One Hit KO

A big hello to all you OHKOers out there.  This is Pikkdogs here with a deck analysis for you.   A lot of people will be banking on the new Hyrdreigon deck to do well in the

next format.  Hydreigon is a new deck, but it actually comes into the format with some momentum.  Klingklang BW does a similar thing that Hydreigon DRX does and it won the Format. Darkai, who is in this deck, has a ton of momentum coming from a Worlds win.  So this deck has a lot of hype and a lot of expectations to live up to.  Before we talk about the deck more, let me go through some news.

This past weekend was the Worlds championship.  While I don’t usually provide news or anything like that, most of us do know that Worlds was held last weekend.  In the masters end, two Speed Darkrai decks made it to the finals.   The finals was a match-up of American Harrison Levin and four time, four time, four time, four time Portuguese National Champion Igor Costa.  If you think Igor looks familar, he seems to be the vampire from Twilight.  The Top Cut consisted of the top 16 players from the Swiss rounds.  A lot of the top 16 players were very familiar.  Sami Sekkoum, the perennial UK champ made it to the quarter finals.  Yuta Kamatsuda from Japan and The Top Cut’s Michael Pramawat also made it to the Quarters.  In the semi-finals was a friend of Onehitko.com and one of the U.S.’s greatest players, Jay Hornung.  Jay is the greatest thing to come out of the state of Iowa since corn and John Wayne.

The finals was a thrilling three game final between two Darkrai decks.  Igor did end up winning, but the game was very close.  The weekend was not very good for American players.  The U.S. sent one player to the finals in each three divisions, and they all lost.  We even had three of the top 4 Master’s players, but we still couldn’t stop Edward, I mean Igor.  The bad news for the U.S. continued when it was announced that for the first time ever, Worlds will not be held in the U.S.  Worlds 2013 will be held in Vancouver, Canada.  But, Vancouver is basically a border town, so unless you don’t have a passport this news shouldn’t bother you.

The finals made news among hardcore players because of the announcers.  The boys from The Top Cut were not used to film the finals, instead, Pokemon invited people from Gamespot (I believe) to do the commentary.  The bad thing about this was that one of the announcers didn’t really know the Pokemon jargon. This did lead to some funny catchphrases such as: “Professor N”, “Junk Claw”, “Trash Ball”, and my personal favorite “how the hell did that energy get on that Darkrai?”  Pokemon did look kind of silly hiring these people who don’t really know the game when they had 4 guys from the Top Cut who have experience.  But, overall I do not think that these guys did that badly of a job.  They had to talk in a way that did not rely on Pokemon jargon, since a lot of newbies were watching.  So I think for the majority of the audience, the slip-ups weren’t that bad.  And I don’t think we should complain too much, at least they streamed the match this year, Pokemon is finally stepping into the 21st century.  Overall, I’m just glad that they streamed it live for people to see. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch it by clicking this link.

Before we move on, I gotta congratulate Igor for winning.  It was a really cool final and both players played well.  Also, none of the players drank each other’s blood, which is a good thing.  Seriously, I joke that Igor’s name sounds like a hunchback butler and that he looks like the twinky vampire from Twilight, but these are just bad jokes.  Congrats man. Now on to the actual article.

The Basics

The goal of this deck is to be a hybrid of the Klingklang deck that won Nationals, and the Speed Darkrai deck that won Worlds.  It can move energies and use Max Potion like Klingklang, but it has energy acceleration like Speed Darkrai.  You build up a Hydreigon early and then attack with someone like Darkrai EX.  Once he gets damaged, you move the energies off Darkrai with Hyrdreigon, use a Max Potion, and then move the energies back.

The setup of the deck is not terribly complex.  The main goal early in the game is to get a Hydreigon early on.  Stage 2s are never easy to get out, but you just have to build a consistent deck and hope that you get one on turn 2 or 3.  You can increase your chances of getting an early Hydreigon by adding more consistency cards like Emolga DRX and Level Ball.  A high count of Rare Candy is also a good thing to have.  Your first couple turns should be fairly boring, but once you get your stage 2 going, than you will have a more complicated game to play.

Your main attacker in this deck is normally Darkrai EX.  Most people know that Darkrai EX’s “Night Spear” does 90 damage and snipes for 30.  This is not a great attack, but it does 2HKO anything in the format that is not Eviolited.  If Eviolite is a problem in testing you can always add Dark Claw to negate the Eviolite.

You can use almost an unlimited number of secondary attackers in this deck.  The most common of course is Mewtwo EX.  Mewtwo is a great versatile card that will help you about just about every deck around.  It should be in every version of this deck, it is that good.  One tech that I like is Tornadus EX.  This tech kind of covers your weakness with the Dark Pokemon, if you see a lot of Terrakions on the field, perhaps Tornadus EX can come and use his resistance to even the score.

Then we go into some more obscure techs.  Cards like Groudon EX and Kyogre EX were great in the Klingklang deck, but now they aren’t so good.  Because Rainbow Energy is split into two cards named Blend Energy, the fighting and water Pokemon are on opposite Blend Energy cards.  You still can use these cards, but the fact that you now only have 4 energies that they can use, does hurt their playability.  You can use just about every other card that you  want in this deck, it is a versatile deck like that.  I will leave all of the combinations to your imagination and let you come up with your own variant.

Does it Work and Is it Better than Klingklang? 

In my testing this deck does work.  Of course Darkrai EX does lose a lot because of the loss of Junk Arm, it just doesn’t have the energy acceleration like it used to.  And of course Hydreigon is not as versatile as Klingklang once was, you can blame the loss of Rainbow Energy for that.  Sure you can still use Prism Energy, but that’s only four cards and it is hard to justify playing 4 copies of Blend Energy that your main attacker can’t even use.  It is also hard to justify running so many Special Energies when your goal is to use basic energies with Dark Patch.  With those weaknesses aside, this deck still isn’t bad.  It does use Max Potion well, even though it is hard to get the card when you really need it.  One thing I really like is the “Dark Cloak” Ability, most Stage 2 decks are screwed if your opponent wants to use Pokemon Catcher to stall, but this Ability gives your deck a fighting chance.  The deck is also fairly consistent, it can be hard to get out 2 Hydreigons in a game, but if you can keep one of those in play at all times, you should be able to keep your strategy going.  I wish that the list wasn’t as tight as it was, but you are just going to have to test this deck a lot of times to get the deck where you like it.

So is it better than Klingklang?  I think that the decks are too similar for us to decide right now.  It will become apparent once we figure out what everybody is playing during Battle Roads, but right now it is hard to take a side.  Darkrai does have the energy acceleration and the free retreat, but it is cut off from some of the better cards.  Klingklang is the more chunkier deck that is a little more versatile.  It can use Heavy Ball better than Hyrdreigon can use Level Ball.  The retreat cost on all of the Klingklang cards are fairly poor, but maybe Darkrai can help balance out the retreat cost.  Both decks have the good and the bad about them, but each deck seems to be okay.  While Hydreigon seems to have a slight lead now, we never know what will change in the future.

Decklist

Here is the decklist that I am using.  I know it is not a great list, and there are probably better ones circling around the net right now.  But this list should be okay to start testing with.  Of course you should change it to what you expect your metagame to be, and you should adjust to your playstyle.  Again I am not saying that is a good deck, but here is a list very similar to the list that I am using.

Pokemon-13

• 4-Deino
• 1-Zwelious
• 3-Hydreigon DRX
• 2 Mewtwo EX
• 3-Darkrai EX

Trainers-34

• 3-Bianca
• 3-N
• 4-Professor Juniper
• 2-Random Receiver
• 3-Rare Candy
• 4-Dark Patch
• 4-Pokemon Catcher
• 4-Max Potion
• 1-Super Rod
• 4-Ultra Ball
• 1-Level Ball
• 2- Pokemon Communication

Energy-12

• Basic Darkness Energy-12

Match-Ups

Here are a couple of the match-ups that I have tested. 

Zekrom/ Eelektrik

This match-up is fairly even.  You can use “Night Spear” to slowly knock out a benched Eelektrik and they can’t really out-speed you or onehitko you.  But, if something goes wrong your opponent does have better recovery than you do.  It just depends on what variants each player is playing and how lucky each player gets.

Troll

You will have some problems with Terrakion.  They can OHKO you and you don’t really have a good answer.  If your build is heavy on Tornadus and Tornadus EX you might have a chance, but you will lose your Hydreigon.  Be careful about how you use Darkrai EX, if you rely on your secondary attackers you might stand a better chance, losing those 2 prize cards to “Retaliate” is just brutal.  For this decks sake, I hope that fighting decks aren’t too popular at Battle Roads.

ReshiBoar

This will be another tough match-up.  It is not really a bad match-up, but it will be a hard game to win.  You can use 4 Max Potions to get rid of 4 Blue Flare’s, but you it will be hard to deal with all of the “Outrages” that you will have to endure.  Since you can’t OHKO the Reshirams, it will be hard to beat this deck when you are surrendering two prizes to their one.  Your only hope is to use Pokemon Catcher to get rid of their Emboar’s before their Reshirams can outclass you.

Klingklang

Two similar decks finally meet.  I did not do a lot of testing with this match-up, but I did find a couple good things about this match-up.  Hydreigon will probably setup faster, but if the Klingklang deck has fighting Pokemon in their deck, your deck will lose most of the time.  It all depends on the variants that are being used.  Beyond that, it is all about which deck gets luckier.  The decks are fairly similar, so luck and variant choice will determine who wins.

Conclusion

So that is my experience with this deck.  It is not the BDIF in my opinion, but it will be a good deck that will be played.  I do like the deck, but if you think this is gonna be the best deck around, you will probably be disappointed.  Make sure to use the comment box to let me know what you think about the deck and how you would improve the list.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

Category: Deck Discussion | Tags: Darkrai Deck, Hydreigon deck