Alt. Format My take on Necrozma/Metagross - Post Rotation

[AlphaVoxel]

What's up PokeBeach!?

I am mostly doing this for the sake of trying to pass time before I go to a Prerelease, but this is a deck I have been wanting to build since Necrozma was first revealed. So, I'll just jump straight into the deck:

Pokémon - 23
3x Necrozma GX
4x Beldum
3x Metang
4x Metagross GX
1x Solgaleo GX
3x Cosmog
2x Cosmoem
2x Lunala GX
1x Tapu Lele GX

Supporters - 11
3x Altar of the Moone
2x N
2x Guzma
3x Professor Sycamore
1x Brigette

Items - 16
1x Field Blower
4x Choice Band
3x Ultra Ball
4x Rare Candy
4x Max Elixir

Energy - 10
8x Psychic Energy
2x Rainbow Energy

So, there you have it. It may not seem like much, but I feel it has a fair bit of potential, especially going into rotation in the next few months.

The main card of the deck is, of course, Necrozma.

Spoiler

Necrozma-GX – Psychic – HP180
Basic Pokemon

Ability: End of Light
Prevent all damage done to this Pokemon by attacks from [C] Pokemon (both yours and your opponent’s). Try blowing up this table, sky snake!

[C][C][C] Prism Burst: 10+ damage. Discard all [P] Energy attached to this Pokemon. This attack does 60 more damage for each Energy discarded in this way.

[C][C][C] Black Ray GX: This attack does 100 damage to each of your opponent’s Pokemon-EX and Pokemon-GX. This attack isn’t affected by Weakness, Resistance, or any other effects on each of the Defending Pokemon. (You can’t use more than 1 GX attack per game.)

When your Pokemon-GX is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 2 Prize cards.

Weakness: Psychic (x2)
Resistance: none
Retreat: 2

This card, in my opinion, is pretty good. All you need is 3x Psychic Energy and a Choice Band, and you can hit for a pretty nice amount of damage (210, to be precise). The GX attack makes things even better. By hitting for 100 on EACH EX or GX your opponent has in play, you are then able to take things out a lot easier.

This card is supplemented by Metagross GX, which lets you attach a Metal or Psychic Energy from the discard to one of your Pokemon. I have included 4x in the deck, to help in the event that one is prized, or knocked out/discarded. Metagross can be used as a backup attacker in an emergency due to the 2x Rainbow Energy

I have added the Solgaleo/Lunala for Energy Acceleration and Mobility, respectively. Solgaleo helps get energy onto the field so that Lunala can move them around. However, I would may consider cutting the Leo, seeing as if I use the GX attack, I cannot use it on Necrozma. Lunala is nice to have to help keep the Energy in play, and can even be used as a backup attacker in an emergency.

I have the 4x Max Elixir for further Energy Acceleration, and Brigette to help get your Pokemon into play.

That is all I can think of at the moment, but I will probably ad more later if I get bored, or if I find out a new way to do things.

With that, I have a few things I would like to ask:
-Please, by all means leave suggestions! I want to try and build this deck if I can, and I would love to know how I can improve on it!
-I would ask that you keep criticisms constructive, as I am still learning quite a bit.

That should be all for now.

Thanks,
-AV

 

[Wechselbalg]

It's a bit too heavy on Pokemon and the supporter line is too thin for a format with no VS Seeker.

I think you should decide what you want to focus on: Metagross/Necrozma, (that deck shouldn't run more than 2 Necrozmas though) Metagross/Solgaleo (fun, but I wouldn't recommend it as a seriously competitive deck) Solgaleo/Lunala in which Solgaleo is used to accelerate the energy on to Lunala asap - that deck might be able to fit in Necrozma as well, or probably should fit in, since Lunala is not that great of an attacker. Baby Lunala could also be an alternative, since its first attack doesn't have a damage cap and including it doesn't mess with your evolution lines.

If you're using Brigette, then a 2 of that card (especially post-rotation) will be a must imo, same with Lele, as ideally you'd want to have that combination on your first turn, otherwise Brigette is going to be a wasted slot. You could end up having both the Lele and Brigette prized, which would really hurt you when you're still trying to set up.

If you're using Solgaleo then you really don't need Altar of the Moone, same with Metagross. The first has the retreat any of your Pokes for free ability, the second needs the manual retreat in order to fuel itself with Geotech for the next attack.

2 Field Blowers, or maybe even 3, are a must, since Garbotoxin completely shuts all these Pokes down. If you run Field Blower you should also consider running Skyla, in case you don't have FB on hand when it's sorely needed. And Skyla is very useful anyway in decks which can have moments where you need "just that one item". Similarly, 4 Ultra Balls are also staple, especially if you don't want to run any Heavy Balls.

I'm not sure if there would be enough room for the Max Elixir in most of these decks. If you're playing Solgaleo/Lunala then you're already trying to focus on bringing out Solgaleo asap and accelerating energy that way, same with Solgaleo/Metagross. Maybe in a deck with Lunala/Necrozma only? Metagross doesn't need Max Elixir at all imo, since you're trying to evolve your Beldums asap and after that Max Elixir is useless, and imo ideally, what you need in order to be able to play Metagross effectively (provided that you already have 3 Metagross in play) are 3 energies in the discard and 1 in hand for emergencies. (In case one Metagross somehow gets knocked out you can just manually reattach 1 energy and geotech the other two again.)

Max Potion is a very useful card in decks where you can move energy around freely/clear all energy off and reattach them before attacking.

You need 3-4 Choice Bands if you don't run Solgaleo, otherwise, 2 are enough I think, since 230 already 1 shots lots of things, but with Metagross it is good to have at least 3 to be able to reach the magical 180 damage.

I hope that these comments help a bit - I play Metagross and Metagross/Solgaleo myself, so most of the advice comes from personal experience. I haven't yet tried Lunala though so that is mostly speculation on my part.

 

[Kietharr]

You need to cut the Solgaleo/Lunala line, this deck is way too heavy on pokemon to be any kind of consistent. Necrozma is kind of an iffy card as I've said in the other Metagross/Necrozma thread. I have more experience piloting Metagross than any other deck in the meta right now and I see it as a one of card at best. Your main attacker being weak to Garbodor makes it very difficult to play the game. It's viable but expect a lot of frustrating losses to what will remain the most common deck at most locals and in most events.

The more I think about Necrozma the less I actually like it even as a one of in Metagross, the psychic weakness on a two prize card is just such a buzzkill in the game as it stands. Not even Mega Mewtwo could survive that handicap. It's mostly useful for Black Ray but honestly Koko Promo's spread damage is enough to round out KOs on the 190/200 cards which are generally the 'problem' cards for Metagross. It's also a free retreat which is useful in a deck like this, you can Olympia to it then manual retreat back to the same Metagross to attack. Guzma will have a similar interaction.

My overall advice would be to refocus this deck around Metagross, use Necrozma as a one of or remove it, remove the Solgaleo line and focus the list on being as consistent as possible at getting Metagross out. I'm including the list I play online with below as an example of a pure Metagross build. At rotation it only loses Lysandre and VS seeker, replace with 4 Guzma, go to 3 Lele then pad out some of the staples, another stretcher would be nice.

Pokémon - 16

* 1 Tapu Koko PR-SM SM31
* 4 Beldum GRI 83
* 3 Metang GRI 84
* 4 Metagross-GX GRI 139
* 2 Tapu Lele-GX GRI 60
* 2 Alolan Vulpix GRI 21

Trainer Cards - 34

* 1 Rescue Stretcher GRI 130
* 3 N PR-BLW BW100
* 1 Skyla BKP 122
* 3 Rare Candy SUM 129
* 1 Olympia GEN 66
* 2 Lysandre AOR 78
* 4 Professor Sycamore BKP 107
* 1 Heavy Ball BKT 140
* 3 Field Blower GRI 125
* 1 Brigette BKT 161
* 4 Ultra Ball SUM 135
* 3 Choice Band GRI 121
* 4 VS Seeker PHF 109
* 3 Max Potion GRI 128

Energy - 10

* 2 Psychic Energy XYEnergy 8
* 8 Metal Energy Energy 8

Total Cards - 60

 

[zaratath]

I would consider taking out the rainbow energies for basic metal energies. The reasoning behind this is metagross GX can recycle these but not the rainbows so if you need to attack with meteors multiple times you can recycle.

Those are my thoughts on the list

 

[Jpkemperor]

I completely agree with Kietharr, Necrozma could be a nice tech card on a Metagross-focused deck. It could fullfill the role of the promo Tapu Koko to finish off things you could not kill with metagross. If you were to use Necrozma, you could probably drop choice band from the deck and just hit 150 to as many different pokemon as you can, then kill everything with Necrozma.

Another approach would be playing 4-5 basic psychic energies to use Prismatic burst and kill very tanky pokemon such as another Metagross GX in the mirror match, but you would still need to have 4 psychic and a choice band to ohko metagross due to resistance.

However, I still think it's more consistent to just go Giga Hammer + choice band + dhelmise + promo tapu koko to finish the ko if needed, especially because tapu koko only gives one prize, has free retreat, and only needs two energy. Using tapu koko early game could eliminate the need for a choice band late game.

When it comes to supporters I'm currenty testing 4 sycamore, 3 N, 3 Lysandre (Guzma), 2 Skyla, 1 Briggete with only 2 Tapu Lele GX and NO vs seeker. It's been working well. I believe the second brigette spot can be used on something else and I would prefer to take the risk of prizing Brigette sometimes.