Cotton Swarm vs. Speedrill

Hey guys! I wanted to write a quick article because a lot of people have talked about Jumpluff and Beedrill being really similar at the last couple of tournaments I went to and I wanted to hear some more opinions about what deck people think is better in a competitive tournament (or if you think the decks are basically the same.) I’m going to try to compare the basic strategy between each deck, what advantages/disadvantages each deck has, and what matchups would be good or bad against each deck.

Beedrill Great Encounters GE 13 Pokemon CardStrategy:

Beedrill:

Focus/Objective: Beedrill decks are usually focused around getting Beedrill’s attack, band attack, to do as much damage as possible, by getting as many Beedrill into play as fast as possible. Band attack does 30 damage times the amount of Beedrill you have in play, so the maximum amount of damage you can do is 120, without tools/techs.

Drawing Power: Most Beedrill decks use either one or more Claydol GE/Beedrill RR to try to search for cards to set up the max 120 damage the Beedrill GE can do. Claydol GE does the expected “Cosmic Power” to try to search for cards that you need and Beedrill RR uses the Poké-power “Flutter Wings”, which allows you to search for a grass type Pokémon in your deck and then lets you put it into your hand.

Overview: Overall Beedrill is a very consistent deck that can cause a lot of damage if played right and sets up extremely fast.

Jumpluff:

Focus/Objective: Jumpluff decks are currently based on trying to do as much damage with Jumpluff’s attack, Mass Attack, by getting as many Pokémon in play as fast as possible. Mass Attack does 10 damage times the amount of Pokémon in play (both yours and your opponent’s). Overall the maximum damage you can do is 120, just like Beedrill, if you are not using any tools/techs.

Jumpluff HeartGold & SoulSilver HS 6Drawing Power: To search for cards to make the deck faster and more consistent most people I have seen usually use one or a combination of Claydol GE and Sunflora HGSS. Claydol is used for the ALWAYS popular “Cosmic Power” ability and Sunflora HGSS uses the Poké-Power, “Sunshine Grace”, which allows you to search for a grass type Pokémon in your deck and put into your hand.

Overview: Jumpluff is an insanely fast deck that can constantly attack with a lot of damage if played correctly.

Advantages/Disadvantages:

Beedrill:

Advantages:
• Can constantly cause an insanely large amount of damage
• Attack costs only one grass energy card
• Has a free Retreat Cost
• Sets up extremely fast
• Has a decent amount of HP for a stage 2 Pokémon
• Easily recovers after a kill
• Beedrill is Epic

Disadvantages:
• Completely walled by Mr. Mime MT
• Can get killed in 1 or 2 shots by most decks
• If you lose the ability to play trainer cards you will suffer tremendously
• Has a +30 weakness to fire types (not too bad except for matchups against Blaziken FB and Charizard)

Jumpluff:

Advantages:
• Can constantly cause an insanely large amount of damage
• Attack costs only one grass energy card
• Has a free Retreat Cost
• Sets up extremely fast
• Easily recovers after a kill
• Jumpluff is Epic

Disadvantages:
• Completely walled by Mr. Mime MT
• If you lose the ability to play trainer cards you will suffer tremendously, not as bad as Beedrill in my opinion
• Has a x2weakness to fire types (not too bad except for matchups against Blaziken FB and Charizard)
• Very low HP for a stage 2 Pokémon

Matchups:

Beedrill Matchups:

Beedrill Rising Rivals RR 15 Pokemon CardDiagla G vs. Beedrill: Chances are that Diagla G would easily win by just using Deafen because Beedrill really relies on using trainers to set up and Diagla G is so bulky that it is really hard to kill.

Garchomp C vs. Beedrill: Overall the winner would probably be Beedrill because it would probably be able to survive getting attacked at least once and it could set up faster.

Jumpluff vs. Beedrill: The winner would probably be who ever could set up faster!

Gengar vs. Beedrill: Beedrill would easily get killed by Gengar considering all of the trainers, stadiums and supporters you will most likely have in your deck and Gengar is really difficult to kill without getting Knocked Out yourself.

Machamp vs. Beedrill: Beedrill would easily win considering Machamp can do almost nothing to Beedrill because Beedrill can easily set up and Machamp can’t cause a lot of damage to Beedrill.

Shuppet vs. Beedrill: Shuppet would most likely win because most Shuppet decks use Mr. Mime MT and Beedrill suffers a lot from not being able to attack quickly.

Gyarados vs. Beedrill: Beedrill will probably win against Gyarados because Beedrill can usually take a hit when battling against Gyarados and Beedrill can usually hit harder.

Flygon vs. Beedrill: Flygon would probably win against Beedrill because Flygon would most likely discard something that would be essential for Beedrill to have and Flygon has a lot of HP.

Charizard vs. Beedrill: Even though Beedrill does have a weakness to Charizard, Beedrill would be able to set so fast that Charizard couldn’t keep up with Beedrill.

Donphan Prime vs. Beedrill: Although I have not had a lot of experience battling against Donphan Prime, I believe Beedrill would be able to simply overpower Donphan, unless Beedrill was not setup fully.

Jumpluff Matchups:

Sunflora HeartGold & SoulSilver HS 31Diagla G vs. Jumpluff: I think Jumpluff would actually win because it can cause a lot of damage quickly and Jumpluff doesn’t rely on trainer cards as much as Beedrill.

Garchomp C vs. Jumpluff: The winner was usually Garchomp C because it was actually harder to protect the bench, then when I was using Beedrill.

Beedrill vs. Jumpluff:
The winner would probably be who ever could set up faster!

Gengar vs. Jumpluff: Almost all the Pokémon I had in play had a Poké-power, which made my bench really easy to kill.

Machamp vs. Jumpluff: Jumpluff would easily win considering Machamp can do almost nothing to Jumpluff because Jumpluff can easily set up and Machamp can’t cause a lot of damage to Jumpluff.

Shuppet vs. Jumpluff: Shuppet usually won because of Mr.Mime MT.

Gyarados vs. Jumpluff: Gyarados usually won because it was able to kill Jumpluff in one hit because of Jumpluff’s low HP.

Flygon vs. Jumpluff: Jumpluff had a lot of trouble against Flygon and usually lost because of Flygon’s power and Jumpluff’s low HP.

Charizard vs. Jumpluff: Jumpluff was able to move so fast that it usually killed off Charizard before it could set up.

Donphan Prime vs. Jumpluff: Jumpluff was easily able to kill off Donphan Prime because Jumpluff was able to take a few hits because of its resistance.

My opinion:
Overall I thought, both decks were pretty much the same kind of deck because they both used a strategy that was the same and all of the cards that were usually in each deck, did the same exact thing! There were only a few differences I found in the decks that may have made me like one of the decks better.

1. When playing Jumpluff my opponent was able to somewhat control the amount of damage I could cause by only playing a certain amount of Pokémon.

2. Beedrill needs to have certain Pokémon in play to be able to do the max amount of damage, which was a problem when I had a lot of Beedrill’s evolution cards prized, unlike Jumpluff who could cause the max amount of damage by playing any kind of Pokémon.

3. Jumpluff doesn’t rely on using trainer cards as much as Beedrill does, which helps when playing against Diagla G or Spiritomb AR.

4. Jumpluff usually could have a lot more techs in play.

Please comment on my article! Which deck do you think is better? Please leave constructive criticism!

Reader Interactions

29 replies

  1. jordan baker

    I prefer Jumpluff, it seems faster to me and its pretty easy to swarm. It also has so many potential techs as you mentioned.

  2. Adam Capriola

    I like Jumpluff better because you don't need to get 4 Stage 2's in play for it to do a lot of damage. You only need 1 Jumpluff out.

    It's difficult for your opponent to really limit their bench unless they are playing Palkia G LV.X PL, so it's usually doing pretty good damage. I think you can fit more things into a Jumpluff deck than you can in Beedrill too.

    So my vote goes to Jumpluff. Very good analysis on your part though Nave. :)

  3. Adam Capriola

    Glad you like it, I have a post explaining why I changed from the old one scheduled for tonight. :)

  4. Matthew Riddle

    I agree with everything Adam says.

    Weakness is lame and the HP is low, but unlike Beedrill, Jumpluff has the space to tech in things (if needed) to add more HP (shaymin lv.X) or remove fire weakness (metapod). Beedrill requires too much bench space for other Beedrills and I am totally blown away whenever a player can tech something into Beedrill and use it effectively (looking at you mr. world champion).

  5. ofr3ako

    Speedrill is also MORE susceptible to a power locking deck (*cough* *cough* PLOX or G-Lock) than Jumpluff is.

  6. Sergio Ortiz

    pheww, really cool coverage!
    maybe you can always tech a 1-0-1 oe1-1-1 line of jumpluf in beedril LOL
    IMO, beedrill stills GREAT against a lot of things (except dialga G)
    but, who has a chance versus Dialga G (giggles)
    Nice article, i'll choos beedrill cuz of fire weaknes is just +30…

  7. smgausch

    I like both these deck, but hate the hp and the weakness. I agree with much of the article except your Charizard match-up for both. I play all three decks because I like to hit for cheap and fast, but unless Charizard has the worst set-up ever I usually average a first trainer turn zard or at least second, and with weakness i will 1 hit your main attacker every turn. For one energy and two other pokemon not named uxie on the bench it will OHKO Jumpluff and an e-belt and another poke and any b is done. I like both these decks for the next few tournies, including charizard. My only problem with them all is Dusknoir DP can kill you(why aren't more people playing this card). If you run rare candies tech a 1-0-1 line this card is a game changer. You can knock out on pluff ,bee, zard right after you had them shuffle one back in, EPIC.

  8. Koay Ze Nian

    But playing Jumpluff with Pichu would only give your opponent a fast and ” free ” setup. Thus , your opponent would get a T2 Luxray LvX , T2 Claydol etc. for free =/ and a 30HP pichu doesn't seem very pleasant to me . Most of the attacks would rip jumpluff off while Beedrill still has the chance to survive one attack ( or more with SSU ) and with the new Pokemon Communicator I don't see why its so hard to play =/

  9. Mark Stroup

    Jumpluff definately, just because I think it's easier to rely on bench space being taken up to make damage, than that of collecting 4 Stage 2's at once on the field.
    Also because of Jumpluff's resitance, which puts a finger in front of Donphan Prime's face.
    Beedrill usually goes 2 RR and 2 GE Beedrills, making the RR Beedrills useless attacking (unless you need 3 energy anyway because you're walled against Mime) whereas Jumpluff offiicially swarms.

  10. Matthew Riddle

    Yeah, I definitely think Dusknoir will see some major use at a tournament before the end of the season.

  11. Adam Capriola

    Great point about Dusknoir, I haven't been considering it too much myself.

  12. Clayton H

    great article! you covered alot of points! the downside of both is their fire weakness but in the long run i would see jumpluff being used more even though it has less hp

  13. Michael Randolph

    I vote jumpluff because i love sniping all the hoppip and pichu with shadow room! That and it seems to set up rather quickly compared to beedrill as far as damage output goes anyways.

  14. shortychaos22

    I made a jumpluff deck and found that you can add shaymin lvx to help with the low hp issue

  15. jordan baker

    I played a few games with the Shaymin X and ran into a few big problems. First of all being that I didn't really need the extra HP. Yeah its nice but focusing on jumpluff and swarming is a much better tactic. Second Shaymin X doesn't have free retreat and my Jumpluff deck only has 6 energy. I do run warp point but I would rather use those strategically to get KO's than to retreat a tech.

    All in all there are a lot of techs that Jumpluff can use (Cherrim, Shaymin, Sunflora, Pichu, Pachi, etc.) I picked Cherrim and then focused on swarming. This also gives me more bench space for Claydol and Uxie.

  16. Saturn

    The reason people are not using Dusknoir is because of Unown G. All of it's moves are putting damage counters which unown G prevents. People are still running Machamp, so unown G will be waiting…

  17. SMGausch

    Saturn, I was not suggesting to attack with a Dusknoir, but rather to use the DP Dusknoirs Poke-Power. A 1-0-1 tech of this is a game changer. It can allow you to make your opponent shuffle one of their bench pokemon into their deck(if the have 4 or more) pair with warp point you could shuffle their main attacker back in, or just shuffle a support pokemon, claydol, back-up, etc. back in. At the very least you force them to play with only 3 bench spots. This cripples jumpluff, beedrill, charizard, almost anything.

  18. Blazingnine2008

    If you like to get rid off the weakness of bothe decks i prefer to put a metepod HGSS. Nice article

  19. Blazingnine2008

    One more thing you can put also a shaymin lv.X for plus 40 hp.

  20. jordan baker

    There really isn't any point to put the metapod in a Jumpluff deck. It has such low HP that it wont really matter.

    It would just takes up bench space in a tech heavy deck that also tries to swarm.

  21. Adam Capriola

    Yeah I agree with Jordan. Maybe in Beedrill it could help vs Blaziken FB's, but probably not. The bench spot is just not worth it when it will be of minimal aid.

  22. gigar

    Jumpluff does 70min and 120 max with out pp or ebelt or buck or crobat g
    i have play both for a long time (jumpluff since it came out)
    there both very fast and fun but Jumpluff is a much more competitive deck
    Can add lots of TECH
    and Eat fire while it sets up.
    I Play a mean Arcanine + typh prime deck.
    all i had to say :P
    Jumpluff ftw

  23. gigar

    Jumpluff does 70min and 120 max with out pp or ebelt or buck or crobat g
    i have play both for a long time (jumpluff since it came out)
    there both very fast and fun but Jumpluff is a much more competitive deck
    Can add lots of TECH
    and Eat fire while it sets up.
    I Play a mean Arcanine + typh prime deck.
    all i had to say :P
    Jumpluff ftw

  24. Tyler Samplonius

    has anyone put a decklist together, combining both of these strategies?

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