what are ya'll taking about??? appanrently one shotting a g'dos wasn't cool??? or getting dragged up by a promogigas for ko wasn't worried about, or the first reason donphan even got big was to counter luxray, uxie x/toxicroak g to one shot machamp, or to complete the triangle, g'dos to one shot donphan. weakness was a huge part of our meta last format. all the reasons you guys just listed were prime examples of weakness exploitations in last format and of which exploud still wasn't used. you can't tell me this format zekrom is only played because it counters yanmega, it's good on it's own, the fact that it does that is just gravy. no one is going to want to spend the resources to get that thing out and be stuck once it gets catcher'ed, our format now doesn't allow for useless stuff like that. last one did and ppl still didn't use it.
Cards I could see that could potentially be playable
- Thread starter Chompy
- Start date
Chompy
Active Member
The biggest difference between Sewaddle and 40 HP or less basics (Solosis and Oddish) is Sewaddle has 50 HP, meaning that Yanmega can't snipe as effectivly as it once did, unless the player happened to have catcher in his/her hand. If your paranoid that one of the key cards are prized, then run a 2-0-2 Leavanny line, although it may mess up the consistency. Not that it really matters when you have junk arm.
I could see Hydreigon/Electrode/Leavanny (Tech) being one of the top contenders for cities. Due to the amount of support the deck received from the new toys it received. For example, Super Rod to shuffle the Pokemon back from the discard pile to the deck if you wanted to use Electrodes Power, or if Sewaddle was knocked out from catcher, bring it back. Also, if you discarded energies from your hand/deck (Junk Arm/Sages Training), you could always shuffle the energies back from the discard pile using super rod, then use Electrodes Power to increase the odds of drawing the energies from the top 7. Most likely, the deck will probable tech in Legend cards like ESL, RDL, since Hydreigons Ability allows you to turn any energy into a dark energy, so right there you could get away with that.
I could see Hydreigon/Electrode/Leavanny (Tech) being one of the top contenders for cities. Due to the amount of support the deck received from the new toys it received. For example, Super Rod to shuffle the Pokemon back from the discard pile to the deck if you wanted to use Electrodes Power, or if Sewaddle was knocked out from catcher, bring it back. Also, if you discarded energies from your hand/deck (Junk Arm/Sages Training), you could always shuffle the energies back from the discard pile using super rod, then use Electrodes Power to increase the odds of drawing the energies from the top 7. Most likely, the deck will probable tech in Legend cards like ESL, RDL, since Hydreigons Ability allows you to turn any energy into a dark energy, so right there you could get away with that.
DragonClyne725
New Member
SableDonk didn't even use Weakness last format. As Tagrineth stated, many cards didn't have 2x weakness so it wasn't hard of Gyarados to beat Luxray. Personally, I'm seeing Leavanny as a 1-0-1 tech in Stage 2 decks that can abuse Rare Candy and take awhile to get their main hitter up. I hate spending 3 Turns and tons of resources to get a Tyranitar out with a DCE and 2 dark energies just to see it get OHKO'd by a Donphan just because of weakness.
not completely sold, unless you're going to attach an energy to the leavanny itself and possibly fall an attachment behind and hope not to run into anything fire i'm not going to want to play this guy. not the worst card ever but i'm not down for putting five cards of it into my deck.
---------- Post added 11/01/2011 at 08:11 PM ----------
what did lucario gl do? i played it in every deck that could take advantage of type weakness. 1 0 1 is too thin a line to play with catcher roaming around.
---------- Post added 11/01/2011 at 08:11 PM ----------
what did lucario gl do? i played it in every deck that could take advantage of type weakness. 1 0 1 is too thin a line to play with catcher roaming around.
jjkkl
Front Page Article Editor
Wait, why would I attach it to Leavanny? I'm confused. I'm thinking in decks such as Tyranitar, Blastoise, Cobalion, Gothitelle, etc. - cards like those that are at the mercy of their bad single type advantages (Donphan, Zekrom, Reshiram, Mew respectively) can gain a significant equalizer if they have 1-2 turns of no weaknesses. Okay, sure, have them Catcher up a Leavanny if they want to, but that's 1 extra turn the player can manage to keep attacking, and for decks that face pretty horrible matchups, it can be pretty crucial.
Of course, I'm not saying that Leavanny will become a super-tech in all decks overnight, but I would argue it's pretty valuable in decks that could use the (albeit many times) temporary weakness elimination.
ADDENDUM: I do want to mention Elekid's KGL article, 'Kay Good Luck', as an excellent example of a deck that can perform magnificently with a temporary weakness removal:
Where this guy really shines however is the Poke-Body. Its Body makes it so that none of your Pokemon have any Weaknesses. This solves so many problems that the deck had before. I was always a little bit paranoid about running into that random Jumpluff or Tangrowth deck, and against that 1 Bubble Coat really just won't cut it. However now that I've added in Exploud all those Grass decks are incredibly easy to beat. This also solves the big problem I had which was Luxray with an Expert Belt and 3 Energies doing Trash Bolt for exactly 180 damage. Bubble Coat usually worked for that, but in some cases it was hard to get it out or they would just do psychic restore or something like that to get rid of it. So Exploud makes it so that Luxchomp literally can't knock out KGL in one hit. Of course they can always drag it up or snipe it or something, but while they're doing that say Bye-Bye to 10 cards off the top of their deck 
Decks that had difficulty (such as the Legends) can start to be interesting rogue combinations now because of Leavanny. Okay, yeah, it's not as good as Exploud, but it's Ability can't get shut down either, and the setup for many decks right now aren't at the same level as SP (yet, mayhap).
---------- Post added 11/01/2011 at 07:46 PM ----------
Sorry, my mistake. Late night, papers and all. You understand
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oh because kgl is so powerful in this or last format. zoroark kills kgl, if it has to. and you'll attach that energy the leavanny so you don't get ko'd by anything fire in one shot. unless fire decks are magically not in our format, and if you just don't play it against fire decks then now you've got at least five useless cards in your deck that ruins your consistency to boot.
jjkkl
Front Page Article Editor
You're using a strawman argument. The validity of KGL as a 'powerful' deck is not the argument. The validity of deck weaknesses becomes mitigated as particular decks become more viable. However, I will bite your fallacies:
- Zoroark doesn't kill KGL. I played KGL, and I've played it against decks that have sent 2-3 Zoroarks at me before because they didn't know what else to do. Zoroark has difficulty taking on KGL because the only consistent method is to use Mega Tidal Wave, and because of Zoroark's nature as a counter, players in most cases have been hit once or twice before sending out a Zoroark, always putting the discard race ahead.
- Why would I attach energy to Leavanny? Why would I attach an energy to a two-retreat cost Pokemon because of fear of getting it killed? Why would I send it out in a Reshiram deck in the first place?
Let's use an example like Samurott. If I wanted to play Samurott, with Leavanny, I can do that, because as daunting as two Stage 2's sound, it's pretty easy with a large Supporter count. The bad matchups? Zekrom and Magnezone Prime. In all other cases, wouldn't it make more sense to use the Leavanny line as Junk Arm fodder to do what I need to do? Why would I build a Leavanny against, say, Tyram or Emboar when I can one-shot everything and not be affected by weakness at all?
You're making a presumptuous statement and an oversimplified one as well in the situation. Under what position and under what circumstances are you using where I would be using Leavanny and it would be a massive hindrance most of the time? A switch can easily - EASILY - solve my problems.
- At least five? Where are these at least five? We've talked about 1-0-1 and 2-0-2. Nobody mentioned 2-1-2, and even then, that doesn't warrant an 'at least' clause at the beginning. I would argue that it doesn't wreck consistency.
But these are arguments against your strawman argument. My argument is that Leavanny can make certain decks - decks that have had daunting issues due primarily to poor weaknesses - viable in particular metagames. These decks have essentially an equalizer on their field to minimise the massive risk they take against 'that one deck'. I am not saying - I must stress this again, because it doesn't seem like you're really addressing it (correct me if I'm wrong) - that Leavanny will become some super-tech overnight and everyone will put it in their decks.
No, what I am saying is that for particular decks that are greatly hindered by weaknesses, Leavanny becomes a great card to utilise because it buys the person an extra couple turns at the least, and from that, we may see some interesting rogue decks do fairly well because of this.
Thank you for your well thought and very well written post, not trying to be a jerk here, I admire anyone that can write a good response. But I will say that from a competitive standpoint, no one will use leavanny. If you want to go out of your way to try and make it work, i'm all for rogue builds, good ones though. Restricting yourself to a 2 0 2 build will just put all the stress on your rare candy, your consistency WILL suffer, all the draw support in the world can't stop that. Juniper and Sage's is a terrible play in anything stage two, PONT and Copycat just put all the cards you don't want back in your deck to redraw. And were leavanny worth playing then it would be super teched overnight. If i'm wrong and it comes to cost 20+ dollars PM me your name and address and I will personally send you a hand written letter of apology.
Competitive play=/=Metagame
Leavanny can be used to some success, but I doubt we'll ever see it in a top tier deck. Mainly because the cards it will help out most (tanks being OHKOed because of weakness) already needs Vileplume and Reuniclus to support them. Off the top of my head I can't think of any card that really needs Leavanny (and only Leavanny) to be metagame, but I can think of a lot of cards that will really like its support.
Leavanny can be used to some success, but I doubt we'll ever see it in a top tier deck. Mainly because the cards it will help out most (tanks being OHKOed because of weakness) already needs Vileplume and Reuniclus to support them. Off the top of my head I can't think of any card that really needs Leavanny (and only Leavanny) to be metagame, but I can think of a lot of cards that will really like its support.
Thank you for your well thought and very well written post, not trying to be a jerk here, I admire anyone that can write a good response. But I will say that from a competitive standpoint, no one will use leavanny. If you want to go out of your way to try and make it work, i'm all for rogue builds, good ones though. Restricting yourself to a 2 0 2 build will just put all the stress on your rare candy, your consistency WILL suffer, all the draw support in the world can't stop that. Juniper and Sage's is a terrible play in anything stage two, PONT and Copycat just put all the cards you don't want back in your deck to redraw. And were leavanny worth playing then it would be super teched overnight. If i'm wrong and it comes to cost 20+ dollars PM me your name and address and I will personally send you a hand written letter of apology.
Exploud never had a stage 1 that searched out colorless pokemon nor a trainer-locking pokemon that is capable of running off of the same support.
Grass is a good type to be for support pokemon right now to say the least and it makes a huge difference for Leavanny.
nada somos
New Member
In my opinion anything with room that isn't already playing eviolite should play Rocky Helmet. Rocky Helmet is a bonus that doesn't hurt anyone but your opponent.
Miamisportsfan45
Active Member
Where does Conkeldurr falling into play here? Bonus HP is always useful.
HornetsBasketballFan
Active Member
It hurts your opening hand. And you consistancy.