I will state right now that this deck should probably only be played at a league. If you play it at a tournament and do horrible, don’t blame me, please.
pokebeach.comWell, I am back to write a deck analysis on one of my favorite decks to play, Speed Torterra. You may already know this, but Torterra won German Nationals last year. Earlier this season I was trying to figure how to speed up Torterra as the set up was just so slow, but I think I’ve found a nice balance of cards to increase its quickness.
Let’s begin by looking at the attacker of the deck: Torterra from Unleashed. Torterra has a nice, hefty 140 HP, weakness to Fire types (such as Blaziken FB LV.X and Charizard AR), no resistance, and a heavy Retreat Cost of four.
Torterra has two attacks: “Giga Drain,” which does 40 for 1 Grass and 2 Colorless, and “Land Crush,” which does 80 for 2 Grass and 2 Colorless. The whole point of the deck is to get Torterra set up fast enough to use Giga Drain because of its effect to heal the same amount of damage you do to your opponent’s Pokémon.
The National’s winner played Flygon to give Torterra free retreat and Nidoqueen to heal; however, the problem with this is that it slows the deck down. Instead, I wanted to focus on speeding the deck up and getting a turn two Torterra. I do not run any Shaymin LV.X because I don’t think Torterra needs a higher amount of HP and I decided to run defense Cherrim instead, so here is what the list looks like:
| Pokémon – 24
4 Turtwig MD #77 |
T/S/S – 26
3 Pokémon Collector |
Energy – 10
6 G |
Pokémon
pokebeach.comNow if you know me, you would know that I love playing defensively, so of course I would want to play Cherrim AR. In my opinion, it’s like the story “The Lady, or the Tiger?“; you choose a door, defensive Cherrim or offensive Cherrim. Anyway, I play two Sunflora as once you get set up, you can search for any Grass Pokémon you need, which helps get everything moving. The one Uxie is used as a hand refresher, and that’s it.
I chose three Cherrim AR so I can reduce damage done because if you play the offense one, sure it lets you heal more damage, but if Torterra would be Knocked Out by an attack you can’t heal the damage. With Cherrim defense form it can prevent the KO and still let you heal. Just for the little extra damage that you sometimes need, I threw in one Cherrim SF.
The choice of the Turtwig should be between the Platinum or the two Majestic Dawn ones, and I personally like the Majestic Dawn #77 Turtwig. I also like the Grotle from Majestic Dawn because it at least has an attack to attach an extra Grass energy.
With all that explained, it is obvious this is totally different from the German National winner’s Torterra deck. My version has a fast set up through Uxie and Sunfloras, and instead plays on a defensive strategy rather than a high amount of HP. I believe it is now time to go over the Trainers, Supporters, and Stadiums…
Trainers, Supporters, and Stadiums
pokebeach.comNow if you looked at the list above and are thinking, “Why in the world would he put Flint’s Willpower in this deck?!”, I would normally think that too, but the point of this deck is to get an attacking Torterra set up by turn 2. So with Flint’s Willpower at my disposal, I would be able to attach a Double Colorless Energy for my regular energy attachment, and then play Flint’s Willpower to attach a Grass Energy and there we go: a turn 2 Giga Drain. Not the best idea, but hey, it works.
I run more Pokémon Communication over Bebe’s Search as I will probably be playing a Flint’s Willpower as my Supporter for the turn, but you should know the reasons why I run Bebe’s Search, Pokémon Communication, Pokémon Collector, and Luxury Ball. I run 4 Super Scoop Up to pick up a damaged Torterra or a benched Sunflora and use that extra bench space for a Cherrim.
I run Expert Belt to give Giga Drain a boost, and four PlusPower to once again boost Giga Drain when I need to. Three Broken Time-Space is used to well you know, quickly evolve all my Pokémon. The most interesting card in this list other than Flint’s Willpower is Twins. I believe you would already be down in prizes anyway so at least you can play Twins to grab some useful cards.
Now to the final part which is the easiest part of the deck building process, the Energy.
Energy
en.wikipedia.orgGrass Energy are required Energy for Torterra’s attacks, and Double Colorless speed let you Giga Drain quicker. Simple, right?
So that’s my Speed Torterra deck. In the end I don’t expect it to be really great; it’s more of a fun deck to play around at a league or against a Poké-friend. If you insist on playing the deck at a tournament, then I recommend using it at a Battle Road and not at a higher level tournament like States or Regionals. Hope you enjoyed the article.
– Chemical
flints only attaches to sp pokes. also no spiratomb AR! also a 4-4 cherrim a 2-2- sunflora and a 4-3-4 torterra seems extensive. i would use a 3-3 cherrim(1 offense). a 2-2 SUNFLORA AND A 3-2-3 TORTERRA. THIS ALSO GIVES ROOM FOR 4 SPIRATOMB ar AND 1 UNOWN q. this deck will spike in play probably if format becomes rr-on. healing can finally work(unless charizard takes over)
Reminds me of torrim
Pretty cool article. I would probably run offensive cherrim since it also lets you remove more damage (thus also beign defensive). The problem is the OHKO, which I am pretty unsure on how to deal with.
Reminds me of the ol’ Turtwig GL deck. I loved that.
You do know that Flint’s only allows you to attach an energy to SP pokemon, right?
ahhh there seems to be no speed or consistency in this deck…. 4 spiritomb and another uxie will help…. also you should run 1 SF torterra for faster evolution.
I’m not sure, but maybe you meant to include Bronzong G in the list (as the other part of the “Flintzong” energy acceleration scheme)? As a couple of people have already posted, Flint’s won’t work without SP, but Bronzong G provides a convenient way of moving that Flinted energy onto a non-SP poke–just Flint’s to Bronzong G first, and then Galactic Switch to any other Pokemon (at the price of 20 damage on Bronzong).
Good article otherwise. I will say that Torterra suffers from the same problem that all high-energy Stage 2’s do–the current format has easy evolution acceleration (Rare Candy & Spiritomb), Supporter acceleration (Sableye & Jirachi) and lots of Trainers, but no easy energy acceleration for anything but SP. Sadly, I think that’s the only “slow” part about this deck. Wouldn’t a non-SP energy accelerator Supporter be nice in the next expansion?
i’m sorry but this is just……..bad. It’s inconsistent, slow, and some cards wont even work in this deck….(Flint’s Willpower -_-)
I think I would choose to use all offensive Cherrims (SF). I understand you wanting to play defensively, but when you make “Giga Drain” about as powerful as “Land Crush” you are more apt to keep using the attack that the deck was made to tank around. Also it helps you heal even more so you are still playing defensively. It’s like how DialgaChomp players try to increase the damage of “Deafen” so they could use it more often to get KOs and then hurt their opponent’s recovery.
Whoops my bad, I forgot I had switched the luxury ball for a Brongzong G when I typed this,
I’d take out Flint’s willpower, Bronzong g, and add a 1-1 Shaymin line. Also, i’d think that this would do better as a lock deck rather than a speed deck. The 4 Pluspowers seem techy and that’s where i’d slap on 4 Spiritomb AR. Can you imagine a Torterrable tank with 200 hp, can take at least 5 turns of hits and able to heal itself! Torplume? idk sounds like a sadistic missle
i think celebi prime
is a very good starter for this deck
it will speed a lot torterra
take out flint
and
add 4 celebi prime as starter
It takes 2 energy to attack, do you REALLY need to accelerate that? I say drop Flint and the ‘zong and the Scoop Ups.
Also, Twins is kind of weird. It is a GREAT card, but do you really plan to have it in hand when you only run 2? Especially since there is no real reason you should be behind. Twins works great in SP because of Cyrus. Twins also works great with Sableye. Twins is also great with Jirachi RR. But, without a way to get it out, the card really struggles.
And this deck BEGS for offensive Cherrims. In fact, I don’t think there is even an arguement for defensive Cherrims in this.Yes, I generally think reducing is better that healing, but we are generally talking about 20 HP…if you are worried about 20 HP, why aren’t you running Shaymin X? Shaymin X gives you +40 HP, meaning its better than Cherrim, and you can run straight offensive Cherrims, which means you will net less damage taken and net more damage given.
One other thing you may want to consider: Black Belt, VS Seeker, and Junk Arm. A belted Torterra with 2 Cherrims in play will do 80/heal 80, tack on another 40/40 since you “believe you would already be down in prizes (still not sure why),” I think a few Black Belts in here would be killer late game: Smacking for 120, healing 120? Can’t beat that…
It’s a league deck, it’s not meant to be that great, the whole idea of this torterra is to play it at league for fun, and to play this list at a tournament is a foolish decision. The list was also made with cards I have around my house not in my current Dialgachomp and Charizard at the time.