Landorus and Machamp Prime

DeepSleepDarkrai

DeepSleepDarkrai

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Hey everyone so after last weekend's city championship I decided to run Landchamp, and before you make any comment about Gothitelle, there wasn't a single one there. So this thead is to find out what kind of match ups Landchamp has with the meta, please help me out before this weekend. This is not a I need help with Deck list thread, but just trying to find out what kind of chances the deck has.
 
I think this is an interesting idea, since Landorus is a reasonable alternative to Donphan due to the advantages that it's a basic, it spreads to the opponent as well as yourself, and it only has one retreat. Eviolite can also replace Donphan's Exoskeleton, but the main issue with Landorus is that it needs 3 energy to get going rather than one... Abundant Harvest can speed things up a turn I guess, if you discard fighting energy with Juniper, Engineer's Adjustments, Sage's Training, and/or Junk Arm. Overall I do think this idea is worth trying out.


It should actually do pretty well in terms of matchups in the meta, considering the abundance of lightning type decks out there, using combinations of Zekrom, Thundurus, and/or Magnezone, all with Eelektrik. Those matchups should be quite easy, since, well, you do have weakness on them...

Of course Gothitelle will be a hard matchup due to weakness, but if you play your cards right the game is quite winnable, especially because Machamp is one of the few pokemon in the format capable of one-shotting a Gothitelle, and that's always a bad thing for them.

Reshiram might be a tough matchup due to its sheer speed, consistency and recovery, but luckily they need a PlusPower to one-shot a Landorus with Eviolite, and they won't one-shot Machamp unless they want to somehow throw down 3 PlusPowers. You can one-shot Reshirams and even Typhlosions with ease, however, so if you manage to set up a Machamp or two you should be in business.

In theory, Durant might be a really bad matchup, since your deck takes setting up and Durant will disrupt you too fast for that. Not much else I can really say on this one.

CKE should probably a rather easy matchup, since you can one-shot Cobalions and Kyurems the majority of the time, and thanks to Fighting Tag, Cobalion can't stop you if you have two Machamps out. Trust me on this, I lost a game against a DonChamp due to this in a Cities, using CKE. As long as they don't set up too fast, that should be an easy matchup.

Chandelure might be an... interesting matchup. This mostly depends on whether they run energy or not. If they don't, then all you have to do is take out Chandelures with Machamp. The damage won't likely stack up fast enough to hurt you, and I recommend running Max Potion in combination with Fighting Tag so that you can heal damage off when you need to. If they do run energy, however, then there might be problems, as Chandelure's attack can one-shot you with 2 Cursed Body uses or one Cursed Body and a tails on burn. Jirachi will also be problematic.

The Truth, unlike Gothitelle, isn't going to have weakness going against you, but the trainer lock is still going to slow you down a lot. But again, Machamp's ability to one-shot every pokemon in that deck (barring SEL...) will sort of ruin the whole Reuniclus-Vileplume-Blissey healing strategy.

I assume the matchup against VVV would be ridiculously good, all thanks to Fighting Tag. As long as you have a Machamp on bench whenever you get paralyzed, you should do just fine.


Well, that's pretty much my short analysis of every deck I could think of that's reasonably popular in this format, hopefully my opinions help. If Landorus just doesn't work out for you, remember you can always try using Donphan with Machamp.
 
I dont think this could work out very well. You would need 5 turns to set up a single Machamp, with T1 Abundant Harvest, T2 Gaia Hammer, T3 attach to Machamp, T4 attach to Machamp, T5 retreat, attach DCE and attack with Machamp. In those 5 turns you could easily be decimated by Catcher, sending you even farther back. As for matchups, it would have quite insane matchups if it ever worked. Weakness against the most popular decks, Magnezone and Zekrom, laughs at google Engines (if you can get a Machamp up under Trainer Lock) and Cobalion, and eats VvV for breakfast.
 
Machamp would be hitting for 60 and discarding special energy turn 2. Use him as a tank and fighting tag out to keep adding damage to the champs on the bench. So in theory, building damage around turn 6 (with switch for lando) swinging for 150.

All that is if you aren't able to get lando hitting both benches. While the above is performed, keep energizing lando/tekk so if one champ falls.

Really it isn't a bad deck for the meta. Just have to nail down a solid list.
 
alexmf2 said:
I don't think this could work out very well. You would need 5 turns to set up a single Machamp, with T1 Abundant Harvest, T2 Gaia Hammer, T3 attach to Machamp, T4 attach to Machamp, T5 retreat, attach DCE and attack with Machamp. In those 5 turns you could easily be decimated by Catcher, sending you even farther back. As for matchups, it would have quite insane matchups if it ever worked. Weakness against the most popular decks, Magnezone and Zekrom, laughs at google Engines (if you can get a Machamp up under Trainer Lock) and Cobalion, and eats VvV for breakfast.
Click to expand...
machamp has fighting tag, so you can set him up and swing for 140-150 T3
 
Ah, I completely forgot about Fighting Tag. I'm pretty stupid. That actually sounds like it could work out pretty well. Not only is it faster than Donchamp, which was very good in its time, but it has huge weakness bonuses and it being rogue will make it so your opponents wont know what to do. Sounds very good.
 
This still has the same problem DonChamp does. After the first Machamp goes down, you're usually left with no energy on the board. However, unlike DonChamp, you don't have cheap one-energy attacks, so you can't even try to keep pressuring them. Honestly, I don't think Machamp is going to have a lot of potential in this format. Fighting has no good energy acceleration, unfortunately.
 
Celebi23 said:
This still has the same problem DonChamp does. After the first Machamp goes down, you're usually left with no energy on the board. However, unlike DonChamp, you don't have cheap one-energy attacks, so you can't even try to keep pressuring them. Honestly, I don't think Machamp is going to have a lot of potential in this format. Fighting has no good energy acceleration, unfortunately.
Click to expand...

I think your wrong here Celebi in fact by turn 4 you should have 2 Machamp in play and be able to abuse max potion to keep them a live with fighting tag. The only other meta deck besides Gothitelle I can see this deck have trouble with would be Tyram due to it speed and recovery.
 
How would max potion work? It discards all the energy attached to the pokemon as well as healing.
 
DeepSleepDarkrai said:
I think your wrong here Celebi in fact by turn 4 you should have 2 Machamp in play and be able to abuse max potion to keep them a live with fighting tag. The only other meta deck besides Gothitelle I can see this deck have trouble with would be Tyram due to it speed and recovery.
Click to expand...
I stopped reading there. Your argument just lost all credibility, as that is impossible. :p

But seriously, you would need a literally flawless setup to pull that off. Landorus + Engineer turn one, and turn two, plus two Machop T1-2, two DCE the next two turns, TWO state 2's out by T3-4, and it goes on and on. Catcher really hurts the deck, and if they manage to KO your Landorus with something like Zekrom, or an early Tornadus/Reshiram/Thunderus before it gets damage on your bench, you're going to struggle hard. Although it's counter-intuitive, this deck falls to Magnezone, since they can remove your Machamps from play and address whatever appears to be a threat (whatever has energy) with Catcher after that. It's much easier to swarm Magnezone that need two energy than it is to swarm Machamp that need four. Furthermore, double PlusPower drops from Reshiram/Zekrom are common enough to give this trouble as well.

The deck has a great mid-game, and an acceptable early-game, but it just fizzles late-game against any deck capable of getting rid of Machamps and Landorus.
 
pokemonjoe said:
How would max potion work? It discards all the energy attached to the pokemon as well as healing.
Click to expand...

It's quite simple to get around, and very effective. Say they damage an active Machamp. You use Fighting Tag to send up an undamaged Machamp and the energy moves to it, and then you use the Max Potion on the energy-less benched Machamp to heal it so that you can Fighting Tag next turn. This strategy may have cost me the game when I faced DonChamp with my CKE.

(Of course if I didn't whiff that Electrode I would have also won... Raaaaaggeee....)
 
DeepSleepDarkrai said:
I think your wrong here Celebi in fact by turn 4 you should have 2 Machamp in play and be able to abuse max potion to keep them a live with fighting tag. The only other meta deck besides Gothitelle I can see this deck have trouble with would be Tyram due to it speed and recovery.
Click to expand...

Here's the problem with this logic: turn four setup is terrible. To illustrate, let's compare that to the earliest possible setup for some of the meta decks, or even up in coming decks:

Tyram: T2-T3
Eelzone: T2-T3
ZPST: T1-T2
CaKE T2-T3

I won't judge on Goth and Truth as I don't know them well, but T2 is said to be fairly common to Gothetelle, and that's one of the slowest decks in the format. That said, turn four is terrible, as your opponent is getting anywhere from 1-3 turns to kill you. With no trainer lock, OHKOs are likely, Pokemon Catcher can KO important pokemon and slow you down even more. Ideally, unless your deck is like The Truth (ie trainer lock), your setup should be no later, on average, than turn three, and ideally turn two. Turn four setup is abysmal and usually costs the game unless the opponent's late game is substantially worse than yours.
 
Meaty said:
It's quite simple to get around, and very effective. Say they damage an active Machamp. You use Fighting Tag to send up an undamaged Machamp and the energy moves to it, and then you use the Max Potion on the energy-less benched Machamp to heal it so that you can Fighting Tag next turn. This strategy may have cost me the game when I faced DonChamp with my CKE.

(Of course if I didn't whiff that Electrode I would have also won... Raaaaaggeee....)
Click to expand...
The glitch is the double colorless energy. Machamp can't move them off, but they're vital to keeping enough energy on the board. Losing one DCE can cost you the game. Losing one off of each Machamp is devastating. That's two turns of lost attachments, and four lost energy you then have to manually attach again while basically praying your opponent doesn't have a way to OHKO the one card you have with energy on it.

A high Max Potion count also makes the deck even more inconsistent than it naturally is, and a low one makes the strategy more unreliable than it already is.
 
Celebi23 said:
I stopped reading there. Your argument just lost all credibility, as that is impossible. :p

But seriously, you would need a literally flawless setup to pull that off. Landorus + Engineer turn one, and turn two, plus two Machop T1-2, two DCE the next two turns, TWO state 2's out by T3-4, and it goes on and on. Catcher really hurts the deck, and if they manage to KO your Landorus with something like Zekrom, or an early Tornadus/Reshiram/Thunderus before it gets damage on your bench, you're going to struggle hard. Although it's counter-intuitive, this deck falls to Magnezone, since they can remove your Machamps from play and address whatever appears to be a threat (whatever has energy) with Catcher after that. It's much easier to swarm Magnezone that need two energy than it is to swarm Machamp that need four. Furthermore, double PlusPower drops from Reshiram/Zekrom are common enough to give this trouble as well.

The deck has a great mid-game, and an acceptable early-game, but it just fizzles late-game against any deck capable of getting rid of Machamps and Landorus.
Click to expand...

It's not as hard as you may think for example: Landorus, 1 Energy, Machop and Juniper would be all you need in your starting hand to make it work, and really you could make it with out the machop in the first 7, and get it in the second 7 with Juniper. Also how many energy on average does a Magnezone deck have because it was take 3 energy to KO Machamp, 3 energy to KO Landorus with Eviolite, and another 3 to KO Terrakion. So inorder to get 6 prizes they would have to lost burn 18 energy. By the way have you playtested a Landorus Machamp deck yet, or are you going off of Donchamp's match ups because catcher isn't as bad to this deck than it is to Donchamp.
 
You just listed 4-5 cards. You need 2 energy in the opening hand for it to work. Furthermore, you can't use a supporter to get any of these. Again, needing over half of your opening hand to be a set group of unsearchable cards means you need an ideal opening hand. Not to mention you need a pretty big bench pretty quickly, and you need one specific Pokemon to be your starter.

Magnezone decks do run second attackers - Yanmega, Tornadus, Zekrom, RDL, and Reshiram are all capable of an even to favorable prize exchange against your Landorus. And it's not exactly easy to swarm the things when you need three energy to do do damage with them.

Do you mind explaining why Catcher is easier on this deck than it is on DonChamp?

Magneboar makes a very good point about the average setup time of a deck in this format.
 
Celebi23 said:
You just listed 4-5 cards. You need 2 energy in the opening hand for it to work. Furthermore, you can't use a supporter to get any of these. Again, needing over half of your opening hand to be a set group of unsearchable cards means you need an ideal opening hand. Not to mention you need a pretty big bench pretty quickly, and you need one specific Pokemon to be your starter.

Magnezone decks do run second attackers - Yanmega, Tornadus, Zekrom, RDL, and Reshiram are all capable of an even to favorable prize exchange against your Landorus. And it's not exactly easy to swarm the things when you need three energy to do do damage with them.

Do you mind explaining why Catcher is easier on this deck than it is on DonChamp?

Magneboar makes a very good point about the average setup time of a deck in this format.
Click to expand...

See last part of post on why there isn't a lot that is needed to be in your opening hand.

The secondary attackers your talking about can all be OHKO by Machamp and all but one of them can't OHKO Machamp.

Landorus has 1 retreat cost unlike Donphans 3 which is why catcher isn't as bad for this deck.

Lets take a look at the set up for this deck T1 Landous Active and Machop on Bench discard a fighting energy via Sage's , Juniper, Junk Arm, and attach a fighting energy to Landorus for abundant harvest and end T1 with 2 energy on landorus. T2 Attach 3rd Fighting energy to landorus and candy to Machamp use cards like dual ball, great ball, collector, and communication to fill bench end T2 wilth Gaia Hammer. T3 attach to Landorus or Machamp and use Fighting Tag Champ Buster for any where from 110-150 depending on how many bench pokemon were placed the turn before end T3. I was only saying you should have a second Machamp by turn 4 not that the deck is set up for attacking turn 4.
 
A smart Magnezone player will go out of their way to remove your Machamp from play, then clean up from there. You promote Machamp and OHKO my secondary attacker for four energy, I promote Magnezone and Lost Burn three. That's a pretty uneven exchange. Not to mention that these secondary attackers can take a very early prize lead against you.

One thing you should always do is check the stats of cards before making posts. Posting inaccurate information like you just did tells me you definitely haven't played with DonChamp at all, or any Donphan variant for that matter, and therefore invalidates a large amount of your argument. While Donphan may have a much larger retreat cost (not three, though), it also has a much cheaper attack. If you Catcher Donphan and don't KO it, you're still going to be taking pressure from my attacks. Landorus, on the other hand, needs three energy on him to start doing damage. Besides, a smart player will never Catcher your support attackers. They'll Catcher the Machamps and remove them from play, or they'll Catcher easy prizes to maintain a cheap but even prize exchange. But that's beside my point. Both of these decks are horribly vulnerable to Catcher. That's what matters. It doesn't matter if one is somewhat less vulnerable than the other.

The irony here is that the scenario you described is the exact same one I would use to prove you won't ever get this setup in a timely manner. You need two basics in your opening hand, two energy, a very specific supporter, and again the list goes on. After playing this game for a long time in most of its recent formats, you'll realize just how resource-light the average attacker has to be. It's almost impossible to get two Stage 2's out by T4, not to mention four energy by T2 and a full bench.
 
To use another example, a deck like Magneboar, with built in draw, energy acceleration, and a higher damage count, is considered to no longer be a serious part of the competitive picture at this time (although you'll probably still run into a small smattering of them). The big reason for that is how difficult it was to get everything online and Emboar's vulnerability to Catcher.
 
Well, Machamp is weak to Psychic, and Landorus is weak to water types.
So I'd watch out for those mainly.
Upon looking through scans to find these cards, I noticed a few possibly formidable opponents in the HGSS format, I will list them here:
1. Shiny Lugia
2. Shiny Deoxys
3. Lugia LEGEND (both halves)
4. Ho-oh LEGEND (both halves)
I may be fairly new to the trading card game, but I know for a fact that all of the Pokémon listed above are extremely powerful from watching the movies. Ho-oh may not be a psychic type or a water type, but it is a very powerful Pokémon indeed, this one especially, as it can do 100 damage in one attack.
Hope I could help.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top