Snagging a Victory with Claw Snag

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Claw snag, good game.

As most of you know the Pokémon United States National Championships are this coming weekend. A lot of people are scrambling to find a deck that will work after the very surprising standings from the Canadian National Championships. The deck that was considered the “BDIF” by so many, Magneboar, only took 2 seats out of the Top 16 in masters.

Almost everyone was very surprised by this and are equally surprised by the rising of Yanmega. As it turns out speed and versatility are better than having a slow heavy hitter. (Anyone surprised now? Look at LuxChomp and Gyarados, they could easily beat slow heavy hitting decks in MD-On.

Well I’m not here to talk about either of these decks, I’m here to talk about an unexpected star that seemed to come out of nowhere. Weavile.

I’m guessing you read the picture I have or already knew what Weavile does, so I’m going to get right to it. Weavile can be used in many combinations to limit your opponent’s set up by discarding key cards or to help completely get rid of your opponents hand, which I will get to later.

I will go over 2 decks and give decklists for each of them. The deck that did well in Canada that uses Weavile is the one I will get to first.

Weavile/Ambipom’s goal is to make sure your opponent doesn’t have a hand from early on in the game by dropping Weaviles and using supper scoop ups and seekers to repetitively use Weavile along with Ambipoms first attack to put cards in their hand on the bottom of their deck. Here is a decklist that I will explain.

Pokémon – 23
4 Aipom (3 TM/1 UL)
1 Zorua BW
1 Zoroark BW
Trainers – 29
4 Team Rocket’s Trickery
1 Flower Shop Girl
Energy – 8

You need 4 Cleffa for getting your Weaviles and Ambipoms. No need for Judge because of Trickery. Most of the rest is self-explanatory.

The second and last Weavile deck I will talk about is Weavile/Donphan. As I said earlier, Weavile/Ambipom lacks a good attacker, which can hurt them against decks that get out an attacker quickly to start attacking by turn 2, like Yanmega. This deck gives you that attack power, and in combination with Weavile it can really cripple your opponent. Here is my list, which I will also explain.

Pokémon – 23
4 Phanphy CL
4 Donphan [Prime] HS
2 Boufflant BW
Trainers – 28
1 Flower Shop Girl
Energy – 97 F
2 Double Colorless 

Again, you need the 4 Weavile to get them out quickly. Ruins of Alph is for Yanmega so you can 2 shot it with Donphan. Boufflant is needed again for RDL. 4 Cleffa because you need to Eeek until your set up enough to have your Donphan out safely. Judge is in here because of no Ambipom.

Sorry for the short length or this article, because I wanted to get you guys info on this in time for Nationals. I hope you liked my article and take into consideration the deck as a play for nationals. If you’re not playing it, expect it because I do predict a fair amount of play. Thanks for your time!

-Henry

Reader Interactions

11 replies

  1. apb58

     I’m confused why you say “there’s no need for judge because of trickery”.
     Let’s say they had a 6 card hand. Play trickery, goes down to 5; with a weavile drop it’s down to 4, and with ambipom, it’s down to 2.

    With Judge, they go down to 4, Weavile drop gives them 3, Ambipom gives them 1.

    I think Judge is the superior play, even if trickery gives you a little draw.

    Also, why no slowking? When they have no hand, it’s up to you to make sure it stays that way with dead draws!

  2. Anonymous

    oh, I guess somebody already posted it and beat me to the punch : P

  3. Anonymous

    Sorry, but this article was rushed.  I don’t think that you had any time to get any research done about the deck that he was using, as phou pointed out in the comments.  You did not allow a full-flourishing explaination of how the deck works, and you barely talked about any of the matchups.  I can understand the lack of testing, but theorymon would have been good enough for the short amount of time that we had with the concept.

  4. Jonah Davids

    This article seemed pretty rushed, it seemed like you talked briefly about Yanmega and Disruption and then shoved two lists down your throat.

  5. Jonah Davids

    This article seemed pretty rushed, it seemed like you talked briefly about Yanmega and Disruption and then shoved two lists down your throat.

  6. seth resol

     I like the general concept of these decks but I would have liked a better explanation of the two deck lists. I think that judge would help the ambipom/weavile as explained by apb58 in his comment below.

  7. Emil lumen

    Does this mean if i wanna win nationals i should run 4 junipers, 4 oaks, 4 copycats, and 4 judges cause weavile and ambipom is gonna say no to my hand? ha ha ha ridiculous.

    This deck just got lucky at nationals cause it was new and no one knew what was the threat. 

    Bouffalant with a double colorless already benched {easy to get out} can revenge KO ambipom and if another come out then the second attack will KO that one.

    The bull is the answer to almost every low hp deck.

     

  8. greg

    i may be wrong. but doesnt flower shop lady only put back only basic energies. and it has to be 3 and 3?

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