Discussion How Will They Break This Card? Smeargle XY8 in Expanded

Empoleon_master

Empoleon_master

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If you haven't heard about it yet Smeargle in XY8 is an amazing card. It has 70 hp 1 retreat cost and one of the best abilities on a basic non EX pokemon I've seen in quite a while: Recoat. Which reads "once per turn you may swap a basic energy card on your active pokemon for one of a different type basic energy card in your discard pile".

Initially I thought "ehhhhhh" then as someone pointed out on the comment section on the card translation it has a lot of potential with any energy acceleration EVER. Here's how it's likely going to take the format by storm, Plasma Storm. (I will be in the shame corner now for even thinking of typing that)

Remember Ray eels or bacon powered dragons? *old man voice* You see back in mah day we had a decent format and meta, not unlike this one, there was a card called Rayquaza EX (dragon type) which had 170 HP, 1 retreat cost, and two attacks, Celestial roar which discarded the top 3 cards of your deck for 1 colorless energy, and each basic energy you discarded was place on it, and then, it's second attack was Dragon Burst which for one fire, and one lightning energy allowed you to discard all fire or electric energy attached to it and dealt 60 damage for each energy card you discarded. Then you used this with 3 Eelektrik on the bench which was the Eelektrik or Electric type bronzong of its day to deal 180 each turn if you could get that rayquaza to the bench and back which wasn't hard when you played 3 of them and keldeo with float stone. Those were the eels, and now for the bacon, there was a Emboar which was basically a fire type blastoise which was harder to set up unless you had no less than 2 Tropical Beach, a $150 a piece card. *end old man voice*

Why am I telling you about decks from long ago? It's simple, that same rayquaxa can be used again now....and set up in one turn with relative ease. You start with the above mentioned Rayquaza, and a few smeargle on the bench, (this is assuming you go turn two) then do stuff to use Archie's ace in the hole (I don't have any experience playing it so I think that it's easy to do considering how I get wrecked by it via my friend T1 consistently) to get out blastoise, and since you're playing 4 battle compressor in the deck you should have 1 fire energy and 3 minimum electric energy in the discard pile by the time you use Blastoise. Then it's a simple matter of having 3 smeargle on the bench and using Deluge to get a minimum 3 water energy onto rayquaza, swap it out with electric/fire energy (the types are you choice but I reccomend electric due to Raikou EX being present in expanded) and attach a fire energy manually to your active Rayquaza EX and there, you've dealt 180 damage T2 of the game by abusing smeargle with blastoise and Archie's ace in the hole.


So, guys how do you think the format will be broken by Smeargle in other ways than the one I listed above? It has a lot of potential and is just good in general I can't wait to see what you guys come up with for it.
 
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This idea won't work as well as you think for many reasons and will be at best a potential tech or 'specific' use card in some decks. How many decks do you know that uses Multi-type Energy? Secondly, Ray-Eels is better because it's in expanded so Smeargle is at best a tech. Ray-Boar is just the same concept. Most decks usually run a single type energy plus special energy, few run multi-energy decks because of acceleration. Smeargle will make many decks in my opinion clunky because in order for this to work, you one, have to have energy in the discard, and two, have to have energy on the Active Pokémon. This doesn't work with Rayquaza EX very well because you're not going to slap multiple energy of the type you have very little of. There is not any energy acceleration being done at all, this a mere swapping of energy and basic at that. What it is good for is for decks like Ho-Oh EX with Rainbow burn, this card would help Ho-Oh EX be able to hit for high amounts of damage more consistently than ever before. Decks like that will shine more with this card than any other deck will most likely.

This card is not about energy acceleration. Cards like Eelektrik, Emboar, Blastoise, Milotic (heaven help me), and M. Manectric do a much better job at energy acceleration than Smeargle ever will.
 
It might be useful in a deck like Mega Manectric/Regice or Aegislash. It allows you to run less electric and still have a consistent turn 2 turbo bolt.

I currently have space in my deck for 1 Smeargle. And I think it would help the consistency quite a bit.
 
Don't see it making a big appearance at this stage. All the big decks do their energy acceleration without a need for smeargle. There will be a place for it in some decks but not any of the meta decks methinks
 
I don't think it will be that great.

You need to build Archie's Blastoise, with three cards replaced with Smeargle. Then you replace Keldeo with some other basic. You do your setup with battle compressor/archie etc. Then you accelerate the water, and use Smeargle to swap the water out for whatever else you need.

Downsides-

a) You have to give up three cards- maybe all your other attackers- the Wailord, the Sigilyph- there is no plan B; or give up consistency cards
b) You need to draw more battle compressors- you need to discard water *and* the other colors. So this less consistent and slower.
c) There is an extra component- Smeargle, a necessary condition, takes the place of a backup attacker, a "nice to have", so it automatically becomes more clunky
d) It's not obvious that what you put in for Keldeo will be better than Keldeo- Keldeo has the lack of damage cap allowing you to 1HKO most stuff, and can build up o the bench. What's going to be better than that?

TL;DR- deck is a lot less consistent, has no plan B, is slower to set up, powers up a less good attacker.
 
The idea was not to have anything to deal with blastoise keldeo only to use smeargle with blastoise and battle compressor to make blastoise basically a blastoise for any time you wanted it to be, ie electric for the rayquaza think about it with smeargle you turn archie's with blastoise into an archie's for a blastoise of any type you want.
 
Empoleon_master said:
The idea was not to have anything to deal with blastoise keldeo only to use smeargle with blastoise and battle compressor to make blastoise basically a blastoise for any time you wanted it to be, ie electric for the rayquaza think about it with smeargle you turn archie's with blastoise into an archie's for a blastoise of any type you want.
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But you're not accelerating energy. You're swapping energy. The problem with Smeargle is that you can't use it as a main engine for a deck like Blastoise because of a few reasons as stated before. On top of those reasons Smeargle is only allowed to swap one energy per turn, meaning you'd have to have multiple in order to do such consistency. Having a overload of dual energy types is not good either, it will bog your deck down tremendously and will not give you what you are trying to achieve. Sticking Smeargle to Ho-Oh EX like I said before is your best bet.
 
SilverSilent said:
But you're not accelerating energy. You're swapping energy. The problem with Smeargle is that you can't use it as a main engine for a deck like Blastoise because of a few reasons as stated before. On top of those reasons Smeargle is only allowed to swap one energy per turn, meaning you'd have to have multiple in order to do such consistency. Having a overload of dual energy types is not good either, it will bog your deck down tremendously and will not give you what you are trying to achieve. Sticking Smeargle to Ho-Oh EX like I said before is your best bet.
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I know that, I'm saying that with blastoise smeargle turns archie with stoise into an archie with stoise for any type of energy as long as you have like 3 smeargle and 3 of the desired energy type in your discard pile. With level ball and ultra ball plus the 5 cards you draw via archies this shouldn't be that hard to do. And remember with multiple smeargle it doesn't have to be a new energy type each time which is how you could get rayquaza set up in one turn.
 
Empoleon_master said:
I know that, I'm saying that with blastoise smeargle turns archie with stoise into an archie with stoise for any type of energy as long as you have like 3 smeargle and 3 of the desired energy type in your discard pile. With level ball and ultra ball plus the 5 cards you draw via archies this shouldn't be that hard to do. And remember with multiple smeargle it doesn't have to be a new energy type each time which is how you could get rayquaza set up in one turn.
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I think you're misunderstanding what we're trying to get at. How does Blastoise work with Rayquaza? Raquaza's attack is fire and lightning Energy. You'd be running three different types of energy. Blastoise with Deluge for water energy, then you'd be running fire and lightning energy for Rayquaza EX. This has no synergy at all what so ever. At most with your idea in one turn (if you haven't placed any of the right types of energy on Rayquaza) You'd have three energy on Rayquaza EX only dealing 120 damage. Now, to hit at least 210 you need 4 types of the same energy which you'll most likely will not hit because your opponent will easily Lysandre up a Smeargle to knock it out. Secondly, how many energy will the require? You're looking at an upwards of 15 energy or more in my opinion. That's way to much energy being ran to make an attack work somewhat decently. If it was Black Kyurem with Blastoise then sure, I can see Smeargle being teched in if you need to get a lightning energy out of the discard because you were unable to pull one.
 
SilverSilent said:
I think you're misunderstanding what we're trying to get at. How does Blastoise work with Rayquaza? Raquaza's attack is fire and lightning Energy. You'd be running three different types of energy. Blastoise with Deluge for water energy, then you'd be running fire and lightning energy for Rayquaza EX. This has no synergy at all what so ever. At most with your idea in one turn (if you haven't placed any of the right types of energy on Rayquaza) You'd have three energy on Rayquaza EX only dealing 120 damage. Now, to hit at least 210 you need 4 types of the same energy which you'll most likely will not hit because your opponent will easily Lysandre up a Smeargle to knock it out. Secondly, how many energy will the require? You're looking at an upwards of 15 energy or more in my opinion. That's way to much energy being ran to make an attack work somewhat decently. If it was Black Kyurem with Blastoise then sure, I can see Smeargle being teched in if you need to get a lightning energy out of the discard because you were unable to pull one.
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The thing is that the deck is so simple you could find the space easily and you don't even need that much fire energy. The count should be pretty balanced. 3 fire 6 water 6 electric you do have a count of 15 energy but I believe the deck could still work. 3 energy types does sound stupid but unless a thing like archie's ace in the hole comes out for electric or fire types this seems the best way to build the deck. Also I love the debates about this keep it up guys.
 
Empoleon_master said:
The thing is that the deck is so simple you could find the space easily and you don't even need that much fire energy. The count should be pretty balanced. 3 fire 6 water 6 electric you do have a count of 15 energy but I believe the deck could still work. 3 energy types does sound stupid but unless a thing like archie's ace in the hole comes out for electric or fire types this seems the best way to build the deck. Also I love the debates about this keep it up guys.
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What is the point of making a deck more complicated when you have things like Dynamotor Eels that do the job more consistently, easier and even better?
 
bbninjas said:
What is the point of making a deck more complicated when you have things like Dynamotor Eels that do the job more consistently, easier and even better?
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The idea was that it would make decent use of smeargle as an example. It could run two energy types in some other kind of deck that needs heavy energy acceleration that could only be done via blastoise. Also while I love eels the idea was that it would be able to be set up faster than eels which takes a minimum two turns to set up.
 
Empoleon_master said:
The idea was that it would make decent use of smeargle as an example. It could run two energy types in some other kind of deck that needs heavy energy acceleration that could only be done via blastoise. Also while I love eels the idea was that it would be able to be set up faster than eels which takes a minimum two turns to set up.
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In reality you likely will not be setting up that early with a Blastoise/Smeargle combo. Let alone do you need to somewhow get a Turn 1 Archie off, you will also need a significant amount of Smeargle, a Blastoise and a few attackers, which is quite a bit of resources already. You then need to run two types of energy on top of that, which, consistently, is about 10 to 15 cards (Energy Retrievals, Basic Energy, etc). You would then have very little space for any sort of consistent draw, making a Smeargle/Blastoise pretty unviable.
 
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bbninjas said:
In reality you likely will not be setting up that early with a Blastoise/Smeargle combo. Let alone do you need to managed to get a Turn 1 Archie off, you will also need a significant amount of Smeargle, a Blastoise and a few attackers, which is quite a bit already. You then need to run two types of energy on top of that, which, consistently, is about 10 to 15 cards (Energy Retrievals, Basic Energy, etc). You would then have very little space for any sort of consistent draw, making a Smeargle/Blastoise pretty unviable.
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Oh well, I thought it was worth discussing as it was the best thing I could think of and my guess would be that the only pokemon you run in it would be 4 ray 4 smeargle 2 shaymin 2-3 stoise and 1-2 raikou EX max. I really hope to see smeargle do well with something in the future.
 
I'm not saying Smeargle may never have a place in the format, but the idea you're bring up is way to consistent. You're expecting to pull of Archie's Ace in the Hole T1 which is hard to manage with that energy count. Archie's Blastoise worked because of the consistency of items and support cards. With that said, I am going to build a Ho-Oh EX/Smeargle Deck and try to get multiple energy on Ho-Oh.
Empoleon_master said:
Oh well, I thought it was worth discussing as it was the best thing I could think of and my guess would be that the only pokemon you run in it would be 4 ray 4 smeargle 2 shaymin 2-3 stoise and 1-2 raikou EX max. I really hope to see smeargle do well with something in the future.
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As I've said, Ho-Oh EX can work with Smeargle because Rainbow Burn is 20+ for ever different type of energy on Ho-Oh EX, Meaning that you can optimize 2HKO's more efficiently with Ho-Oh EX now and possibly see it on the rise. Things like Virizion EX, Bronzong, Eelektrik, and other energy acceleration cards will most likely provide Ho-Oh EX a better way of pulling this damage off mixed with battle compressor and Smeargle. You'll be seeing Ho-Oh pulling 100+ damage most likely now because you'd have energy acceleration with a simple engine, Smeargle to swap energy around, and tech to keep Ho-Oh from being knocked out.
 
I'd imagine Smeargle would do well in dragon decks, actually. One of the reasons I've heard people prefer to neglect the Dragon type is because of that awkward energy cost, and Smeargle is certainly helpful in remedying it. It also helps decks that aim to hit weakness, allowing for a bit more of a variety in energy types.
 
I'd just like to point out that Black Kyurem EX does the same thing as Rayquaza, but the attack cost actually agrees with Blastoise. There's really not any room for all of that extra stuff like Smeargles and extra Energy. That deck has like zero extra space; all of those fast Trainers have to be there for the sake of fluidity so that you can actually consistently get a turn one Archie's Ace.
 
Empoleon_master said:
The idea was that it would make decent use of smeargle as an example.
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Then let us try to come up with a decent example and not a painful one. ;)

Think about Energy Transfer decks; sure you can run off-Type attackers that have either mostly or all Colorless attack requirements, adding in Rainbow Energy and depending on deck specifics a few others (such as Prism Energy if in Expanded and focusing on Basics). You probably can't improve too much on a deck trying to hit as many different Types as possible because the card count would just get too clunky, but if you find a single good attacker that needs two or three or even four Energy of a type incompatible with your particular Energy Transfer Ability (Aromatisse with Fairy Transfer being the most likely), you can probably fit this all into a plausible, functional deck. Hmm... Max Potion is getting a reprint and Focus Sash could allow a good Fighting-Type to survive most attacks...
 
Ok, if not for ray with dragon burst do you guys think it could be used with blastoise/archie for any other type that doesn't have a blastoiseish thing going for it like grass?
 
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