Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

TCG Strategy Puzzle

dkates

New Member
And you thought Sneasel was broken! Given the facts below, find a way for your turn 2 attack to do 100 damage to the Defending Pokemon with no coin flips, Energy discards or self-damage. If you know the answer, please DO NOT POST IT. PM me. I will post the answer myself in a few days. Include the method and what the sequence of the cards in the deck would be, up to the point needed.
  • There may be coins flipped while this is set up, but none of them affect whether the setup works.
  • At no point in the setup is either deck shuffled.
  • All plays involved, and the deck itself, are completely within the rules.
  • This setup does not involve copying any of your opponent's attacks.
  • Assume you go first, for simplicity's sake. It works either way.
  • No Pokemon Powers are involved.
  • All cards involved are from the Base, Jungle, and Fossil sets.
  • The 100 damage is before applying Weakness and Resistance.
  • PlusPower is not used.
  • The deck that would be required for this setup is not one most players would play these days.
  • Double Colorless Energy is not used.
  • There are no Special Conditions involved.
  • Assume your opponent's actions have no effect on the setup.
 
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One person has gotten this one right. Anyone else want to take a shot? When I post the answer, I will also give the names of everyone who got it right.
 
I posted this puzzle a week ago, and only one person, TheDeuce, gave me an answer at all! Incidentally, TheDeuce's answer was correct. If anyone was just waiting to see it, here is one version. Other versions have the same basic idea, but may have small differences. TheDeuce's version, for example, was slightly different from this one.
  • Starting hand is 4 Nidoran Male, 1 Nidoran Female, one Grass Energy, and one Professor Oak.
  • Start with Nidoran Female Active and the Nidoran Males on the bench.
  • Draw your card. What it is doesn't matter.
  • Attach a Grass Energy to Nidoran Female.
  • Play Oak.
  • New hand is 3 Pokemon Breeders, 3 Nidoking, and an Oak.
  • Go ahead and use Fury Swipes, ending your turn. This is the source of the coin flips that don't affect the strategy.
  • Your opponent takes his turn.
  • Draw your card. It's Grass Energy. Attach Grass Energy to Nidoran Female.
  • Use the 3 Breeders to evolve 3 of your benched Nidoran Males into Nidoking.
  • Play Oak.
  • New hand is Breeder, Nidoking, Item Finder, Nidoqueen, and 3 other cards.
  • Use remaining Breeder to evolve your 4th Nidoran Male to Nidoking.
  • Use Item Finder, discarding 2 of the 3 unspecified cards to pull back Pokemon Breeder.
  • Use the Breeder to evolve Nidoran Female to Nidoqueen.
  • Now, use Boyfriends. Since you have 4 Nidoking on the Bench, Boyfriends does 20 damage plus (20*4) more damage. This equals 20 + 80, or 100.
 
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Nice! However, if you say Sneasel is broken, just look at the Pokemon Breeder card _all by itself_. It was the main staple of the Base Blastoise deck (isn't it also called the RainDance deck?).
Personally, I think that card should either be reprinted as a supporter (that's if you have to flip for breeder), or just banned altogether.

I don't use them out of principle, even in 'unlimited' battles. Same goes for Energy Removal, though they're not quite as bad.
 
The difference here is that Breeder is useful only in a certain subset of the playable strategies, while few strategies cannot accomodate Sneasel. Actually, that opening line was just an attention-getter. My point was that Sneasel is not the first Pokemon to be able to do mass damage like that on turn 2, just the one that we made the biggest deal about.
 
Yeah, well I can knock out a chansey on the first turn with only 4 cards! No PlusPowers! It's risky though.

Play Giovanni's Machop, on start. Draw card, doesn't matter what, attach a Fighting energy, play Viridian City Gym, Evolve to Gio's Machoke and use Risky Attack. People thought Chansey was safe to leave stranded. But no! There's a way! Obviously weakness comes into play. And Gio's Gym allows you to evolve on the first turn.
 
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