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| Taking Vengeance since 2013! |
It's Fall, and a whole new season of Pokemon is upon us! With a nice selection of League Challenges in my area to playtest in and hopefully earn my first few points on the road to World's, I'm very optimistic. Between being close to graduation, internships, and getting a new job, I've been extremely busy. But despite my hectic real life duties, I still want to make time for something to distract myself and keep me sane.
After the top 16 success of Dylan Bryan's deck, and wanting to have a strong start out the gate in the new competitive season with all new tournament changes, I've decided to take up this deck with a few modifications to current meta plus a few choices of my own due to my playstyle.
Without further ado, let's take a look at what I like to call "Balloon Party!"
Pokemon 23
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| Ballloooooonnn Paarrrttteeeeh :3 |
x4 Eevee (PLF)
x4 Flareon (PLF)
x1 Leafeon (PLF)
x3 Drifloon (PLB)
x2 Drifblim (DRX)
x1 Drifblim (PLB)
x2 Trubbish (PLS)
x2 Garbodor (DRX)
x1 Audino (BCR)
x1 Chatot (PLB)
x1 Terrakion
x1 Mr. Mime
[x1 Landrous EX]
T/S/S
13 Supporters
x4 Juniper
x4 N
x2 Colress
x1 Bianca
x2 Random Reciever
17 Trainers
x4 Ultra Ball
x2 Float Stone
x2 Silver Bangle
x2 Pokemon Catcher
x3 Enhanced Hammer
x1 Super Rod
x1 Computer Search
Energy 9
x5 Fighting Energy
x4 Double Colorless Energy
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| #HipBump |
1 Chatot PLB- An answer to Toolbox and a psedo Tool Scrapper if and when it's needed. It's first attack, for one Energy, takes away all of the opponent's tools. The obvious downside is that it does become a free prize to most decks and its poor HP (60) allows for it to be easily donked. But it's great fodder set up for Flareon.
1 Audino-LaserBank won't be as popular and with the current nonexistence of Gothitelle/Acelgor, but its still useful for powering up Flareon's attack as well as getting rid of those Lasers, should they come up. And if an attack doesn't OHKO any of my active Pokemon, healing for 10 damage isn't all that bad either.
I've added an extra 5th energy for safety-net purposes. Running at 4 energy has cost me a few games here and there where I just run out of steam at the last second and deck out. It's mostly a preference and the fact that, though this deck has forced me to become more conservative in playstyle, it's very hard to do so when it comes to energy drops.
The Plasma Factor
Plasma match-up is very, very favorable for this deck. Between both balloons and Enhanced Hammers, you'll be putting the squeeze on them. You can go multiple routes with this deck, but don't drop too many Flareons or Landrous EX because Kyurem can come in and one shot it. You prize trades should be very favorable, even if they happen to tech Enhanced in their lists. Most of your main basics are donkable, but you should come out on top so long as you don't start one lone Active.
VirGen decks, though not exactly Plasma based, get hurt pretty badly by this deck too. Flareon only needs 5 Pokemon in the discard pile + Bangle. All of the other attackers this deck can mount don't really bother Flareon either, especially if Garbodor is running as well. Bouffalant DRX looses Bouffer, Drifblim's Derail (if they run balloons in their own build) Verdant Wind, and Red Signal (though that may or may not be an issue) With these two decks probably seeing the most play in the upcoming format, this deck is arguably a great counter to those decks.
The Rest?
Blastoise-If you're meta is heavy with Blastoise, you can always tech a second Leafeon and drop a Chatot or third Drifblim. This alone should be enough to help swing the matchup in your favor, just don't drop Landrous EX or you're just giving your opponent two free prizes. Also try and avoid dropping Flareon in this match as much as you can until your discards become rather sizeable. and you've shut down the majority of their strategy. Going for a T2/T3 Garbodor is your best bet to getting ahead in this match-up. Balloons will be dead weight so feed them into your discard pile for Flareon fuel late game as a finisher.
PlasmaKlang-Doesn't slow this deck down the slightest. This deck hardly runs any EX's and Flareon just dispatches PlasmaKlang due to weakness. Not much really to say here.
Darkrai-Go out hard with Landrous EX and timely Terrakion drops. Darkrai and possibly all its variants will give Flareon an uphill battle. Keep Sableye off the board to stop the Enhanced Hammer streams-this is where having that 5th extra basic energy comes in really handy. Chatot could be interesting to drop too, should you run him to take away Dark Claws. Keep Mr. Mime in play unless its a DarkGarb variant-if that happens, catcher up their own offending Garbodor and shut it down with either Flareon or Balloons.
Toolbox-Really easy to knock their Trubishes down with Flareon and if they trade KO's more power to the next upcoming Flareon. Shutting off Sigilyph will cripple Tool Drop greatly, along with their ability to move tools. Pick off any EXP Sharers to make them incapable of streaming energies and this should be an easy match-up to win.
Hope this gives you some ideas for the upcoming format! I think Flareon is going to be one of those interesting decks in what feels like a stale meta that will come in and take some people by surprise, even though it gained prominence at World's. Bicycle Away!
-Kalyst
Images from: Pokemon Wiki, Serebii.net
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