Rocking the Virbank City Gym

Great article Colin! Definitely looking forward to this set. I've had an article written for TCGwHats that's been on hold for 2.5 months since we found out Virbank was held back, involving Scolipede. It'll probably never see the light of day though... p.s. Loved the titles for the sections :P

As for Ninetales though, I agree with Tornadus EX. I just wrote a Ninetales/Tornadus/Mewtwo article this Sunday! http://tcgwithhats.blogspot.ca/2013/01/hypnofox-ninetalesmewtwotornadus.html I'm liking the deck so far. my only trouble is figuring out the lists I have to test against.
 
Thanks Colin, i really enjoy articles that leave room for the imagination, i found myself at first scrolling down to look for deck lists, then stopped and said, hey this is a topic im actually really interested in, it really got me thinking about poison pokemon and how Virbank/Lazer is really going to change our format. I have been working on a Darkrai EX/Sableye DEX/Ninetales DRX deck for a few weeks, and im really enjoying playing with it.
Gothitelle has such a great ability in this format, Gothitelle/Gardevoir +lazerbank might be just what i need to boost its power.

How many decks do you think will run Virbank? depending on the meta i could see only running 1-2 virbank in certain decks just because so many other decks will already have it in play for you.
 
great article, however you seem to have missed out stuntanks ability to poison and perhaps PRZ for 1 energy, combined with darkrai and virbank i could be a decent set up.

Ps. in the video games virbank is the 2nd gym and Roxie has Venipede, Koffing and something else that i can't remember.
 
Definitely looking to include Virbank City Gym in my Empoleon/ Accelgor/ Mew Ex build. The list has always been tight but I have had success even without cards such such as Tool Scrapper and Max Potion so I should be able to find room.

TechnoLegend players will be hesitant to lay down the stadium if they think you have a way to poison them, so even if your opponent has two in deck they may never lay it down and use a different stadium to beat out yours.
 
Personally, the poison combo is way overhyped. Yes, it does an instant 30 damage, but as you yourself have stated, poison rarely sticks.

What this means is that, in decks that don't actively poison, Laser effectively acts as nothing more than a triple pluspower. The stadium sticking or not makes no difference; you only have four lasers to use, which means throughout the game, that stadium is useful for only four turns most of the time.

Also, I think you should mention how, with the printing of escape rope, nulling that poison effect is easier than ever, ESPECIALLY with keldeo, since you can rush in AND use escape rope for a free retreat (a combo I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned so far). Catcher and switch counts will drop to accomodate escape rope who functions a bit like both, particularly for decks that don't really care who you damage (e.g. rayeels), so it's inclusion must be taken into account.

That said, I'm kinda excited about darkrai/keldeo using a full set of ether and lunatone for super speedy setup. Throw in dark claws and lasers and you have a very mean attacker.
 
Mark- I apologize for not linking to your article on Tornadus EX/Ninetales. I hadn't gotten around to reading your blog yet this week, so I didn't even know you had written about it!

TechnoLegend- I believe most Darkrai EX variants will be running Virbank (except for Hydreigon). Also a lot of Big Basic variants will also find room for Virbank too. I really do think almost everyone will be playing 3 Stadium cards. Some Virbank players may try to get by with 2 of the Stadium card, however. I'm not really sure.

GM_hubbleday- I had completely looked over Skuntank, but I probably wouldn't have written about it even if I had remembered it was in the format. I also neglected to write about Lilligant and Gliscor simply because they do not seem strong enough. I apologize for making that assumption about the video game! I forgot that they had made some changes between the Anime/Video game (I do not play the video games right now). Thanks for correcting me!

Roarkiller- I very much disagree about the Poison hype. I think it is very warranted. Even if Poison never sticks (which it will occasionally), an extra 30 for one turn is extremely powerful. Also countering an opposing Skyarrow Bridge, Aspertia City Gym or Tropical Beach can also be a devastating play. In regards to Escape Rope, yes there are more options for getting out of Status Conditions, but that does not mean people will play them. People will play Escape Rope but they will only substitute some of their Switch for the Escape Rope, not add more Switching cards. If they were playing 3 Switch before Plasma Storm they might play 2 Switch and 1 Escape Rope after Plasma Storm. I doubt they would go up to 2/2 or anything like that. Your point about a weak Pokemon Catcher substitute is valid though. Regardless, I still do not think the number of Switch/Escape Rope will increase that much (if at all) when Plasma Storm hits the metagame.

Thank you all for the comments!
 
Haha no worries Colin!

Also Roarkiller.

"Just" a triple pluspower? Pluspower is a card aggro decks are already running in 4-ofs. Back when we had Junk Arm, we were running 1-2 Pluspower in everything because that extra damage is just that good. A triple pluspower is definitely worth the hype. Even just the regular pluspower effect is worth it right now. Even if that's all it ends up as, that is definitely very good.
 
loved the article colin, would have been good too see a few more skeleton lists to see how you would play virbank/hypnotoxic, but other than that learnt a bit more about the future meta game. thanks :)
 
A Aspertia City Gym based decks seem like a bad idea because if you only have 20-30hp left and verbank is played down your pokemon could be knocked out without them even having to attack.

if you wanted to go the Darkrai EX/Keldeo EX combo to escape status conditions would you need at least 2 Keldeo included in the deck? i mean whats to stop your opponent from using a catcher and trapping your keldeo active?
 
Great article Colin!

It's going to be interesting to see how these old decks are transformed by the new cards, and what kind of new decks can step up to challenge our current ones.. I am like Colin and think that poison will see a lot of play.
 
"Team Plasma seems to really like Garbodor"
Obviously, haven't we known for the last 5 generations that bad guys use rubbish Pokemon :P
 
This was a fantastic article Colin, I really enjoyed reading it. I had something similar in mind when I was planing for my article but due to time constraints from Regionals I wasn't able to write more about the Laser. I'm certainly not disappointed that I left it out now though, you covered everything very nicely!
 
No no, you get me wrong. I didn't say it's a bad card, I said it's overhyped.

I understand how powerful that "just a triple pluspower" can be. But I also realize that not all decks can use it, compared to catcher or sigilyph. Blastoise is fast becoming the most used deck in format, but I will be VERY surprised if it has lasers.

Big basics are the best users, not decks without wiggle room. Conversely, I do indeed expect players to have more switching ability BECAUSE of lasers, whether it be in the form of keldeo, or increased switch count, or dowsing machine, or a combination of any.
 
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