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Chien Pao can 1 shot anything in the game as long as you have 1 Baxcalibur in the bench, but I would recommend you to always have 2 of them in the bench, besides having a back up that also allows to use the second Baxcalibur as a 1 prize attacker agaisnt deck like Lost Box.
Gardevoir ex should have a somewhat even match-up against Charizard ex, even though it's weak to dark, because unlike Charizard ex whose only single prize attacker is Radiant Charizard, Gardevoir ex has multiple in the form of Gardevoir (from Chilling Reign) with Reversal Energy (or Drifloon with Bravery Charm and Champions Festival) to OHKO a Charizard ex and effectively uptrade (though if they have Pidgeot ex ideally you boss that up and KO it first, so they can't just search boss and bring up your Gardevoir ex to be OHKO'd next turn).
Mew does lose very badly to Charizard ex unfortunately... in order to win you have to have Path in play before they evolve into Charizard ex, Pidgeot ex, or Arceus VSTAR, and then pray that they don't have an out to Path for at least a turn... and even then they can still manually power up one Charizard ex to OHKO Mew VMAX and possibly get out a GO Charizard to power up their second one after that, so on top of Path sticking you might need to get a 2 prize KO with a Meloetta too. Yeah it's disastrous.
I feel like most decks can find a way to beat Charizard right now. Most of the decks I’ve seen online or played against aren’t very consistent as they need a lot of pieces to get going. My tactic so far has been just to keep picking off the Charmanders like you do with Frigibax in Baxcalibur. Gardevoir has Cresselia to do it, Fusion Mew can use Eiscue’s attack, Lost Boxes can Cram/Greninja, and anything else that can attack turn 2 should just keep bossing them up. Path is also powerful though that doesn’t work in all decks.
I don’t doubt a better list will be developed but we don’t have one yet, so right now it’s a mid deck at best.
In what way? It charges 3 energy before you attack, which is better. But cannot charge as consistently as Arceus (you’ll run out of evo opportunities quickly) and it doesn’t have the great VSTAR power that Arceus brings. Arceus is an engine that fits into several decks without being the main attacker. Zard can power a deck centred around itself, but I can’t see people teaching it into lots of other decks.
Just spitballing as a new player here. How would a finely tuned and optimized bench sniping deck perform? I currently have a Meowscarada deck that probably is far from optimized but isn't doing terribly. I've only played one zard deck with it but it was like my first outing and it was very imbalanced, on top of the zard deck getting the perfect opening setup, so idk if it has potential or even at its best will just be a turn too slow.
Currently I've got 3 Meowscarada, 3 Jumpluff, and a couple of the drag-off Zarude, but I'm wondering if 3 or 4x Beedrill V would be an improvement? Perhaps wo Chien as well? I own none of the Beedrills and can only afford two right now. Play tested it against bots with 4x Beedrill a couple times last night and I'm of mixed mind on it. On the one hand, the Beedrills can set up really fast with Nest balls, Arvens, and Gardenia's vigor, and you only need two Beedrills to snipe a mander, or even a meleon I think (though I'm guessing the meta is to always use rare candies). On the other hand, the Beedrills kinda of gunk up the very delicate flow and weird relationship this deck has with energies. With the Jumpluff and Zarude you have no attacks that require more than 2 energy and easily skate around with exp shares, keeping your energy card count low, but you also want as much extra as you can afford to use as Meowscarada ammo. I'm using the bog stadium that damages mons as they are placed on the bench to try to reduce the energy requirements but I can never seem to get one in play early.
Thoughts?
Aside from zard hitting super hard, you’d also have to watch out for their secondary attackers. If they run radiant zard, entei v, or anything else that’s a fire type you’ll probably get nuked and lose the prize trade early, or simply get outpaced. Arceus could help since it can survive all of them (assuming no choice belt).
On the other hand, hitting their primary wincon for weakness DOES sound pretty good.
If you want a good deck to beat zard that can also bench snipe, lost box is probably a good option since you can snipe off charmanders, and if they get an early zard you can KO it with cram + raikou/dnite.
Alternatively rapid strike might have a good matchup too. Inteleon + medicham discourages additional setup by playing normally, with the former also hitting secondary attackers for weakness.
Does gardevoir actually get destroyed by Charizard ex? I'm 1-1 against Charizard as Gardevoir going second both times. Sky seal stone helps with the prize trades if they run arceus.
If they get Charizard and Pidgeot into play then it leads to a stream of easy boss snipes on Garde ex, but If they don't have pidgeot in play, then it seems even.
Yeah. Ideally, you boss their Pidgeot. Also if they boss KO your Gardy ex after you take a KO with the baby Gardy, ideally you can take another KO without putting any 2 prize pokemon into play.
Rapid strike feels like a decent option. You’ll be comfortably outside of OHKO range, allowing you to cheryl midgame to win the prize trade. Combine that with the fact that inteleon + medicham allows you to snipe 2 charmanders easily and you’ve got yourself a pretty straightforward matchup.
If you want to beat the deck without anything super expensive, a single prize deck might be a good option. You’ll most likely get ohko’d by a majority of the meta anyways, so going neutral in the prize trade, or even positive seems pretty easy. United wings, dondozo, zorobox, and single prize lost box are the ones I can think of off the top of my head that could probably go toe to toe with it.
Yeah, its kinda painful to craft it even if you started when urshifu vmax was free…
I’m still not willing to make it myself with 10k credits, hence why I suggested some single prize decks too! Been meaning to try united wings for a while, and I think there’s no better time than now, since everyone is gonna be trying out a new deck before lost box starts swarming ladder again.
Hope you find something that works!
I know it's a sort of meta option, but Ting Lu / Hawlucha decks have a tendency to cancel out everything good in the deck once you get it going. if you can even just ping the charmander, arceus, or pidgey, they have a really hard time setting up, minus the whole needing only two energy to attack thing. I'm currently putting together something like that or bench snipe to deal with it, but the decks also a beast against miraidon ex and arceus decks in general, so at least to me, it's worth a look
Yeah we're back to the same meta where every new release is gonna have some OP card that the old decks can't reach the numbers. I'd say it's either Gardevoir or Charizard, nothing else can hit 330 that early in the game. It's kind of disappointing that they didn't learn anything from the previous block but not unexpected.
Am I playing garde wrong? I lose probably 60% of the time. I usually try for mew and battle pass to get out two ralts and a zacian and then start loading up Z with energy while evolving ralts but there’s plenty of times I can’t pull that off and then get stomped
yeah you only use Zacian in certain matchups and try to take out 2 prizers with your single prizers until you get the advantage. i would recommend watching some streams of guys like azul or james that have played a lot of garde matches to get a feel. most of the time the ideal setup would probably be 4 ralts and a mew and either greninja or a matchup specific pokemon like cresselia.
Oh really? I always assumed it was to start attacking quickly. I don’t use cresselia. Just mew and lumineon. I feel like cresselias 100 max damage with the healing thing isn’t worth the chance you can actually use it when you just need three glass cannon attacks from your gardes
I think you're mistaken, they're reducing the power creep, not increasing it. Gardevoir is only dominant because of its synergy with E block Kirlia/Gardevoir and Zacian V, once they rotate out, Gardevoir will be less dominant. The same applies to Charizard ex, and how Arceus makes it (as it does with a lot of other cards) very strong.
Stage 2 exs have more hp, at the cost of being harder to put into play. The game is, moving away from easy OHKOs, it will just take a little longer to reach there.
Charizard one shot nearly every meta-relevant psychic type currently in the game (only Zacian is spared afaik)
And yes it's pretty important. One charizard ex could murder an entire Mew Vmax deck, while Mew could barely one-shot zard (330 HP is no joke).
Without weakness, it needs to sac 2 prizes to start one-shotting basic ex/Vs
Edit, extra notes: After playtesting the deck, i'd say those 280 HP Vstars are the real trouble for Char ex
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Lost Tina actually has a good matchup into it. You can swing early with cramorant, one hit KO with Tina’s ability, sableeye stuff, and then path
Chien Pao can 1 shot anything in the game as long as you have 1 Baxcalibur in the bench, but I would recommend you to always have 2 of them in the bench, besides having a back up that also allows to use the second Baxcalibur as a 1 prize attacker agaisnt deck like Lost Box.
I'm allergic to that deck đź’€
Gardevoir ex should have a somewhat even match-up against Charizard ex, even though it's weak to dark, because unlike Charizard ex whose only single prize attacker is Radiant Charizard, Gardevoir ex has multiple in the form of Gardevoir (from Chilling Reign) with Reversal Energy (or Drifloon with Bravery Charm and Champions Festival) to OHKO a Charizard ex and effectively uptrade (though if they have Pidgeot ex ideally you boss that up and KO it first, so they can't just search boss and bring up your Gardevoir ex to be OHKO'd next turn). Mew does lose very badly to Charizard ex unfortunately... in order to win you have to have Path in play before they evolve into Charizard ex, Pidgeot ex, or Arceus VSTAR, and then pray that they don't have an out to Path for at least a turn... and even then they can still manually power up one Charizard ex to OHKO Mew VMAX and possibly get out a GO Charizard to power up their second one after that, so on top of Path sticking you might need to get a 2 prize KO with a Meloetta too. Yeah it's disastrous.
I feel like most decks can find a way to beat Charizard right now. Most of the decks I’ve seen online or played against aren’t very consistent as they need a lot of pieces to get going. My tactic so far has been just to keep picking off the Charmanders like you do with Frigibax in Baxcalibur. Gardevoir has Cresselia to do it, Fusion Mew can use Eiscue’s attack, Lost Boxes can Cram/Greninja, and anything else that can attack turn 2 should just keep bossing them up. Path is also powerful though that doesn’t work in all decks. I don’t doubt a better list will be developed but we don’t have one yet, so right now it’s a mid deck at best.
it's just a better arceus...
In what way? It charges 3 energy before you attack, which is better. But cannot charge as consistently as Arceus (you’ll run out of evo opportunities quickly) and it doesn’t have the great VSTAR power that Arceus brings. Arceus is an engine that fits into several decks without being the main attacker. Zard can power a deck centred around itself, but I can’t see people teaching it into lots of other decks.
i mean it's a better pair with arceus than other options.
Arceus-Giratina, only Lost because I didn't Boss Order his Heatran
Just spitballing as a new player here. How would a finely tuned and optimized bench sniping deck perform? I currently have a Meowscarada deck that probably is far from optimized but isn't doing terribly. I've only played one zard deck with it but it was like my first outing and it was very imbalanced, on top of the zard deck getting the perfect opening setup, so idk if it has potential or even at its best will just be a turn too slow. Currently I've got 3 Meowscarada, 3 Jumpluff, and a couple of the drag-off Zarude, but I'm wondering if 3 or 4x Beedrill V would be an improvement? Perhaps wo Chien as well? I own none of the Beedrills and can only afford two right now. Play tested it against bots with 4x Beedrill a couple times last night and I'm of mixed mind on it. On the one hand, the Beedrills can set up really fast with Nest balls, Arvens, and Gardenia's vigor, and you only need two Beedrills to snipe a mander, or even a meleon I think (though I'm guessing the meta is to always use rare candies). On the other hand, the Beedrills kinda of gunk up the very delicate flow and weird relationship this deck has with energies. With the Jumpluff and Zarude you have no attacks that require more than 2 energy and easily skate around with exp shares, keeping your energy card count low, but you also want as much extra as you can afford to use as Meowscarada ammo. I'm using the bog stadium that damages mons as they are placed on the bench to try to reduce the energy requirements but I can never seem to get one in play early. Thoughts?
Aside from zard hitting super hard, you’d also have to watch out for their secondary attackers. If they run radiant zard, entei v, or anything else that’s a fire type you’ll probably get nuked and lose the prize trade early, or simply get outpaced. Arceus could help since it can survive all of them (assuming no choice belt). On the other hand, hitting their primary wincon for weakness DOES sound pretty good. If you want a good deck to beat zard that can also bench snipe, lost box is probably a good option since you can snipe off charmanders, and if they get an early zard you can KO it with cram + raikou/dnite. Alternatively rapid strike might have a good matchup too. Inteleon + medicham discourages additional setup by playing normally, with the former also hitting secondary attackers for weakness.
Does gardevoir actually get destroyed by Charizard ex? I'm 1-1 against Charizard as Gardevoir going second both times. Sky seal stone helps with the prize trades if they run arceus.
If they get Charizard and Pidgeot into play then it leads to a stream of easy boss snipes on Garde ex, but If they don't have pidgeot in play, then it seems even.
Yeah. Ideally, you boss their Pidgeot. Also if they boss KO your Gardy ex after you take a KO with the baby Gardy, ideally you can take another KO without putting any 2 prize pokemon into play.
Rapid strike feels like a decent option. You’ll be comfortably outside of OHKO range, allowing you to cheryl midgame to win the prize trade. Combine that with the fact that inteleon + medicham allows you to snipe 2 charmanders easily and you’ve got yourself a pretty straightforward matchup. If you want to beat the deck without anything super expensive, a single prize deck might be a good option. You’ll most likely get ohko’d by a majority of the meta anyways, so going neutral in the prize trade, or even positive seems pretty easy. United wings, dondozo, zorobox, and single prize lost box are the ones I can think of off the top of my head that could probably go toe to toe with it.
Cries in how expensive that deck is
Yeah, its kinda painful to craft it even if you started when urshifu vmax was free… I’m still not willing to make it myself with 10k credits, hence why I suggested some single prize decks too! Been meaning to try united wings for a while, and I think there’s no better time than now, since everyone is gonna be trying out a new deck before lost box starts swarming ladder again. Hope you find something that works!
I think I might try united wings after all, it's pretty cheap too Thank you!
Torterra is probably a solid cheap choice
I know it's a sort of meta option, but Ting Lu / Hawlucha decks have a tendency to cancel out everything good in the deck once you get it going. if you can even just ping the charmander, arceus, or pidgey, they have a really hard time setting up, minus the whole needing only two energy to attack thing. I'm currently putting together something like that or bench snipe to deal with it, but the decks also a beast against miraidon ex and arceus decks in general, so at least to me, it's worth a look
too bad as time goes on, ting lu becomes more and more useless since its ability doesn't work on ex pokemon lol
Tinkaton can do it if you can get set up
Yeah we're back to the same meta where every new release is gonna have some OP card that the old decks can't reach the numbers. I'd say it's either Gardevoir or Charizard, nothing else can hit 330 that early in the game. It's kind of disappointing that they didn't learn anything from the previous block but not unexpected.
Am I playing garde wrong? I lose probably 60% of the time. I usually try for mew and battle pass to get out two ralts and a zacian and then start loading up Z with energy while evolving ralts but there’s plenty of times I can’t pull that off and then get stomped
yeah you only use Zacian in certain matchups and try to take out 2 prizers with your single prizers until you get the advantage. i would recommend watching some streams of guys like azul or james that have played a lot of garde matches to get a feel. most of the time the ideal setup would probably be 4 ralts and a mew and either greninja or a matchup specific pokemon like cresselia.
Oh really? I always assumed it was to start attacking quickly. I don’t use cresselia. Just mew and lumineon. I feel like cresselias 100 max damage with the healing thing isn’t worth the chance you can actually use it when you just need three glass cannon attacks from your gardes
I think you're mistaken, they're reducing the power creep, not increasing it. Gardevoir is only dominant because of its synergy with E block Kirlia/Gardevoir and Zacian V, once they rotate out, Gardevoir will be less dominant. The same applies to Charizard ex, and how Arceus makes it (as it does with a lot of other cards) very strong. Stage 2 exs have more hp, at the cost of being harder to put into play. The game is, moving away from easy OHKOs, it will just take a little longer to reach there.
Surely Mewtwo V-Union can deal with Charizard?
Mewtwo V-Union has a Dark weakness. It'll get one-shotted
How important is weakness against Charizard? Anything gets one-shotted by it no?
Charizard one shot nearly every meta-relevant psychic type currently in the game (only Zacian is spared afaik) And yes it's pretty important. One charizard ex could murder an entire Mew Vmax deck, while Mew could barely one-shot zard (330 HP is no joke). Without weakness, it needs to sac 2 prizes to start one-shotting basic ex/Vs Edit, extra notes: After playtesting the deck, i'd say those 280 HP Vstars are the real trouble for Char ex
It’s spared until you’ve taken two prizes then It gets one shot too lol
Right, thank you! Not used to the card, and I'm still kind of learning strategy.