jjkkl
Front Page Article Editor
I did give Houndoom a shot, and one of the problems I found was that unless I ran more dark energy, because of the lack of proper search (save for energy search, ironically enough), I had to more carefully time his second discard attack. Technically, he was okay, but it was a lot of setup and planning for something that should have been 'discard every attack turn gogogo'.
RE Donphan: That's the thing: opponents did have T2 / T3 Donphans, but it ran down to one of two scenarios: either they were discarded before they could set up, or I kept the discard and traded blows for the first 2-3 turns. Of course, trading blows with Donphan was something I couldn't do the entire time, but it also wasn't something that was impossible either, as Seeker-ing the opponent with constant Claw Snags allowed me to stay above water and maintain at the pace upon which I could handle 1-2 Donphans.
The weakness, frankly, is not that big of an issue because most of my Pokemon are low HP in the first place, so I've naturally built this deck to prepare for the very good chance of everything being OHKO'd. The strategy is not to trade blows, but to withstand them, and with Donphan, that's precisely the aim of the continuous Claw Snag lockdown. So, in a nutshell, I didn't face off more than 1-2 Donphans in the matches I won, because most of my opponent's discarded cards were cards he could have used to either search for more or recover from. The matches I lost, frankly, were when they did swarm Donphans effectively, either because of my inability to lock or regardless of the lock.
RE Unown Dark: Nah, I use Unown Dark, actually, to search for either Rambunctious Party or as discard-retreat fodder for Cinccino swarms. I don't use it with the logic of powering up Weavile or Sneasel, but rather, as a means to get energy from the getgo without needing to topdeck into it. It's just a handy tool to have, I found, and there wasn't really much harm in it.
RE Judge lines: I did, originally. But then I did more draw testing and found out that:
3 Judges = 14/20
4 Judges = 16/20
In terms of my opening hand. While those two hands could be razor thin in being the win-lose factor for a match, I just didn't think I needed it, nor did I run into a 'damn, I wish could Judge right about now' scenario. I did, however, start thinking 'Damn, I wish I had Twins in this deck', which was the 4th Judge slot. Technically, there's nothing wrong with it, but statistically to me, it was a risk I was willing to take, since I lessened and shaved the difference with Pokegears anyhow.
Did you mean the Tail Code Aipom?
