Am I on Punk'd?! How much does a 1-1 Claydol DECREASE your chances of getting a T1/T2 Machamp. very little!
How much does it benefit you in the long run? heaps! I don't even know why i'm arguing this, it's so freaking obvious.
MACHAMP CAN NOT WIN WITHOUT CLAYDOL
if they use JUDGE...You LOSE
If They Use Spiritomb... You LOSE
if they play vileplume.. YOU LOSE
If They Play Donphan... You LOSE
IF They Spray Your Uxie early... YOU LOSE
MACHAMP CAN NOT WIN WITHOUT CLAYDOL
if they use JUDGE...You LOSE
If They Use Spiritomb... You LOSE
if they play vileplume.. YOU LOSE
If They Play Donphan... You LOSE
IF They Spray Your Uxie early... YOU LOSE
Discussing past formats won't get you anywhere.
So I am going to derail the discussion lololol
Sableye vs Vilegar, how does this work? It's very hard to get out a KO vs the tomb fast enough to mean anything, slaying the Vileplume is nearly impossible without Energy Gain and Turn, and the resulting Gengars will just beast you anyway; no viable counters to Gengar exist because of Fainting Spell, so there's no way to just run through them.
Vilegar seems relatively vulnerable to well-placed Initiatives, but obviously I can't rely on that - so is that the extent of my matchup, hoping I can screw them up early on with Initiative and then going for weak kills for the rest of the game?
I don't see how anyone can discredit a 1-1 Claydol line in Machamp. It's a great counter to Hand Disruption, gives you the options to play another Stage 2 tech, boosted consistency and loads of other benefits. Uxie's give you a quick Machamp and a form of drawpower against SP builds with Luxray in.
Vileplume/Spiritomb will likely be run in the same decks in this format, so those points are the same. Machamp has as good a chance without Claydol as it does with vs. Donphan (Remember, most Donphan builds don't use Claydol either). The deck goes through enough cards to AT LEAST get 2 Uxies by T1 (or T2 if you go first). Also, with so much drawpower in the deck, a judge is not likely to mess you up unless you get really unlucky.
Really, out of all those points, I think Tomb/Vileplume was the only viable argument, and every deck nowadays has autolosses or near-autolosses.
Also, for uuuuffff, not playing the Claydol down vs. SP could limit your draw power if you were to draw into them. The deck should have Warp Points anyways, but you can't always rely on that, and I would rather have an Uxie/Unown R Bright Looked than a Claydol (especially since they can repeatedly bright look Clay).