News Japan's SM3 Sets for the 20th Movie Feature Ho-Oh and Necrozma!

Kietharr

Aspiring Trainer
Member
With this most stage 1 GX evolutions can have as much or more HP than stage 2s. And most of the stage 2 GX cards are actually quite bad in the first place, only Decidueye and Solgaleo see play.

When are they revealing support for all of the stage 2 GX they're cranking out? Most of them simply aren't going to cut it without some compelling exclusive support options.
 

Asrialys

Aspiring Trainer
Member
It's like they keep trying to challenge us to one-shot everything. They increase HP to avoid one-shots and make games last. Then someone figures out a way, or they release a Pokemon too powerful, and then the HP just gets higher...
 

Fayld

Rayquaza / Eelektross Master
Advanced Member
Member
Mega Pokémon are not stage one Pokémon ;). Could be an awesome card for stage one decks that can keep their tools around or benefit from it through healing. Could see this in a Alolan Ninetales decks. People panic a little too much about Field Blower. It is an awesome card but most deck have issues to include more than two of them. Decks still get value from their tools like they did in the XY format when Startling Megaphone was around.

People actually do this a fair amount in expanded with tool scrapper. That said, there are two reasons you don't see it much. The first is space. If you have a 3 3 line of ex and mega, you probably have bare minimum 3 spirit links to support that line. That's 9 cards right there. Then you need some standard support cards and energy. By the time you are finished getting all that in, you are left with precious few slots in any mega deck.

The other reason is that there are only a couple of mega decks being played at all in standard and even those appear to be going extinct.

In all reality, the mega Pokemon are no more powerful than the stage 1 and stage 2 gx Pokemon we have now. The end turn condition is a gimmick that was bad design from the start for Pokemon that weren't so much stronger than their counterparts even at the time. Honestly, the only one where that condition wasn't broken was rayquaza and if they hadn't printed the evolution trait on it, even that would have been fine.

I wish they would have printed a stadium for evolving mega Pokemon without spirit links. Unfortunately, that will never happen now so Pokemon can focus on creating meta defining trash cards that spur almost all the best players to run it.

Seriously, those Seattle results are ridiculous. For all those thinking we would get creative deck building again, I present Seattle as exhibit a on why that is 100 percent incorrect.
 

AuraJackle

Aspiring Trainer
Member
All those people who don't read cards will be confused by this card and think it's just a worse version of ffb. Seriously I can't believe how many times I've seen people slap an ffb on a stage 1 or 2 and act like it was a smart move
 

Dark Espeon

Dark Avatar
Member
Seriously, those Seattle results are ridiculous. For all those thinking we would get creative deck building again, I present Seattle as exhibit a on why that is 100 percent incorrect.

Could not disagree more. In fact some of the cards designed for once force the players to become more creative in exploring means to achieve aims that items accomplished previously. An example is the inclusion of either Bridgette or/and Pokémon Fan Club to set up. There are much more incentives hidden in this set to become a little more creative and deviate from classic net-deck formulas. Keep in mind that common definitions of creativity include novely combinations of existing ideas and usefulness for a certain purpose. In order for an idea to be considered creative it has to meet both requirements.

In terms of entire new thactics there is not much new stuff. In fact this can be said for allmost all sets. You still have beatdown, stall and control. It does not matter much which Pokémon serve as an instance of these three tactics since the core idea will remain identical. However there is a lot of creativity left in the set to be explored. You just need to be willing to analyze the cards and think a little outside of common schemes.

I do not have a lot of detailed or were able to follow the stream but a Water Box deck appearetly mode top cut too. We already had a discussion that Water Box could be able to deal with Garbodor variants because it can be faster than them and set up at any time in the game. Other examples could be Tapu Bulu and a few other decks.

Another argument advanced in favor of the position that Garbodor is bad for the meta is that it turns Pokémon into rock-paper-scizor. To tell the truth this is part of the design of the game since BW and XY. There are counters for almost all cards and decks in the game. The basic idea is to adjust or chose a deck depending on the expected meta. From a buissness point of view this is a clever design since you may be forced to switch decks during the season, which requires you to have a sufficient card pool to start with. This in turn can help to increase sales.
 

GrandPanacea

Thread Necromancer
Advanced Member
Member
Interesting card for sure. A bit annoying, because my Disruption Umbreon deck is workin' over time to hit numbers as is, but overall, I like it.
 

9Blades

Gym Leader of Water Types
Member
I see everyone saying this is really good for Garbodor (And it is). But I see it as a good counter AGAINST Garbodor too. Having an extra 40 HP means it takes an extra two item cards for Garb to get a ko. Also, this works well in decks that run stage 1s (Alolan Ninetales, Lurantis, ect.) because if you're against a non-GX/EX, like Garb, then Choice Band has no use, but this does! I could see myself at least running 2 of this and Choice Band.
 

Hunga

Oh no! Rotation in sight
Member
Well, to be fair, every non Rayquaza, Mewtwo and Gardevoir Mega are pretty fair but I'd one up you here and say most cards now (even some GX cards) are poorly designed.

The poor design in the GX is kinda the result of EX beeing so insanely bonkers.

I really would love to see something for stage 2 Pokémon, to push them back into playable, since about most of them are considered unplayable for just beeing stage 2.
 

Ami Dark

Professor/Leader of the Destiny Tower League
Member
From the looks of the Sylveon decks I have seen, it'll just slow it down. Garbodor? Yeah. Maybe anything that needs that extra life. I know my Excadrill deck doesn't need it. It does better with it's choice band. I can see why it would be needed though for some things. Just seems slow more or less. Would've been better if it was a stadium. But Sylveon? That wouldn't be caught dead lifting weights with it's beauty and grace.
 

Fayld

Rayquaza / Eelektross Master
Advanced Member
Member
Could not disagree more. In fact some of the cards designed for once force the players to become more creative in exploring means to achieve aims that items accomplished previously. An example is the inclusion of either Bridgette or/and Pokémon Fan Club to set up. There are much more incentives hidden in this set to become a little more creative and deviate from classic net-deck formulas. Keep in mind that common definitions of creativity include novely combinations of existing ideas and usefulness for a certain purpose. In order for an idea to be considered creative it has to meet both requirements.

In terms of entire new thactics there is not much new stuff. In fact this can be said for allmost all sets. You still have beatdown, stall and control. It does not matter much which Pokémon serve as an instance of these three tactics since the core idea will remain identical. However there is a lot of creativity left in the set to be explored. You just need to be willing to analyze the cards and think a little outside of common schemes.

I do not have a lot of detailed or were able to follow the stream but a Water Box deck appearetly mode top cut too. We already had a discussion that Water Box could be able to deal with Garbodor variants because it can be faster than them and set up at any time in the game. Other examples could be Tapu Bulu and a few other decks.

Another argument advanced in favor of the position that Garbodor is bad for the meta is that it turns Pokémon into rock-paper-scizor. To tell the truth this is part of the design of the game since BW and XY. There are counters for almost all cards and decks in the game. The basic idea is to adjust or chose a deck depending on the expected meta. From a buissness point of view this is a clever design since you may be forced to switch decks during the season, which requires you to have a sufficient card pool to start with. This in turn can help to increase sales.

And all that creativity turned into 25ish of the top 32 decks being some variation of drampa espeon or tauros and Garbodor. That's no longer creative. That's the archetype. Is it using a slightly different archetype than the previous one? Barely. Including fan club or brigette and still keeping the same baseline 25 trainers isn't exactly ground breaking. But instead of the previous set where we had at least 5 decks that could legitimately win a tournament, we now have one. Awesome.

As for the Vespiquen and water box decks, they were both run by two of the very best players in the world. I would hardly call either a counter.

If this seems like a sky is falling statement, it isn't meant to be. I actually don't have many issues with any of the Garbodor variations unless I am playing something that is just begging to lose to it. But it does make it next to impossible to get through a full tournament without taking a bad loss from one of these decks. They are very easy to use which means they are going to be very popular. I mean, when 75 percent of even the top players ran it, that is telling and it is going to get boring fast.
 

Dark Espeon

Dark Avatar
Member
And all that creativity turned into 25ish of the top 32 decks being some variation of drampa espeon or tauros and Garbodor. That's no longer creative. That's the archetype. Is it using a slightly different archetype than the previous one? Barely. Including fan club or brigette and still keeping the same baseline 25 trainers isn't exactly ground breaking. But instead of the previous set where we had at least 5 decks that could legitimately win a tournament, we now have one. Awesome.

As for the Vespiquen and water box decks, they were both run by two of the very best players in the world. I would hardly call either a counter.

If this seems like a sky is falling statement, it isn't meant to be. I actually don't have many issues with any of the Garbodor variations unless I am playing something that is just begging to lose to it. But it does make it next to impossible to get through a full tournament without taking a bad loss from one of these decks. They are very easy to use which means they are going to be very popular. I mean, when 75 percent of even the top players ran it, that is telling and it is going to get boring fast.

Well. The Japanese meta seems to be more varied and the last few tournments have been won by different decks. I would not go by what people run but by what could be possible with the current card pool. I basically consider all Garbodor decks to be ideantical in essence. All of them run the classic BBP deck formula which is easy to use because all of their attackerts are chosen to be rather self-sufficient. There are quite a few counters to the current Garbodor builts but most of them seem to have been either forgotten or dismissed from the start. Just a viewpoint from a japanese meta that you may or may not wish to consider.

I do agree that creative options are slightly limited but that is not specific to the release of SM2. When was the last time you have seen a decent mill deck that can hold its own without necessarily being either inconsistent or fragile? Beatdown and control has a lot of options to choose from at the moment.
 
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