In short, not they will not, but they'll enjoy a major surge in play after
BW: Dark Explorers is released, even if all the cards end up falling flat. Fans of :dark: Pokemon will just have to try out the new cards. Whatever does work will stick around, but doesn't strike me as BDIF caliber.
The next set dark exploers hase a pokemon tool called dark claw. It increase your dark pokemon's attack by twenty damage when attached and dont forget there is the special dark energy also.
Of course, against the premiere attackers of the format (big Basic Pokemon), that just means
Darkness Claw will cancel out
Eviolite.
Zoroak from bw. This card can coppy your opponent attack but with dark claw it copies it and does twenty damage more or evan more!!
This is where a few cards make things misleading. The plain versions of
Zekrom and
Reshiram are just 10 points away from OHKOing each other... and since they have the same HP, you OHKOing them with their own copied attack. This isn't common, plus again factor in
Eviolite - using this
Zoroark you still must supply another 10 points of damage for the OHKO. That isn't bad, of course.
It is when you pull out for the big picture.
Zoroark only has 100 HP, making it a bit small, compared to the big Basic Pokemon, Pokemon EX, and even occasional Stage 2 Pokemon it will be going head-to-head with. Simply put, whatever you invest in it will almost certainly be gone the next turn. Plus many Pokemon can't OHKO themselves (in mirror), so you'll
have to invest in
Zoroark to shoot for that OHKO yourself.
If it works, it would be brilliant for a
Zoroark to urn around and OHKO a Pokemon EX, but unfortunately that isn't happening with the one's we've got right now, unless you spam
PlusPower or all your Special Energy
Darkness Energy.
Zoroak from ep. This card i find to be underated. It can one shout chandelure and if you have dark claw attached to it 100 damage with no draw backs.
Except the same set that brings us
Darkness Claw probably brings us this:
Translation from Pokebeach.com said:
Zoroark 100HP :dark:
Stage 1 – Evolves from Zorua
:colorless::colorless:
Beatdown: Does 20 damage times the number of Darkness-type Pokemon you have in play.
:dark::dark:
Dark Rush: Does 20 damage times the number of damage counters on this Pokemon.
Weakness: :fighting: (x2)
Resistance:
sychic: (-20)
Retreat: :colorless::colorless:
With everything else coming in the set, Beatdown should be an easy 120 Turn 2+, and if for some reason your opponent doesn't OHKO
Zekrom (trying to think of how to handle that...
Defender, maybe?), Dark Rush will likely be amazing (if you're hanging on with less than 40 HP, then it does
more than Beatdown with a full Bench!).
Scrafty from Bw. Scrafty can put your oppoent in to a mean lock with fliptini on the bench. But you can switch to get out of paralized and burned. If its none ex pokemon i doubt your opponent will survive two turns with dark claw attached to scrafty while useing its first attack with out oppent playing switch or you getting two tails.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! I will not deny that
Darkness Claw helps that
Scrafty, but it is hardly worth mentioning. Your combo of a Stage 1, a Pokemon Tool, an Energy an Energy still only works 3/4 of the time on your end. The effect of it "working" is only a 50% chance of two more damage counters between turns, and if your opponent Evolves, Retreats, or burns a
Switch, its gone. That means at best it would be a "soft lock". You could improve it by adding in a Benched
Vileplume so that only Evolving breaks the lock (and of course, a lot of attackers can't Evolve farther) but... well that is probably the best way to use
Scrafty, but you're halfway to a better deck. Plus you of course must get
Darkness Claw attached before you drop
Vileplume.
And remeber there is also the card dark patch to help out dark pokemon and other pokemon to.
Indeed, I'd say it is as important or more important than
Darkness Claw for a lot of them.
No mention of Absol Prime? T1 attach Dark Claw, get a Sp. Dark in the discard via Junk Arm or the like, play Dark Patch, attach energy from your hand and swing for 100 T1.
Absol Prime was helped majorly by
Skyarrow Bridge, since it becomes a free retreater. That way you can open with it, and get it out of the way easily. If your opponent focuses on it, they ignore your real attacker. If they ignore it, you can throw it up later when it can really hurt.
You do need to read the spoiler for
Dark Patch:
Pokebeach.com said:
Dark Patch – Trainer
Choose 1 Basic Darkness Energy card from your discard pile and attach it to one of your Benched Darkness-type Pokemon.
You can use any number of Trainer cards during your turn.
64/69
As thepliskin5005 stated, something else has to be Active, so you can
Dark Patch to something on your Bench. You can manually attach a Special Energy, but
Dark Patch only works on
basic Darkness Energy cards. Hitting for 100 means using another Pokemon and either
Switch or something you can manually Retreat. If you manage to get two basic
Darkness Energy cards into your discard pile, you could double up on
Dark Patch and use your manual Energy attachment on an Active to hopefully pay for its Retreat Cost, but then your combo only does 90, which isn't bad.
It really is in the deck set-up.
Absol Prime opening (unless you needed it for something like a
Cleffa) means anything your opponent doesn't play down pre-game but plays that first turn gets stuck with an extra 2 damage counters on it. If that's a
Zekrom, even one they equip with
Eviolite, Bolt Strike would do 20 more points of self-damage... and then it only has 90 HP left.
Note, I said
Zekrom with
Eviolite: we still aren't getting a OHKO without even more help, which is why I keep saying these Quickstrike Darkness decks are going to need
PlusPower.
Darkness Claw effectively negates
Eviolite, so now Special
Darkness Energy and
PlusPower can go back to doing their thing. If
Xtransceiver wasn't a flip and/or we still had
Vs Seeker,
Black Belt would be a lot more useful.
Charmanda66, I do like that
Krookodile, but it looks like it will be tricky to get going. With two
Dark Patch and a
Double Colorless Energy, while I wouldn't plan on pulling the combo off more than once, you could power one up fully in a single turn. Once you've got three Prizes taken, it's solid.
dark::dark::colorless::colorless: for 120). Four Prizes taken and it's good (four for 160, OHKO range for a non-Pokemon EX). When you're on your last Prize anyway, you get a massive 200 points of damage, somewhat ironically enough to OHKO any Pokemon EX, even when it has
Eviolite attached (the irony is you only need one Prize then).
Darkrai EX looks promising. Open with
Absol Prime ideally. Use the appropriate Supporter (or Item followed by a
Junk Arm) to get some basic
Darkness Energy into the discard pile, and while it will require a double
Dark Patch you'll have
Darkrai EX ready to go your first turn. Attach whatever Pokemon Tool looks most useful for the situation (probably
Eviolite or
Darkness Claw) and go to town. Ideally everything is already a little injured from
Absol Prime, and your opponent now has you OHKOing the Defending Pokemon while you keep building damage on the Bench, setting up more KOs (possibly two at a time).
Darkrai & Cresselia LEGEND aren't helped that much, but anything that spreads damage (see above) might have a good use for them.
A 1-1
Honchkrow line (version with Vengeance), while risky, might work in a :dark: Pokemon heavy deck now, since you can power it up in a single turn. Sadly you still can't EVOLVE it in a single turn, so it will be seen coming. Kind of doubtful, since it takes 11 Pokemon in the discard pile before it becomes decent; it'd be another Pokemon to save for late game then.
I suppose if you're feeling real lucky and can play the necessary cards (and make them succeed) to strip your opponent's hand to almost nothing, now either
Houndoom can at least function. It is sad though; the one that discards cards is so small it needs help discarding so that it can hopefully somehow OHKO (or use
Crushing Hammer to strip of Energy) whatever your opponent opened with. The other is hardier but still isn't doing enough to the Defending Pokemon to stay alive. At least
Darkness Claw still ups their damage and
Dark Patch still speeds them up.
Hydreigon will have some better back-up and speed. I can really see
Absol Prime/
Darkrai EX/
Hydreigon work now. I still don't expect it to be a top deck, but when you have all of those hitting the Defending Pokemon pretty hard while softening up the Bench, you basically are only losing to everything that OHKOs you fast.
...
It doesn't help much, but
Sharpedo decks will benefit a little from the anticipated Trainers.
Tyranitar decks will benefit (mostly the Prime, but if you really wanted to use the non-Prime, it would technically be better than it currently is), as would the old
Weavile.
Hmm... really pretty depressing if you think about it. Most of the Darkness-Type Pokemon we have or know we are getting really aren't all that great.
