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I'm not trying to sound mean here and I know my opinion is rather pointless in this subject and you are vastly better than me, I realize this. Things I noticed about your list were, How can you pull all of that clunc off?
I am not one to talk considering my horrid list I sent in, but it just seems theres just NO room. The lack of "draw" is one thing, you told me yourself about my deck that I had a lack of draw, but I realize I didn't have the Azelf or the 2/2 line of clay just the 1/1, but still.
I would be assuming, this would be your ideal poke setup, active pokemon would most likely be Leafeon X?
the bench would be...1 Claydol, 1 Forretress, 2 Eevee, 1 pixie!
It would seem that there's just no room, I mean you could always let your stuff get KO'ed then play down the other pixies.
Mainly, im just atthat you run ZERO drawing supporters. Cynthia is not drawing IMO.
I am NO master deck builder to say the least so I am prolly not making any difference here.
Just don't bash me too hard on your reply:tongue:
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After really thinking about it, I shouldn't of said ANYTHING....*wishes for edit button*
If you want to talk about clunk, look at Magnechu's list in comparison to mine. We got the same scores, yet his runs a 3/3 Wailord line (bigger than Forretress), only two more draw cards, but no Uxie or Uxie LV.X. His also has even more cards to get out to maximize his combo. Lack of Vaporeon when he runs 5 Water Energy is questionable, as well. Since this is a contest where the judge (Cyrus) is going to compare lists, I have to provide explanations like this.
Try and show me what draw I should run? What is better than I have? Oak's Visit? Its card advantage is only +2.
Bench wise, yeah, you would want something like that. The thing is, my deck doesn't need everything out to work. Every single card abuses Forretress' Poke-Body or adds to the consistency in my list. Leafeon LV.X to attach two energy a turn to maximize the damage spread, Vaporeon to remove the damage Forretress creates, Azelf LV.X to remove damage, etc. There are constant options no matter how you set up in a given game to abuse the card, and that's why I feel like I got a 5 in that category.
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yoyofsho16
New Member
Wait, so are these the only people who make it to round 2? If not, then how many from each pod move on?
Cyrus
Iron Chef - Master Emeritus
This Friday: challenges for round two will be posted. Only pods 1 through 4 will compete.
Next Friday: challenges for round two will be posted. Only pods 5 through 8 will compete.
Tentative date: the bracket will be announced.
yoyofsho16
New Member
So you are saying no one is eliminated, correct?
You are absolutely correct that just because it's a 2/2 doesn't mean it's a tech.
Fortress lays damage on all Pokemon that aren't it. Did your deck try to take advantage of that in any way? Not from what I saw. I guess you could say that Vaporeon heals the damage done to your Pokemon, but that is only one half of the coin. The other half is taking advantage of that damage on the opponent. Using something that can take that damage and abuse it, like Bronzong doing 10 to everything that already has damage on it, or a Pokemon that has an attack that does more damage if the defending is already damaged.
Your list really didn't abuse that extra damage with any of the Pokemon. Because of that, I felt the deck wasn't focused on Fortress. Your deck did take advantage of the extra energy attachments from Leafeon lv.X through Fortress and you ran a much bigger line of the eeveelutions, thus making me feel that your deck was more focused on the eeveelutions than anything else.
edit: Also, your deck didn't take notice of moving the energy off of Forretress after it's attached. It's Poke-Power only activates when you attach energy to it. So, you must be willing to either attack with it, or move the energy off of it. Your deck was not designed to do either. I say you can only attach with Forretress in a blue moon because you run 4 metal energy and Forretress takes MMCC to attack, meaning that if one of your metals get gone (or prized), you can only attack with 1 Forretress the entire game (unless you recycle the energy). How can you say your deck was focused on Forretress when you didn't put any thought into how to move the energy off of it because you wouldn't be attacking with it that often?
Now, on the topic of other challenges, I feel one cannot just throw 4 of a card into their deck and declare that it is focused on that card. You can effectively get away with running 2/3 of a card and still have it focused on the card. The Unown ? deck that was posted could have ran 2 of it and I would have still felt it was focused on the card (even though I don't think overall it was focused on the card, this was just an example) since you don't need more than 1 of them on the field to use it's Poke-Power each turn. For each card, the numbers can change. For something like Cradily, I would say 3 or 4 since it should be the main attacker. For something like Weavile, I feel 2/2 would suffice since the card cannot be the main attacker, but you can focus on it by combining it with cards that can take advantage of it's Poke-Power. I guess in the case of Forretress, 2/2 will suffice, but I kind of feel more would be nice.
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Vegeta ss4
Iron Chef Leader
Thats what I was questioning...and I like your list Magnechu....
My original idea was similar with the lefeon X and such but instead of the stall I was going to run whishcash for the AMAZING D. Spread, I wonder if I would of went with my original deck, I would be up in this Elite score...
I mean you both are much better than me so I can't argue with the elitist but share an opinion.
And to Scizor(directly)
I feel your list would be better with a few draw cards!!!!
Things you could EASILY take out is Mesprit X like...:S:S
If you went your route Scizor I would of Ran SSU with Uxie for the amazing draw...something is about get koed, SSU it hopefully, and redo!
Then again, you could say that makes this deck EXTREMLY flippy!
I'm just not liking the list man, but it doesn't matter what my opinion is....but I think it would be pretty cool to see how the "real" Iron Cef should be. If this is the basis off the food challenge, then why not have 3 judges who are in NO connection to each other and arent in the tournament. They give their scores, and then you make an average of their scores...
Pro:
It makes a better tournament and takes away the possible biase stand-point of a certain playstyle.
It takes away the tie hopefully....it will atleast get rid of majority of ties because of the averaging of scores.
And it makes it a "Real" Iron Chef.
Cons:
Cant think of any at this point!
PS- I am enjoying this tournament and commen Cyrus of a solid job!
vanderbilt_grad
New Member
Prime my kids asked me to build an Armaldo deck after the pre-release so I actually started looking at it back then. I tried a bunch of different builds and hated them all for different reasons.
I tried it with Regirock, but it was slow and inconsistent. Hard to get 4+ energy in hand and Starks out early game.
I tried it with Relicanth, and had some of the WORST STARTS EVER.
I tried it with Groudon and never had enough energy in hand early game to make it worthwhile. Plus Groudon’s retreat cost made it so that I pretty much had to either just sacrifice him or use him as my lead off attacker ... and IMHO he works better as an attacker without Armaldo.
I tried it with Yanmega as a partner and it was inconsistent I either got the fossils out or the bug but never really seemed to be able to get setup like I thought I should. It was usually T3 or even T4 before I was going strong with Yanmega and building an Armaldo. Getting Armaldo, Claydol, and Yanmega out is hard.
I tried it with Leafeon and it was still slow and sometimes bad. Pretty much the same problem I had with Yanmenga.
That was all before Iron Chef. I had actually given up on creating a good Armaldo deck that I liked before the contest. The 4 in my binder looked mighty sad.
In addition to the bad starts and whatnot I had some problems I alluded to in my list. Armaldo. He hates conditions. If he gets confused for instance it really stinks, even if you are running something like Regirock and Starks ... that was one reason for the Yanmega pairing I figured Switch + Yanmega free retreat was a good idea there … and that Yanmega could spread while I set up Armaldo on the bench. But I ran into the second problem ... namely that having Fossil trainer support limits what you can in terms of having other supporters and Pokemon. It’s really difficult to fit in a strong line of Yanmega + Claydol, AND have room for Switch and other supporter stuff you might want while keeping consistency.
Then there was the problem with Armaldo’s attack. WAY too often the opposing test deck would “escape” the extra damage Armaldo does. Since it’s an effect on the defending Pokemon, they could retreat (Kingdra did that a lot), they could level up (Empoleon and Garchomp tended to do that), they could Warp (which could really mess with the deck depending on the list I used), they could run Unown G which just avoided it altogether. You get the picture. I needed that first attack to do 70 for the 2HKO on a really regular basis for Armaldo to win those games and he wasn’t. The decks I tested lost a lot. Sure Plus Power and Bucks help a ton for getting that first 70 ... but finding room for them and Excavator is a pain in the you know what. And yes I tried lists with them.
When I saw what I had for Iron Chef I literally groaned out loud. If I were a quitter I would have just given up. But I’m stubborn and I figured that I would come up with something. After a good night’s sleep I had my inspiration. I posted a silly & somewhat random Loppuny deck for fun here on the Gym a while back. One of the things that made is interesting was that Loppuny was doing 70 or 80 base damage most of the time. I realized that Weavile could do the same thing for Armaldo. Pushing the first strike damage up to 70 most of the time fixed a ton of the matchups. If I got the extra damage from Crush Claw, then great, but I was no longer dependant on it for most games.
Weavile & free retreat also fixed a lot of the other problem matchups. I had been testing against decks with Metagross and such that can drag things from the bench up. It stinks for Armaldo to have Claydol active and Weavile + Moonlight or Switch fixed that in a big way. My initial test lists had 3 Moonlight and 3 Switch for that very reason.
The final “fix” were the TS-1s. I couldn’t run enough Call Energy to make it worthwhile since Armaldo needs FFC and that C spot would be filled with Special Darks if I could and I needed enough Fighting energy to be able to get it in hand regularly via draw. But the Technical Machines ... once I tested those I knew I was set. My second test game I had a T2 Armaldo with 1 energy, normally he could do nothing, but with a TM I could. I used a Bebe’s for Baltoy and TS-1ed the Claydol. From there I just got everything out on my bench while I finished powering him up. The TS-1s allowed me to “attack” for setup early even evolving whatever they were attached to and fixed many of the constancy issues I had been having.
The odds of having a powered up T3 Armaldo are pretty good with this list, mostly because you frequently avoid having to waste those early energy attachments on anything but Fossils. You can have Armaldo attacking T2 with a lucky start, something none of my other lists were able to do as well as this one. Most of my other attempts were T4+ in terms of getting my first Armaldo out swinging. One of the keys here is potentially avoiding paying retreat costs on anything.
The Houndoom rarely got used in my testing, but I didn’t have time to really throw it at many of my grass lists. At most it’s a stopgap to do some unexpected damage I’ll freely admit, but sometimes that may be enough to swing a given game. He can take advantage of the extra damage from a Crush Claw done the turn before (assume Armaldo attacks with Crush Claw leaving the effect and then gets KOed). Promote Houndoom with 1 energy and he will swing for either 20 or 60 base + 40 from Crush Claw + Burn ... and if they are weak that’s even more. Sure it’s a best case scenario but even in the worst case Doom isn’t a bad tech.
I don’t think that it would hurt my list at all to get rid of him and add in +1 Switch and +1 Moonlight or to do the 1-1 tech of your choice. I also don’t think that it would hurt to do -1 Armaldo for +1 of something like Chatot. As long as you have the 4 Fossils I think you could get away with 3 Armaldos in most games.
Is my list the “best way” to run Armaldo? I don’t know for sure, probably not, but it’s the best one I’ve found that works for me so far.
Vanderbilt_Grad, maybe Gardevior SW to reuse the opponent's Buck's Training?
Fossil cards come into the competition with a limitation from the beginning. They are harder to work with than any other type of card. I think you did fairly well with what you were given.
Fossil cards come into the competition with a limitation from the beginning. They are harder to work with than any other type of card. I think you did fairly well with what you were given.
Darkwalker
New Member
Telepassing Buck's Training would just net you two cards since the Buck's will stay in their discard, and therefore not add 10 damage since it's not next to your active pokemon.
I toyed around with Weavile as well in Armaldo, but overall I discarded the concept since I didn't see the free retreat bonus as all that important. Rather than focusing on Armaldo's offense I tried to cover all of it's many, many weaknesses. That groan Vanderbilt_Grad mentioned was shared by me, as I really don't like Armaldo, much less the focus for a deck. I was a little surprised Vanderbilt_Grade didn't include any Unown G in his list to help cover Armaldo's weakness to conditions, but I definitely like his list and how it works.
I toyed around with Weavile as well in Armaldo, but overall I discarded the concept since I didn't see the free retreat bonus as all that important. Rather than focusing on Armaldo's offense I tried to cover all of it's many, many weaknesses. That groan Vanderbilt_Grad mentioned was shared by me, as I really don't like Armaldo, much less the focus for a deck. I was a little surprised Vanderbilt_Grade didn't include any Unown G in his list to help cover Armaldo's weakness to conditions, but I definitely like his list and how it works.
"Unknown V is something that makes this deck. A Cleanse Away without actually attacking? Amazing! It basically counteracts Forretress on your own side of the field! Stick Wailord up there and go nuts on Forretress and cleanse with Unknown V." Its not an attack but it ends your turn, so its not THAT amazing. I do like it in a fortress deck though. Nice play Mikey.
Rogue Archetype
Moderator <br> Contest Host
I underestimated how SERIOUS this contest is..
I thought we were just building for fun lists. You guys are building these things out and PLAY TESTING them and everything.... as if you're going to leave Iron Chef and head straight to battle roads with these decks !!
I'm definately going to have to step up my game here (not that it would do much good but... )
GREAT LISTS guys. You guys are mad clever!
I thought we were just building for fun lists. You guys are building these things out and PLAY TESTING them and everything.... as if you're going to leave Iron Chef and head straight to battle roads with these decks !!
I'm definately going to have to step up my game here (not that it would do much good but... )
GREAT LISTS guys. You guys are mad clever!
You can say the same thing about yours, in which you run another stage 1 than me which, while it is the main active, it isn't Forretress and isn't neccessarily always benefitting off of being active. (Wailord takes 4 energy, so you should have to wait longer to get going than my list). More options are good and make the deck more consistent.
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There's no way that Unown V is more original than like Fairies and adding NEW elements to the deck. Unown V is by far the most obvious card to use with Forretress and it was one of the reasons I didn't use it.
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Lol. What do you mean my deck didn't take advantage of the damage done? I run Azelf LV.X and Vaporeon to remove damage. With Uxie, this is more than enough to remove the damage done.
Your point on Bronzong is hugely flawed. You can't have Bronzong active if want to heal ANYTHING! Even running Unown V wouldn't make sense. Oh I'll heal with Unown.....OOOPS my turn ends and now I can't Pain Amplifier. Makes no sense. At least Vaporeon does damage.
4 Eevee is so you can ABUSE Forretress' BODY FASTER. I'm sorry for using Caps here, but some of your points are borderline ridiculous. Everything I ran with the Eevees BENEFIT Forretress or its spread ability.
Mikey's list ran what, 3 Metal? Give me a break! He runs another stage 1! You can say the same thing about his then, even MORESO in fact. Moving energy? Wow.
Your whole post just showed why 2/2 is effective and correct and you actually solidified MY points.
If you think Magenchu's list is better because he tries to "abuse" a 4 energy whale while taking attacking turns off, fine. But all of the Fairies add something to the deck. Moreso than Bronzong ever would.
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Scizor, or Chad if I may call you, I don't have information on anyone else's list. I form my opinions only after seeing yours. I have no favoritism or bias. I just speak how I feel.
If I may assume here, your strategy is to spread damage every turn with Forretress and heal yourself. Over the next few turns, the 20's will add up on the opponent and KO all their Pokemon. Isn't that the strategy?
I guess my main disagreement would that I would focus on the damage on the opponent and use attacks that would just OHKO whatever they have after a while. While it seems that you want to errect a wall and protect yourself for multiple turns until the damage can build up enough to KO all the opponent's Pokemon. The only difference is that your strategy will take longer to accomplish and leaves your Pokemon open to attacks from the opponent while mine goes on the offensive early and tries to take them out before they can really do any harm. Two possible strategies, neither better or worse, just different. I do not mean to make your strategy feel inadequite, just I would have played it differently.
You didn't mention the idea that you have no way to move the energy off of Forretress. What do you expect to do? Have a forretress with all your energy on it?
I never meant to be rude, but you certainly have become aggressive over my complaints. If I offended you, I apologize. I just meant to speak my thoughts on the ideas.
If I may assume here, your strategy is to spread damage every turn with Forretress and heal yourself. Over the next few turns, the 20's will add up on the opponent and KO all their Pokemon. Isn't that the strategy?
I guess my main disagreement would that I would focus on the damage on the opponent and use attacks that would just OHKO whatever they have after a while. While it seems that you want to errect a wall and protect yourself for multiple turns until the damage can build up enough to KO all the opponent's Pokemon. The only difference is that your strategy will take longer to accomplish and leaves your Pokemon open to attacks from the opponent while mine goes on the offensive early and tries to take them out before they can really do any harm. Two possible strategies, neither better or worse, just different. I do not mean to make your strategy feel inadequite, just I would have played it differently.
You didn't mention the idea that you have no way to move the energy off of Forretress. What do you expect to do? Have a forretress with all your energy on it?
I never meant to be rude, but you certainly have become aggressive over my complaints. If I offended you, I apologize. I just meant to speak my thoughts on the ideas.
Prime: Unown is not here to retreat regirock, if you ever start with it you better pray for a warp point (which i run 4 of them)
Unown's main purpose is to keep energy in play.
Once Eggs has attacked with his 1st attack, unown q helps to retreat it and SAVE energies.
This is incredibly good because one more energy in play might be crutial to attack with eggs later on the game.
Thats why i play 2 unowns, during the game you WILL retreat several times
Why would you discard energies that you NEED if you can play some unowns and avoid discarding them?
i think thats more than a fair point to run 2 of these guys
lmk your opinion
Agustin
Exeguttor only has 80HP, so I feel it will be OHKO'd more than not. I thought you wanted to get energy in the discard pile so Regirock can bring it back? I understand what you are saying, I am just saying that I don't think Unown Q will help that much. 2 retreat with Unown Q is still a lot.
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