“Bring on the Damage!” – A Look at Big Trends This Season as Well as What’s to Come

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“Bring on the Damage!” – A Look at Big Trends This Season as Well as What’s to Come

Post your comments and questions below! Any and all honest feedback is much appreciated.

I liked reading this article. I love card combos.

What do you think about a Lucario PLS/ShayminEX/Cofagrigas PLF combo? Cofagrigas PLF forcing the opponent to take prizes, which feeds both Lucario PLS and ShayminEX's attacks. Lucario hitting Fighting and Steel weak Pokemon and ShayminEX hitting Grass weak Pokemon for massive damage after 2 "Six Feet Under" Ability uses. Probably a bit of an awkward energy line up though.

Great article though, I love articles that spark my creativity.

Wow...one of the BEST articles! Well written, with articulate thought into strategy and game play. Thank you!

I rather liked how this article explored the new combos available. I had remembered, and then forgotten Bangle + Plume. But now that you've reminded me, I'm excited again! My Deoxys/Plasma Badge/Plume deck was pretty decent on its own, so now that we've got Bangle, I am very excited! Especially because we also picked up Tropius PLB which can be the grass attacker for Vileplume (though a spare Oddish can hit for 50 with a Bangle + DCE ). Rayquaza for Black Kyurem EX (and Hydreigon I suppose). Stunfisk or Landorus for Darkrais/Thundurus? Hmm... Durant PLS 91 has DCE for 20? Klink DEX does as well, but has 10 less HP. Though the return-to-bench attack may be better suited for such a low HP Pokemon to be your main attacker. Deals with Kyurem. Mewtwo + DCE is pretty fine against any Psychic Pokemon (though falls short on Deoxys just slightly. But you have Stunfisk or Landorus presumably). Reshiram BLW works great as a fire attacker.

Seems like the pieces are in place. Bit cramped, but probably viable!

The problem i forsee with plume/silver bangle is that it becomes hard to deal with non ex attackers. Durant or klink with silver bangle doesnt do anything against kyurm as you suggested for eg. Stunfisk+silver bangle still cant ohko an absol. Just my two cents

Oh right... EX or something... Cobalion EX is still decent. 120 Damage and Energy removal. It worked just fine with Deoxys/Plasma Badge. So even then it wasn't guaranteed OHKO'ing.

This was a great article. There was going to be a followup in the forums after a few decks have been tested-- would love to see how that panned out. Tested Tornadus EX extensively and couldn't quite get that to work -- but Shadow Triad definitely helped there. And Bouff has been great in Genesect. Would love to hear where you came to.

Just wanted to let you know, I always look forward to your articles.

Thanks for reminding me about this! I'm still testing a lot of different things, and have something like 8-ish decks built at this point, but here are a few things I came across...

- I tested Bouffalant with Landorus EX in the hopes that I could easily reach those "magic numbers." While it worked fairly well, I struggled against a speedy Blastoise and Plasma. I tried a few things to get energy accelerating the right way. First, I tried to revive the EtherDex combo (Ether/Pokedex), but then realized that Pokedex rotated, so that fell through. Then, I tried EXP Share to keep Energy on the field. Unfortunately, with a higher Tool Scrapper count in most decks, this didn't really work out either. Plus, having an EXP Share means you cannot attach a Silver Bangle (unless, of course, you run a high Tool Scrapper count yourself, but getting rid of one Tool for another didn't always work, especially as N is played late in the game). This deck still sits in my box, and I just acquired a third Landorus EX (my favorite EX personally), so perhaps I'll find some motivation to try it out again.

- The Kyurem/Deoxys deck is really good. And personally, I've seen more and more Plasma decks move in this direction (less Thundurus EX while keeping only a couple of tech Pokemon). The best bet seems to be somewhere in the middle, keeping single counts of Keldeo EX, Thundurus EX, and Absol. I haven't tested enough Plasma to be sure on all this though (this will change soon once those darn tins get released).

- I haven't tested Vileplume at all, largely because it's so metagame-specific. I wanted to see where the Klaczynski Open left us before I started working on the deck. I'll start testing this deck soon.

- Zebstrika NXD largely turned out to be a failure. Sure, it has a wonderful matchup against Plasma (so long as you can land an attack while having Silver Mirror attached), but against everything else it's horrible. Darkrai EX and Genesect EX both start attacking within three turns at most, and after just a few games of having Zebstrika blown away by Night Spear I was ready to dismantle the deck. The large Ghetsis count lead to unpredictable outcomes, but I'd say only 1 in 4 games did it really matter.

- I had the same experience you did with Porygon Z/Tornadus EX. If the opponent could break through my single Tornadus, everything would fall apart soon after.

- I've been testing a lot with some interesting rogue-ish decks, including Trubbish and Flareon. I'm also keeping my eye on Togekiss PLS. It + a Silver Mirror can possibly autowin the Plasma matchup. I'm not entirely sure what to pair it with though. Perhaps Victini EX? Hmm...

Hope this helped!