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Original Deck
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Street Fighting Man
Pokemon: 18
3 Hitmonlee Fossil
3 Sandshrew
1 Sandslash Fossil
1 Mankey Jungle
2 Rattata Team Rocket
3 Jigglypuff
1 Wigglytuff
2 Oddish Team Rocket
1 Pinsir Jungle
1 Drowzee Team Rocket
Trainers: 20
2 Switch
2 Professor Oak
1 Mr Fuji
4 Bill
4 Gust of wind
4 Energy removal
3 Potion
Energy: 22
1 Full heal energy
6 Grass energy
15 Fighting energy
I tried to make this deck balanced between Pokemon, trainers and energy. I
also wanted to be able to fight a wide variety of decks. Street fighting
Man
holds his own against most one color decks I have fought, and also does
well
against more balanced decks as well. I win about 3/4 of the time. My best
fight was against a fire deck: Moltres, I think, was using wildfire to
burn
up my deck. I won on my last draw, deck totally gone.
The main power cards are Hitmonlee and the Sandshrew/Sandslash evolution
The gust of wind trainers help 'Lee crush the bench when he is not fully
powered.
The Jigglypuff/Wigglytuff line is for the rumble action of the Wave
A good street fight has some sneaky stuff too. Oddish is good for
poisonpowder and sleep powder. Only takes one grass energy to use them
both.
I had six grass energy and usually had some left over, so I put in Pinsir.
Good HP and Guillotine kicks butt for two grass and two colorless.
What's left are my bench players.
Drowzee can help out if someone is playing Aerodactyl. His pokemon power
stops evolution, except when Drowzee uses his poke power from the bench.
Rattata used to be there for the combo with Here comes team rocket. I got
tired of my oponent being able to see his prizes, so I use Mankey's Peek
power to look at what I want to see. If I see something good in my prizes,
Rattata uses trickery to put it on the deck and no one knows but me.
I named this deck after an obscure song by an old British rock band.
I usually use a Quid coin to flip, just for flavor.
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Deck Fix
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Deck Focus
The first thing I notice about your deck: you plan on beating
everything.
You note the decks that have potential to beat you, and throw in cards that
will beat those decks. That's a very good asset to use in future
deckbuilding, but taking it too far can also be bad. The key to a good
deck
is a balance between versatility - being able to adapt to beat different
decks you may face - and focus around the central theme of the deck. You
need to have a theme to the deck; a goal on how to win. As it is commonly
said in deckbuilding articles, be able to summarize the purpose of your deck
in one short, concise statement. Then, once you've made the deck focused
on
your central point, you playtest and edit the deck so that it can adapt to
beat decks that give it trouble. It seems as if instead of being based
around a common theme, this deck is a bunch of cards that each play a major
role on beating decks in your area.
So, the first key to fixing this deck is developing a theme.
Looking at
the deck, I'd say first of all that the entire grass line looks like it needs
to go. There's only 3 grass pokemon, which drawing will not be frequent.
Then there's only 6 grass energy, so you'll get stuck with grass energy
sometimes when you don't have grass pokemon, and stuck with grass pokemon
sometimes when you don't have grass energy. With so few grass cards in the
deck, and needing to strengthen the evolution lines, it seems best just to
drop grass all together. This will give room to increase the number of
evolutions in the deck, adding focus and increasing the probability of
actually getting an evolution out. Also, with grass out of the picture,
you
will also draw the correct type of energy for sandslash and hitmonlee - very
energy intense pokemon - more frequently. Whenever you play a couple of
energy-intensive pokemon in your deck, it's a good idea to run only one color
so you don't run into energy problems. Other than that, I see one more
problem with the focus of the deck before there's a defined theme. The
rattata/mankey combo just won't work that well. Since you only have 2
rattata's and 1 mankey in the deck, you have a very low chance of actually
having both of them in play at the same time. And since they aren't really
that great without each other, and the attacks pretty much stink, it's best
off to just drop them and you'll end up with that many less bad basics to
draw at the beginning of the game to get stuck with. It'll help your
consistancy a bit.
Now, there should be a theme defined. It seems at this point
that the
focus of the deck seems to be on getting evolutions out. Since we need
something to help the evolutions come before the basics get killed, we'll add
a high HP damage sponge to soak up the damage while building up the
evolutions. Chansey would be great for this, and when combined with his 1
retreat cost, it should improve the deck a great deal. Now the original
theme may have been something like 'Get evolutions powered and beating down,
while combining the grass pokemon status effects and prized trickery combo to
the mix to help get the cards you need, while providing metagame against
decks that are hard to beat.' Now, the theme can be reduced to 'Soak up
damage with chansey and power up evolutions in order to beat down your
opponent and take 6 prizes.' Quite a bit shorter than before.
Pokemon
Okay, some of this has already been addressed in the Deck Focus
section,
but there's still some work to be done. From the original 18 pokemon, 6
have
been dropped already (mankey, 2x rattata, 2x oddish, pinsir). Now we'll
drop
the drowzee since it's a single and specialized to beating aerodactyl.
Just
not worth putting in a weak basic with no useful attack and low HP when it's
only intended for use against a specific pokemon. So now theres an empty 7
slots for new pokemon. Let's strengthen the sandshrew/sandslash and
jiggly/wiggly lines to 4/4 and 3/3. Since deck manipulation in this deck
is
low, and the amount of basics isn't as high as it was, the Sandslash line
will probably be the most useful, since you won't always have the 5 pokemon
on your bench needed for wiggly to be efficient. So, we're down to 1 extra
card to add. We'll want a couple more basic pokemon to back up wiggly.
We
add in Chansey, as mentioned in the above section. Let's add 3 to make it
a
card you'll draw frequently, and bumping the pokemon count up to 20. 2
cards
must be removed in other sections to make up for this... However, with a
strong pokemon base, this deck will be much better.
Energy
Now, on to the energy... Since there's no longer grass
pokemon in the
deck, those obviously go :). Take 6 grass out, and add 4 double colorless,
1
full heal energy, and leave the 6th card to make up for one of the extra
pokemon. This'll give some much needed DCE's for chansey, wiggly, and even
sandslash, while still providing another full heal energy that can get your
pokemon out of a tough bind. Energy count is at 21, so we'll have to
remove
1 trainer to make up for the extra pokemon...
Trainers
Now, the trainers seem pretty well mixed. First of all, the
potions are
pretty cool with evolutions with lots of energy, but the spot could be used
better with other trainers, so potion gets removed. In it's place we'll
add
Pokemon Trader. Since there's so many pokemon in the deck, Pokemon Trader
will work well as deck manipulation to get the evolution pokemon needed.
Energy removal is a nice tactic to stall them down while you're building up
your evolutions, so you're all good there. Bill is great for card
advantage,
and 4 is definately a good idea, so stick with that. There's only 2
Professor Oak's, so I'd suggest increasing that to 3. Take out a gust of
wind, since your evolutions shouldn't have too much trouble picking off the
opponent's pokemon with the heavy attacks - gusting for a benched pokemon to
take a prize will only let your opponent's energized pokemon attack you one
turn longer. It's probably a better idea to just beat away the active
pokemon late game, while still building your bench. Gust is still useful
early game to slow them down, and nice to get those last couple prizes. 3
definately sounds like a good number. Now, the 2 switch and 1 Mr. Fuji
look
a little odd being singles like that. Take out the fuji, since there's
only
one. It won't be as useful as it could be with multiple copies - turning
into a card you'll draw at the wrong time instead of having enough copies
that you get them when they're needed. Now the deck is trimmed down to 60
cards - 19 trainers, 20 pokemon, 21 energy. Not a bad mix. And one
of the
best things about this deck - computer search really isn't needed. Since
there's not really much to search for but evolutions or oaks, Pokemon Trader
is in the deck. Pokemon Trader doesn't lose 2 cards like computer search,
and with the abundance of pokemon in the deck, it works out well. The only
bad part is that you can't search for an oak if necessary. 3 oaks and 4
bills should be enough card drawing to keep energy in your hand, though, and
pokemon trader is grabbing the evolutions.
Strategy
The strategy from the original deck to the new deck has changed a
bit.
Instead of being jumbled up with billions of things to do, there should now
be a more orderly way to do things. Many decisions are eliminated with the
removal of the low HP basics. The strategy should be simple: power up
evolutions on the bench, using card drawing to keep energy in your hand and
pokemon trader to get the evolutions, and beat the opponent down to take 6
prizes and win the game. Hitmonlee is great in that it's basic and has an
extra attack. When you're out of gusts, and just need another prize or
two,
it'll be a great way to get it/them. Also, it can take out low HP basics
in
the early game if your opponent has a nice big pokemon up like lickitung,
chansey, or kangaskhan to absorb damage while they build up. You can
bypass
their building phase and start KO'ing them early. To build up pokemon, you
really have 3 options: hitmonlee, sandslash, wigglytuff. You should be
able
to get one whole evolution line or the hitmonlee and energy needed to get one
powered relatively early. beat down and sacrifice it. While it's out
fighting, build up the next pokemon on your bench, and your heavy hitters
should take their pokemon out relatively quickly and easily. A good way to
start this is by building up hitmonlee early, and while it's kicking away you
build up your bench, ready to take over when hitmonlee falls. Basically,
build up pokemon and beat down. :)
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Final Deck
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Pokemon: 20
4 Sandshrew
4 Sandslash
3 Jigglypuff
3 Wigglytuff
3 Hitmonlee
3 Chansey
Energy: 21
15 Fighting Energy
4 Double Colorless Energy
2 Full Heal Energy
Trainers: 19
4 Bill
4 Energy Removal
3 Professor Oak
3 Gust Of Wind
3 Pokemon Trader
2 Switch
Good luck with the deck!