Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Donphan, Johto Giant

It's a good article, it's just a shame about the matchups - if it was BDIF how come it hasn't seen more top tier play?
 
nnaann said:
It's a good article, it's just a shame about the matchups - if it was BDIF how come it hasn't seen more top tier play?
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He wrote all the matchups with the higher number first, even if he means its unfavorable.
I'd change that, its kinda confusion.
 
There's been alot of articles which have been biased towards their own deck, so thats a really important aspect of getting your article right. Is it possible for you to change it the format which other articles use, to save confusion? I'm glad I got it wrong though, when I read the Gyarados matchup and saw 90/10 I nearly lost all faith in the Pokemon community :lol:. The matchups look fair, good job :thumb:
 
Great article! There are a few things I would like to point out, though.

3 Pokemon Reversal is good, but I would really like to see a 4th. Dragging up a Garchomp C to KO it with a Belted Earthquake is important in the LuxChomp matchup, so I feel a 4th Reversal is needed. However, LuxChomp can find it difficult to deal with a Belted Heavy Impacting Donphan, and this list looks like it could get a 3-Energy Donphan up really fast.

ERL is a great tech, as you already know. If you are facing Cursegar, you can easily take down pretty much the entire deck by using two Thunder Falls. ERL can also suddenly win a LuxChomp match (or give you a big lead) by taking down 2 Crobats, an Uxie, and another Uxie or Azelf.

Speaking of Cursegar, I found that my Donphan/ERL deck smashed it to bits. I found it was pretty much an autowin, and I steamrolled every Cursegar I faced. I don't know how easy it is to get a T1 Donphan under a Spiritomb lock with this list, but I still think that you would crush Cursegar. Also, Donphans are pretty much uneffected by Compound Pain since they receive 0 damage from each other's Earthquakes, and if they do have damage on them, Compound Pain would only do 10 damage to them.

Otherwise, a great article!
 
Pokeblowers bears some mention over pokemon reversal (really a matter of preference though).

I think that turbo-phan if getting slept on in a format where it can really shine as one of the contenders seeing that popular water decks have had their consistency hurt with the shift to MD-On. Unown Q and Unown R are some pretty cool techs that still keep your list turbo too.
 
Thank you for the very nice article. :smile:

Donphan is one of my favourite decks - it´s fast, it´s powerful, it´s consistent and very diverse since it can be teched into whatever you want.
In my opinion Donphan/ERL with Manectric added in is the best one since if you run BTS (2 or 3 ) along with the Stark you may have a belted Donphan and a Manectric on your bench T1 and keep up for the entire game.
To improve the Gyarados matchup, I´d use Devoluter or if there was space definitely Exploud SV (however, there rarely is any space for that so rather accept the autoloss).

However... I second Rokman - where on earth was Relicanth? That ugly fish snipes for at least 60 in almost every game, making ERL even better since Relicanth can be used either to soften up or pick off Pokémon that ERL can´t touch. In one game, Relicanth sniped for a whopping 110 damage. Sniped.

I disagree with Gengar/Vileplume - it´s probably going to ruin your day unless you play Judge, Let Loose Giratina, or even Lookers (they actually work!). Regirocks only work with Energy in your discard pile, but once you get it there GengPlume will have to use Shadow Room since Poltergeist does nothing Difficult, but doable.
Finally, playing 10-12 energies of which 3-4 are Rainbows are a great combination in my opinion unless you play Donkphan. Those energies + Regirock + Stark can get you a Heavy Impact Donphan in two turns, which it will most likely survive.

Thanks for the article, it was very well written even though the pictures were a bit dominating.:thumb:
 
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I've tried Relicanth. In that list, I played 2-1 Uxie. I wanted to play 3-1, and was looking for something to take out. Honestly, I have only used Relicanth ONCE. It's a good idea, but I took it out. It's worth consideration.

---------- Post added 09/08/2010 at 03:27 PM ----------

Nekizalb, I based my CurseGar matchup on my own experiences against it. It came down to 1 prize, but a loss is a loss. Granted, it may be better now that Claydol and Dusknoir are gone.
 
Hey, Im new to donphan here, just wondering with donphan adding damage to the bench, how do you keep yourself from knocking uxie out?
 
Hey, Im new to donphan here, just wondering with donphan adding damage to the bench, how do you keep yourself from knocking uxie out?
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You use Manectric PT with its fun Poké-Body. Bench Shield the Manectric and your Bench is fully protected - without a Manectric in play, Entei/Raikou LEGEND is technically bad because of those Powered Pokémon on your Bench.
 
wait but the original list didnt have any manectric or bench shields...how did the original list manage uxie?
 
It takes 7 Earthquakes to KO an Uxie, and Uxies don't tend to survive that long on the bench anyway.
 
so uxie is just snipe bait?

cos what i did was whenever i warp point, i send out uxie to use the attack, is that move better or letting uxie die and just hitting EQ/impact all the way better?
 
Depends. If you can get a nice KO with the Uxie, or you need to recycle it for draw, then fair play.

If not, you are doing an low-damage attack and giving your opponent a free shot at whatever you bring up.
 
Against LuxChomp, Uxie is going to die anyways. It's really the only cheap prize they have, so that's what they'll take first.
 
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