Lessons from the Pro: MegaZord – Ripped and Ready to Wreck!

Written by | August 26, 2011 | 38 comments | 1,130 views | Rating: -10

Introduction

Hey everybody! Welcome to the newest edition of Lessons from the Pro. Today I’m going to be writing about MegaZord with the bonus of the cards the deck acquires from Emerging Powers. I’ll start off with a short analysis on the deck and then move to what the deck acquires. Then I’ll provide a skeleton deck list for MegaZord and end with a battle video on MegaZord vs MegaZone: Magnezone/Yanmega. I hope you enjoy my newest article!

Analysis

MegaZord may sound like a weird name, but it’s YanMega/Zoroark/Donphan: MegaZord. Cool name too. The deck was played at last year’s Nationals and Worlds and had nice places at Nationals, but not so much at Worlds. I like the deck because it’s very fast and consistent.

A lot of the new Emerging Powers cards help it so it’ll be so much better. Yanmega is for early game to start sniping around with Linear Attack to spread some damage around the board. You have Donphan for later game to clear the field. Zoroark is a tech for stuff that it can OHKO with Foul Play and things like that. You play a Reshiram to kill the Kingdra threat.

As for T/S/S, it’s pretty much the same as any other deck, along with the energies. The deck gets unique when you look at it’s new partner cards that I’ll be talking about. All around the deck is very versatile and deals a threat for almost every deck in the format, and it’s gonna get better. It’s a deck to be feared so watch out. On to the new helper cards…

What does the deck acquire?

Great Ball

Great Ball is a reprint from the EX days. It says that you can look at the top 7 cards of your deck and a take a Pokemon you find there and put it in your hand. That sounds great and really is. In MegaZord you play three evolution lines so you’ll have a better chance of finding one of those lines from the top seven cards.

With this card it makes MegaZord even easier to set up at about turn two. I suggest it to any deck that runs a lot of evolution lines because you will find it very useful. Try it in your MegaZord deck because it will really help you out.

In my testing you can get the evolution about sixty percent of the time which really gives your deck a huge boost in speed and gets you rolling quickly. I think you should do a 50/50 split with Pokemon Communication and Great Ball in MegaZord.

In my battle video towards the end you’ll see that Great Ball worked great! :P Check this awesome card out in your MegaZord deck.

Max Potion

Max Potion works with about every Pokemon in this deck. All you little energy (with the exception of Donphan if it’s using Heavy Impact). Max Potion works almost as Blissey Prime does, Blissey lets you discard all energy attached to all your Pokemon and then heal all damage off them.

Max Potion says to discard all energy attached to one of your Pokemon which I think is better because you get to choose instead of getting rid of all your energies. I take preference to Max Potion because it’s situational and you don’t have to give up all your energies. It’s also a ton faster because you don’t have to evolve into Blissey. The card will help this deck a ton and it’s worth testing.

Pokemon Catcher

Pokemon Catcher is what everyone is talking about. It’s a Pokemon Reversal without the flip; a reprint of Gust of Wind. The card is going to be absolutely broken and played in almost every deck. Expect playing against four or more (they can use a Junk Arm to get it back) in a game. This deck played Pokemon Reversals before so you can just switch those for Catchers. Every deck is going to need them.

In a very fast deck like MegaZord, you’ll be able to use Catcher much to your advantage. You can grab out Pokemon your opponent is going to need like Oddish, Cyndaquil, etc. They won’t be able to set up as fast and you will have an easy game on your hands. This card will be in almost every deck and it’ll be big. Watch out.

Crushing Hammer                         

Crushing Hammer is similar to Energy Removal 2 cards from the past. Those cards could help you win games by removing energies from your opponents heavier Pokemon and it made it harder for them to set up. MegaZord is really fast as it is, so if you teched in a Crushing Hammer it could make it almost impossible for your opponent to win.

They would be back one turn for every heads you hit with Crushing Hammer. That will make it very hard for them to get everything out. You have Yanmega to snipe with, so you could get rid of some energies from one of your opponents Pokemon and then start sniping it with your Yanmega. In a few turns you can have that bigger threat dealt with and you can get out your Donphan and knock out everything with Heavy Impact.

This card really helps against decks that have to stack energies on their Pokemon. Against a Magnezone that’s charging up, this card works great. I think this card gives MegaZord an even bigger advantage so I suggest you check it out and pop it into your deck.

Bianca

This card says draw until you have 6 cards in your hand. It can be really clutch. It’s a lot like Volkner’s Philosophy from a rotated set; Rising Rivals. That card let you discard a card to draw six. Both of these cards are very situational and help you at certain times, Volkner’s could let you discard a useless card to draw more cards, however Bianca just lets you draw up until you have six. I don’t really have a preference to either, but in this format you’re forced to play Bianca if anything.

Tornadus 

At first glance you might think that Tornadus is a bad card. It only has two attacks, both not being the best, but in MegaZord it’s pretty good. It can be used as a stall card against mirror, or just Donphan decks in general. It has a really nice resistance to fighting which really helps. You can just throw him up and leave him there while Donphan only hits for forty per turn. Not that much.

Now on to the two attacks. Hurricane hits for eighty for a DCE and another energy which isn’t too bad. It has a nice retreat cost of one which isn’t extreme like Donphan. Energy Wheel for a colorless is okay. If you started with a Donphan or something and Switched it away, you can put of your Tornadus and use Energy Wheel.

It lets you move an energy from one of your benched Pokemon. That’s not that great, but if you up against a Donphan, that’s okay because they won’t be able to hit you for that much.

Overall I think the card is pretty good and worth teching in for the heck of it. It can ever help in some situations so that’s an added bonus. I’d try the card in the deck and see how it goes.

Skeleton – 56 Cards

Pokemon – 17

 Trainers – 28

 Energy – 11

You can add in the cards I’ve mentioned.

The List in Action

Conclusion

Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you enjoyed my article. If you didn’t, please leave some kind of feedback to why you didn’t and something I should change. Thanks. Please check out my YouTube if you liked the battle video.

Videos are better than ever with muted sound with narration over the top during Recorded Matches, and narrated scans for Card of the Days. Thanks for reading again. I hope you enjoy the new Pokemon season! See ya later everyone!

-The Purple Pro

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  • Anonymous

    purple pro once a great article.i like how you included a battle vid and a deck list. i was just wondering do you think megazord would be more consistent wining games or zps with tornadus and maybe thunderus. or would you just wait for evolite for zekrom

    • The Purple Pro

      Yes. Finally. Thanks.

  • Anonymous

    Did you ever tested Proffesor Oaks New Theory or even Juniper in this deck?
    Doing a 2/2 Greatball/Communication split it just wrong. Great ball CAN fail easier communication doesn’t
    I don’t have anything against great ball, but playing 2 communication is just wrong
    Why not just post a skeletton and some information about adding other cards in, not just a list with consistancy removed for some emerging powers cards.

    • The Purple Pro

      Yes I have. I changed my list a lot to make that one. If you watched the battle video, the list did great.

      • Anonymous

        with a consistent list of pokemon like the purple pro provided, great ball DOES work. i’ve also tested it.

      • http://twitter.com/AzZ0na Josh

        doing well in a mirror match doesnt make the deck good… so it has a fair matchup against itself… big deal

  • Anonymous

    i also think crushing hammer will be good cause you can just use bianca to bring your hand back to 6

  • Anonymous

    i also think crushing hammer will be good cause you can just use bianca to bring your hand back to 6

    • The Purple Pro

      I agree.

  • The Purple Pro

    If you rate my article negatively, please tell me why. 

    • Anonymous

      Although i thought there were some good parts of the article i rated it negatively. This was largely for 2 reasons. Firstly, it was poorly-proof read, for instance using “evaluation” instead of “evolution” on more than one occasion and some poor grammar (sorry!). Secondly i thought that 2 Crush Hammers, only 2 Communication, a 3 energy pokemon with such a low energy count and only 8 draw supporters, 2 of which were Bianca, were bad calls in a sub-par list.

      You clearly know the deck well and your discussion of how the deck changed for the new set was an excellent idea to make the article stand out and give something different. It was not a terrible article but i think it was posted too soon and was not front-page ready.

      • The Purple Pro

        Should I have just given a stranded list? Sorry about the spelling on evolution. My computer has a spell-check and that didn’t work then…

      • The Purple Pro

        *Standerd

      • Anonymous

        **Standard ;)

    • Anonymous

      I didn’t rate this one. I agree with some of the negative comments others made, but I would also say that this article is *much* better than the one you posted last time; this time I feel you put some thought in how the deck changed with EP, and what effects specific new cards might have. (Which you didn’t really do in your last article.) Sounds like others are disagreeing with some of the choices you made, but this time you really made choices, which is good.

      So I don’t know what Adam has said, but I say, keep submitting!

  • Anonymous

    Thought I would just comment because I actually hit the negative button on this one.
    The article is okay, but I feel the list needs a lot of work. As someone else has already said, the list looks like you took out a bunch of consistency and are using the Emerging Powers cards just because they’re there. The new set really doesn’t bring much to this deck at all (apart from Catcher and maybe Max Restore) and Tornadus isn’t a good inclusion, especially if you only have 3 Double Colourless.
    You only appear to have 8 draw supporters which is incredibly low since I’ve been using the deck for a while and find myself needing at least 12 to get going as fast as possible.
    Overall, the article just feels a little weak and yeah, the list did perform well in your vid, but you had a 0 hand when using Bianca (which is rare and it was topdecked), your opponent really didn’t have the chance to do anything because of bad draws and there were some questionable decisions in there. The most prominent is that you used 2 Pokemon Catchers in one turn just so you could get down to a 0 card hand, but then you didn’t even KO the Magnemite with 2 energy on it. You should have left the Cleffa til later on in the game cause it’s always going to be there for a Linear Attack.
    Just what I thought about the article, but take all the comments into consideration and learn for next time.
    Deckbuilding is half the game and is very difficult to do.

  • Anonymous

    I haven’t hit the dislike button yet but I expect that I will when I finish reading this, because I stumbled upon this paragraph:

    You can use this card for a great advantage to setting up and getting everything out very fast. With this card it makes MegaZord even easier to set up at about turn two. I suggest it to any deck that runs a lot of evaluation lines because you will find it very useful. Try it in your MegaZord deck because it will really help you out.

    This paragraph can be summarized as: “This card is good and speeds up your deck.” Everything else is filler and unnecessary and makes the article feel clunky and annoying to read.

    • The Purple Pro

      Very sorry about that…

  • The Purple Pro

    I proofread it and changed it a bit.

  • Anonymous

    can some one explain to me why would bianca or crush  hammer wouldnt  be good. or you guys just took out cause its not a staple

  • Anonymous

    Still prefer lost remover over crush hammer. Also, your opponent played a yanma and evolved into yanmega the same turn.

  • http://twitter.com/mngf87 Martin Garcia

    Im sorry to be on the negative side, but ehres why:

    The article is way too short, like you were rushing to make it public. The explanations are not clear enough, redundant and dont really bring any new light to things already discussed. And many of them seem like theorymoon, at best.

    Not only that, the list just seems plain bad to me. I understand the hype about new cards, and of course we all want to include them in our deck, but cutting to communications for 2 great ball? sorry thats not nearly good enough as advice for newer players. Communication gives you any pkmn, and never fails, unless you want it to, while greatball can fail a lot, and only gives you whats in the seven first cards, if the pkmn you want is not there, well . . . you would need a pkmn communication to fix that, wouldnt you?

    I appreciete the list, who doesnt? Everbody likes lists, if only to compare to their own.
    But this one is mediocre, at best. Seems like you just wanted to put in the new cards, and thats it.
    I understand the list is skeleton, but thats all the more reason its bad.

    Jus 2 communication? only 8 draw cards? In addition, there are a lot of tech cards that DO NOT belong in a skeleton, like the second switch, the third donphan line, the fourth catcher, 8 energies, heck, i played this with just 6 fighting and never had an energy drought.
    The problem is you make this “techs” look like staples by putting them there, when they are clearly not needed.

    Sorry, this article doesnt get a thumbs up from me.

  • Anonymous

    Has the list been changed since the article went up?

    If so, I’m not a fan of that . . .

    1. It makes nonsense of comments that refer to the original list
    2. The list should be final and tested before the article is written
    3. What if the comments that made you change the list are wrong? I mean, they’re not in this case, but a lot of the time they are.

    This isn’t the deck discussion forum. If you can’t stand by your article . . . then it simply wasn’t ready for the front page.

    • Anonymous

      Agreed.  PP, if you’re going to stand behind your writing, then please post the FIRST list here in the comments, so that comments about said list will make sense.

    • Anonymous

      The list has been changed (no Bianca, no Tornadus, no Great Ball). Which makes my earlier comment now make no sense. It has also been proof-read and had other changes made. Still, it does prove i was right about it not being front-page ready. Not a bad article but more time needed to be spent before it was posted.

  • Anonymous

    So, to direct the discussion away from article quality and towards content for a moment–
    How do you all feel about running Yanmega and Tornadus in this deck at the same time? Should it be one or the other? (Does Tornadus belong at all?)

  • Anonymous

    In addition to everything that’s already been said…

    It’s really annoying to read a front page article complaining about catcher. It’s broken, 4 catcher 4 junk arm… yadda yadda. Great players have already learned to play around catcher and to utilize catcher themselves and actually welcome it since it decreases the “coin flip” factor. It seems to me that the only people complaining about it are the ones that don’t know how to play against it.

  • Anonymous

    Lost Remover > Crushing Hammer, IMO

    • JPN Gallade

      Yeah, I agree on that too, but the one plus Crushing Hammer can have is that it can discard basic energies.  While it may sound dumb, remember that any energy can have potential to change games to some extent, so Crushing Hammer can potentially rid of a basic energy for a win.

      • Anonymous

        Oh, I know. I just feel that right now, Crushing Hammer doesn’t really fit into any notable decks. But if a deck has space to spare, and especially if it focuses around disruption or a slow setup, Crushing Hammer can be very good to run, especially when you take into consideration that a lot of decks run very low energy amounts, simply because cheap, efficient attacks tend to dominate.

        I think one of the biggest drawbacks is that isn’t too effective against TyRam in the long term, and I feel like that’s the deck to beat right now since it’s the simplest and cheapest top tier deck.

      • JPN Gallade

        Also a very good point, but keep in mind that no one can be that sure if Tyram is still going to be good after Catcher’s release.  Like other stage 2 builds in which there’s a stage 2 as a bench sitter, the deck will slightly have a harder time since Typhlosions (or any of its earlier stages) will commonly be Catchered, and if the player won’t find an easy around this, it can be tough for the deck to survive.

  • Anonymous

    Your article was fine bit a bit short, if you want to keep your rating up, work on the size of your articles, otherwise your article was fine.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UQZ2REEF74P3OEJ3C7IUABOU6E shmup-o

    Sweet mother please drop the rap.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_UQZ2REEF74P3OEJ3C7IUABOU6E shmup-o

    double post

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SFPOZ73M63XXJV3QYFTSWOOAH4 Leonard Wong

    This article is really… really bad. In the battle vid, you relied on top decks to get Bianca. If you didn’t get it, what will happen? Please playtest more before posting such articles.

  • reignematthew

    i recommend a pichu or a cleffa for the starter and zekrom or reshiram will be the main attackers and zoraoark and kingdra or ampharos prime to be a supporter and stoutland to keep zekrom or reshiram alive which i recommend and zoroark to be a counter attack and donphan as a blocker which will be a good strategy to beat the opponent

  • Anonymous

    IMO you should stop calling your articles “Lessons from the Pro” and stuff like that. I realize that your username is The Purple Pro, but it makes you sound conceited.

  • Anonymous

    IMO you should stop calling your articles “Lessons from the Pro” and stuff like that. I realize that your username is The Purple Pro, but it makes you sound conceited.