Week 6: Pooka's Fix - Toolbox

[Pooka]

Sorry for the delay, folks. After searching the forums for something good, I thought we could come up with various ideas on this topic. Enjoy!

Originally Posted by Jayson

Let me illustrate the timeline of my deck a little:

The original pokemon lineup looked like this:
3-3 Slowking UF
4-4 Kingler d CG

With so few basic pokemon I would often go through at least 1-2 mulligans every game, and with no delta basics, and with such a high probability of getting stuck starting with a useless castform, I had to remove all mentorable energy from the deck. It wasn't very consistent.

Next, I did this:
3-3 Slowking UF
3-3 Quagsire d DF
4-4 Kingler d CG
3 holon's castform

But with so much room devoted to pokemon, and so much extra room needed for tools, I was running only twelve energy (4 metal, 4 scramble, 4 DRE) and that created problems early in the game when I couldn't attach my DREs or scrambles to the basics I had out and would miss one or two energy drops early in the game. I tried dropping Kingler d to 3-3, but it severely reduced his effectiveness as a swarmer. Still inconsistent.

Next:
4-4 Kingler d CG
2-2 Quagsire d DF
2-2 Ledian d DF
3 castform

The plan with this deck was to either start drawing with castform or Ledian early on, or use a Wally's training for a T1 or T2 kingler. I've never been a big fan of the 2-2 evolution line though, except possibly as tech in an EX-heavy deck. Also, having so few ledybas made a ledian start very uncommon. I wanted to increase one of my support pokemon to 4-4, but I didn't think ledian could take over in dealing out damage once my kinglers had run out during a game, so I decided to go with 4-4 quagsire. Here's the current list:

Pokemon (19)
4- Krabby CG
4 - Kingler d CG
4 - Wooper d DF
4 - Quagsire d DF
3 - Holon's Castform HP

Energy (13)
4 - Metal
4 - Double Rainbow
3 - Fire
2 - Scramble

Trainers (28)
2 - Holon Mentor
2 - Castaway
4 - Wally's Training
3 - Mary's Request
1 - Copycat
2 - Mr. Briney's Compassion
4 - Windstorm
3 - Mysterious Shard
1 - Crystal Shard
2 - Energy Root
2 - Cessation Crystal
2 - Buffer Piece

The strategy is purely rush and swarm, the ideal set-up is a 100 hp quagsire or kingler on T2 hitting for 60 or 70. One-use tools like Buffer Piece, Mysterious Shard, and Crystal shard can be returned to your hand with Quagsire's power to be reused as needed. Generally speaking, most safeguard pokemon aren't very effective attackers, and most decks only include one or two. Mysterious shards comboed with Quagsire's power can make any pokemon in this deck a safeguard pokemon over and over. And once all your quagsires are out, you can briney them back into your hand to use their power again, keeping your tools flowing back into your hand.

[Dendrobatida]

I know you get first full stab at this, but some of my immediate thoughts are that Wally's Training is not the play (nothing in here has free retreat, an attack that can be used t1 for any major effect, etc.). Celio's would work far better.

As far as his early energy drop problems, I would think one or two holon's magnemite would work just fine - he could get them with mentor or celios

The holon castforms seem a bit odd to me. He has the woopers, but that's it, since krabby isn't a d. Wouldn't something like Mawile make a better starter?

I do like the idea of constantly recycling mysterious shards.

[Pooka]

Forget the Wally's/Celio's, why not play Holon Researcher? In fact, I'm quite surprised he runs no Holon Transceiver. It just seems to fit in the deck.

There are several different ways to run Quagsire (which IMO should be the focal point of the deck). I'm not quite sure Kingler is the way to go. Other possibilities are Stantler, which is recently gaining in popularity, or some other d line, like Exeggutor, Raichu, etc.

Castaway needs to be at 3-4; it's too important! In addition, it can help with Energy problems. Clearly the problems come from simply not running enough Energy - there are only 7 Energy that can be attached to Basics. As you said, Holon's Magnemite would help loads.

We could examine each Tool and its potential usefulness in the current metagame. There's a lot of things we can do with this.

If you have some ideas you want to get out there, feel free to go ahead first. There's plenty of options for everyone to work with on this. I won't have mine for a couple days since I'm busy with applying for college stuff.

[Dendrobatida]

Originally Posted by Pooka

Forget the Wally's/Celio's, why not play Holon Researcher?

Celio's doesn't require a discard, and unlike researcher, can grab the krabbys and holon pokemon.

[Pooka]

On the other hand, Researcher is searchable via Transciever, and Mentor can grab the things you mentioned regardless. To me, the Transceiver/Researcher route is much more versatile than Celio. Even if you're worried about the discard, you could always just discard a Tool. The first time you play Quagsire, you simply get the Tool back anyway.

[Cyrus]

I'll post some full-fledged thoughts eventually, but here's my take on his list:


Pokemon (19)
4- Krabby CG
4 - Kingler d CG
4 - Wooper d DF
4 - Quagsire d DF
3 - Holon's Castform HP ~Not good. Holon's castform can not possibly set this deck up well.

Energy (13)
4 - Metal
4 - Double Rainbow
3 - Fire ~Energy counter in general is too low, especially since this deck has few cheap attacks, unlike raieggs.
2 - Scramble ~add at least one more here.

Trainers (28) ~Undeveloped holon engine, wally<researcher, and (in my opinion) incorrect bias for the tools. Focus needs to be on cessation, the most lethal tool in the format right now. Windstorm may be wasted space compared to other things, like more energy or draw.
2 - Holon Mentor
2 - Castaway
4 - Wally's Training
3 - Mary's Request
1 - Copycat
2 - Mr. Briney's Compassion
4 - Windstorm
3 - Mysterious Shard
1 - Crystal Shard
2 - Energy Root
2 - Cessation Crystal
2 - Buffer Piece

[Dendrobatida]

For our reference, a list of all the tools currently legal:

Balloon Berry
Buffer Piece
Cessation Crystal
Crystal Shard
Cursed Powder
Energy Root
Fluffy Berry
Lum Berry
Memory Berry
Mysterious Shard
Oran Berry
Protective Orb
Solid Rage
Strength Charm
Sitrus Berry

There are a few I'm inclined to ignore completely, on the grounds that there is another tool that does the job better, or simply because they lack function in the current metagame. They are:

Balloon Berry
Oran Berry

In this particular deck, I think we can rule out memory berry as well.

Those I really like for this type of deck:

Cursed Powder
Cessation Crystal
Fluffy Berry
Solid Rage
Mysterious Shard
Energy Root

Kettler, if we're going to focus on Cessation Crystal, we might need to find an alternative to Quagsire. Retreating/switching kingler every time we want to get a few tools back, or waiting until our active cessation guy gets pwned, seems cumbersome to me.

[Pooka]

Originally Posted by Dendrobatida

Kettler, if we're going to focus on Cessation Crystal, we might need to find an alternative to Quagsire. Retreating/switching kingler every time we want to get a few tools back, or waiting until our active cessation guy gets pwned, seems cumbersome to me.

Not necessarily. If you already have a Cessation Crystal on the Active, you can't attach another Tool, so why would you need to use Quagsire's Power to get any Tools? I don't think that's an issue at all. If you have a Cessation Crystal locked in, wasn't your goal reached?

[Dendrobatida]

Originally Posted by Pooka

Not necessarily. If you already have a Cessation Crystal on the Active, you can't attach another Tool, so why would you need to use Quagsire's Power to get any Tools? I don't think that's an issue at all. If you have a Cessation Crystal locked in, wasn't your goal reached?

we're not arguing here, pooka. I'm not saying find an alternative to Quagsire because Cessation Crystal shuts down his power, I'm saying if we make a tool that doesn't get readily discarded (Like cessation crystal) the main focus of the deck, do we really need a 4-4 Quagsire? Again, seems cumbersome to me if you're only going to retrieve one or two Cessations at a time, and you're going to wait to be knocked out to do so anyway. Wouldn't a 2-2 Quagsire do just fine? Open up 4 slots for an alternative pokemon line or something of that sort? A 4-4 Quagsire makes sense if you're spamming the strength charms, mysterious crystals, and the like.

[Cyrus]

I think 3-3 Quagsire could be easy to "get away with." However, just because the focus would be on Cessation doesn't mean a decent-sized Quag line would be inferior. Regardless of which tools you're trying to keep out there, Quagsire is basically a guarantee of a cessation lock if you need it, so I would not risk lowering it past 3-3.

While I think Cessation should be the focus, we can't risk leaving out the versatility of other tools, especially charm, crystal shard, and Mysterious Shard.

As a side note, I think Holon Energy is really, really vital to making this successful. I'm just not sure if this should play FF, GL (if grass were in the list), or even both.

[Pooka]

Jake: Ah, my fault. I misinterpreted what you said. I'll agree with Kettler, though; 3-3 is as low as you go with Quagsire.

Kettler: I'm just curious, how often will the deck actually be able to get the Holon Energy on and working effectively? I mean, it seems like you'd have to use DRE/Scramble to do the attacking most of the time. Maybe I'm wrong, though.

Overall, I'm seeing these Tools as being playable.

Buffer Piece
Cessation Crystal
Crystal Shard
Energy Root
Mysterious Shard
Solid Rage
Strength Charm

Obviously we aren't going to be able to fit all of those. Which ones are the most important?

[Cyrus]

Well, with the initial DRE (and assumed t2ko), you'll have just one or two extra turns to attach energy before that attacker goes down. That's the time where you can attach the holon. On a kinda side note, I think that GL may be the better play...always nice to have a guaranteed answer to Flariados :X

Here's how I'd rank the level of importance for those tools:

Cessation Crystal
Crystal Shard
Strength Charm
Mysterious Shard
Solid Rage
Buffer Piece/Energy Root (pretty equal)

Fluffy Berry and Cursed Powder are also really nice. Here's a tool count suggestion:

4 Cessation Crystal
2 Crystal Shard (maybe even a third one...C weak is getting popular now)
2 Strength Charm
2 Mysterious Shard
1 Solid Rage
1 Buffere Piece/E root

I'd say we need a minimum of eight, or a maximum of 12.

[bulbasnore]

Very cool you guys are doing this deck. My son runs it from time to time & I played his deck in TC vs. PCL at last worlds (sans Quaggy) and got through a Metanite and almost got the LBS (5 to 6). I see Eskil has a pic of the 'Japanese Champion' playing it and 'surprising the field' with it (or some such) in his Japan article.

[Dendrobatida]

DENDRO'S DIAGNOSIS:

Oky doky. Time to post a completely revised list. I'm actually going to avoid using cessation crystal for this potential build, since it seems as though my fellow cardiologists will explore its use at length, and we always hope to give a variety of opinions here. Instead, I'd like to go a different route - the mysterious shard strategy proposed by the deck's initial creator, Jayson.

The primary problems he recognized were energy attachment early, and slow starts as a result of poor energy allocation (scrambles, DRE's, castforms can't be attached t1). I'll see if I can't reTOOL this (Oh...oh my sides...they hurt from the laughing...) to solve those problems.

Here's my revised list, with explanations to follow:
Pokemon (21):
3 - Krabby CG
3 - Kingler d CG
4 - Wooper d DF
4 - Quagsire d DF
2 - holon's voltorb
3 - holon's Electrode
1- Latias d
1 - Latios EX d

Energy (11)
4 - Double Rainbow
3 - Grass
2 - Holon Energy GL
2 - Scramble

Trainers (28)
3 - Lanette's Net Search
3 - Castaway
4 - Celio's Network
4 - Mary's Request
2 - Copycat
2 - Mr. Briney's Compassion
4 - Windstorm
3 - Mysterious Shard
2 - Crystal Shard
2 - Energy Root

You'll note that the deck lacks the holon engine, first and foremost. While the castaway engine is slower, it synergizes better with your deck, particularly your need for tools.

The above deck plays 4 different types of basic pokemon (Water, grass, electric, fire), so Lanettes will work wonders for us, and conserves a card that Mentor otherwise would not. The basic strategy here has not changed - you will be recycling mysterious shards to fend off EX pokemon, and taking advantage of the weaknesses of the other popular non-EX decks out there, most noteably Metanite (you have fire and, through crystal shard, colorless). I have dropped the overall number of tools. Either you will be going through mysterious shards and crystal shards, or you will have an energy root permanently attached. I felt that more tools would just be a waste of space, however nice their function might be.

I dropped the krabby/kingler line to a 3/3. Since Quagsire performs essentially the same attack, albeit with a slightly higher low-end output and slightly lower upper-end output ( 50 v 40, 70 v 80), 4/4 did not seem necessary, particularly since the idea of the deck is to shield rather than swarm (sorry....no matter what you might think, a pokemon that requires 3 energy to perform its main attack is not a swarmer).

The grass and holon GL reflect the subtle transition to Quagsire as an equally effective attacker. It also greatly improves the Flariados matchup.

Cessation crystal is an interesting little conundrum. It will stop houndoom, which absolutely murders this deck otherwise, but you can't attach it if houndoom is already in play. And you can't shut off houndoom without filling your bench with Lati@s. If they can shut those off (space center comes to mind), you're still left in limbo, because now you've got a bigger bench than they do. That's why I opted to avoid it (and, as mentioned before, other cardiologists will cover it at length).

Your energy attachment problems should be reduced by the voltorb, which you can get with Lanette's or Celio's Network. In addition, in a pinch you can actually use electrode as an attacker - it adds a 5th type to your deck, and the one element it's missing: auto-status.

Good luck.

[ryanvergel]

I'll try to be quick since I'm about to go out of town, but I've done some Kingler testing with my mate Alex, and he did a lot of research on it. Turns out the Japanese ran kingler with Sandslah, an anti-ex fighting type. They both work very well together. This is how we tested it:

Pokemon[16]
4 Sandshrew
4 Sandslash d
4 Krabby
4 Kingler d

Trainers[28]
4 Holon Transceiver
2 Holon Mentor
2 Holon Researcher
1 Holon Lass
1 Holon Scientist
1 Holon Adventurer
3 Castaway
4 Cessation Crystal
3 Crystal Shard
1 Mysterious Shard
1 Protective Orb
1 Energy Root
1 Strength Charm
3 Mary's Request

Energy[16]
4 Double Rainbow Energy
2 Scramble
4 Fire
4 Metal
2 Holon FF

--
It's pretty speedy. You need 4 DRE and lass really helps out too. Crystal Shard is pretty much a minimum of 3 with MetaNite and SallyGross.

[Cyrus]

Hey guys,

I was really excited to see that we were fixing up a Quagsire deck this time around! Unlike Dendro and Ryan, I'll take a more standard approach to this build, doing my best to remember the creator's intent:

Pokemon (14):

3 Krabby CG
3 Kingler d
3 Wooper d
3 Quagsire d
1 Holon's Castform
1 Holon's Voltorb

Trainers (28):

4 Holon Transceiver
3 Mary's Request
3 Holon Mentor
2 Holon Researcher
1 Holon Scientist
1 Holon Adventurer
2 Castaway
3 Cessation Crystal
2 Strength Charm
1 Mysterious Shard
1 Crystal Shard
4 Battle Frontier
1 Scott

Energy (18):

4 Double Rainbow
3 Scramble
4 Metal
4 Fire
3 Holon Energy FF

~~~Advantages to this build~~~

It is possible to run both the holon and castaway engines together in the same deck, especially in a list like this. Right now holon is simply the best method of combined search/draw in the game, but without Castaway, you have no way to really diversify. However, you _can_ make any tool stick for a decent amount of time. Also, there is plenty of energy variety here...DRE and Scramble are pretty standard, metals are needed to pull off a t2 kingler attack, and fire/ff is critical against Metanite and Flariados, two very popular decks right now.

I downgraded the Mysterious Shard focus to just a tech, because Cessation, at least to me, is the best tool in the format, but I didn't forget how critical getting to play that once or twice will be in the Banette game. Luckily, there's "just" enough flexibility within the tools so that you can axe a charm for anything else...a second mysterious, crystal, energy root, among others.

~~~Disadvantages~~~

For a stage one deck, getting out t2 is just a bit more difficult than usual. Also, the Castform and Magnemite threaten to hurt your consistency, but the positive about this is that either can use legitimate attacks in either circumstance: Casty can delta draw for 2-3 (depending on how many woopers you mentored for), and Magnemite can tenderize potential threats with Linear attack. I've also been testing this extensively, and have found that 7 tools is the MINIMUM you would want...considering we are at that minimum if you went with this list, then you'd surely want to avoid risking that by running 8, 9, or a third castaway, like my buds Ryan and Jake.

~~~Suggested Changes~~~

#1: -4/4 fire/FF, +4/4 d rainbow/heal. Heal is just as nice vs flariados, and d rainbow exponentially increases your odds of attacking with the T2 kingler. Quagsire also loves this card a ton more than fire...but perhaps the best advantage of going this route is not having to run castform anymore, which is there specifically to give you more colored energy options.

#2: -2 anything, +1/1 Quagsire. I love 4/4 Quagsire without any doubt in my mind, but the cuts are extremely difficult to choose here.

#3: More tools! Already explained, but as also previously stated, room is extemely tight.

I hope that my list, general description, and qualifying suggestions make your testing for Quagsire d a much easier process. Good luck

[ryanvergel]

I honestly just don't like Quagsire that much. He has expensive attacks, weak to grass (so is sandslash, but with orb you can tear up flariados) and I don't think his power is actually that great. Like Jake pointed out, you only really want to use him to get back tools like strength charm or crystal shard... and those cards are mainly techs and shouldn't be used every turn anyways. I think the best route is to use cessations on kingler for disruption.

If I were to use quagsire, I would go 2/2. You might use one quagsire to get back 2 windstormed or KOd cessations, and the other one to use for an emergency shard or charm, but other than that how often will you use it? I've used kingler in decks before and I was fine with a 1/1 line (it wasn't with kingler, but it was a deck with 6-7 tools that needed to be out). 4/4 seems ridiculous overkill when you're going to use tools like root, orb(you need orb a lot for electric decks and flariados, which the deck is super weak too), fluffy, cessation- all of which stay on. If you play at least 2 shard and 1-2 strength charm, you really don't need 4/4 quagsire. Half the time you won't even be able to play the shards or charms because you have another tool attached.

I might even suggest going 2/2 quagsire and 2/2 sandslash. A fast fighting pokemon in a metagame with fighting weak castform is powerful. His body can be devestating too, eating up decks like arcanine, banette, flariados, etc. Even against big ex decks, his body doing 10 in turns can really catch people off guard.

Maybe going 2/2 with quagsire and another stage 1 is a better play.

[Pooka]

Sorry about the delay, folks.

Since I find the Cessation lock most appealing, I'll go with that route.

// Pokemon
4 Holon's Castform
2 Holon's Magnemite
3 Quagsire d
3 Wooper d
4 Exeggutor d
4 Exeggcute d

// Trainers
4 Holon Transceiver
4 Holon Mentor
4 Battle Frontier
2 Castaway
2 Holon Researcher
2 Holon Adventurer
1 Mr. Briney's Compassion
1 Holon Scientist

// Tools
3 Cessation Crystal
2 Mysterious Shard
1 Solid Rage
1 Crystal Shard

// Energy
4 Scramble Energy
4 Grass Energy
3 Double Rainbow Energy
2 Fighting Energy

Against any deck that sets up via Holon's Castform, the idea is to KO the Castform ASAP with Exeggutor and lock down with Cessation Crystal. Eventually you should be able to lock one in, and then your opponent is done using Powers. With Quagsire, there's no way your opponent will have more Windstorms than you have Cessations.

Against Banette, you have the infinite Mysterious Shards, so they should never really be able to KO a Quagsire. If you get in a tight spot, just remember you have Wooper - Amnesia is huge!

Being able to shut down MetaDrag and Banette, two of the top archetypes, is huge. In reality, this could have a chance of going somewhere.