Welcome back to a new
edition of Blaze's
Banter. After some of
my own playtesting and
playing in the Pokemon
National Championships
at Origins I've decided
to review a deck that is
very similar to the 15+
Champion's deck played
by Seena G, it also came
in 1st place
in the 11-14 age
division as well. It is
a Turn 2 disruption
deck. I normally don't
do this as I like to
review decks that are
not major archetypes and
do quite well with those
non-archetype decks, but
in preparation of the
upcoming World
Championships held in
August in San Diego I'll
be reviewing some of the
major decks that will
see play from the North
American side.
At 1st glance
this deck will remind
you of an old school
deck called Haymaker,
with the exception of
the Medicham-ex evo.
line as Haymaker did not
run evos. But what
Haymaker was all about
was speed and
disruption. And that is
what Turn 2 is all
about. Turn 2
disruption decks have
been made and played in
various incarnations
mainly using Muk-ex,
Hariyama-ex, and
Medicham-ex. Other Turn
2 decks that have been
played using a similar
Trainer engine are Dark
Slowking and Dark
Steelix to name a few.
Also you will see that
there is an extremely
low count of Pokemon and
high count of Trainers.
Does anyone remember the
phrase Trainermon' That
phrase came out during
the Wizards days of
Pokemon when the amount
of Trainers in a
player's deck really
outnumbered the Pokemon
and Energy counts. Must
used Trainers back then
were always 4 copies of
Professor Oak, Bill, CPU
Search, Item Finder,
Plus Powers, Energy
Removal, and Gust of
Wind to name the most
popular. In Turn 2
decks you have somewhat
of the same idea of the
high Trainer count with
the use of 4 Swoop
Teleporter, 4 Energy
Removal 2, 4 Pokemon
Reversal, and 4 TV
Reporter. You will
probably even notice the
absence of Steven's
Advice in this build.
The reason for that is
even though Steven's
Advice is one of the
most popular draw cards
in the current Modified
format, it really is
useless against Turn 2
decks where the majority
of times, the person
that is playing Steven's
will only net 1 card off
of a good Turn 2 deck.
This
basically slows down the
opponent, and when they
have to use cards like
Rockets Admin. and
Copycat in hopes of
getting good cards, the
Turn 2 player can still
manipulate that.
The Turn 2 player drops
cards from his hand to
make sure the opponent
can't copycat a lot of
cards, and by using TV
Reporter this helps with
keeping the card count
low in your hand.
Well what do you say is
the disruption part of
Turn 2' Aside from the
obvious trainers that
have been reprinted in a
'flippy' sense it is
Medicham-ex's Poke-Body
Wise Aura. Wise Aura
indicates that as long
as Medicham-ex is your
active Pokemon then each
Pokemon (excluding
Pokemon-ex) Both yours
and your opponent's cant
use Pokemon Powers. So
say bye bye to Pidgeot's
Quick Search, Ludicolo's
Swing Dance, Magcargo's
Smooth Over, the
Darkness Navigate and
Dark Trance combo used
in many Dark Dragonite
decks, and etc. Keep in
mind though that
Pokemon-ex are not
affected by this so that
Zapdos-ex can still use
Legendary Ascent and
Deoxys-ex can still use
Change Form to name a
couple. What makes this
so powerful is that with
the use of Wise Aura and
the 'flippy' trainers
you can essentially lock
down your opponent. If
you can hit that
Reversal on say Magcargo
then you can lock it in
and your opponent cant
use Smooth Over to get a
Switch or Warp Point and
then you can start
beating down his threat
on the bench with
Medicham's 1st
attack Pure Power. All
the while using the
Energy Removal 2 Trainer
card and start
discarding those
precious energies off of
their main attackers.
If your opponent can get
some damage through on
Medicham-ex then you can
build up another one on
the bench and then use
Super Scoop-Up to
prevent your active one
from getting ko'd.
Let's look at Medicham's
2nd attack
called Sky Kick. Sky
Kick does a base damage
of 60 for only 1
Fighting and 2 C
energies. Then if the
defending Pokemon has
Fighting resistance, Sky
Kick does an extra 30
damage. This is awesome
as many of the popular
decks also use Fighting
resistance Pokes like
Pidgeot, Dark Dragonite,
and Salamance. Also
many of the popular
decks are also weak to
Fighting such as Dark
Electrode, Rockets
Sneasal, Slaking,
Spinning Tail-Tar, and
Dark Amphy just to name
a few. So you can pile
up the damage with Pure
Power then ko a Fighting
Resistance Poke with Sky
Kick.
The use of a lone Wobby
is purely tech. Since
Wobby has a Poke-Body it
can still stop this deck
and is also a good
matchup against
Zapdos-ex. I can see
the use of Space Center
increasing as Wobby has
resurfaced to counter
these popular Psychic
weak decks.. It is up
to you but with 4 Swoop
Teleporters it is very
easy to get a surprise
Power-up Wobby to get an
easy ko in especially
when time is called or
if you are in Sudden
Death. Usually with
this deck it doesn't get
that far as it has a
very fast set-up rate
and a very fast ko
ability that many games
will be finished before
time is called.
Here is an example
decklist using the above
mentioned strategies:
Pokemon - 13
4 ' Jirachi (Wishing
Star)
4 ' Meditite
4 ' Medicham-ex
1 ' Wobbuffet
Trainers: 32
4 ' Swoop Teleporter
4 ' TV Reporter
4 ' Energy Removal 2
4 ' Super Scoop Up
4 ' Pokemon Reversal
3 ' Wally's Training
3 ' Rocket's Admin.
2 ' Island Cave
2 ' Battle Frontier
2 ' Pokemon Retriever
Energy: 15
10 ' Fighting
3 ' Metal
2 - Psychic
Finally with the new
ruling that once a
particular Stadium card
is out a Stadium with
the same name cant be
replaced by it. So what
that means is that if
you play Battle Frontier
1st then
neither you or your
opponent can replace
that Battle Frontier
with another Battle
Frontier. This makes
getting out the Stadium
card the fastest a race
now because now that
some decks like
Zap-turn-dos run 4
Battle Frontiers that
makes those 4 cards dead
cards in a players
deck. Also this helps
with the use of TV
Reporter. If you have a
dead Stadium card that
cant be played because
of the new ruling then
just dump it for your
card for the TV Reporter
discard.
And as always this
decklist is not the
actual decklist that was
used by either player
but just a starting
point to get you to
start building and
playtesting this awesome
deck in preparation of
the 2005 World
Championships. Also
please contact me at
JSChimento@aol.com
or AIM me at JSChimento
if you wish to discuss
this article or any
decks.
