As the first Fall Regionals of the season draws closer, the amount of testing that I've been doing has gone up. Since my finals have just finished (well, technically, it's over-I still have some tweaks to do and re-rendering and my "one week break" isn't really a break) I've had some time to rethink, re-test and re-play my Flareon deck. It's nice to step away from it for a bit and come back to it so I'm revisiting it with some more thoughts and insights.
Making the Case for Flareon
Observation 1: Flareon relies on Pokemon in the discard to hit what is known as the "magic numbers" or the OHKO's via it's first attack, Vengeance.
Conditions to help boost the damage output: Silver Bangle, LaserBank (Hypnotoxic Laser/Virbank) Deoxys EX
Observation 2: To make Plasma a more favorable match up, the deck needs certain techs to combat the speed.
Conditions to help the Plasma match up: Drifloon PLB, Driflblim DRX, Drifblim PLB, Enhanced Hammer.
Observation 3: To make the Blastoise match up more favorable, it needs a way to punish Energy commitment and big attackers
Conditions to help punishment: Leafeon PLF, Zoroark NXD, Garbodor
The list I'm testing currently has some really funky card choices but so far, it's somewhat improved my Darkrai matchup without having to sacrifice too much in the others.