The thing is, I think people are approaching the idea of a Zekrom deck wrongly right now. Most people look at Zekrom as the new donking star of the game because of how macho the card is. The goal is to stack your chances at getting an improbably combination of cards into your hand so you can wipe away your opponent's field. When I look at Zekrom, I equate it to the Haymaker deck of the Base Set days. It sets up quickly, but then it's able to keep hitting turn after turn. It's not the donking ability that makes the deck good, it is the consistency of the attacking cards.
Why Changing Format wont change the fact its still a crapshoot
- Thread starter SebastianS
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^THIS
It's not bad, it's just not good either. Fun to play, fun to play against. I've already built 5 HGSS decks, and zekrom loses to 4 of them....
sentimentGX4
New Member
What? Are you afraid of coming up with innovative deck ideas instead of copying decklists online?
It's no "crapshoot". Being able to judge and make a successful deck by yourself takes significant skill and grasp in the game.
SebastianS
New Member
When lacking a sufficient counter argument, turn it into a troll thread
thanks dude!
you truely understood it
Otaku
Active Member
Zekrom Donk needs FIVE cards in the OPENING HAND to even have a shot at donking. Without Zekrom active they're ruined. Without THREE LIGHTNING ENERGIES it's over. And if I have more than one Basic the whole thing is moot. This deck should really be looked at for its potential T2 or T3 rather than T1 IMO.
1 :lightning:
1 :lightning:
1 :lightning:
1 Zekrom
1 Pokemon Collector
Magical five card hand to autowin?
"I summon [DEL]Exodia[/DEL] Zerkom the Forbidden One. Zekrom obliterate!"
Now, because I want a better idea of what I am facing, can someone link me to some 'good' Zekrom FTKO decks? To destroy it, I must know it. To know it, I must become it!
I refuse to believe that this isn't some type of theorymon ploy to get us to try and build this deck that clearly has no inherent strategy.
Maybe once Catcher comes out but then there's the question that surely there is something better to pair with Pidgeot than some crappy uncommon with 90HP (in a format with attacks that hit for 120 with a 1 turn setup).
vaporeon
Moderator
It's a spread deck I working on.
---------- Post added 05/02/2011 at 02:07 PM ----------
Thats the only problem and last I check, most decks won't be able to take a 120 hit til about the third turn anyway.
vaporeon
Moderator
It won't if you use starters but if you can't get your next poke out ready to kill it, you won't be able to setup and we'll have another G-Dos format.
@Qwachansey- You do not need 3 Lightning. That is why good lists run Unown DARK.
So, open Zekrom. Collector and 2 Lightning = 120 T1. Not impossible. Pokemon Communication and Juniper/PONT will give you even more outs as well.
T1 Zekrom WILL get you 2, maybe 3 prizes right off the bat. I don't care what anyone says, that is SCARY. Bullados you are absolutely right.
So, open Zekrom. Collector and 2 Lightning = 120 T1. Not impossible. Pokemon Communication and Juniper/PONT will give you even more outs as well.
T1 Zekrom WILL get you 2, maybe 3 prizes right off the bat. I don't care what anyone says, that is SCARY. Bullados you are absolutely right.
vaporeon
Moderator
Just looking at everything we have right now, I still want to say this is a good format, but I'm not sure anymore. This might be start of the worse for ever. My reason is because of Rare Candy and the 2 Dragons.
With Rare Candy now Pokemon Breeder, basic decks can just rage through. With my testing, having to wait a turn to evolve through rare candy hurts. They hit for 120 and can take 2-3 prizes before you even get to do anything if they have not already killed your setup because there are no good starters to play right now. If you can kill one of their dragons, they can Fishermen or ER their energies back to their hand, making this format another G-Dos format. so if you play with stage one or stage 2 decks, you lose because they are now too slow.
With Rare Candy now Pokemon Breeder, basic decks can just rage through. With my testing, having to wait a turn to evolve through rare candy hurts. They hit for 120 and can take 2-3 prizes before you even get to do anything if they have not already killed your setup because there are no good starters to play right now. If you can kill one of their dragons, they can Fishermen or ER their energies back to their hand, making this format another G-Dos format. so if you play with stage one or stage 2 decks, you lose because they are now too slow.
Otaku
Active Member
Vaporeon, even if what you just said about the format is true... the problem would not be the nerfing of Rare Candy, though I do wish they had just quit printing it a few sets ago and started giving us Pokemon Breeder, myself, to preserve the card for Unlimited play. The problem would be the Basics that can actually hit so hard, so fast.
vaporeon
Moderator
That's another problem as well. We never had basics that could hit for 120+ with no real recoil from the attack. It makes setup hard and if you use starters, You'll be giving off 2-4 prizes before you can even make a come back and by that time, the game is over.
What they did to Rare Candy was not fair. The game is way too fast and not being able to evolve as soon as you play a Pokemon with Rare Candy makes stage 2 decks unplayable and there are no Pokemon around that can evolve your Pokemon. I do like the next format a lot, but it's not looking good because there will be no deck variation.
What they did to Rare Candy was not fair. The game is way too fast and not being able to evolve as soon as you play a Pokemon with Rare Candy makes stage 2 decks unplayable and there are no Pokemon around that can evolve your Pokemon. I do like the next format a lot, but it's not looking good because there will be no deck variation.
Where are you getting 120 with no recoil? Zekrom does 40 to it self and Reshiram discards 2 energy, specifically fire. You can offer that Zekrom/Reshiram can take 2 or 3 prizes while you set up, but remember we still have Twins in the same format, which can easily turn the game around. The Rare Candy change hardly makes Stage 2 decks unplayable, sure you can't run 2 main stage 2 lines anymore like you could with Tomb/Claydol, but it puts Stage 2 decks at a little slower pace than stage 1 decks, which isn't all that bad. I'm sure no one would want to see Tepig/Candy/5x Fire, top deck Emboar going first, how to turn a unplayable hand into a game win.
We can all cut the insult crap here the format is brand new and nothing is proven so its kind of hard to judge whats a good list vrs. bad list for any deck yet.
---------- Post added 05/03/2011 at 12:27 AM ----------
I'm sitting on 30 some Rare Candy I would hate to become worthless just because of a Breeder reprint. While I can appreciate unlimited play it can't factor in to these kind of decesions.
Otaku
Active Member
Except by that logic, shouldn't they avoid an early rotation? Wouldn't that be grounds for them to have not significantly altered the text for Rare Candy in the first place?
I am wondering if you fully understood what I was saying. I am not saying to reprint Pokemon Breeder now. I am saying that as soon as it was realized that the potency of Rare Candy was the main hang-up for Trainers being allowed first turn, we needed Rare Candy to quit showing up in so many sets. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps that is what they did do as Unleashed isn't super recent. Plus, knowing you if this was coming down the pike in an obvious manner, you wouldn't be sitting on 30+ Rare Candy, would you? You might not have been able to reduce yourself down to the amount you'd have wanted for the occasional Unlimited foray, but again you've shown yourself to be a good trader and you'd probably be down to maybe one or two extra play sets, tops. Plus, you'd have made a killing snapping up older copies of Pokemon Breeder in order to capitalize on the demand for it in my theoretical scenario.:lol:
I always think the overall health of the game matters. If nerfing Rare Candy was better for the game than reprinting Pokemon Breeder and letting Rare Candy rotate out, hey TPC made the right decision. I am not entirely convinced that having to issue such a significant errata was better than simply rotating it out, but neither am I certain my suggestion would be better. The effects of the secondary market are important, and more important to the game's health than Unlimited play. Neither trumps a healthy game itself, hence why something has to be done at all, even though the early rotation is probably messing up a lot of trader/sellers who were counting on the normal September 1st rotation and another two months to unload their old-but-not-yet-Unlimited-format-only stock.
There are people who play Unlimited, because they are semi-retired and only bust out their decks to play a friend periodically. Yeah, rules changes are a pain for them as well. Again, health of the current game comes first. I find it foolish to completely dismiss this aspect of the game. As in if all things were revealed to be even for how to handle Rare Candy, catering to Unlimited could tip the balance. Unlimited has very low priority, but it is unwise to ignore it completely from a business standpoint.
Good luck with Finals.:thumb:
Stop. Breathe. Think. I am sorry if that sounds condescending, but perhaps you'll forgive me because I've had this discussion so many times over the course of the Pokemon TCG, and many others.
When it comes to balancing a format for a TCG, you need to
- Identify the problem.
- Identify the exact cause of the problem.
- Create strategies (plural) to deal with the problem.
- Evaluate strategies to find the best one, avoiding creating future problems or returning to old ones.
- Implement the best strategy.
- Big Basic Pokemon we have will cause the game to degenerate into what the format used to be like in the days when Unlimited was the Standard format.
- This rests on two record setting Basic Pokemon that just came out in the Western metagame, and in a format that does not yet officially exist there.
- Probable solutions would be to make Evolutions stronger, create balancing agents that will counter those two Basic Pokemon (or Basic Pokemon in general), after giving players time to come up with their own solutions.
- We can only half complete this step. If Rare Candy had not been altered, Evolution based donk decks would dominate. Cards like Donphan Prime would easily be able to donk players, and those decks they didn't donk they would still be hard to fight off a swarm of them. Thanks to Double Colorless Energy, many Stage 1 and 2 Pokemon would always be a come-from-nowhere threat. Basic Pokemon would exist only to Evolve and occasionally for a turn 1/2 set-up option. We have had multiple formats like this, so it is a pretty safe conclusion. We players need time to see if there are already solutions in the game and we just aren't using them. Fighting Weakness is pretty easy to exploit on Zekrom. Reshirom doesn't have donk potential to my knowledge. The fact that it needs Evolutions to power up fast gives most decks time to set themselves up before losing and indeed could be a weakness that can be exploited, especially if we get a Fossil Muk style Pokemon soon that shuts down Abilities. Even if we don't, the simplest solution wouldn't be to overpower Evolutions, but probably to ban the two problem Pokemon.
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