One Hit KO

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there, this is Pikkdogs here with a deck analysis.  I am only joined by my extra-dimesnionary sidekick, Pedro.

Before we begin the article Pikkdogs, I gotta stop you and wish you a 25th Birthday. 

Well, Thank You Pedro.

Oh you’re welcome, we gotta celebrate your birthday, 25 years is a big milestone for a guy as big as you.

You mean penis wise?

No, I don’t.  I mean a 300 Lb guy doesn’t get too many birthdays, we could be looking at the halfway point for you. 

Well, Thank You Pedro I appreciate the care you show.

You’re welcome, now finish up the article before your heart fails. 

Strategy

The Durant deck has one main Pokemon, any one care to guess?

Jigglypuff?

No, Pedro.  The Durant deck features Durant.  Durant is a 70 HP basic Metal Pokemon with a fire weakness and a 1 retreat cost.  His attack, called “Devour”, allows you to mill 1 card from your opponent’s deck for every Durant you have in play.

So the deck strategy is simple, get lots of Durants out on turn 1 and then keep them in play for the rest of the game.  This allows you to mill the most amount of cards in the shortest amount of time.

The problem is that Durant only has 70 HP, so keeping him alive is not easy.  To win you are probably going to need to buy yourself 3 extra turns, you can buy these turns in many ways.  Sometimes you will come up with some really good cards on the mill, and your opponent will not be able to setup without the cards you discarded.  But you are probably going to need to provide disruption in other ways, just in case.  One way to prevent an attack and buy yourself a couple extra turns is to take energy away from your opponent.  You can do this by using Lost Remover and Crushing Hammer. They can’t attack without energy.  Another way is to make sure the Durants stay in play longer.  You can do this by using Special Metal Energies, Eviolites, and Defenders.  Preventing an attack should buy you the time you need to mill those other cards.

Now as for techs, I have included 3 different Pokemon to be used as techs.  The first one is Mime Jr.  The main role for Mime Jr. is to use the Free Retreat that he has, you need a free retreater in this deck.  His second role is to Lost Zone cards with his “Sleepy Lost” attack, which let’s you send one card to the Lost Zone from the top of your opponent’s deck.  It is not great in this deck, but if you run out energy at least milling one card isn’t bad. The second tech I use is a combination of Rotom UD and Alph Lithograph 4.  Alph Lithograph let’s you look at your face down prize cards and write them down, and Rotom let’s you switch the top card of your deck with any of your prizes.  So if you prize a Durant you aren’t screwed, just use a Twins to get these two cards and your 4th Durant is in play.  The combo can also be used for other prized cards that you want in your deck, like your 4th Junk Arm.   The last Pokemon tech is Spiritomb.  Late in the game when your opponent’s deck is low, they will be trying to get their hand size as low as possible so that their deck is as big as possible.  They will be playing cards like N to make sure they won’t deck out.  Well Spiritomb will stop all that.  Spiritomb forces your opponent to shuffle his hand in his deck and draw seven cards, thanks to his “Spooky Whirlpool” Poke-Power.  In my early testing I was able to use the Whirlpool and Devour combo to win a game.  It does suck when you start with it, but there’s not much you can do about that.

Matchups

Now that you know how the deck works, let’s look at how it fairs in the matchups department. Since the format changed because of Noble Victories, I will not list every matchup individually.  Instead I will list what this deck is good against, and what its not.

Good

• Stage 1’s.  Most of these decks don’t run any fire Pokemon, so you can easily make these decks take 2 shots to kill a Durant or two.  Stage 1’s are only good when they can out speed a deck or hit for weakness, they should do neither here.
• Donphan and Dragons.  Same thing, can’t outspeed it and can’t hit for weakness.
• Most things not listed in list below.  Durant works against most decks very well, so you should be fine unless you run into some weird rogue or trainerlock decks.

Not Good

• Gothitelle– Item lock takes away the use of your items, so you are pretty much dead in the water once they get a couple knockouts.  The good thing is that they can’t use Twins here and you have resistance on them, but those things probably aren’t enough.



• Ross Deck– Same thing, item lock sucks.
• Kyurem– I’m not sure if anyone is making a straight Kyurem deck, but if they did you better watch out.  Anything that can knock out all your Durants in one turn is bad news.  It isn’t auto loss, but I still don’t like.
• Rogue things that can easily hit for 100 +.  If you have an easy to get out Pokemon that can do 100 damage every turn, you will also be in trouble.  If they have to recover energy like in Reshiram, you have a good chance to mill some important cards that they need to setup.  But, if they don’t have a complicated deck like that, they are in a position to give you a bad day.  While we mentioned Reshiram, let’s talk about him and Zekrom.  Zekrom should be about an even matchup, maybe a little favoring them if they don’t get a turn one knock out.  If they get setup turn 1 its over.  Reshiram matchups can vary greatly based on the deck.  If they have an Emboar based deck, just try to Catcher up the Emboar and you will be fine.  If they have a Typhlosion based deck, they might be trying to put damage counters on Reshiram so they can outrage for a knock out.  They will only need 2 damage counters to do so.  If they get that going quickly you are in for a bad day.  Make sure to get your eviolites on your Durants so you have a chance. 

 Decklist

Like all of my decklist, this list is not perfect.  It is not something you can just copy for Cities.  But it is something you can test and hopefully you might like it to polish it up and run a version of it yourself at a tournament. This is not my exact list, but a somewhat similar version of it.  I think I might wanna change my list to add more Crush Hammers, but then again I don’t like the flip.  Anyway, here’s the list. 

Pokemon-8

• 4-Durant
• 2-Mime Jr.
• 1-Rotom
• 1-Spiritomb

Trainers-43

• 4-Pokemon Collector
• 2-Dual Ball
• 4-Twins
• 2-N-Only use in the early game or the middle game, you don’t want them to get a small hand late game.
• 4-Juniper
• 3-Lost Remover
• 2-Pokemon Catcher- Great for stalling.
• 4-Junk Arm
• 4-Revive
• 4-Eviolite
• 1-Alph Lithograph
• 3-Defender
• 3-PONT
• 1-Sage’s Training
• 1-Super Rod
• 1-Crushing Hammer- For disruption, might want to run more.

Energy-9

• Special Metal-4
• Basic Metal-5

Well that’s a close version of what I’m running.  Let’s see how I did against Team Warp Points finest at their weekly meeting.  Note, these guys are my buddies so I won’t reveal what they are playing or who they are for the sake of being secretive.  I will try to reveal as little as possible about their decks.  If you want to learn more about them, just tell me that in a comment and I will ask them if it would be okay for me to do so.

Testing

When I got to Team Warp Points Poke-Barn I was greeted by a rendition of Happy Birthday.  I tell you for some reason TWP gets a lot of flak on the internet, but they are genuinly some of the nicest guy I know.  Its always nice to be amongst friends who love the game.  Anyway, 2nd place regionals winner Bertolli (his name’s Mike, but Bertolli is  a better name) was there and he had a lot of NV stuff for trade.  So I traded some RH stuff for some NV stuff that I desperatly needed.  Its nice to have a buddy who won 2 boxes of cards.  But, let’s move onto the play.

Round 1-Zekrom

This game started off fairly even, I didn’t have the big first turn that I really needed, but he didn’t get everything going right away either.  I used all my trainers to get 4 Durants in play and used Eviolites and Defenders to stop a knock out or two, but I needed to stop 1 or 2 more.  By the time he took his last prize he had about 6 cards left in the deck. 

Round 2- Zekrom

I actually got a bye this round, but I found the first guy who donked and challenged him to a game.  This was not a great game.  I started with Durant and Mime Jr.  He started first and got a 1st turn Zekrom and knocked out the Durant.  I used a Revive and started going, but theres not much I can do when he starts that fast.  I played a couple more turns out and then I scooped. 

Round 3-Donphan and Dragons

He starts with a lone Kyurem and doesn’t get anything more for the next 3-4 turns.  He puts a DCE on Kyurem and “Outrages”,  I don’t think much of that and start to setup.  I get 4 Durants in play either my 1st or 2nd turn.  I also get an Alph Litograph and Rotom going.  On his turn he attaches a Rainbow Energy  and “Outrages” again.  At this point I know I will be screwed if he does his spreading attack a couple times, so I look to find a Lost Remover.  However, I can’t get one right away and have to wait until he put 60 on everybody.  Then I did use “Mischevious Trick” to get a Lost Remover, and I Junk Arm for it to make sure the spreading is over.  But. all of the Rainbow energies that he put on himself gives him a lot of fuel for the “Outrage” attack, so he gets some knock outs like that.  He eventually does get a Donphan going, but Kyurem is doing fine by himself.  He ends up taking his last prize when he has only a couple cards left in his deck. 

Round 4- Reshiphlosion

Out of all my matchups on the night, this one was the most scary.  But I feel she didn’t quite play this well enough, she should have put more damage counters on Reshiram so she could have “Outraged”.  Anyway, the game went like this.  I started well and milled 3 the first turn.  She sets up a turn 3 Typholosion and is able to get Reshiram going for several turns.  Whenever I had the chance I used Pokemon Catcher to bring up Typhlosion Prime.  My milling was also going great, I milled 4 for almost each turn from here on out.  I ended up winning when she had 2 or 3 prizes left. 

So the testing didn’t go to well.  If we can assume these testings to be average, I can say that Durant is workable but nowhere near top tier.  I still might play it for Cities just for fun since I love to mill, but it needs a lot of work to just be a decent deck.  If any of you out there are testing Durant and have some good ideas, please leave them in the comment box. 

Well, I’m all done. Pedro what are you doing for Thanksgiving? 

Well, me and my mom are probably going to have our annual Turkey dinner, then I think we are going to see the new Muppet movie. 

Ahh, my family likes the after dinner movie as well.  I’m a big muppet fan too.  Though I feel cheated, I thought I learned how to pick up girls from Animal but it hasn’t worked so far.  You would think running after a girl yelling the words “Woman Woman Woman!!!!!” would work. 

Who would have thunk it? Well, for me, Pikkdogs, Ed, and all of the Onehitko staff; we wish you guys a happy Thanksgiving.  And if you live in Canada we would like to retroactivley wish you a happy thanksgiving a month ago.  And if you live in Europe or somewhere else then, you are missing out on some good turkey.  Good Night.

 

Category: Deck Discussion | Tags: durant deck, Durant deck list