This week, let’s look at a deck from Icechomp:
“The deck's strategy is to power up your Pokémon until you start getting Azumarills and Ampharoses out. Then you can use drizzle and energy connect to power up for a max bubbles for up to a devastating 600 damage. Lapras is there to help you get the deck's many supporters out, and Electabuzz is good with energy connect.
Thank you for your time,
Icechomp”
3 Mareep (2xDragon,1xAquapolis,) 3 Mary's Impulse
3 Flaaffy (1xDragon,1xAquapolis,1xExpedition) 2 Prof Birch
2 Ampharos (Expedition) 2 Copycat
2 Electabuzz (Sandstorm) 1 Lanette's Net Search
3 Marill (Sandstorm) 1 Poke Ball
3 Magneton (Dragon) 1 Master Ball
2 Lapras (Skyridge) 1 Poke Fan Club
2 Elm's Training Method
10 Water 2 Oran Berry
10 Electric 2 Moo Moo Milk
3 Strength Charm
1 NRG Recycle System
The strategy is to use Ampharos’ Power to move energy placed on other Pokémon onto Azumarill for a big Max Bubbles attack. The problem with this, though, is that it doesn’t really speed up Max Bubbles. Maximizing Drizzle is your best bet for a big Max Bubbles.
But, let’s look at how we can get the best return on Ampharos’ Energy Connect.
The first thing that we want to do is to find ways to increase the energy attached to Pokémon.
Since we have Energy Connect going for us, we don’t really care where that energy winds up, as long as it’s attached to a Pokémon. In fact, having it attached to a Benched Pokémon gives us more Flexibility.
The big change that I would make here is to replace Sandstorm Azumarril with Dragon Magneton. This Pokémon lets you do damage for each energy attached, but the energy can be anywhere on your field. We’ll need some coverage for our Fighting weakness, so SS Wobuffet and Aquapolis Zapdos can help us there. Aq Zap is usually hard to play because you can’t directly attach Lighting energy onto it, but Energy Connect solves that problem! Get the energy on other Pokémon and move it on up to Zap.
Now, the other thing you want to strive for in a deck is consistency. There are a lot of good cards out there, but you can only fit some of them into your deck and unless you have an overwhelming reason to have that one copy of something in your deck, you’re much better off choosing the cards that your rather have 2 and 3 and even 4 of. For that reason, I choosing what I feel are the best versions of the Pokémon needed for this deck and also choosing less Trainers, but more copies of each. I’ll review some of them in a minute, but first, here’s the fix:
3 Mareep (Aquapolis) 4 TV Reporter
3 Flaaffy (Dragon) 3 Juggler
2 Ampharos (Expedition) 3 Copycat
2 Electabuzz (Sandstorm) 3 Pokémon Fan Club
3 Magnemite (Aquapolis) 3 Prof Elm's Training Method
3 Magneton (Dragon) 4 Oran Berry
3 Zapdos (Aquapolis) 2 Low Pressure System
2 Wobuffet (Sandstorm)
11 Electric
3 Psychic
3 Multi
Dragon Flaffy has Energy Recall. Pull 2 L Energy out of the discard.
Aquapolis Magnemite gives you free retreat (if you have another on the Bench), not an easy thing to come by in this version of Modifed.
Zapdos has a great attack and is resistant to Fighting. It’s major drawback is it’s Poke-Body. Ampharos gets right by that. You can also attach the Multi Energy to help get you going.
The Trainer selection had some good ideas, but needed tightening up in implementing those ideas. I’ve also added a couple of Trainers that get some L energy into the discard pile so that you can Recall and Plasma it. To get powered up quickly, you’ll want to do that as soon as possible.
Drawing power is good, but Mary’s Impulse is, to put it bluntly, bad. Half the time you get nothing. TV Reporter gives you 3 new cards and lets you toss an energy into your discard. In the same vein, Juggler has you discard 1 or 2 energy cards for a draw of 3 to 5 cards.
We’re going to consolidate the 5 different search Trainers into just Fan Club and PETM. The others are just too flippy and Lanette was just wrong, even when this was a two-color deck.
I also chose to go with all Oran Berry for healing. Moo Moo has the problem of coin flips and Oran lets you put it on Zapdos before you attack with Lightning Storm, in case you flip tails on your attack. Finally, I’ve replaced Energy Recycle with Low Pressure System. You have enough other ways to pull energy out of the discard, and having 10 extra HP is always useful.
Thanks for the deck, Icechomp!