One Hit KO

Hey OneHitKO, it’s me, coolestman22 again. After a fairly good Regionals run (I posted a report on the SixPrizes forums, if you want to check that out), I felt like I needed to write another article. Since I wanted to test the Boundaries Crossed metagame before I write an article about any of those decks, I may as well do an article similar to my first ever OneHitKO article, but for Boundaries Crossed.

One thing I want to say before I start this article is that I am very, very disappointed in TPCi for cutting Bike, Ether, and

Escape Rope from Boundaries Crossed. Virbank isn’t so important to me, as the only decks that would play it would be Tier 3 stuff like Scolipede/Celebi EX and Amoongus NXD decks. Escape Rope I wasn’t expecting to see too much play either, mostly because a lot of decks liked to Catcher-stall and it would force you to play your Escape Rope before your Catcher for plays to KO a bench-sitter. There would be some decks that played it, but most of the time it would take a back seat to Catcher. I was only testing it in one deck, and that deck was one I wanted to run more than 4 Switch in.

Bicycle I am disappointed with, but I can live without Bicycle for 3 months. It would have been nice to play Skyla and draw in the same turn, but I feel that Bike isn’t the worst of our wounds.

Ether is the card that I am furious with TPCi for cutting. Ether was going to be great for our format. It would open up a lot of possibilities for Quad decks, and it is amazing for a lot of decks. I was testing a Quad Kyurem NVI deck that relied on EtherDex and Exp. Share, and it was incredibly fun to play. In my first 5 games, I got a T2 Glaciate in 4 of them. I almost never got a T1, so a donk was unlikely (although not out of the possibility). Ether would allow Quad Terrakion to be good once again and keep Darkrai and Eels in check. Ether would allow for a bunch of fun Tier 2 options, such as Quad Keldeo, and it makes Landorus EX a lot more viable. Ether makes the meta way better instead of a stale Blastoise/Hydreigon/Eelektrik meta we’re probably going to have.

Don’t get me wrong, Boundaries Crossed is still a great set. We have a lot of cool Tier 2-3 attackers coming out, such as Charizard and Flygon, as well as a couple good new archetypes, such as Blastoise, Stoutland, and Vileplume. I am happy with PCL for potentially giving us such a great metagame, and I am unhappy with TPCi for taking away 50% of it.

So with that, let’s get this set review underway.

Vileplume

I really like the idea of a Vileplume Box deck. What it does is it forces your opponent to get OHKOes starting really quickly and not drop an EX, or else it will go down in one hit.

The issue I’m seeing with this deck is the reliance on Special Energy. If your opponent has metal, water, or lightning weakness your best attacker uses a DCE. After four KO’s you will have run out of energy. The answer to this would be Recycle, but that is a flippy card that makes the deck significantly more clunky.

Here are the attackers that a Vileplume box deck would probably run:

Grass – Maractus BW 12

Fire – Larvesta NVI 20

Water – Lapras NXD 25 (Plus you get a Call for Family attack for a WLFM or Prism with this)

Lightning – Emolga EPO

Psychic – Mewtwo EX/Mew EX

Fighting – Landorus EX

Dark – There really isn’t a good dark attacker for Vileplume box. Hopefully you won’t play against Chandelure NVI decks or Cofagrigus DEX tool chuck decks (And if you do you can always go aggro Durant NVI deckout)

Metal – Durant NVI (Yes, you do get to use Vice Grip for something other than donks. Take that, Kyurem EX).

Dragon – SR Rayquaza

And I don’t believe there is a single card in BW-DRX with Colorless weakness. The only legit card last format that did was RDL, but before that we would need something to take care of Garchomp C Lv. X. Ah, the good old days where Ambipom G was good.

Most of these are only hitting for 160 max, meaning we need something to boost the damage output a bit, such as PlusPower or Aerodactyl DEX. If I end up liking VileBox, I’ll write an article about it.

I think Vileplume is going to be a Tier 2 deck that people will test against, but it won’t necessarily do too well at Cities. If it wins a Winter Regionals in Masters, tell me and I’ll eat my hat.

Celebi EX

I’m honestly not too big a fan of a bench-sitting EX with 110 HP. Even with an Eviolite attached, Hydreigon and Keldeo EX still easily OHKO it. Without an Eviolite, you can add Zekrom BW and Darkrai EX with a Dark Claw attached to that list.

The Ability is really nice, however. It’s the first card that lets us use our prevo’s attacks since Platinum (Memory Berry). It is necessary for Scolipede to ever work competitively, however. I don’t think Scolipede will ever be a good deck, but if it is then you can say I told you so.

Charizard

I really like Charizard, although I don’t see it ever being good enough, especially with a Water weakness. Although I

don’t like it as a partner with Celebi or Emboar (shudder), I do feel that its first attack deserves a mention.

With Split Bomb you can hit two EX’s, Tynamos, or other things. If you hit EX’s, you are two Flamethrowers away from taking four prizes. After that, if you can keep Charizard alive long enough, you can take a couple more prizes via Flamethrower or Split Bomb. The deck is extremely fragile and I don’t think it would work at all, but I feel like taking prizes that fast deserves a mention. Charizard will probably never enter a Tier One deck, however.

Blastoise

Blastoise is in my opinion the best evolved Pokemon in Boundaries Crossed. Getting Rain Dance back into the game is huge in my opinion, especially because it has a legitimate partner, unlike all of the previous Rain Dancers we’ve had (That includes you, Emboar), with the exception of possibly the Base Set one. I feel that Blastoise will have the largest impact on the format of any of the Pokemon, and possibly any of the cards in Boundaries Crossed.

With Cilan and Energy Retrieval in the format, and a respectable partner in Keldeo, it is probably going to be the first Tier One Rain Dance since Base Set.

Keldeo EX

I honestly don’t think I can write anything here that I wouldn’t have said in the Blastoise section except for how amazing I believe Step In is. Step In makes it so that it is nearly impossible to Catcher stall against a Blastoise deck. Even if you have a different main attacker, Keldeo is just amazing and it should be played in any Blastoise variant.

Step In also allows you to run Musharna NXD as extra draw support. One of the main problems for Rain Dance is that if you don’t have any energy in hand, you don’t have acceleration. If you get N’d late in the game down to 1 or 2 cards, Musharna can give you the extra draw support that can change the outcome of the game.

Step In also increases the viability of a Klinklang BW deck. If they try to Catcher-stall, you can Step In, move a Prism to Keldeo, and free retreat via Dark Cloak. Keldeo is also a decent attacker in Klinklang because Water and Metal are together on the same Blend.

Psyduck

No, I’m not kidding. Psyduck seriously trolls Rayquaza/Eels decks. For one water energy, it discards a fire energy attached to the defending Pokemon. This means that if they were attacking with Rayquaza EX and they just discarded all their Lightnings and they only had one fire attached, they have a couple turns to replace it or else they are stuck not attacking every other turn.

If you could pull off an Extinguish, that means that they would likely have a benched Ray that still had a fire energy, and that could come in and OHKO Psyduck. Whoop-de-doo. They would have two turns to get a fire back or else they would be forced to attack with something else.

Against Rayquaza Dragon Vault, it gets better. If they used Shred last turn, they have 3 energy attached, one of which was a fire. If you could discard their fire, they would be forced to either get a new fire or retreat, burning both their energy and forcing them to waste Dynamotors later just to get them back instead of using them to power up something more worthwhile.

I don’t think Psyduck will be a serious option, but it is an interesting card and if you could pull of enough Extinguishes you could seriously limit your opponent’s attacking options.

Jellicent

The last water-type I want to cover is one that hasn’t been getting much hype, but I feel like it might have some sort of impact on competitive play in the future. Jellicent is a Stage One that increases the retreat cost of all of your opponent’s Pokemon by one.

Some people may remember Ariados MT and how this is pretty much exactly this, and Ariados did see some play in Flygon Lv. X mill decks. The problem with Jellicent in this format is that we have Darkrai EX and Keldeo EX that pretty much just nullify Jellicent. I do believe that if mill becomes good once again, Jellicent might see some play in mill decks (Durant/Jellicent?), but right now the metagame is just not in Jellicent’s favor.

There is a Bellossom from this set that does 10 damage plus 20 more for each energy in the defending Pokemon’s retreat cost, so if your meta is shifted towards Blastoise decks instead of Hydreigon ones Bellicent might be a decent call for a Cities or two. Bellossom can OHKO a Keldeo if there are two Jellicents in play, and always OHKOes Blastoise. The problem is that against Darkrai decks, anything with a Dark Energy attached automatically has 0 retreat, meaning Bellossom only does 10 damage.

Electivire

Electivire has an attack for LCC that does 30 to each of your opponent’s benched Pokemon. This probably isn’t going to ever be competitive, but this combined with Eelektrik NVI for an engine could make a decent Tier 3 spread deck. Spread is nice to have, and in a format with big EX’s you are six spreads away from an OHKO on them. I think I might test this for a bit.

Dusknoir

Dusknoir has an Ability that is basically Darkrai and Cresselia LEGEND’s Moon Invite attack, just in the form of an Ability. This is amazing if you can ever get it out because if your opponent has an engine of some sort that you want to make disappear, you can KO it and then attack later on. It also works pretty good against Hydreigon decks because if they retreat to another Darkrai instead of Max Potioning, you can move all the damage to the new Darkrai (Or enough for an OHKO) and then take two prizes and three energy off your opponent’s side of the field.

With the Trainers in Boundaries Crossed, I could see 1-0-1 or 1-1-1 techs becoming a thing again, although I don’t expect every deck to play them. Although I would much rather play a Serperior BW, that might just be because I like defensive decks.

People are also suggesting playing Dusknoir alongside stuff with spreading-like attacks such as Groudon EX, Kyurem NVI, or Flygon (Which I will cover later). The only one of these I see potential in is the Flygon one because it doesn’t rely on a nonexistent EtherDex engine.

Swoobat

Swoobat is a card from Boundaries Crossed with an interesting attack that mills one for each Psychic Energy it has attached. People are talking about pairing this with Gardevoir NXD, but honestly I’m not seeing it. I would much rather play Durant if I were to play a mill deck because it can attack from T1 and has a much more powerful mill.

Cresselia EX

Cresselia EX is probably my favorite of all the EX’s from Boundaries Crossed. It OHKOes Mewtwo, tanks, and has no weakness when you attack with it. If you could get it going early enough it could be devastating, especially with an Eviolite.

Just think about this: Darkrai does 90. With an Eviolite, that’s immediately reduced down to 70. Then, with the Ability that goes down to 50. Factor in one Potion and all of a sudden Night Spear only did 20 damage to you.

Start playing a thick line of Serperior BW, and you got yourself one big tank. Even if your opponent attacked with a heavier hitter, like say Hydreigon, that does 140. Eviolite and it’s down to 120. After a single Royal Heal and Sparkling Particles (Yes, that is the name of the Ability), it’s 80. Add 1 Potion, you’re back down to 50. Set up 2 Serperior, that’s 30. Another Potion, it’s all gone.

CressTank is going to be pretty good, but I feel like it’s missing something big. Oh yeah, Ether.

Munna

Munna is a basic Pokemon with an Ability that flips a coin. If heads, your opponent’s active is asleep, but if it’s tails your active is asleep.

Right now I don’t think a card that has a 25% chance of working for you, a 25% chance of doing nothing, and a 50% chance of making it so that you need a Switch to attack this turn isn’t very good. However, there may be a use for it later on.

Scolipede

Scolipede is a Stage Two from this set that has an Ability, Poison Point, which Poisons the defending Pokemon when Scolipede is attacked.

Whirlipede EPO has an attack for one energy that does 10, and then 60 more if the defending Pokemon is Poisoned. Meaning that hits for 70, and 20 more from Poison damage, if Scolipede was attacked last turn. That’s 90 damage for one energy. If Virbank City Gym were in the set, that’s 130 right there, so maybe they had a good reason to cut it. (Of course you would need to have Celebi EX out for this to work right).

Landorus EX

Landorus EX is really good in the early game. It donks Tynamos and Dark Deinos, and hits for 30 on a benched

Pokemon. If you do this twice early on, you’ve got yourself 120 damage on the board, which is amazing if you set up a Dusknoir later on, or you can hit EX’s and take 2 easy prizes via something later. You also can OHKO a Hydreigon or Blastoise with the second attack if you end up using it.

If they hadn’t cut Ether, Landorus would be a lot more prominent because Quad Fighting would be a lot better. Right now, though, Landorus might not be as good in everything. Anything running Fighting, Prism, or the appropriate Blend should at least consider Landorus, though, as it gets a bunch of donks and opens the door for big plays later on.

Skarmory

No, once again I’m not kidding. Skarmory OHKOes Kyurem NVI for 3 of any energy, meaning that if you’re playing Eels or Hydreigon and are having trouble with Kyurem techs in Blastoise decks, you’ve found your guy. Kyurem shouldn’t be that prominent, though, but PCL needed a way to keep it in check.

Flygon

Flygon is one of my favorite cards from the new set. The Ability I like, and the fact that it needs no energy I like. I feel that if TPCi had given it 20 more HP it would be able to compete more in this format. As it is,.though, it’s a Stage Two that spreads and can abuse Max Potion and Tropical Beach.

I have been testing Flygon/Dusknoir for about a week now, and it doesn’t have the best matchups, but it gets set up faster than you would expect. Your opponent is forced to be careful playing benched Pokemon, and you can take out crucial support Pokemon. You can almost always get a Switch if they Catcher-stall.

The problem? You can only run 4 Rare Candy, which is huge. To get a T2 Flygon and T2 Dusknoir, you’ve already used 2 of your Rare Candy, meaning that you only have two more to set up a backup Dusknoir and extra Flygons. This usually leads to running out of Rare Candy and not being able to set up any more Flygon.

I am still trying to work with Flygon, however. I don’t feel like I should give up quite yet, because if it ends up working I have myself a deck with a built-in draw engine that can abuse Max Potion that most people won’t test against. I hope I can get it to work, but right now I’m pretty doubtful about it.

Black Kyurem EX

I’m not big on the idea of this. Even with your 300 HP, you’re still down your Ace Spec and a Tool Scrapper away from being a normal EX again. If Gothitelle/Reuniclus were to suddenly become viable again, I might consider this with my Ace Spec being devoted to this just for the sake of being able to Max Potion 290 off, but otherwise it just looks pretty and is screwed over by a staple Trainer.

White Kyurem EX

Pretty much the same as above, except that there is a little bit of hope in being able to do 200. Still not convinced, though. Steer clear, people.

Raticate

I remember back when this card was revealed, everyone was hyping it to death. It was going to be paired with Rocky Helmet, Amoonguss, all that stuff. The hype has significantly died down as people realize that a Stage One with 60 HP just might not cut it.

The best part is that it has synergy with Shedinja DRX, another Stage One with 60 HP. Honestly I’d rather use Raticate with Eels and Rocky Helmet, and then with Poison Hypnotic Beam once it comes out. Raticate will be Tier 3, but until PHB is out I don’t see Raticate being that good.

Ditto

Ditto is a pretty good card, in my opinion. It increases your odds of starting with what you want, and the ruling is that if you wait a turn and then Transform you can go directly to the Stage One (I’m not sure about this with Rare Candy and Stage Twos, or going Ditto-wait a turn-Basic-Stage One-Stage Two), so you could use Ditto with Milotic DRX to skip the 30 HP Feebas phase.

However, I’m not sure that many decks will have the space for Ditto. It’s a great card and all, but most of the time I’d rather have that fourth Catcher or Skyla.

I’m assuming the ruling is that you can’t Transform into a Restored Pokemon, but if you can, please tell me so that I can troll you with Archeops.

Exploud

Exploud is a Stage Two that just happens to evolve from my favorite Pokemon. It also has the Round attack, which is pretty good. Its Round does 50 per Round, so that means that you’re OHKOing an EX with a couple Wigglytuffs. I doubt that Round will get much better because of this, however.

The attack I’m more interested in is actually the first attack, Roar of Destruction, which discards all the Items in your opponent’s hand. This could be really good if you manage to set this up as it completely wrecks Sableye and screws over anyone hoping to get a Rare Candy to a Stage Two next turn. You can argue that Sableye will just get them back, but then Exploud will wreck them again. Sure, they could Catcher-stall you, but the Catcher gets wrecked first. I am actually really interested in this attack, and I want to have some fun trolling my league with it. Especially since it evolves from my favorite Pokemon.

Stoutland

I remember looking through the Freeze Bolt and Cold Flare scans, and I saw a Stoutland. I thought to myself “Maybe we’ll finally get a good one”.

I looked at it, said “That’s pretty interesting, but Catcher screws it over”.

Then about two weeks later I was at league, and then I just randomly realized how good that Ability actually is. It completely shuts off your opponent’s draw power. Sure, they can Catcher, but getting a Catcher involves drawing Catcher. Drawing cards becomes significantly harder without a Supporter. You could just sit there bashing with Stoutland all day, and your opponent would dead draw all game.

Well, now that Bike and Escape Rope aren’t in the set, two cards that pose threats to Stoutland are just gone. Meaning that Stoutland might actually be good.

Stoutland also has something really rare in this format: Options for prevos. The ones I’ve determined as the best are Lillipup BW 80, which PUTS AN ITEM CARD FROM YOUR DISCARD PILE INTO YOUR HAND, and Herdier BW 82, which draws 3 for a DCE. These two are just, well, amazing. They make a Stoutland deck a lot less stupid of an idea, in my opinion. Skyla and Computer Search help a good deal, too.

I haven’t started testing Stoutland yet, but I have a feeling I’m gonna like it a great deal.

Audino

As we wrap up the Pokemon in the set, we get to one I’m not particularly fond of, which is Audino. Audino has an Ability where you discard it from your hand and heal 10 damage and a Special Condition from your Active Pokemon. The only use for this I’m seeing right away is as another way to heal in CressTank. If the meta gets too full of paralysis, Espeon DEX is a much better answer. If there is ever a format where Espeon is rotated and paralysis is legit, Audino may be our answer, but until then I think I’m going with Espeon.

Town Map

Town Map is an interesting card that lets you flip your prizes over. Honestly I think this won’t see too much play, but in Dusknoir and Chandelure decks where you can take prizes mid-turn it’s huge. Take a prize to get the Max Potion or Juniper or whatever for a fact, I’ll take that.

Hugh

Hugh is a Supporter that makes both players either draw or discard cards from their hand until they have five left. I’m honestly not too big on this card, and if it gets big enough I’ll start anticipating it and minimizing my hand size. It will see a bit of play early on and then take a back seat to cards like Bianca and Skyla.

Skyla

Skyla is one of my favorite cards from Boundaries Crossed. Searching for the game winning Catcher, that Rare Candy or Ultra Ball to get your Stage Two engine out, or grabbing a game-changing N for next turn is just so good. (Sure, they could N, but you could bet they wouldn’t be drawing many cards if the N you would play is game changing). People who aren’t playing it as a 4-of should consider starting.

Asperita City Gym

I’m not really big on this card right now, seeing as there aren’t any dominant Colorless Pokemon in the format right now. It will make a fun Tier 3 deck with Regigigas EX and will be a 1-2 of in Stoutland. Other than that, it will just be something that sits in your binder.

Computer Search

Computer Search is my preferred Ace Spec. Discarding cards is big in 2 of the 3 Tier One decks, and it can lead to some big plays in the third. Getting cards is always nice, especially when you’re trying to set up your Stage Two engine. This will be the Ace Spec most decks play, so expect to see a bunch of this.

Gold Potion

I really like Gold Potion. I really do.

I just think that Computer Search is just so much better in anything not involving all basics or discarding cards.

This card basically says “You didn’t attack last turn”.

The problem is that Computer Search helps consistency, which is the #1 thing in most decks.

If you play Roserade DRX 15, I would have to say Gold Potion is the way to go.

Well that’s about it for this article, thanks for visiting OneHitKO and taking the time to read this article, and feel free to leave a comment. As always, I’m open for some discussion, because I know everyone has their opinion. I think Cities are going to have a great format for the third year in a row (At least), and I am really looking forward to it. I’ll try to get some deck analysis articles out soon so that you can read about how awesome the decks for this format are. Good luck at Cities, and thanks for reading!

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