How do you recover from -N-

[Govnah]

I typically get hit with -N- with 1 prize to go by worthy opponents. my deck will be too exhausted to recover. This is most devestating after winning the mewtwo war with RDL, as if doing that wasn't hard enough, now i have to figure out a way around this cowardly tactic. assuming i'm using emboar, my opponent is going to junk arm a pokemon catcher, grab my boar out and laugh uncontrolably as he plays -N-.

 

The only possible counter I've been able to think of is burned tower and ensure I have 2 ninetales up before I take my 3 prizes with RDL. at least then I'll have a 50% chance to draw 3 additional cards. I would love to hear suggestions from other peoples.

 

[boukhalfa06]

i am not at N but i win in pokemon black

 

[K3RUPT]

Not much you can do, you'll be in topdeck mode. Only counter to N really is Magnezone prime. You will see N for awhile, he won't be rotated out for almost 2 years.

 

 

 

 

i am not at N but i win in pokemon black

 

 

 

 

LOL WHAT?!

 

[Govnah]

 

i am not at N but i win in pokemon black

 

 

i lol'd!!

 

& thanks k3, I guess i'll just have to try to tech burned tower, some odds are better than no odds

 

[K3RUPT]

Burned tower or Battle city could help too actually. Maybe you'll draw into a supporter or pokegear if you run it.

 

[SWERVESTAR]

Yeah like K3 said, you either have Magnezone out (maybe just maybe) or you don't. Most likely you don't and you get sent into topdeck mode. It's just a part of the game, and there isn't really a safe way to avoid it. You can minimize the damage of 'N' by drawing prizes conservatively, but that comes at the cost of your own progress in winning as well.

 

 

 

The card is designed around comebacks, and allowing players who are down to play catchup. You can't really tech in a whole lot specifically for it, you just have to design a deck that can push damage on low resources effectively.

 

[Icecweem]

 

I typically get hit with -N- with 1 prize to go by worthy opponents. my deck will be too exhausted to recover. This is most devestating after winning the mewtwo war with RDL, as if doing that wasn't hard enough, now i have to figure out a way around this cowardly tactic. assuming i'm using emboar, my opponent is going to junk arm a pokemon catcher, grab my boar out and laugh uncontrolably as he plays -N-.

 

The only possible counter I've been able to think of is burned tower and ensure I have 2 ninetales up before I take my 3 prizes with RDL. at least then I'll have a 50% chance to draw 3 additional cards. I would love to hear suggestions from other peoples.

 

 

 

 

I assume you're playing a emboar/RDL/reshi deck. Why not tech 1 smeargle in your deck? Your deck is slow and being able to play two supporters is huge. Attaching energy to smeargle for the retreat in certain situations won't hurt your deck too much cause you don't really attach energy anyway until emboar is up.

 

 

 

Also most competitive decks uses sky arrow which you can take advantage of. You even have the option of denying the free retreats of CMT and certain eels deck with your burn tower if the free retreat is not a huge deal to you.

 

 

 

When you get N'd down to say 1 or 2 cards, you can bring in smeargle for a chance to get a supporter from your opponent. It's something reliable rather than only depending on your top decks.

 

 

 

Another way is to prepare for N!. You know you've taken lots of prizes, play down your cards that are useless to you at that point of time to just get rid of them so when you get N'd, you won't be dead drawing to these useless cards and increases your odds of getting some useful cards.

 

 

 

And because you're playing an emboar deck with ninetails draw power, I assume already you have burned tower (You should be running 1 dohh!). Battle city is a bad card in this deck.

 

 

 

And Govnah, no, it's not a cowardly tactic to use N. It's part of the game that makes this game somewhat more balance. N is by far in my opinion the best recovery/come back card out there in this format.

 

 

 

As for the emboar being dragged out and your hand N'd down, You can't do much really, that's the cons of running an emboar. That is why most would go with typhlosion because typhlosions are not heavily dependant on your own hand once they're set up. You can run 3 switches in your deck to increase the odds of that not happening though.

 

[Govnah]

Thanks everyone i've been using your feedback with amazing results, I even put a single -N- in my deck explicitly for CMT.

 

so anyways, I completely remade the deck I was running. I took out my zekrom ex's because even though i was running like 13 other basics I was bad starting with zekrom about 30% of the time. as for -N- Counter...

 

step 1, i get my ninetales out asap. if I have 2 ninetales up i can cycle through my pokemon and items fast enough to keep a good enough rate of energy top draw. i'm running less energy and I took out my energy retrieval items. so now my energy recovery looks like this:

 

14 energy

 

1 Cian

 

3-4 Fisherman

 

1 Burned Tower ( I wasn't running it before bc i had to submit a ticket to retrieve my basic fire deck)

 

2 super rod

 

Additionally, where prior my draw power consisted of 2 pont, I now have some Cheren and a battle city. One of the main issues with the deck was trying to setup 2-3 pignite on my 2nd turn consistantly with only 2 pokemon collectors. I solved this problem by removing my level balls and adding 3 transcievers. I also added an extra cleffa and have some v-create victini.

 

The results? consistantly good starts, durant players auto-quit when i drop victini, easy -N- recovery (50%chance to recover from worst case scenario), and with the slightly higher pokemon count I've been able to conceal RDL easier. The ONLY reason i even use RDL is it changes my win conditions vs CMT or anything with mewtwo. 3 prizes and they play a mewtwo == i win. The drawbacks? My previous version could essentially 1shot any non-legend, So I'm having issues now vs the Donphan and Terakion decks and itemblock/heal decks. If I had some candy I would run 2 abiliboar 2normalboar but without candy it takes up too many resources in the early game to setup everything that is required.

 

 

 

TL; DR

 

+1 battle city, +1 burned tower

 

+supporter draw power

 

+modified energy recovery for emergency Ninetails/Emboar revival

 

+eliminated "off-chance" of bad starts via removing zekrom EX

 

-weaker against healing & the most popular fighting decks

 

[LARRY891]

Yeah, N is one of those downsides that comes with getting an early prize lead (which is good IMO, as it makes you have to think about how to avoid letting your opponent overtake your control of the game). I often like running it with Magnezone so I can then draw more with Magnetic Draw.

 

 

 

[VikesRule]

You say you're running both Battle City and Burned Tower in your deck, may I ask why? You'll only be able to use one or the other in a game. I think Burned Tower is clearly a superior card for a deck that runs Ninetails since it has so much synergy with Roast Reveal. Battle City really isn't a good card, the only deck I think it fits is Durant, but even then it's not great. Maybe if you want to have it to play just to discard an opponent's Skyarrow Bridge, but even then, why not just Burned Tower? I feel Battle City benefits your opponent just as often as you, whereas Burned Tower is not as effective for some decks, particularly ZekEels where they want energy in the discard pile as well as decks that rely on special energy that can't be recovered by Burned Tower.

 

To discuss the topic at hand, I agree completely with Icecweem as his analysis is spot on. N is tough to deal with but as long as you have enough switches in your deck you should be alright. Teching in 1 smeargle is a great idea, but you could always go with Cleffa since it has built in free retreat and you have a guaranteed new hand whereas Smeargle is hit-or-miss (especially if you do a Portrait and end up doing another N!)

 

[Govnah]

 

You say you're running both Battle City and Burned Tower in your deck, may I ask why? You'll only be able to use one or the other in a game. I think Burned Tower is clearly a superior card for a deck that runs Ninetails since it has so much synergy with Roast Reveal. Battle City really isn't a good card, the only deck I think it fits is Durant, but even then it's not great. Maybe if you want to have it to play just to discard an opponent's Skyarrow Bridge, but even then, why not just Burned Tower? I feel Battle City benefits your opponent just as often as you, whereas Burned Tower is not as effective for some decks, particularly ZekEels where they want energy in the discard pile as well as decks that rely on special energy that can't be recovered by Burned Tower.

 

To discuss the topic at hand, I agree completely with Icecweem as his analysis is spot on. N is tough to deal with but as long as you have enough switches in your deck you should be alright. Teching in 1 smeargle is a great idea, but you could always go with Cleffa since it has built in free retreat and you have a guaranteed new hand whereas Smeargle is hit-or-miss (especially if you do a Portrait and end up doing another N!)

 

 

battle city because I only have 1 burned tower. its not quite as good but it disrupts CMT well enough until i can get burned tower out while providing some defense against -N- if burned tower is also prize pooled. giving my opponent an extra energy is of little consequence, and CMT gets so many cards with smeargle battle city's draw is trivial. lastly, sometimes i run with recycle in this deck and its really frustrating when you pull it with ninetails but can't draw again, especially when you need a specific supporter from discard, battle city is double cool at that point.

 

[16bitroots]

Now I really just want to run basic swarm and DO THE WAVE with my darling Audino. Heck yes.