Altaria DRX

D

Dia

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I haven't seen a thread about this yet, so here goes. When you get down to it, Altaria is not a desirable card for tournament play any more. It is Catcher bait and takes up the bench, rendering the deck useless without a Skyarrow Bridge or other method of easily retreating, and it gets absolutely stomped by any card that can deal out 70 damage, or gets treated like a free prize in any Eels deck running a Rayquaza DV. So is there any quick fix for this problem? Giant Cape gives a measly health boost, but still doesn't stop the easy KO. I have thought and thought and thought about this but just cannot find a way that Altaria becomes a desirable, usable card in Garchomp decks. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Thanks.
 
It's been generally agreed on for a while now that Garchomp/Altaria doesn't work. Altaria will possibly have uses in the future, but Garchomp works best on its own with other attackers for now.
 
I disagree. I've actually gotten fourth at a Battle Roads with it recently. In fact, one of the matches I lost was to the mirror; he placed second with it! While Altaria's 70 HP isn't desirable, take it away, and you can't even 2HKO Eviolite'd EX's. This wastes a lot of time against Darkrai when they Max Potion 160 damage off. 60 for one isn't too bad, especially with Mach Cut's effect, but 40 for one is. You'll be forced to spend most of the game using Dragonblade, every turn, a half-powered Durant. Altaria is the achilles' heel of the deck, but that doesn't necessarily mean you should chop off your heel. With Altaria, you can potentially OHKO Ho-Oh, and every non-EX minus Wailord. You also OHKO for one energy things like Hydreigon and Eeletrik. And speaking of Eeletrik, Zekrom as a deck is realiant almost entirely on Eeletriks ability. It's a Stage 1 with 90 HP, a bit more difficult to retreat. I don't think Garchomp is bad because it can't quite keep Altarias in play. (In fact, I don't think it's bad at all, just not as good as everyone had hoped.) I think its weakness is not being able to OHKO Darkrai. It's not that you can't keep Altarias in play, its that they don't quite do enough when they are in play. But it's certainly better than straight Garchomp or Garchomp/Terrakion.
 
Just a small tip: Are you packing Rescue Scarf? I think you'll need 3-4 to keep Altaria consistently present.
 
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