Hello, 6P.com and welcome to another edition of Carl’s Cache. This article is going to cover a deck that has seen a lot of play in my part of the country (Ohio and Michigan), but hasn’t been thoroughly (okay, Chris did do a little snippet of it in the Underground) explained or covered: YMCA or otherwise known as Yanmega/Mew/Cinccino.
The deck was made and designed around beating Gothitelle. Gothitelle was the most hyped deck coming out of Emerging Powers, and in our area it was scoring several top 4s, top 2s, and some victories. YMCA was designed to utilize the best counter to Gothitelle, Mew Prime, while using a unique strategy to topple the metagame. In BRs it proved to be very effective and had a good showing, but it didn’t spread, so I decided to write an article on the deck.
The Stars of the Deck
3-4 Mew Prime: This card is the main attacker of the deck and the ideal starter. Mew’s Poke-Body lets him copy attacks from Pokemon in the Lost Zone, and his attack sends a Pokemon from your deck to the Lost Zone. He also comes equipped with free retreat, which is always useful. Against most decks, your ideal turn one is to start with a Mew Prime and See Off a Zoroark.
However, Mew Prime has several See Off targets that can be included in the deck:
0-1 Crobat Prime: Usually included to add strength to your Yanmega mirror matches, plus gives you an additional sniper. It is in most variants of the deck, but won’t be used in a fair amount of your games.
0-1 Muk UD: This guy isn’t run as much as he used to be in Mew decks. His main use is for dragging up a big Pokemon with high retreat costs, to either snipe around them or stall. He would mainly be used in a metagame full of Vileplume, Magnezone, and Emboar.
0-1 Jumpluff HS: The last “major” See Off target, his use is pretty self explanatory; he’s used to get KOs on high HP Pokemon. However, you are already using Cinccino so he becomes less useful, but his attack is for one energy card, instead of a Double Colorless Energy, so he does have his merits.
Mew Prime is run in a count of three or four; four is for maximum consistency, while three is typically consistent enough, but frees up an extra space to let you tech in another card.
1-2 Zoroark B/W: He is the card that has the attack you mainly use, Foul Play. Foul Play lets you get the cheap and easy OHKOs, especially with PlusPower on the following Pokemon (all metagame by the way): Magnezone Prime, Reshiram, Zekrom, Cinccino, and Gothitelle. The best part about this card might be the fact that he lets you OHKO a Gothitelle before they can attack you. A lot of lists use just one, but for me the card is so integral in how the deck functions that two just seems to be a lot safer, and quite frankly, better.
3-4/3-4 Yanmega Prime: The Y in YMCA and it is pretty clear why he is in here. He is in here as a cheap attacker than can clean up the dirty work. He attacks for free, allowing you to save your energy drops for your attackers, and also makes it easy to squeeze in some disruption in your deck, like Judge. He fits right in the theme of the deck, which is really taking six prizes as quick as possible, and usually as efficiently as possible.
He also helps you hit numbers. An example of this would be attacking a Magnemite for 40 with Linear Attack, then the next turn using Cinccino to KO a Magnezone Prime with Do the Wave.
The line really depends on your style, I prefer to use a 4-3 line; it gets me the extra starter, and with Rescue Energy, I have always felt that a 4th Yanmega prime isn’t as useful. However, if you want to cram in some extra stuff you can cut it down to a 3-3, or if you want the thickest line, you could use a 4-4 to maximize your consistency.
3-4/3-4 Cinccino BW: The last major attacker in the deck is Cinccino. Cinccino is included because he is still a beat stick, and once it’s set up it forces your opponent to plan on taking 100 damage each turn, and there’s not much way around it. Cinccino is also, in my opinion, the ideal option to see off against Gothitelle, the reason the deck was invented, because at four basic Pokemon you are KOing Gothitelles for one DCE the rest of the game.
Currently, I am using the three of the Last Resort Minccino from EPO because it can get a donk on Baby Pokemon and Solosis along with four Cinccino from BW. My thinking is that I want an extra Cinccino to See Off, therefore making running a 4th Minccino relatively useless. Ideally a 3-4 is what I would run, but I wanted the extra spot so my line is a 3-3.
Those are the “stars” of the deck, now onto the supporting cast:
0-1 Jirachi UL: This card is very helpful in shoring up your bad matchups, mainly against massive Stage Two Pokemon, aka Magnezone Prime, Kingdra Prime, and Ability Emboar. But what’s awkward in the deck, for me at least, it requires you to toss energy into the discard to have the full benefits of the card, but at the same time you don’t want to waste the energy. Another problem is that with the rise in play of Blissey Prime and Max Potion, your “setup” for Stardust Song plus Time Hollow can be crippled and set you back several turns.
0-2 Tornadus EPO: He is your Donphan counter, and is also a great way to not waste your precious Energy drops. He also gives you a bulky basic Pokemon to take a hit or two for the team, while you set up your fragile attack force. He covers up your weakness to Donphan pretty well, and also can help you hit magic numbers with Hurricane as well, which as already stated lets you conserve your energy too. Most lists that I have seen are using one.
0-1 Bouffalant BW 91: This is an interesting card, in that he really hasn’t been used ever, but he fits quite nicely in this deck and may finally have found his niche in the format. Bouffalant is the Zekrom counter for this deck, providing quick and easy support for Zoroark, allowing you to KO a Zekrom even when your Mew Prime isn’t out, but more importantly it forces the Zekrom player to respond with another Zekrom, or attempt a Tornadus + 2 PlusPower move to return the KO. I would definitely be using one of him, but his retreat cost hinders me from wanting to use two.
1-2 Cleffa HS/CL: You know why it’s in here. Consistent draw support, and gives you another great opener if you can’t get Mew Prime, Manaphy isn’t even truly viable in this deck because of the importance of each Energy drop.
0-1 Tyrogue HS/CL: I’m going to mention this card because in this deck he provides a good free attack, saving energy, and also helps you in hitting magic numbers. Again at this point not much more to be said about this guy.
T/S/S
The deck runs a lot of the common four-copy Trainers and Supporters: Pokemon Collector, Pokemon Communication, and Junk Arm are all used in four copies. Pokemon Catcher also is a four-of in some builds. The deck also runs a high count on PlusPowers that allow Zoroark to copy Blue Flare or Bolt Strike and get the OHKO. Then, it has the standard issue of deciding what draw cards to use. Cheren is typically used, in conjunction with Copycat and maybe a Juniper or two.
Judge also can be used in this deck to get the disruption, and I love that card. Then it can run Twins, but I don’t generally recommend it, since this deck is built to be highly aggressive. Max Potion goes great with Yanmega Prime in here, and maybe Black Belt, but it falls under the same category as Twins.
Lastly, Revive and Flower Shop Lady are typically used for recovery; some lists like to run a high count of recovery, some don’t. I prefer not to, and I just run Rescue Energy.
Energy
The energy count in here is pretty straightforward:
4 Double Colorless: Your main attacks all will use this card. This card is definitely a four-of.
1-7 Psychic: Depending on whether or not you run Rainbow energy determine how many of these you want, you want five Psychic Energy-providing cards at a minimum. Although to be fair the max is usually six or seven; you just don’t have enough space to work with.
0-4 Rainbow: These really aren’t used in this deck to be honest, but if you really feel the need to put in Jumpluff or even Lilligant, you could use them.
0-3 Rescue: This is my favorite recovery card, especially in this deck because once you get a Zoroark in the Lost Zone you don’t need specific energy to attack. It also provides straight-to-the-hand recovery against Trainer lock, something Revive doesn’t do at all. It also makes running the 4-3 Yanmega Prime line make more sense. I am currently using two.
My List
Here’s the current list that I am using:
|
Pokemon – 23 4 Yanma TM 1 Cleffa HS/CL |
Trainers – 26 4 Junk Arm 2 Judge 2 Copycat 4 Cheren |
Energy – 11 5 Psychic 2 Rescue |
There’s my list, and for the most part the counts are explained in the article.
Conclusion and Matchups
Like most decks, it has a few great matchups but some truly horrible ones. And to be honest its matchups are also very generally biased. The deck struggles mightily against two main types of Pokemon:
1. Magnezone Prime: You simply do not have the resources to continually KO this guy.
2. Pokemon whose attacks do significantly less damage than their hit points also cause problems for this deck because with Foul Play you can’t get a cheap prize, and in most cases Cinccino doesn’t do enough damage to them. This is why the deck has ultimately been on the back burner for me, when it faces any card that does less damage than their hit points; it has no good ways to KO it.
Great examples include Donphan Prime, Kingdra Prime, Typhlosion Prime (especially since he can also get rid of your Energies), and Ability Emboar. These are all relatively popular cards, and all of them easily OHKO Mew Prime and two of them for one Energy. This causes a lot of problems for the deck, and I think it will end up holding the deck back from truly achieving.
However, in cases such as a player using Ability Emboar and Typhlosion Prime, in particular, you can weaken them using Muk. You could also try to counter the problem by adding in Defenders or, when it comes out, Eviolites. But, as of right now there isn’t a good way to fix this deck’s problems.
The positive-to-even matchups are usually everything else. It can beat TyRam, despite the annoyance Typhlosion can represent, by using a Cinccino and Yanmega strategy to take down the Typhlosions and then using Mew Prime to take down Reshirams. It can beat ZPST with a good start, and by using its counters effectively.
It has a great Gothitelle matchup and then most of the other matchups are solid and give you the opportunity to outplay your opponent. Even in your bad matchups, aside from MegaJudge and ReshiBoar, you have at least chance to outplay them.
I also, and I might be alone in this, think that the deck is a little gimmicky; it seems like once you get used to playing against it your matchup just gets better because you are able to realize all the cool tricks the deck can pull.
That’s why I felt the need to write the article, it just isn’t out there yet. I don’t recommend playing the deck because of MegaJudge’s relative popularity, but if you want something new, fun, and inventive, try this deck out.
Well, hopefully I’ll see some of you at Regionals and good luck getting your full-art N‘s at the prereleases.
