Hello again everybody! I’m finally up to date with reading the newest articles and have almost done all my university work, so I thought I’d better write something.
I’m now part of the uhh… “Staff” thing, I think they’ve called it. (Don’t ask me how that’s happened as I’m yet to understand myself.) As I’m sure most of you know already, most things I write follow rogue ideas and looking at some cards that people don’t often play, hopefully inspiring you to test out some new combinations. I know my writing style tends to be very informal and quite chatty, and I know that some of you are not very keen on this, but hopefully it will grow on you. :D
At the moment, I’ve been playing around with Magnezone, a card that I’ve wanted to build a deck with for months but simply been too lazy. Many of the popular decks simply have no synergy together *points at LuxChomp*, and I like things that actually work specifically together. Yes, things like Vileplume and Gengar do have synergy together, but hardly any of the other popular decks do. Besides, I’m a huge fan of playing things that people don’t expect. So on to the deck list:
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Pokemon – 19 4 Magnemite SF 3 Magneton SF 1 Magnezone SF #5 2 Magnezone SF #6 1 Magnezone LV.X LA 3 Spiritomb AR 2 Unown Q MD 1 Chansey HGSS 1 Blissey Prime HGSS 1 Rotom UD |
T/S/S – 29 2 Broken Time-Space 2 Conductive Quarry 3 Pokemon Collector 2 Interviewer’s Questions 4 Engineers Adjustments 2 Palmers Contribution 2 Pokegear 3.0 1 Luxury Ball 4 Pokemon Communication 3 VS Seeker 4 Super Scoop Up |
Energy – 12 4 Special Metal 2 Basic Metal 6 Lightening |
This deck list may seem a little strange to many. No Uxie for “Set Up” draw power and no Rare Candy with the main attacker being Stage 2. Well, hopefully I’ll be able to explain some of the eccentricities to you and get you out of that habit of throwing the same cards into every deck.
So, to start this off, I’m going to give you a layout of how the deck sets up and plays, and the strategic plays for it. Then hopefully have a look at other possible things that you could add in, and reasons why I chose what cards I did to play. If you’re very lucky then I’ll remember to write all the sections of the article this time!
The Pokemon
Setting up is the most important part of this deck. Granted it is not the fastest deck by a long way in the current format, but it is still pretty impressive. Usually you can achieve two Magnezone built up and ready by turn 3 at the latest. So anyway, I promise I will eventually get on to doing the actual analysis rather than just rambling soon. You’ve got to admit it is a pretty impressive skill though.
Spiritomb
Yaaaay look! It’s the card I hate more than any other in the entire game. I hate it so much I specifically had to go buy 3 to build this deck. However, this card is perfect for this deck. As a starting Pokemon it slows your opponent down by preventing them from playing Trainers, which hopefully will have them stuck for a while. The downside of this is that you will have your trainers stuck in your hand as well. It is at this point you’ll realise you also love hate the card.
Spiritomb does actually have an upside! Yes, I’m glad it does too because, from the explanation so far it, is pretty awful. Really, isn’t it? I’m sure most of you know this already but, for the few that don’t, I will be explaining each card in detail just so that everyone is up to speed. I hate reading an article and having no idea what the author is writing about. So, sorry if some of this is trivial to you. Soon I shall stop deviating from the topic. I’m going to have to start a new paragraph now…
Spiritomb’s Upside: For 0 energy, Spiritomb can use “Darkness Grace” to search your deck for a card that evolves from one of your Pokemon in play and put it onto that Pokemon. Awesome! The downside upside of this is that Spiritomb takes 10 damage. I’d prefer it to do 30 damage, personally, just to get the wretched thing out of my way.
Unown Q
Not much to be said about this guy really. Attach it to a Pokemon to reduce the retreat cost by 1. Or alternatively, I’ve recently been using it as a starter to donk the opponent’s Pokemon that’s weak to Psychic. It’s perfect for killing off an evil Oddish or Uxie in a couple of turns doing 20 damage plus weakness for just 1 Colourless energy.
Magnezone #5
This Magnezone has a very useful Poke-Power. “Magnetic Search” will allow you to search your deck for any Metal or Lightning Pokemon and put it into your hand, like a super cool Bebe’s Search every turn but better in every possible way. It has a fairly healthy HP of 120, so hopefully it won’t get sniped. And, if you really need to snipe something for that last prize card, for LC you can “Speed Shot” for 30 damage to any of your opponent’s Pokemon.
Magnezone #6
This Magnezone is what the deck is based around. His Poke-Power, “Super Conductivity”, will allow you to attach a Metal or Lightning Energy to your active Pokemon from the discard pile at a cost of 10 damage. Thus meaning once you have energy on the field you’ll always have a supply as you can grab it from the discard pile.
The attack is what this card is all about though. For LCC, “Gyro Ball”, will wallop your opponent for a pretty unimpressive 60 damage. However it allows you to switch your active Pokemon if you wish. In doing so, I suggest you throw in that troublesome Spiritomb to annoy the bejeebers out of the opponent. If you decide to switch, it forces your opponent to switch too! If they haven’t got a great start then most likely they will have to send something in from the bench, which will force them to waste resources retreating it again. All the while Trainers are locked, increasing the pressure on them.
Magnezone LV.X
The LV.X ideally wants to be placed onto Magnezone #6, turning it from a Lightning Pokemon to a Metal one. With a nice HP boost to 140, being Metal type lets the LV.X work like a lovely, little tank. Its attack, “Cyber Shock”, hits a slightly better 80 damage at the cost of ML, but you must discard both energies. An upside to this is that the defending Pokemon is 100% Paralysed. That’s right, no annoying coin flipping! This makes it perfect for taking out your opponent’s big hitters. Just as they get it loaded up to attack, you just constantly paralyse it every turn with the help of “Super Conductivity”, returning your Energy until the bugger dies.
It also has a nice Poke-Power, “Electric Trans”, which allows you to move your Lightning and Metal Energy between your Pokemon as you like. We’ll be seeing more of this later.
Rotom
Hehehe. ROTOM! This wee beastie will let you get things out of your prizes that you may need with his Poke-Power, “Mischevious Trick”. It swaps the top card of your deck with one of your prizes. This also has the benefit of an attack that fits nicely into this deck. For L you can “Plasma Arrow”, which snipes any of your opponent’s Pokemon for 20 damage for each Energy they have attached. This is perfect for sniping that heavy-hitting Pokemon on the bench loaded up with energy.
Blissey Prime
This is what sets this deck apart from the rest. Blissey Prime’s Poke-Power, “Blissful Nurse”, allows you to remove all damage from your Pokemon when you use it to evolve your Chansey. Woohoo! However, if the Pokemon you remove damage from have Energy attached to them, the Energy must be discarded. Magnezone also gets around this problem by using “Electric Trans” to move the energy to an undamaged Pokemon, allowing you to heal all your Pokemon and still retain your energy.
The Trainers
Broken Time-Space
Lets you evolve your Magnezone super fast. Always a helpful hand.
Conductive Quarry
Using this deck you’ll find you dump a lot of Energy in the discard pile. Although you can use “Super Connectivity”, it’s still helpful to be able to return it to your hand in certain situations.
Pokemon Collector
This little, fat dude on a chair collects 3 Basic Pokemon at a time. ‘Nuff said.
Interviewer’s Questions
Some crazy woman with a microphone hunting around for some Energy. In a deck running only 12 Energy that it relies on for all of its draw power, it’s a card you need to have.
Engineer’s Adjustments
This One Man Army with his Spanner is your primary draw engine. Discard an Energy to draw 4 cards. YUM!
Palmer’s Contribution
In the unusual occasion that Magnezone LV.X dies, Mr. Palmer the Merry Little Farmer is your port of call. He’ll shove the entire evolution line back into the deck ready to be sought out again with Magnetic Search.
Pokegear 3.0
With Engineer’s Adjustments being your only draw power, you want to make sure you can get that Engineer’s when you need it. It allows you to look at the top 7 cards of your deck and put a Supporter you find there into your hand.
Super Scoop Up
You play down a Blissey, take all your damage off, and Super Scoop it so it’s ready to use again later. Gotta love that Super Scoop feeling.
The Strategy
Well, that’s what the stuff in the deck does, so let’s look how you can play it. After playtesting it a lot, I’ve found there tends to be 3 playing phases whilst playing against an opponent.
PHASE ONE – Setting up
Totally unpredictable, I know. Setting up. Try and grab a Spiritomb and a couple of Magnemite using Collector or something similar. Spiritomb’s primary use is to get the “Magnetic Search” Magnezone into play as soon as possible while locking your opponent’s Trainers, hopefully slowing them down. If you get the “Magnetic Search” Magnezone out first, you can use his Poke-Power in the following turns to set up all of your Pokemon. As nearly all of the deck is Lightning and Metal types then it can grab almost anything with his Poke-Power. With a combination of “Magnetic Search” and “Darkness Grace”, you can get the next Magnezone set up the very next turn (“Gyro Ball”).
This usually means you can get one of each Magnezone in play by turn 2 or 3. As no Uxie are used, your main draw power comes from Spanner Man. However, you need at least 1 Energy in your hand to use him. For this reason, I had to include a couple of Interviewer’s Questions; as only 12 Energy are used in the deck, it can sometimes be a pain to get that Energy into your hand. Usually, once you get a chain of Engineer’s running, it’s pretty easy to draw into anything you need.
This also helps by dumping your Energy into the discard pile, allowing you to use “Super Connectivity” to attach it to your active Pokemon. If you use “Magnetic Search” to grab the LV.X, you can easily attach an energy from your hand and “Super Connectivity” one from the discard pile to start taking early prizes with “Cyber Shock” (80 damage + paralysis), especially if you want to start off playing aggressively and think you can grab an early win from your opponent.
If, however, your opponent seems to be getting set up quite well, you probably want to continue using “Magnetic Search” and “Darkness Grace” to get your second “Gyro Ball” Magnezone into play. With the ability to use “Super Connectivity” twice during your turn, it gives you significantly more options and a big energy advantage over your opponent. This set up is most suited if your opponent also has a fast set up and you’re planning ahead for a longer, more drawn out battle.
During this time, you shouldn’t be worried about going down in prizes due to losing Spiritomb. This deck can easily lose 4 or even 5 prizes before attacking and still pull back a win with ease. You should expect to lose them and be able to keep one on your bench ready to send up. Remember, if you don’t have a collector to grab one, you can always “Magnetic Search” for any Pokemon, then shove it back in and grab a Spiritomb (or anything else for that matter) using Pokemon Communication.
PHASE TWO – Starting to dish some damage
The basic plan is to play conservatively. If your opponent is still struggling to set up, you can use Gyro Ball to hit for 60 and switch back out to Spiritomb (this should have an Unown Q attached by this point to allow free retreating). If you switch, it also forces them to switch, possibly putting them in an awkward position trying to retreat things while continuing to set up under Trainer lock. This phase is about dealing damage while preventing their set up. Your aim isn’t always to take prizes here; it’s just to make sure that you always have control of the board.
However, this phase doesn’t always happen. If for some reason you set up really slowly, or your opponent has already got some nasty things in play, you may switch to phase 3 without even visiting here.
PHASE THREE – Blowing them into the next hemisphere
If you’re forced into this phase early, you can find yourself struggling for energy and having to constantly damage yourself with “Super Connectivity”. However if you start this while you have a lot of energy in play, then you’ll most likely be on to a winning game.
The plan here is to dish out as much damage as possible while taking as little damage yourself; as you’ve probably lost several prize cards already, this is where you want to catch up. This can be done in 2 ways:
If you’re trying to conserve energy, you can “Gyro Ball” and leave/switch Magnezone LV.X active, crammed full with Special Metal Energy to allow it to tank several hits.
Your other option is something you’re more likely to use when you get into trouble. When your opponent has his main attacker fully loaded with Energy sent out, you’ll want to “Cyber Shock” it. This doesn’t cause a huge amount of damage (80), but it will ALWAYS cause paralysis. The downside is you have to discard 1 L and 1 M energy. This paralysis will render the attacker completely useless, giving you complete immunity to its damage every turn you “Cyber Shock” it until it dies. The opponent can get out of this, however, with the use of Warp Point/Energy, Switch, etc.; however, these are things your opponent will only have a limited supply of.
Finally, at this point, while we’re on the topic of minimising the damage you take, we come to Blissey Prime. The plan with Blissey is simple: use “Electric Trans” to move all your Energy onto an undamaged Pokemon, then drop Blissey and use “Blissful Nurse” to remove all damage from your Pokemon. Then you can move your Energy back and use Super Scoop Up to pick up Blissey to use it again.
Obviously though, you want to get the most out of this card. To use it most effectively, you want almost all of your Pokemon to be almost dead. You can do this by using “Gyro Ball” to constantly keep switching what Pokemon is active so you can control what is damaged. However, you have to calculate exactly the most damage you can expect from the opponent and you always have to consider the unexpected.
I’ve been caught out a couple of times when calculating that if my opponent had a godly hand and Rare Candy’d everything in sight, as well as attached the Energy he needed AND used an Exper Belt, I’d still live with 10 HP left. So went for it. I wasn’t, however, expecting him to be able to do all of that AND also have a PlusPower. Needless to say, I died. But it just goes to show, you must always be ready for the unexpected. You want to get all your Pokemon (remember to keep one fully healed) close to death, then you can use Blissey to take everything off and then Super Scoop Up. This way you’re removing the most damage you possibly can and increasing the number of times you can use your Blissey to heal.
You’re using what?!? Are you crazy?
I think that covers the majority of the major cards, but many people have stressed that the cards in the deck are a little… unorthadox, to say the least. However, it is proven to work. :D
No Uxie
This seems to be top of the list of “You don’t play that? Are you stupid?” Nobody seems to understand why I don’t use the little beast to draw cards. I had 2 of these and the LV.X in my original list and thought it would work well. It’s easy to get Uxie active with “Gyro Ball” to level up and can use Unown Q to retreat it afterwards. However, I simply didn’t use it.
When using Engineer’s Spanner, I simply had way too many cards in my hand to ever use Uxie. I rarely had a hand size of less than 15, rendering Uxie totally useless. So I ripped the stupid little pixie out of the deck and replaced it with things that could help me with my Spanner’s engine.
2 Unown Q
A lot of people have commented on this and I’m not really sure why. Everyone says I only need 1. Well… I’ve tested it and I say I need 2. You need one attached to your Spiritomb to allow it to have free retreat. When my Spiritomb dies I don’t want to have to use Palmer’s Contribution just to get an Unown Q back to put on my new Spiritomb. Playing 2 makes it a lot easier to get out and means you waste less turns searching for one. Also, if you start with it active it can be a great way to get a 2 turn donk on Uxie/Azelf!
No Rare Candy
This is another thing people think is crazy. So what’s the real reason I don’t run Rare Candy? Well… perhaps I just forgot to put them in? However, in my accident I discovered something amazing. I didn’t miss them. “Yes, but you can go straight from a Basic to Stage 2 instantly!” This comment is very true. But in setting up, I can use “Magnetic Search” to get a Magneton and then “Darkness Grace” for Magnezone. Ta-Da! I just got my Stage 2 into play in 1 turn. Also in setting up, with Spiritomb active, you can’t use Candy anyway. During the later phases of the game you’re still going to be able to “Magnetic Search” for any Metal/Lightning Pokemon, so it’s really not missed. Therefore, I’ve used the space for other, more useful Trainers and given the Candy a rest.
PokeGear 3.0
“I’ve never even seen that card! What does it do?!?” Uxie is a searchable draw engine, which is its strong point. I’d rather not rely on just topdecking an Engineer’s, so being able to pick out a Supporter from the top 7 cards is a great help. You can also pick out any other useful Supporter you might need at that moment in time. What this allows you to do is cut down the number of each specific Supporter you play as you can simply find it out.
How many times have you been in a situation where you’re saying “I hope I topdeck X, as then I can grab the win”. Well, if you’ve got some of these sitting in your hand, or you topdeck it, then you’re no longer relying on Supporter X being the top card. It only has to be in the top 7 cards, meaning your chance of winning just increased by 7 times! Now THAT sounds amazing, doesn’t it? A little exaggerated, I admit, but, nevertheless, this card has won me many games.
VS Seeker 
This is my underrated card of the month! It allows you to grab a Supporter from the discard pile. Sounds pretty poop. Well, if I’m using 3 VS Seeker in my deck, I can now use my magical Spanner engine up to 7 times! As long as you’ve used the Supporter before then you can use it again with VS Seeker. This also combos exceptionally well with Palmer, the Fat Jolly Farmer. In the occasion that Magnezone LV.X does die, or you have to sacrifice it or something, you can get the entire evolution line back into your deck, then use “Magnetic Search” to find out the LV.X to put on your new Magnezone (hopefully you had both “Gyro Ball” Magnezone in play). The following turns you can “Magnetic Search” to get the rest of the evolution line back in play. Of course, if you happen to lose it multiple times (generally if your opponent is REALLY annoying), you can VS Seeker to keep getting Palmer Farmer and shuffle that Magnezone back in. What VS Seeker gives you is HUGE versatility, versatility that all decks should make use if. It’s a staple card in most of my decks.
No Expert Belts
Everybody loves Expert Belt. They throw them in everything. Well, I’ve got news for you, I think Expert Belt suck! I’ve never liked them ever since they were released. However, if we’re looking at this competitively, Magnezone’s damage isn’t great and could do with beefing up. So, if you want to hit huge numbers, stop reading this and go and build Jumpluff. This deck is strong because of the effects of its attacks, not the damage it deals. Also, you’ll nearly always be fighting from behind. You’ll most likely be 3 prizes down before you even begin to attack. Giving the opponent an extra prize card due to Expert Belt is the last thing you’re going to want to do.
More Stadiums than I know where to throw my stick
Broken Time-Space lets you evolve loads. Conductive Quarry lets you grab energy from the discard to use with Spanner, or to simply attach without taking 10 damage. Good. So why play 4 in total? Well, I’m sure all of you have been in the infamous “Stadium War” where each of you play different stadiums on consecutive turns until one of you runs out of Stadiums to play.
Well, I’ve got more news for you. If you get into a Stadium War with me, then I’m going to win! I want the Stadium to always benefit me, not the horrible little man sitting opposite. Therefore, if I play the most, it’s more likely that mine is going to be in play. Also, BTS will help your opponent as much as you. Only use BTS when you need to, and then use Quarry to get it out of the way. Hardly anyone plays Metal/Lightning decks, so it won’t benefit many people.
No Bebe’s
“NO BEBE? You don’t play Bebe? EVERY DECK EVER must play at least 324432 Bebe’s to get the Pokemon you need!” I shall simply point at “Magnetic Search” and Pokemon Communication. Why should I use my Supporter of the turn to lose a card from my hand to grab a Pokemon when I can just grab the Pokemon without doing any of that other rubbish? I fail to see why people think playing no Bebe’s is crazy. I dislike Bebe’s. I’d rather play Mum’s Kindness. And, yes, it’s about time they fixed that typo too. Her name is “MUM” not “MOM”! I could go on forever :D
So, I know Magnezone has seen a lot of light recently. But this is my version of Magnezone, which I think is a fair bit different from most. Have a read, get some new ideas, and start using Pokegear 3.0 and VS Seeker! These are my Top Cards of the Month to try out!
