since the SW one supports the strategy, and have 1 DP Weavile as a late game-ish heavy hitter. You can still use Cessation Crystal as you have no need for SW Weavile's power really. Weavile covers both possible Gardy threats somewhat as well Fire decks (Weavile is resistent to Gardy attacks, and SW Weavile plays on Fire deck Weakness).

Also, I wish I had a Honchkrow Lv X. But $16 on Ebay is expensive :(
 
I don't really like the DP Weavile since it's damage is relied on how many energy I have in play. The Absol deck I am playing currently never has that much energy in play. And I most likely wouldn't want to waste attacks to get energy when I could just be using Absol and discarding their hand.

SW Weavile is a little better, but IMHO, lacks the damage needed to really KO a theat. Ambipom is able to two-hit KO anything in the format if the opponent can't discard 2 cards. The only thing better than that would be doing that kind of damage without it being so reliant on opponent's hand size.

Thanks for the suggestions though.
 
If you have trouble keeping energy, how about putting one or two Energy Recycle Systems in? I know it's not central to the strategy, but you did mention it being a possible problem with retreating. And I'm not sure what you'd take out for them.
 
prime, i've gotta say,that when i've been testing weavipom, i've found out that inferncatty is a hard matchup because of energy draw and ohko's, if you can get the energies out of the oppening hand and for the rest of the game, you prevent the draw, but you will just be powering up ape x, or delcatty ex,

in my playtesting since i have used blissey, it seems like that is the only thing that has saved me, it's a differrent deck but the low hp is the same, so maybe you should try that, scramble would accomidate your quick damage with blissey, since you give away absols , this strategy also helps the weakness to other donkers, like bannette, and lucario varients,

good luck
 
Played my variant against Blissvire- came down to last prize
+ warps/switches key
+ Cess Crystal big bonus in this matchup, will go from 2 to 3 in my version not being able to baby evolve, downdraw etc made his life tough
- Battle Frontier not doing much, no Delcatty etc. in this area, will go with 2 Cystal Beach

problems: opp. ran 3 Copycat- made life REALLY hard

Played against Magmortar w/2-2 RK9 won 6-2 on prizes
+ Cess crystal again a help
pretty much ate this deck, got good ER2 flips

Played against Blisscario lost----
He went first, Riolu, Energy, Chan on bench, heads
Lone Absol, knocked Blissy out of his hand
Lucario, Energy GG

Played against same deck again--- won 6-0
He went first, Chan active, Chan on bench
Absol start, aipom on bench, Ambi in hand, discarded his whole hand

I like this deck- it is fun and thoughtful to play, still needs some tweaking
I'm not sure I'll see it at cities though due to the preponderance of Lucario in the area

Anytime Taylor -- nice to see you out & about again!
 
It's good to hear that the idea is working out for some people. Don't give me any credit for it though. I didn't create the idea. I just had the same idea and posted it.

I'd love to hear more about people's experiences with the deck (outside of just playtesting with themselves).
 
I think the a Houndoom in dp4 will be a good replacement for the monkey

Houndoom L.41 – Darkness – HP90
Stage 1 – Evolves from Houndour

[D] Darkness Fang: 20 damage. Choose 1 card from your opponent’s hand without looking and discard it.
[R][C] Dark Flame: 40 damage. You may discard either 1 Fire Energy or 1 Darkness Energy attached to Houndoom. If you discarded a Fire Energy, the Defending Pokemon is now Burned. If you discarded a Darkness Energy, this attack does an additional 30 damage.

Weakness: Water (+20)
Resistance: Psychic (-20)
Retreat: 1

(Thanks to Pokebeach for the translations)
 
Blassari, Houndoom's attack says that you can discard either a fire or dark energy attached to it. If you discard a dark energy, the attack does 30 more damage. If you discarded a special dark energy, because Houndoom is a dark-type pokemon, you would also get +10 damage off of that. So you could do potentially 80 damage on T2.

I definitely like Houndoom, it's first attack disrupting the hand, and it's second attack doing multiple things. It can abuse dark energy, and has resistance to psychic. How good the Houndour is could make a difference though.

Recently, I tested this idea with Banette SW instead of Ambipom. I had to switch the dark energy over to psychic and 4 multi, which worked fine with Absol since I use it's first attack more often than it's second attack and it only requires one colorless energy. The Banette was alright, but it was really hard to keep getting a Banette in the discard pile other than just sacrificing another Banette. The deck couldn't run Quick Ball effectively, so even with 3 TV Reporter and Mentor in the deck, it didn't work that well. I'm still testing it, but I don't think it is going to work that well. Banette's damage is just so unreliable.
 
Prime: OKay, but the Translatios says "This attack does an addotional 30 Damage". I thought that means that the attack only does 30 damage... Shouldn't that say "If you discarded Darkness Energy, this attack does 30 more damage."
 
It's just a translation from a non-official PUI source. Most likely PUI will reword it to what it usually says when it comes time to print Great Encounters.
 
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