pokemon-paradijs.comHey guys RattataJoey here shedding light on an up and coming deck, namely Chandelure.
Chandelure has been receiving quite a bit of interest recently, mostly due to it tending to top cut at premier events such as Cities. First let’s get an overview of Chandelure: he’s a 130 HP Stage 2 with a Retreat Cost of 2, and being a Ghost type has Weakness to Dark.
Next is his Ability – and major selling point – “Cursed Shadow,” which allows you to drop 3 damage counters onto your opponent’s side of the field in any way you like once per turn if he’s active. Finally, we have his attack “Eerie Glow” which for 2 Psychic and 1 C Energy allows you to do 50 damage and then inflicts both Burn and Confusion on to the Defending Pokémon.
Standing alone, you can see that Chandelure isn’t a game breaker, so why is it receiving so much attention and doing so well? Mostly because an ideal setup for the deck is 2 Chandelure with a Dodrio UD on the bench, this allows you to use the ability of your active Chandelure then switch to your second and do it again (retreat and repeat).
Of course this strategy does carry a few minor flaws, most notably the fact that Dodrio can’t reduce its own retreat and can make itself into Catcher bait. Luckily, there is a way around this that can benefit the deck as a whole.
Vileplume UD’s “Allergy Flower” Poké-Body stops either player from using Trainer Item cards while he’s in play, meaning that Pokémon Catcher can no longer affect your field, as well as potentially slow down your opponent’s setup by denying them cards like Pokémon Communication and Rare Candy.
Using Vileplume also allows Chandelure to take advantage of its strongest trait – its evolutionary line. Chandelure has a unique evolutionary in the sense that every part of it adds something to the mix and gives the deck something to work with. So lets break this down into its individual pieces.
pokemon-paradijs.comFirstly we have Litwick BW Promo BW27. As you can see I’ve chosen the Promo Litwick, this is mostly for his “Call for Family.” This is wanted for 2 reasons: 1. To help avoid the donk, and 2. To start up the setup of a second Chandelure line. Of course along with the other 2 Litwick this is just a small additional extra, but it can always be helpful to have that extra Basic in play.
Secondly we have Lampent. Of course this is the only Lampent we have right now, but he does have the ability to give a Chandelure player a strong advantage throughout the game. His “Luring Light” acts in the exact same way as Catcher, but isn’t blocked by Trainer Lock with it being an attack. Using Luring Light you can drag up an opponent’s benched Pokémon that isn’t able to attack and snipe around it on your following turn, allowing you to place damage without taking any from attacks.
In addition to being able to disrupt, it’s also part of Chandelures standard evolutionary line, meaning that you won’t have to tech an additional Stage One when you can just hold off on evolving for a turn, place 30 damage, retreat, then drag something into the Active Spot, only to evolve next turn, place 30, retreat and place another 30.
As shown above all of the pieces of Chadelures evolutionary line add something to the deck, be it a small amount of consistency, disruption or being the main “attacker.” As some people may have noticed in order to make use of the Basic and Stage 1 you’re going to need Energy.
Of course some people might think this draws away from Chandelures overall strategy, but I respectfully disagree. Adding Energy doesn’t take away from what Chandelure, but can help it claim more decisive prizes. When the deck is up and running, using the attack can give you overall damage output of 110 or even 130 if they miss the flip on Burn, allowing you to potentially knockout a dragon in 1 turn and any other 130 HP Pokémon.
pokemon-paradijs.comSo what else can help Chandelure? Well the most obvious addition would be Rescue Energy. When playing under Trainer Lock, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be running a line without the Stage 1 in play, as you can’t Candy up to Chandelure once the lock is in place, meaning that if you do lose a Chandelure from the Active Spot you can pick up the entire line and start playing it back onto the bench on your following turn. This means only a slight reduction in damage output for 2 turns and if you already had an additional Litwick on the bench you hold a chance of being able to use Luring Light to drag out a new defending Pokémon and stall for an additional turn.
Another addition to the deck that can help Chandelure is Bellossom UD. With running Vileplume, there’s a chance that you can set up a second Gloom just to remove the cards from your hand, so why not add in the option of healing 10 damage a turn from all of your Pokémon? With Kyurem NVI in format, the ability to heal all your Pokémon at once can act as a potent counter to Kyurem’s spread as well as buying more turns for Chandelure which can mean another 60 damage on your opponents field and even and additional prize.
The next addition for the deck is Blissey Prime. Blissey Prime allows you to take advantage of the fact that you wont relying on Energy attachments to attack or retreating. Blissey is added to the deck for “Blissful Nurse” which allows you to fully heal every Pokémon on your side of the field at the cost of any energy attached to the Pokémon healed, this allows the Chandelure your swapping to last an extra turn or 2 giving you access to another 60-120 damage to your opponent’s side of the field.
The last addition I’m going to cover is Jirachi UL/CL. Jirachi can provide a handful of KOs at once against evolution based decks such as Vanilluxe, Truth variants and other Chandelure decks. Using “Time Hollow” after placing damage on your opponents evolved Pokémon you can send the highest stage of evolution back to their hand, leaving the damage on the lower stage to Knock it Out. Using this method you can potentially claim numerous prizes at once while avoiding the effect of cards like Rocky Helmet and Rescue Energy.
And that pretty much covers Chandelure plus a handful of his techs. I hope you guys found this useful and as usual I’m open to suggestions for upcoming articles.
Signing off for now,
RattataJoey
Nice covering of the deck. Speaking of which, Tropical Beach would do good since it barely attacks.
he doesnt even mention tropical beach in the chandelure article FAIL!
Yeah, that was a bit strange. I felt like this article missed a lot of important things. This article is only about 2k words and covered very little of the real Chandelure possibilities. I would have liked to seen a 4k-5k worded article that really explores all of the different options and ways to run Chandelure. It wasn’t a completely useless article and isn’t a bad place for beginners to start, but just isn’t comprehensive enough for me. 6/10
Nah, dropping the beach saves you $150 that you could be spending on other, more important stuff. Plus I’d rather attack than play Beach.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean you just don’t mention them at all.
probably its because not everyone can afford beaches
if you can get a beach you shouldnt play chandelure…
You are correct sir… haha
Makes a change.
OK, I’m confused… Even with dodrio, you should only be able to retreat once per turn, right? http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Glossary_(TCG) Isn’t that one of the rules? So using chandelure’s ability more than once should require Switches or something, but people play vileplume with the deck?
Yeah, but 60 damage anywhere is a lot, considering you can devolve, use tropical beach, or use chandelures attack.
Well it could have been more clear that there are two ways to run the deck: with and without Vileplume. The version without it can use Switch to drop 90-120 per turn. The best way to play the version with Vileplume is to add energy and attack for 50 at the end of your turn + burn + confusion.
Tropical Beach is what makes this deck actually good, so you should definatly mention it.
The problem is that this piece of writing doesn’t know whether it is a CotD or a deck article.
The only problem with Chandy is that it needs Trop. Beach to even run correctly. If you live in the US like me, it is not that easy to get 2 or 3 Trop. Beachs.
Not this. Come on?
No Beach. Chandelure without Beach is like 6 Corners without the Terrakion.
Right on Brother.
No Beach. I just saved $150.
it doesn’t matter about the price. Without tropical beach, the deck is subpar and tropical beach should be mentioned somewhere in the article.
Honestly, I haven’t played it, but it shouldn’t hurt the consistancy too much. It should be just like Gothitelle and Ross in that sense (both of which I have played)
Nah, you didn’t mention a lot of stuff. You didn’t even post a decklist. I think this would be better off if you thought it through and showed me more Chandelure, because I barely know about the deck and would like to know more about it. I know you retreat for another Chandelure and try to put 60 a turn wherever you want, but I don’t know some of the details, like how thick your Chandelure lines should be, what techs are good against what metagames, etc. All I saw is this: Chandelure does this, Litwick and Lampent do this, these cards are good in the Chandelure deck, these are some techs. No decklist, no matchups, no nothing.
Also, people please stop mentioning Tropical Beach. My wallet obviously isn’t as thick as yours.
To everyone mentioning the lack of beach, you all already know to use it, if you didn’t then I wouldn’t be seeing it mentioned in every other comment.
Also in reply to the fact that I don’t include a deck-list or match-up’s, firstly I don’t believe in spoon feeding and secondly on the note of match-ups, I feel that there’s no way to accurately numerically display how well decks compare. Sure you can play the match-up 100 times or more and use that experience but your findings could be drastically different to some-one else who uses and different list and a different playstyle
Neither of those answers will wash.
We all know what Litwick’s CFF does. We all know how Blissey Prime works. Yet you mentioned them didn’t you? The best thing would just be to admit that you really should have included some mention of TB.
Your reasons for not including a decklist are a cop out. You could have done a skeleton list at least. All article writing involves ‘spoon feeding’ to a certain extent. If you don’t want to help people out towards building the deck, then . . . why did you write this? That’s a serious question.
I agree that giving numerical values to match ups is arbitary and not very useful, but you can at least give an indication as to whether a match up is favourable or not. It’s also helpful to describe the tactics and techs that can help in particular match ups. The ‘playstyle’ excuse is another cop out. I don’t care what your ‘playstyle’ is: some match ups are still more favourable than others.
I liked your Durant article, and I didn’t hate this one particularly, but it does have some major flaws. The best thing to do would be to admit them and learn from the mistakes, instead of getting all petulant and defensive.
I will admit that it is a big oversight that Beach is missing and after reading the first comment I kicked myself for it, but everybody is stating ‘You missed so much’ then relates everything to 1 card. Yes beach is an amazing card for the deck and I’ve kicked myself for it but I feel I have to get defensive when people are flat out saying the article is bad without expanding on anything else that was missed.
In defence of covering Litwick with there being 3 choices I felt it was required to point out the Basic I felt was best for the deck as a whole and explain the reasoning, this also allowed me to give deeper cover into how good Chandelures entire line is after seeing others just cover the stage 2 and not mention the potential that lies beneath.
Sorry about the rant, but I felt it best to explain my article choices in light of your observations.
thank you for reading btw
No problem with you covering the Litwick. You were right to cover it, just as you would have been right to cover TB.
In fairnesss to you, that is something that the FP editors should have picked up. It would have saved you from all the negative comments and is a pretty obvious suggestion to make.
Yea, I’m just not diggin’ how much backlash I’m taking from missing a single card and the fact that I can’t defend the choices I made for an article designed purely to inform.
In my personal opinion, I’ve seen reviews and articles that have been much worse than this and have gotten mad praise, its kind of upsetting to have 1 little mistake thrown in my face.
Don’t let it get to you.
If you are honest with yourself, you will see that this isn’t as good as your Durant article, and that you are capable of better things. You don’t need to keep defending yourself, it will just provoke more negative comments and make this a bigger deal than it needs to be.
The only way to shut your critics up is to learn from this and write something really good next time.
Cheers Mario. Just out of interest, would you happen to be a UK player?
Yep.
If you go to tournaments you’ve probably seen me around.
He’s probably seen your Happiny getting abused by Mamoswine!
Yeah, I can see where you’re coming from. Looking back, I think my comments on this article didn’t quite go into enough detail, so I’d just like to elaborate on what I said.
Yes, TB was missing and that was a pretty glaring error. However, that wasn’t the only thing I didn’t like about this article. It just didn’t go into enough detail or explore all of your options. I see what you mean by not wanting to “spoon feed” people, but I feel an article like this is a spoon feeding article. I really loved your Durant cotd, so I was hoping this article would contain loads of different cards and techs and different ways to run Chandelure. I guess I was disappointed when it basically just brushed over the card.
I feel Mario says it perfectly below. It wasn’t as good as your durant article, so just try and learn from all the feedback (or in some cases hate) on this article so your next article is your best one yet. I look forward to it!
There’s two stances you can take, generally speaking. One is: I don’t want to spoonfeed info. In which case, why write an article like this? It’s pretty much a spoonfeeding session. The other is: that information is very obvious, there was no reason to include it.
But then, your article has obvious info spoonfed to people, and it turns out you can’t really have your cake and eat it too looking contradictory.
I’m guessing that you see giving ideas to people as spoon feeding, If I was spoon feeding then would be a deck list stating how the deck ‘should’ be run as opposed to me offering advice on how a deck ‘can’ be run
I read the article and read every comment to date. I feel that you, Joey, are correct in feeling a little bit taken back by the lack of depth in the comments. So, I will be a bit more thorough as to why I did not like this article.
1) Tropical Beach: I know everyone else has said it. I know that it costs a lot of money. However, this single card (well actually two or three copies of the card) is almost singularly what makes the deck a great deck. Without it, the deck is very sub par over the course of a longer tournament. Yes, you will set up sometimes, but you will whiff on setting up once or twice without it. It’s a pain, but this must be included in any reasonable coverage of this deck.
2) You basically only talked about less than 10 cards that must go into the Vileplume version of the deck. Decks live or die based on their trainer lines. Some conversation of these should be included. Is N, one of the most powerful cards in the game, a good play in here? What types of supporters work best? Is it OK to run stuff that discards a lot? Not to mention discussion on Pokemon to open with. Is Cleffa or Pichu the play? Leading me to…
3) You do not need to have a decklist. I get that. If you don’t want to hand out a “free” list, that’s fine. However, there needs to be more conversation about what makes the deck work and how these pieces fit together. Stuff like proportionally, what are roughly the slots required for each type of card. Etc.
4) You covered some techs, but I feel that you missed a pretty big one: DCL. This card is a straight up boss in here. With Twins and Tropical Beach, getting the two halves are relatively easy to accomplish. Obviously, you don’t have to run it, but I feel like you really missed one of the better techs to talk about.
5) This one is the second worst mistake in my opinion (only to the failure to cover Tropical Beach). Chandy is run in two different styles. Both styles have had success. Both styles can win. It can be played with or without Vileplume. You only focused on the Plume version and failed to even mention the non-Plume version. This can work really well with a good list. A lot of Junk Arm and Switch will allow you to place 90-120 damage per turn. I find it to be lacking that there is not even a passing mention of this as a viable strategy. I would have been content if you talked about it briefly. Then you decide that the Vileplume is better and communicate that to your readers. Then you could spend the majority of the article cover the Plume version.
6) Personally, I like at least some strategy discussion. How do you play the deck. What are some situations you could find yourself in, and how to deal with them. Normally, this is covered in the match up sections.
7) Again, personally, I like match up sections. I think that they are some of the best discussion pieces of any article. They allow the readers to have a built in topic to cover in the comment section.
I hope that is sufficient to give you constructive feedback.
I am not a fan of this article. No, not because you did not mention Tropical Beach. It is because I still do not know how to play this deck even after reading this article. I have never played with this deck before. Should I be switching out with Switch and Junk Arm to play this deck? Should I play Vileplume? What happens with Vileplume, do I just use Dodrio to retreat for 60 damage anywhere each turn? Or should I be attacking for a burn and confusion? You glossed over these topics, but never really said how the deck works. There was no strategy of the deck written in there, or if it was it was spread throughout and not easy to understand. That is my reason for not being fond of this article.
I think this deck does well when it has a basic or Legend attacker that it can bring up in a single turn, to deal with the times when the player has one only one or no Chandelures fully evolved. I’ve seen the deck run with Cobalion/Special Metals, with Bouffalant/DCE, with DCL Legend (uses the Psychic Energy), with Sigilyph…would be nice to outline some attacker tech options.
So does chandelure’s ability reset then if it goes to the bench, because it’s an ability and not a pokepower?
nope the once per turn is an effect applied to the player not Chandelure so if you where able to double retreat the first chandelure wouldn’t be able to use its ability twice
I appreciate your effort bro!
Has anyone considered a 2-2 or 1-1 Yanmega Prime line? I run a 2-2 because of the extra 10 damage you get with linear attack. It works really well and you would be surprised at how well it works. I just had to max out Junk arm and Switch. I was already running Judge and Copycat, so Yanmega works wonders in this deck.