Tang-Gar Potential?

Giant Growth (Tang-Gar):

Hello and thank you SixPrizes for being there to help/entertain/teach me everything needed to play the Pokémon TCG with confidence and a little know how. Being a relatively new player I have to admit I knew virtually nothing about the complex strategies being used in decks until I stumbled upon this site. You have all helped me immensely and I owe allot of my success in playing to the helpful suggestions and tips you all gave me, not to mention all of the extremely helpful articles submitted by the active members here at SixPrizes.

That being said I could use your help yet again. I have been experimenting with a deck idea for some time now and I have had allot of success with it thus far, but it just feels like it’s missing something. I took the advice that some of the members gave me about adding in a 2-2 Claydol line and I have to admit that it helped me stay consistent much more then I had ever hoped. This is why I’m calling upon the powers that be to help me once again to spruce up my rag-tag deck and turn it into something that will be a more serious competitor (even if it means completely changing my list around).

So without further ado, I bring to you, my idea of running Tangrowth SF with Gengar SF…

In a format where speed and quick set-ups dominate, playing any type of deck where your heavy hitter takes four energy to attack is a complete risk at best (at least until the much anticipated “Double Colorless Energy” gets here anyways). In today’s deck builds SP’s and Donk’s are all the rage. Without running one yourself you can almost certainly find yourself loosing matches before they ever really start. So why do you ask, am I not willing to settle for a SP/Donk list myself? Well let’s just say I remain hopeful that ordinary “build up” decks featuring often times “overlooked” Pokémon will still have a fighting chance.

Now that’s not to say that SP’s or similar techs aren’t warranted, I myself cannot seem to take control of the game with a lonely Tangrowth. But instead I pair Tangrowth with the quick set-up of Gengar. While this may seem like an odd mix at first, when you get right down to it, the two work flawlessly together. How does this work, well let me explain. Gengar brings a quick set-up and the ability to take an opponent down at the point of knockout potentially swinging things in your favor, while disrupting your opponents set up all at the same time (pitch-dark). After Gengar has established a nice prize accumulation, (if the deck has been running like it should) Tangrowth should be powered up and readily awaiting his turn to deal damage and spread to the bench. Not to mention the endless healing support this jolly green giant can bring your damaged Gengars.

If and when your Gengar’s have fallen (hopefully taking a large sum of your opponents with them) the Pokémon to be called upon to wrap everything up nicely should be Tangrowth. Late game you should have established enough damage/disruption with Gengar SF to have no problem hitting there active for 60 and two of their benched Pokémon for 20. It really is a beautiful thing when you see it happen in play.

On many occasions I have taken four prizes (five if they have belted anything within Tangrowth’s grasp) in one single turn. Crobats to snipe the terribly weak and Tangrowth to take out the active AND to finish off two of the damaged benched Pokémon all in the same turn. That’s four prizes, count them FOUR! Now granted this will not happen every time you play this deck but it does happen often enough to keep you greedily awaiting the next opportunity to present itself.

PROS:

Resistance to Kingdra, Palkia, Gyrados, and pretty much any other uber water type. A great Tank to stall with as you build up your bench. The ability to heal not just your active Tangrowth but anything else as well(although it is flippy). Doing a total of 100 damage, spread beautifully (60 to the active and 20 to two different benched). The chance to see complete and utter bewilderment on your opponent’s face as they try to understand the logic behind a Tangrowth hiding in a Gengar deck. And last but certainly not least, the all too common Claydol just so happens to be weak to grass!

CONS:

Now let’s take a moment to talk about all the many drawbacks. I will be the first to tell you this is not and probably will never be a Tier 1 deck but to me it is my little piece of Pokémon TCG heaven. This being said there are several match-ups that can devastate this build. Anybody having ever played against a Nidoqueen tech knows exactly what I’m talking about. I mean rolling off 20 damage that you just laid on the bench every turn is a real stinker and makes Tangrowth’s ability to spread as useless as a fainting spell against a Crobat drop.

And let’s not forget to mention how susceptible Tangrowth is to Blaziken FB or Infernape 4, especially if you happen to have a LV.X Tangrowth out. But what deck doesn’t have a bad match-up or two? Another very common downside to running Tangrowth outside of his weakness to fire and his high energy cost is his ridiculous retreat cost. Although this is easily fixed by pulling a warp point or switch, you’re not always going to have one handy. So you have to make sure when Tangrowth hits the active position he is ready to attack.

Ok so this is basically the deck I run the most often. I have experimented with Donks (Shuppet, Machamp, Starmie, ect) SP decks (LuxApe, GaGa, ect) and just about every Flygon or Speedrill variant you can think of.  These decks are a lot of fun and usually hit fast and have minimal problems setting up. The only downside is there is no surprise factor involved at all, experienced players can tell exactly what you’re going for the second you flip over your active. Except that’s not true with my TanGar build. When I flip over a Gastly SF they assume I’m running a standard Gengar build or when I flip over a Tangela they either think one of two things, I’m running Tangrowth/Sceptile/Leafeon or that I’m a complete novice (which isn’t too far from the truth seeing as how I have only been playing for about 3 months now) either way they usually misplay because of a faulty assumption on their part. But what they never expect to see is a combination of the two. I play at least 10-12 games a week and I average about a 75%-80% win to loss ratio.

Here is the list I run feel free to suggest any changes as all help is greatly appreciated: