Hi everyone! Today I’m going to talk about how you can tech your deck to counter the top tier decks of the HGSS-On format. I’m also going to provide a skeleton for some of the decks I talk about.
The Top Tier Decks
1. MagneBoar
A lot of people are hyping this new deck. MagneBoar is very fast and consistent. It sometimes can have a few bad starts though. MagneBoar uses Magnezone Prime for its Magnetic Draw Poke-Power and its amazing attack Lost Burn.
Using Emboar’s Inferno Fandango, you can attach as many Fire Energies as you want to your Pokemon in your turn. You can attach Energies to your Magnezone and then Lost Burn them off to do tons of damage. Some builds play a 1/1 or 2/2 line of Rayquaza & Deoxys Legend aka RDL.
RDL’s attack Ozone Buster is broken. It does 150 damage for two Fire Energies, a Lightning, and a Colorless. Once you attack you discard all Fire Energies from RDL. Now at first sight this may seem very bad, bur RDL has a Poke-Body that says when you knock out one of your opponents Pokemon, draw two Prizes. Broken.
If you have two Lightnings attached to your RDL and two Fires, you can discard the Fires and get basically two Prizes every time. 150 knocks out almost every Pokemon in the game in one shot.
This deck suffers to Zoroark techs, and Pokemon Reversals. Pokemon Reversals in particular. Zoroark’s attack Foul Play for two Colorless lets you use one of the defending Pokemon’s attacks for free. If you use this against a defending RDL, you can OHKO it.
When you KO a Legend, you draw two Prizes, and if you do this it will give you a big lead. Now Pokemon Reversal lets you flip a coin, if heads you may switch the Defending Pokemon with one of your opponents Benched Pokemon. You can send up an Emboar, KO it, and now they can’t attach as many Fires as they want.
2. Donphan
Donphan can be paired with Serperior, Yanmega, and lots of other things. I’m just going to focus on Serperior and Yanmega. Serperior / Donphan focuses on heal and tanking. When you use Earthquake, Serperior’s Royal Heal heals the damage from your Benched Pokemon.
This can be disrupted by using Solrock and Lunatone. When they are both in play, you stop your opponent from heal damage from their Pokemon. Donphan / Yanmega focuses on disruption and quick attacks. Here’s a nice video of a guy with a unique build of the deck: YouTube link
As you can see he controls the game. You can disrupt this by teching a Zekrom so you can Outrage to KO their Yanmegas and slow the early game down.
Donphan Skeleton – Total 51 cards
| Pokemon – 16
2 Phanpy CL |
Trainers – 25
4 Copycat |
Energy – 10 |
3. Steelix
Steelix is a tank deck. It sets up easily with Skarmory, and then heals off damage with Potion, Life Herb, and Moo-Moon Milk. Steelix can be in theory very easily disrupted. Just set up the Solrock and Lunatone combo and stop all their healing. This will pretty much give you the game once you KO their Steelix.
You can KO it easily with Reshiram’s Outrage. Just wait until they attack, and give them that damage back times two because of weakness. However if they get rolling and start Gaia Crushing, you’ll have a hard time. You can send a Reshiram and if they attacked it with Gaia Crush then do Outrage for 280 damage! OHKO.
4. Scizor
Scizor starts off with a Skarmory to set up the Special Metal Energies you need on your Scizor. Once it gets rolling, it puts out high damage, and tanks with Special Metal. You can disrupt this by teching in a Reshiram for Outrage to possibly OHKO the defending Scizor. If you can’t do this, you’ll have to rely on just continuously attacking Scizor.
Scizor Skeleton – Total 55 cards
| Pokemon – 16
4 Skarmory CL |
Trainers – 26
3 Pokemon Collector |
Energy – 13
7 Metal (Basic) |
5. Tyranitar
Tyranitar is a tank deck with very high damage output. Tyranitar can be paired with Serperior to continuously heal and tank even more. Tyranitar can also be played with Mandibuzz to use Darkness Howl and then snipe the bench with Mandibuzz. T-Tar’s Megaton Tail can deal some heavy damage, so why not do it back?
Tyranitar can be countered with Zoroark with attacking them with their own attacks, and using Reshiram or Zekrom’s Outrage to do the same damage back.
6. Kingdra / Mandibuzz
In this deck, Kingdra does Spray Splash, and the Mandibuzz attacks the Pokemon you did damage to. It can get really annoying when your starter Pokemon such as Tyrogue, Elekid, Cleffa, etc. are getting OHKOed off the bench without you having a say in it.
They can take an early lead until you bust out Zekrom. Both Mandibuzz and Kingdra have weakness to Lightning, so Zekrom will come in handy.
Kingdra / Madibuzz Skeleton – Total 51 cards
| Pokemon – 21
3 Vullaby BW |
Trainers – 27
4 Pokemon Collector
|
Energy – 13
4 Darkness (Special) |
7. Cinccino
Cinccino is a fun swarm deck where you set up a full bench and then Do the Wave can do 100 damage. By the way, Do the Wave is for two Colorless energy! Now since the deck is so fast given it’s a Stage 1, there isn’t exactly a totally effective way to counter this, but you can use Ditto to shrink their Bench to four so Do the Wave only does eighty.
Now that might not help, but you can bust out Zoroark and do Do the Wave against them. It will OHKO them if you’re doing 100 every time.
8. Zekrom
In my opinion Zekrom isn’t up to par because it loses to Donphan so much, but it was suggested to me that I add it to this article. Zekrom utilizes Shaymin UL, and Pachirisu CL. First you play a Pachirisu and do Self-Generation and attach two Lightning energies to Pachi, now you can use Shaymin’s Celebration Wind and move those Energies to your Zekrom.
Now Zekrom starts hitting for 120, which is probably going to knock out most of your Pokemon in one hit, but when Zekrom does forty to itself, that leaves it with 90 HP, you could use a Zoroark to KO it with Foul Play.
9. Tyrogue HS/CL (Bonus Tech… not a deck)
Tyrogue is a fun little tech that you can KO Cleffas easily without wasting Energies or risking an important Pokemon getting knocked out. Mischievous Punch does 30 which OHKOs Cleffas. This will give you some easy, cheap prizes and give you an early lead.
Putting it all together…
You guys may already have somewhat of a deck idea using all these techs. I’ll provide you with a deck skeleton, but you’ll need to choose the main attacker.
| Pokemon – 14
2 Zorua BW |
Trainers – 19
4 Pokemon Collector |
Energy – 7 |
Skeleton – Total 40 cards
The Pokemon
Zoroark BW: Zoroark is a counter to RDL and other Pokemon that have good attacks.
Ditto TM: Ditto helps against Cinncino and decks that need Pokemon on their Bench.
Solrock TM: Solrock and Lunatone have a wicked combo that lets you stop your opponent from healing their Pokemon.
Lunatone TM: You need Lunatone to get the combo to work. So yeah…
Cleffa HS/CL: Cleffa is an awesome starter. For no Energy you shuffle your hand into your deck and get a new hand of six cards. It’s even better because if its asleep, they can’t hurt you.
Tyrogue HS/CL: Tyrogue lets you knock an un-asleep Cleffa. Beast.
Reshiram & Zekrom BW: This legendary pair is used to KO Pokemon that have weakness to them and big tanks that damage them, then you can do the damage back with Outrage.
The Trainers
Pokemon Collector: Totally self-explanatory, unless you’ve been living under a Graveler.
Professor Juniper: Used to discard useless techs from your hand that you don’t need for your game.
Sage’s Training: To rip through your deck and grab the cards you need.
Pokemon Communication: Again totally self-explanatory.
Junk Arm: To discard useless techs from your hand and get Trainers you need back.
Switch: To switch out heavy retreat cost Pokemon.
Pokemon Reversal: To counter MagneBoar – switch them for their Emboar, and then KO it.
I hope you guys enjoyed this article and got some cool ideas for this deck! Good luck in the upcoming format!
