rocketprof1287
New Member
This article is pro, well done!! I have one addition though, Dual Ball!! It's a pro set up for being able to use Junk Arm and it's great to use in the same turn as a Collector!!
Gyarados
- Thread starter uuuufff
- Start date
sirlavitz22
New Member
i like the article dude but have you tried 4 unown r and 3-4 duel ball instead of the sableye it makes the deck a lot faster and helps with the first turn donk if you go second
Jason
Active Member
I have personally tried it, the risk factor is so high.... :S
sirlavitz22
New Member
ok i play testing lost gar against this and i tech in honchcrow sv and seeker so i can seeker and than use the power to put karp on bench and cursed drop for knock out and lost zone it so as long as people dont tech that in you will be good but if they are than u are in trouble. i once put all 3 karps in lost zone than used my sf gengar for the win
Lostgar match-up added!
Lostgar: Gengar/Lost World, one of the very few new and upcoming decks from Call of Legends, has been regarded by some as a very difficult match-up for Gyarados. Lostgar is one that mostly depends on the two player's lists and how well it interacts with each other, and is a match-up where in-game skill plays a relatively small part (comapred to other match-ups).
Most Lostgar builds are designed around speed. This means that you may be staring down a Gengar Prime Turn 1 or two and any Magikarps lying around in your hand will be lost zoned which makes winning almost impossible from that point onwards. Many Gyarados builds have attempted to counteract this by playing a lone Cyrus' Conspiracy in their deck. The idea is that if you have to Impersonate to get set up, you can simply Impersonate a Cyrus and grab a Pokemon Collector (and a Poke Turn should you run any) to get set up on your next turn as opposed to Impersonating a Collector right off the bat and risk having the Magikarps Lost Zoned. This may make set up slightly slower if you are relying on a Sableye set up, but even if you aren't and you are playing more Smearle in your deck, if you don't Portrait something useful early on, you may have to resort to Impersonating immediately, so even lists with only 1 Sableye should be playing Cyrus' Conspiracy.
The way they will try to win is do the obvious: Get 6 Pokemon in the Lost Zone and play Lost World down. They will do this by utilising Seeker and Spiritomb CL. Regice and Junk Arm should be used to clear excess Pokemon from the hand, to force them to play Seeker or Spiritomb to get Pokemon into your hand. Mesprit prevents Spiritomb and any Fossil tech you may play prevents Seeker from working. Fossils count as a Pokemon on the bench and are a legitiamte Seeker target, but when they are in your hand they cannot be Lost Zoned. This means you can "cheat" Lostgar of a Hurl Into Darkness target. Fossils are of course difficult to search out, and can generally only be done by using Poke Drawer +. This means you may not see your Old Amber/Fossil until later on the game, or perhaps might not see it at all if you are unlucky!
Because Gengar doesn't have any "field prescence" or "board control" (it can't knock anything out), you can safely Expert Belt your Gyarados and from this point on you are only 20 damage away from OHKO'ing a fresh Gengar Prime. It only takes 20 extra damage from Flash Bites or Poison Structure to OHKO a Gengar Prime. The more times you can do this the better your chances are of winning. Of course, if you aren't able to draw into your Expert Belt (which is especially the case early on in the game), then you will struggle to OHKO Gengar Primes. OHKO'ing Gengar Primes is not just important for taking prizes and hopefully catching them out on a turn where they can't get a Gengar prime out (or at least can't get a Gengar prime out and Lost Zone a Pokemon in the same turn), it's also important to reduce the amount of energy they have on their Gengar. If you can limit them to just 1 energy on each Gegnar, that means they can only Lost Zone 1 Pokemon a turn at the most, which means you can easily keep up. Another thing to consider is that Gengar has to wait a turn after it Lost Zones 6 Pokemon, THEN play down Lost World for the win, whereas taking 6 prizes wins the game immediately for Gyarados.
Devoluter has been widely discussed as a Gyarados counter, but shouldn't be worried about because it is quite bad. It requires being searched out, then requires the Gengar player to waste a turn using Cursed Droplets on Gyarados (which takes two energy to do), then the Gyarados player has to whiff on any sort of healing card, THEN the Gengar player can Devolute the Gyarados back to its Magikarp, and thanks to Gengar Prime Catastrophe Poke-Body, the Magikarp will be sent to the Lost Zone, gimping your damage output. Unfortunately for that plan, if the Gyarados was Expert Belted (which is the correct thing to do in this match-up), then the 4 counters from Cursed Droplets aren't enough to KO even Magikarp. This "plan" also requires the Gyarados player to be unable to Seeker or SSU the Gyarados after Gengar uses Cursed Droplets (which is an absurd thing to gamble on).
A recap for the match-up against speed-based builds: It depends on how often you are able to OHKO Gengar, how many times you can prevent them from Lost Zoning a Pokemon (via Mesprit, old Amber, Regice/Junk arm) and whether you can avoid an early Hurl Into Darkness on a Magikarp. If you are having trouble with this match-up, don't be disheartened. Keep on practising and adjusting your list!
Gengar builds that are designed around trainer locking with Vileplume are generally harder, for a few reasons:
1) You will only be able to take prizes every second turn, at most.
2) You are vulnerable to Gengar prime Seekering up their Gengar and repalying it down again, thwarting you of a KO.
3) If they can't play Seeker to heal, they can attach another energy and threaten another lost zoning.
4) You cannot play Old Amber (or any other Fossil you may run).
5) It is a lot harder to maintain a Mesprit lock without the use of Super Scoop Up and Junk Arm.
However, despite all of this, there are a few upsides to playing against a Vileplume-based build:
1) They are slow, and you should realistically be able to get up 1-2 prizes early on.
2) They are capable of having consistency issues, as Vileplume based decks are prone to having.
That said, the match-up is far worse if they run Vileplume. They still have Seeker and Spiritomb CL to get pokemon into your hand, while your ability to prevent that (Old Amber, Mesprit) and keep up with the "prizes" they're taking (Crobat G/Poke Turns for OHKO's) are severely diminished, if not non-existant. As such, your best chance of getting a win is them faultering early on and having a clunky hand. Dialga G Lv X is the only real trump card in this match-up, which admittedly is a very good way of countering Vileplume-based Gengar prime builds (especially if they don't run Gengar lv X), however it doesn't do much against trainer-based versions of Lostgar.
One thing to remember though is that there is no "stock" Lostgar list at the moment (and it's doubtful that there will ever be), the remember: The match-up varies and Gyarados can always be tweaked to add strength any specific match-up, should it be prevalent in your metagame (and it's arguable whether Lostgar will make a big prescence on the metagame).
Lostgar: Gengar/Lost World, one of the very few new and upcoming decks from Call of Legends, has been regarded by some as a very difficult match-up for Gyarados. Lostgar is one that mostly depends on the two player's lists and how well it interacts with each other, and is a match-up where in-game skill plays a relatively small part (comapred to other match-ups).
Most Lostgar builds are designed around speed. This means that you may be staring down a Gengar Prime Turn 1 or two and any Magikarps lying around in your hand will be lost zoned which makes winning almost impossible from that point onwards. Many Gyarados builds have attempted to counteract this by playing a lone Cyrus' Conspiracy in their deck. The idea is that if you have to Impersonate to get set up, you can simply Impersonate a Cyrus and grab a Pokemon Collector (and a Poke Turn should you run any) to get set up on your next turn as opposed to Impersonating a Collector right off the bat and risk having the Magikarps Lost Zoned. This may make set up slightly slower if you are relying on a Sableye set up, but even if you aren't and you are playing more Smearle in your deck, if you don't Portrait something useful early on, you may have to resort to Impersonating immediately, so even lists with only 1 Sableye should be playing Cyrus' Conspiracy.
The way they will try to win is do the obvious: Get 6 Pokemon in the Lost Zone and play Lost World down. They will do this by utilising Seeker and Spiritomb CL. Regice and Junk Arm should be used to clear excess Pokemon from the hand, to force them to play Seeker or Spiritomb to get Pokemon into your hand. Mesprit prevents Spiritomb and any Fossil tech you may play prevents Seeker from working. Fossils count as a Pokemon on the bench and are a legitiamte Seeker target, but when they are in your hand they cannot be Lost Zoned. This means you can "cheat" Lostgar of a Hurl Into Darkness target. Fossils are of course difficult to search out, and can generally only be done by using Poke Drawer +. This means you may not see your Old Amber/Fossil until later on the game, or perhaps might not see it at all if you are unlucky!
Because Gengar doesn't have any "field prescence" or "board control" (it can't knock anything out), you can safely Expert Belt your Gyarados and from this point on you are only 20 damage away from OHKO'ing a fresh Gengar Prime. It only takes 20 extra damage from Flash Bites or Poison Structure to OHKO a Gengar Prime. The more times you can do this the better your chances are of winning. Of course, if you aren't able to draw into your Expert Belt (which is especially the case early on in the game), then you will struggle to OHKO Gengar Primes. OHKO'ing Gengar Primes is not just important for taking prizes and hopefully catching them out on a turn where they can't get a Gengar prime out (or at least can't get a Gengar prime out and Lost Zone a Pokemon in the same turn), it's also important to reduce the amount of energy they have on their Gengar. If you can limit them to just 1 energy on each Gegnar, that means they can only Lost Zone 1 Pokemon a turn at the most, which means you can easily keep up. Another thing to consider is that Gengar has to wait a turn after it Lost Zones 6 Pokemon, THEN play down Lost World for the win, whereas taking 6 prizes wins the game immediately for Gyarados.
Devoluter has been widely discussed as a Gyarados counter, but shouldn't be worried about because it is quite bad. It requires being searched out, then requires the Gengar player to waste a turn using Cursed Droplets on Gyarados (which takes two energy to do), then the Gyarados player has to whiff on any sort of healing card, THEN the Gengar player can Devolute the Gyarados back to its Magikarp, and thanks to Gengar Prime Catastrophe Poke-Body, the Magikarp will be sent to the Lost Zone, gimping your damage output. Unfortunately for that plan, if the Gyarados was Expert Belted (which is the correct thing to do in this match-up), then the 4 counters from Cursed Droplets aren't enough to KO even Magikarp. This "plan" also requires the Gyarados player to be unable to Seeker or SSU the Gyarados after Gengar uses Cursed Droplets (which is an absurd thing to gamble on).
A recap for the match-up against speed-based builds: It depends on how often you are able to OHKO Gengar, how many times you can prevent them from Lost Zoning a Pokemon (via Mesprit, old Amber, Regice/Junk arm) and whether you can avoid an early Hurl Into Darkness on a Magikarp. If you are having trouble with this match-up, don't be disheartened. Keep on practising and adjusting your list!
Gengar builds that are designed around trainer locking with Vileplume are generally harder, for a few reasons:
1) You will only be able to take prizes every second turn, at most.
2) You are vulnerable to Gengar prime Seekering up their Gengar and repalying it down again, thwarting you of a KO.
3) If they can't play Seeker to heal, they can attach another energy and threaten another lost zoning.
4) You cannot play Old Amber (or any other Fossil you may run).
5) It is a lot harder to maintain a Mesprit lock without the use of Super Scoop Up and Junk Arm.
However, despite all of this, there are a few upsides to playing against a Vileplume-based build:
1) They are slow, and you should realistically be able to get up 1-2 prizes early on.
2) They are capable of having consistency issues, as Vileplume based decks are prone to having.
That said, the match-up is far worse if they run Vileplume. They still have Seeker and Spiritomb CL to get pokemon into your hand, while your ability to prevent that (Old Amber, Mesprit) and keep up with the "prizes" they're taking (Crobat G/Poke Turns for OHKO's) are severely diminished, if not non-existant. As such, your best chance of getting a win is them faultering early on and having a clunky hand. Dialga G Lv X is the only real trump card in this match-up, which admittedly is a very good way of countering Vileplume-based Gengar prime builds (especially if they don't run Gengar lv X), however it doesn't do much against trainer-based versions of Lostgar.
One thing to remember though is that there is no "stock" Lostgar list at the moment (and it's doubtful that there will ever be), the remember: The match-up varies and Gyarados can always be tweaked to add strength any specific match-up, should it be prevalent in your metagame (and it's arguable whether Lostgar will make a big prescence on the metagame).
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Phazon Elite
New Member
Again, thank you for the superbly written article. I'm just getting back into the game after not really being able to play since Regionals 2010, and given that I lost a lot of my old connections during my hiatus, your insight has made playtesting against Gyrados much easier and more productive.