One of the few decks I have been playing with includes one that centers around my all time favorite, Shiftry! When Shiftry first came out, I think everybody tried to look for ways to abuse it’s power and well, make a good deck out of it.
Sadly, the fact that the power only works DURING your opponent’s turn is a big downfall. No auto burn? :S His power “Unlucky Wind” states, As long as Shiftry is your active Pokémon, whenever your opponent flips a coin during his or her turn, treat it as tails. This means, no Pokéballs for your opponent; a bummer considering the article describing how it might be better than Dusk/Quick ball.
Shiftry has two main attack. One being “Conform” for DC. It does a not too shabby 40 damage and possible confusion if your opponent has the same amount of cards in their hands as you do. This can be raised from Special D Energies. As you may have already realized, Confusion would mean no attacking for your opponent’s Defending Pokémon unless they manage to retreat or switch.
His second attack is “Seal Off” that does 60 for DCC.When used, the Defending Pokémon cannot use any Poké-power or Poké-bodies during their next turn. It has limited use, but it is extra damage and it can be useful. Sometimes.
As for its basic frame, it has a not so spectacular 130 HP for a Stage 2, 1 Retreat Cost. +30 to fire, -20 to psychic. If I had to choose the average stats for a Stage 2 Pokémon, I don’t think this can fit any better. Although +30 to fire can hurt as Infernape 4 LV.X can 1HKO this. Resistance is always welcome, and Psychic is super nice.
I do know that this is a deck analysis, so it is time to talk about the strategy with this deck. (Blame Soul on the long analysis since I tried to format my article toward his.)
Your main attacker will be Shiftry (obviously). Do your best to match your hand with your opponents with Claydol’s “Cosmic Power”, Looker’s Investigation, or even Cynthia’s feelings. Next use “Conform” to confuse your opponent and now they can’t attack. Simple, right?
Well, of course they can retreat! This is where Ariados MT comes in. It’s Poké-Body, “Sticky”, adds 1 Retreat Cost to all Pokémon, excluding Ariados. If you can get around 2 in play, then retreating will be a heavy cost for any Pokémon not under the influence of Flygon’s power “Rainbow Float”.
Claydol is there for draw support. Bench Shield could be added in to protect it. If you wanted to do so, – 1 Memory Berry for it. Sableye is a good starter in this deck and you may even get a lucky donk. Spiritomb is a tech that will always be useful with “Keystone Seal” to shut of trainers. It also has an attack to evolve your Pokémon.
As for my favorite, Speed Stadium no longer helps your opponent out. :)
Finally, to point out a major weakness to this deck, it is the Dreaded Dialga G LV.X. Shutting down powers means, well the whole deck isn’t working properly. Although, Shiftry can still do a mean 80 damage with Expert Belt, or even 110 with 3 Special D Energy and Expert Belt so it is by no means a helpless Pokémon.
While Flygon may prove to be troublesome with it’s Rainbow Float, it is normally the main attacker of the deck so Flygon itself won’t have free retreat. Mind you, they will run out of Poké Turns or Warp Points eventually and there are plenty more Shiftry to come.
I hope this article will help Shiftry see a little bit more play. (It is close to nothing at the moment.) This is a decklist that I made.
|
Pokémon: 24 4 Seedot RR 78 3 Nuzleaf RR 75 4 Shiftry RR 13 3 Spinarak MT 103 3 Ariados MT 20 2 Baltoy GE 60 2 Claydol GE 15 2 Sableye SF 48 1 Spiritomb AR 32 |
Trainers: 25 Trainers: 8 4 Rare Candy 1 Time-Space Distortion 2 Warp Point 1 Luxury Ball Supporters: 11 4 Bebe’s Search 1 Palmer’s Contribution 4 Roseanne’s Research 2 Cynthia’s Feelings Pokémon Tools: 3 2 Memory Berry 1 Expert Belt Stadiums: 3 3 Speed Stadium |
Energy: 11 3 Call 4 D 3 Special D Energy 1 Warp |
Great idea, gotta love the shiftry.
You’ve inspired me to try to put my Shiftry deck back together. The Ariados MT tech is ingenious. However, I would want to try adding Dugtrio PL to the list somehow. It has a Poke-Body that puts 20 damage on your opponent’s retreating Pokemon. Combined with Ariados, retreating becomes expensive.
Nice deck, original.
Thanks for the article, it’s very well written and the list looks pretty decent. :)
Not sure how competitive Shiftry will ever be as its damage output is somewhat low, but it can definitely make for a good fun deck.
I think Darkrai Lv.X and Shiftry might be just awsome, because it’s pretty much a autimatic knock out. I’m testing this at Cities or Provincials
Great deck, I love this idea. I’d suggest maybe using Giratina’s (PL) “Let Loose” Poke-Power to try to even the hands so you can get a confusion lock with Conform.
Great article! You did an in depth review of exactly what each card purpose was. I think shiftry is pretty decent if you take a good long look at it. I have actually been working with it myself. I play flygon and palkia in my shiftry deck though. Playing shiftry with flygon and palkia is pretty much like taking FGD and Flylock and putting them in one deck. You can pull things up with palkia and lock it with either trapinch or shiftry (if you have the same amount of cards in hand as your opponent). But if you want to power lock, then shiftry can do that as well by pulling up a claydol via palkia and then using “seal off”. But like I said great article, it’s nice to see some “rouge” stuff flying around.
Great article! You did an in depth review of exactly what each card purpose was. I think shiftry is pretty decent if you take a good long look at it. I have actually been working with it myself. I play flygon and palkia in my shiftry deck though. Playing shiftry with flygon and palkia is pretty much like taking FGD and Flylock and putting them in one deck. You can pull things up with palkia and lock it with either trapinch or shiftry (if you have the same amount of cards in hand as your opponent). But if you want to power lock, then shiftry can do that as well by pulling up a claydol via palkia and then using “seal off”. But like I said great article, it’s nice to see some “rouge” stuff flying around.
Bannette and Blissey are two techs off the top of my head that could help you match your hand to your opponents if confusion and keeping your opponent from attaking is really the aim of the deck. If that body worked in between turns I think all you would see is Shiftry and Dialga G, so luckly it isn’t that powerful of a body.
Nice Article too!!! It’s always good to see as many ideas flowing as possible.
Great idea, gotta love the shiftry.
You’ve inspired me to try to put my Shiftry deck back together. The Ariados MT tech is ingenious. However, I would want to try adding Dugtrio PL to the list somehow. It has a Poke-Body that puts 20 damage on your opponent’s retreating Pokemon. Combined with Ariados, retreating becomes expensive.
Nice deck, original.
Thanks for the article, it’s very well written and the list looks pretty decent. :)
Not sure how competitive Shiftry will ever be as its damage output is somewhat low, but it can definitely make for a good fun deck.
I think Darkrai Lv.X and Shiftry might be just awsome, because it’s pretty much a autimatic knock out. I’m testing this at Cities or Provincials
Great deck, I love this idea. I’d suggest maybe using Giratina’s (PL) “Let Loose” Poke-Power to try to even the hands so you can get a confusion lock with Conform.
I guess this deck would be even better when copycat comes out ;D
yeah I was about to say that haha :] It’s hard to get the same number of cards as your opponent sometimes, especially in this list that doesn’t really run any way to manipulate your hand size other than Claydol and playing down cards (which is unreliable for the needed confusion)
If you don’t get the confusion, Shiftry isn’t worth it.
Bannette and Blissey are two techs off the top of my head that could help you match your hand to your opponents if confusion and keeping your opponent from attaking is really the aim of the deck. If that body worked in between turns I think all you would see is Shiftry and Dialga G, so luckly it isn’t that powerful of a body.
Nice Article too!!! It’s always good to see as many ideas flowing as possible.
Maybe adding a Unown K in? There’s a chance you can lock something at front and make it really hard to escape from it. Your opponent will be locked until it retreats (few Ariadoses raises retreat cost a lot) or until you decide to KO it. Blind, Kind, Blind, Kind, Blind, Kind… sounds great. Adding 1-1 or 2-2 Dugtrio is great tech in Shiftry. Speed Stadium is going to be beast. Oppenent can get heads from it, but they will count as tails as long as your Shiftry is an active Pokémon. :P
You can easily cut some Candies away from the deck and add other techs. 4-3-4 line with stage 1 Pokés doesn’t need 4 Rare Candies IMO. Especially when you usually want to have Nuzleaf underneath of Shiftry. You could try to play 1-2 Broken to get your stuff on play faster and then discard it with a Speed Stadium.
I guess this deck would be even better when copycat comes out ;D
yeah I was about to say that haha :] It’s hard to get the same number of cards as your opponent sometimes, especially in this list that doesn’t really run any way to manipulate your hand size other than Claydol and playing down cards (which is unreliable for the needed confusion)
If you don’t get the confusion, Shiftry isn’t worth it.
I would also suggest teching 1 unown Q , it works perfect =) or maybe add in dugtrio over ariados?? i don’t know but i ran a rogue which is similar with the deck but i used dugtrio with ninetails PL instead.I would rather put 4 damage if your opponent retreats rather than increasing their retreat cost =/ 1-1 palkia could be decent due to increasing popularity of CurseGar, you can simply gust gengar out and just blow it off =)
Maybe adding a Unown K in? There’s a chance you can lock something at front and make it really hard to escape from it. Your opponent will be locked until it retreats (few Ariadoses raises retreat cost a lot) or until you decide to KO it. Blind, Kind, Blind, Kind, Blind, Kind… sounds great. Adding 1-1 or 2-2 Dugtrio is great tech in Shiftry. Speed Stadium is going to be beast. Oppenent can get heads from it, but they will count as tails as long as your Shiftry is an active Pokémon. :P
You can easily cut some Candies away from the deck and add other techs. 4-3-4 line with stage 1 Pokés doesn’t need 4 Rare Candies IMO. Especially when you usually want to have Nuzleaf underneath of Shiftry. You could try to play 1-2 Broken to get your stuff on play faster and then discard it with a Speed Stadium.
I would also suggest teching 1 unown Q , it works perfect =) or maybe add in dugtrio over ariados?? i don’t know but i ran a rogue which is similar with the deck but i used dugtrio with ninetails PL instead.I would rather put 4 damage if your opponent retreats rather than increasing their retreat cost =/ 1-1 palkia could be decent due to increasing popularity of CurseGar, you can simply gust gengar out and just blow it off =)
Imagine when HGSS comes out, with the release of Copycat, this could see a lot of play. Awesome.
Imagine when HGSS comes out, with the release of Copycat, this could see a lot of play. Awesome.
Yay ! My article got posted. After a more testing, I found that adding + 1 moonlight stadium and – 1 speed Stadium works really nicely. Also, when you can’t get the Confusion, Memory Berry on Nuzleaf’s “Blind” attack helps. It’s basically just your average sand attack with a damage output.
Anyways, there’s a lot of Dugtrio suggestions here, but I just can’t seem to find room for it. This list struggles a little bit with bench space. 1 Claydol, 1 Ariados, 1 Back up Shiftry ( If they have Dark Palm Dusknoir out)
I played him on RS and this deck can easily catch you off guard if you are not prepared. Perhaps the best part about this deck to me is that it has so many options. Good article…good deck
This time, I can spend a bit more time responding to posts.
-Adam, While damage output might not be highest, since it prevents your opponent from doing damage freely, it normally works pretty well still. And with Special Darks, damage output isn’t too bad at all.
-Willy G., Giratina’s power really would be nice since it assures equal amount of cards in our hands, but Bench space becomes a problem. And anyhow, I normally don’t have too much trouble keep my hand even with the opponent. If they run claydol, then I can almost always match it. (They’ll have under 6 cards so, I’ll cosmic power myself and make sure there are trainer’s/supporters I can use to balance to hand out.) Shuppet decks are a little harder with their big hands, but I can try and looker’s investigation it away if I get lucky.
-Poker Face , Copy Cat will be amazing :)Also,perhaps its just different playstyle, but I enjoy locking a lot more. It makes everything worth it when they have a Spiritomb out and have super high retreat cost with Ariados. Then snipe with Nuzleafs lame 30 feint attack. But, Dugtrio may be a superior choice with it’s free retreat cost and Lightning resistance. (It’s not prone to gusting as much)
-Tonu, Unown K Locks are always just evil :P Although, unless I’m trying to just stall till time, I wouldn’t know what to do during the wait :P As for cutting down on rare candies, I think that’s a GREAT idea. I prefer having Nuzleaf under Shiftry so much more. I just have them in hopes of more speed, but maybe Broken time Space will do good. I wish there was a trainer that searches Stadiums…
Yay ! My article got posted. After a more testing, I found that adding + 1 moonlight stadium and – 1 speed Stadium works really nicely. Also, when you can’t get the Confusion, Memory Berry on Nuzleaf’s “Blind” attack helps. It’s basically just your average sand attack with a damage output.
Anyways, there’s a lot of Dugtrio suggestions here, but I just can’t seem to find room for it. This list struggles a little bit with bench space. 1 Claydol, 1 Ariados, 1 Back up Shiftry ( If they have Dark Palm Dusknoir out)
I played him on RS and this deck can easily catch you off guard if you are not prepared. Perhaps the best part about this deck to me is that it has so many options. Good article…good deck
This time, I can spend a bit more time responding to posts.
-Adam, While damage output might not be highest, since it prevents your opponent from doing damage freely, it normally works pretty well still. And with Special Darks, damage output isn’t too bad at all.
-Willy G., Giratina’s power really would be nice since it assures equal amount of cards in our hands, but Bench space becomes a problem. And anyhow, I normally don’t have too much trouble keep my hand even with the opponent. If they run claydol, then I can almost always match it. (They’ll have under 6 cards so, I’ll cosmic power myself and make sure there are trainer’s/supporters I can use to balance to hand out.) Shuppet decks are a little harder with their big hands, but I can try and looker’s investigation it away if I get lucky.
-Poker Face , Copy Cat will be amazing :)Also,perhaps its just different playstyle, but I enjoy locking a lot more. It makes everything worth it when they have a Spiritomb out and have super high retreat cost with Ariados. Then snipe with Nuzleafs lame 30 feint attack. But, Dugtrio may be a superior choice with it’s free retreat cost and Lightning resistance. (It’s not prone to gusting as much)
-Tonu, Unown K Locks are always just evil :P Although, unless I’m trying to just stall till time, I wouldn’t know what to do during the wait :P As for cutting down on rare candies, I think that’s a GREAT idea. I prefer having Nuzleaf under Shiftry so much more. I just have them in hopes of more speed, but maybe Broken time Space will do good. I wish there was a trainer that searches Stadiums…
good idea with the shiftry but i wouldnt use ariados i would swap it fro a powerhouser
good idea with the shiftry but i wouldnt use ariados i would swap it fro a powerhouser
When this first came out, I missed the “on your opponents turn” part and thought with Dialga X from GE (Time Skip) this broke the game.
When this first came out, I missed the “on your opponents turn” part and thought with Dialga X from GE (Time Skip) this broke the game.
I’ll will tell you right now why this deck could never become good.
Because of Foretress.and the SW blastoise.
Talk about my favorite pokecombo ever.
the deck nver attacks and auto wins shiftry.
But i do still love the card and nice article.
I’ll will tell you right now why this deck could never become good.
Because of Foretress.and the SW blastoise.
Talk about my favorite pokecombo ever.
the deck nver attacks and auto wins shiftry.
But i do still love the card and nice article.
Haha, true that. All tails for Forretress power + 7 energies from Waterlog could OHKO all my pokemon. 6 prizes in a row if my bench is full. Must be the few was that could happen… Of course, Shiftry’s seal of could block your pokepower/pokebody next turn. :P
Haha, true that. All tails for Forretress power + 7 energies from Waterlog could OHKO all my pokemon. 6 prizes in a row if my bench is full. Must be the few was that could happen… Of course, Shiftry’s seal of could block your pokepower/pokebody next turn. :P
Do any of you guys know how unpopular Shiftry is in my area? Well it’s so bad that at one tournament I went to I saw a Shiftry thrown on the ground for nothing but for waste.
Do any of you guys know how unpopular Shiftry is in my area? Well it’s so bad that at one tournament I went to I saw a Shiftry thrown on the ground for nothing but for waste.
I used this deck in a small tournament and came in 2nd, losing to lady gaga. But I beat pooka.
I used this deck in a small tournament and came in 2nd, losing to lady gaga. But I beat pooka.
This deck would be much better if the supporter “Copycat” was still legal!! I made a deck with the shiftry’s and it did decent.
This deck would be much better if the supporter “Copycat” was still legal!! I made a deck with the shiftry’s and it did decent.
Just a thought, you say Ariados would be useless against Flygon but you don’t pay attention to Shiftry’s Seal off attack, that means your opponents turn after you attack with your Shiftry’s Seal Off, Flygon can’t use Rainbow Float, not sure about Wind Erosion though. Nice article BTW
Just a thought, you say Ariados would be useless against Flygon but you don’t pay attention to Shiftry’s Seal off attack, that means your opponents turn after you attack with your Shiftry’s Seal Off, Flygon can’t use Rainbow Float, not sure about Wind Erosion though. Nice article BTW
Yep, thats completely true. Ariados can’t do anything against Rainbow Float. Luckily there are no basic colorless energies. However, this deck does suffer if the main attacker in the deck is not flygon and is ,say , Machamp.Moonlight becomes a problem sometimes as well.
In any case, COPYCAT IS HERE!
Yep, thats completely true. Ariados can’t do anything against Rainbow Float. Luckily there are no basic colorless energies. However, this deck does suffer if the main attacker in the deck is not flygon and is ,say , Machamp.Moonlight becomes a problem sometimes as well.
In any case, COPYCAT IS HERE!
Shiftry is great but I have a question. What if you want to retreat Shiftry!?! Switch? Warp point? (scratch that) Also maybe you can throw in Pokemon contest hall. So set up is a piece o cake!
just put in a moonlight stadium, all dark mons, retreat cost is set to 0
just put in a moonlight stadium, all dark mons, retreat cost is set to 0
try to add Copycat then use conform…it makes the opponent to lose easily
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