Now with XY out..

[mightywesley]

Any cards that would help the awesome "Round" deck?

[dmax77]

(Seismitoad) Round is a deck which, in my experience, pretty much needs to fill its bench exclusively with Round-attackers in order to compete damage-wise. 6 Round attackers x 30 damage indeed yields the holy grail of 180 damage to OHKO anything that isn't an unplayable Mega Evo.

 

That being said, unfortunately this seems to pretty much eliminate the possibility of any actual new Pokemon cards finding a place in the deck, with bench space so tight. I would feel uncomfortable even benching 1 non-Round support Pokemon, and if I did, I can only imagine that competitive Round players (if they existed?) would probably play a good number of other techs before anything from XY: Probably things like Mr. Mime or Jirachi EX (yeah, Mime wouldn't be bad!).

 

However, I think there are two trainers that could possibly find a real niche in Round: Muscle Band and Shauna.

 

Muscle Band is becoming a serious alternative to Silver Bangle for decks that don't always expect to be trading against enormous EXes; with its ability to universally up damage, it's easy to see why. I guess the numbers could work out so that it makes sense to play it over Bangle for situations where your Bench isn't full AND you're not facing down an EX.

 

For example, with 4 benched Round Pokemon, you're doing 5 x 30 = 150. That OHKOs any non-EX, and Muscle Band might help get the 170 HP ones, but not the 180 (or a clean Virizion EX, either, thanks to resistance, for that matter).

 

But Muscle Band can help with the lower KO numbers; the lone Seismitoad goes from 30 to 50 (Zorua?), 60 becomes 80 (70 HP evolving basics), 90 becomes 110 (100 HP things like Flareon? oh wait, weakness lol), and 120 becomes 140. This last one seems the most crucial: 140 is the current "magic number" for playable Stage 2 HP, and the ability to hit it against something like Empoleon or Garchomp is absolutely incredible. This is especially considering the fact that attacking Stage 2's these days (so, those two) pretty much need to be attacking solidly for a single energy in order to give big basics a run for their money; just failing to OHKO a Garchomp usually results in a nonchalant Max Potion from your opponent the next turn. Muscle Band solves that problem (except against a 150 HP Emboar, but there's weakness for that!).

 

And Shauna? Well... Shauna could be a useful Supporter to run in Round for two reasons: 1), Once Round (quickly??) gets going, it will be taking OHKOs every turn and you will hopefully get ahead in the prize race if not at least start taking prizes. This reduces the efficacy of N in continuing your stream of Round attackers. 2), The Round deck is evo based, and Shauna, unlike Juniper, cannot force you to discard needed evolutions.

 

That being said, if your Bench is remotely full, Colress will probably still be a better option mid- to late-game. But Shauna could certainly be useful as a 1- or 2-copy card, both hopefully for early game setup when your opponent's hand is low and Supporter-less and as a late-game crutch.

 

But Muscle Band is by far the more powerful addition to the deck and, as far as I can figure, just about the only vital one from the entire XY set. If you want to build a serious Round deck, I'd get at least 3 copies.

 

P.S. Although there is one more consideration: relative deck space. Assuming you're not up against Virizion, 4 lasers/Virbank could technically do the same job as both Bangle and Muscle Band, but universally; the only problem is that I don't think Round, even counting on a good number of evo-less Meloettas vs. Wigglys, can really afford the 6+ slots needed to make the laser combo consistently work. And even then, you might not have the lasers when you need them, as you'll be Skyla-ing things like Rare Candy and Max Potion to keep your somewhat clunky line of Stage 2's coming and healthy. The advantage of the tools is repeated use for only 2-3-4 copies; but of course, it comes at the distressing vulnerability to Tool Scrapper. Decisions, decisions.

[mightywesley]

Thanks for the tips!! That really helped. Alright i took jirachi and mr mime into consideration and I know you can't fit both because you(as you mentioned before) really need the bench space.

 

Before List

 

x4 Tympole (legendary treasures)(60 HP)

x4 Paplitoad (round)

x4 Seismitoad (round)

x4 Meloetta EX

x4 Skyla

x4 Professor Juniper

x2 N

x4 Float Stone

x4 Rare Candy

x2 ultra ball

x2 level ball

x2 Bicycle

x2 Silver Bangle

x1 Tool Scrapper

x1 Dowsing Machine

x4 Double Colorless

x6 Psychic energy

x1 Frozen City

x3 Evosoda

x2 Bianca

x2 Pokemon Catcher

 

I heard you talking about max potion. How many should i run? I totally forgot about that card!

So is evosoda decent to use? Debating if i should run x3 Candy and 1 soda or just x4 candy.

 

Mr mime does seem nice to run but if were to run 1 non-round bencher i think Jirachi could be a better option for that supporter search. BUT the only bad thing is that jirachi can be hit by **** like Darkrai or even get catchered! (thankfully its a coin flip).

I mean, you could leave jirachi in your hand and play it when you're in NEED of a supporter for either Draw Power or getting that Skyla for something else.

 

Yeah, that's why I run x2 N instead of x4 N. It's more of an early game card. Shauna looks to be even with N?

-2 N

+2 Shauna?

 

+3 Muscle Band

-2 Silver Bangle

-1 Evosoda

 

+1 Jirachi EX

-1 Evosoda

 

Frozen city is in there for Blastoise decks, honestly. It could be a potential dead draw though...

 

NEW LIST

 

x4 Tympole (legendary treasures)

x4 Paplitoad

x4 Seismitoad

x4 Meloetta EX

x4 Skyla

x4 Professor Juniper

x2 Shauna

x4 Float Stone

x4 Rare Candy

x2 ultra ball

x2 level ball

x2 Bicycle

x1 Tool Scrapper

x1 Dowsing Machine

x4 Double Colorless

x6 Psychic energy

x1 Frozen City

x1 Evosoda

x2 Bianca

x2 Pokemon Catcher

x3 Muscle Band

 

Let me know if you think this should be great.

[Guest ArtichokeCat]

Maybe take out one Palpitoad? You already have 4 candies....

[mightywesley]

Maybe take out one Palpitoad? You already have 4 candies....

 

er right. Forgot that I had a 4th in there XD So besides that, is the build pretty solid? I'm going to be looking around for some more staples.

[dmax77]

Hmm, glad I could help get the the gears grinding!!

 

I like the changes from the old list to the new, but in my humble opinion there are still a few things that could even out the deck's performance vs. everything you'll encounter:

 

I'm guessing you prefer the speed of Juniper to N any day. Still, I would consider maxing out on N's regardless, just because it is such an invaluable setup tool. With all these things like evo lines, candies, and (hopefully as I'll get to) max potions, I think it's a safer bet to go shuffle-draw-heavy. I'll throw together a sample list of my own at the end but I would aim for 4x N, 2x Shauna, 1x Colress, 2-3x Juniper!

 

Ah, Evosoda I forgot about! xD Yeah, it's actually been making its way into real lists... the only problem I can see here is that in a Stage 2 deck, half the time it really matters whether you can get the final evo out right away as opposed to waiting a turn for the Stage 1; especially since Seismitoad can and should be attacking immediately for just a DCE. I dunno, maybe I'm out of the loop, but I would opt toward 4x Candy and no Evosodas... wait, except that we want Palpitoads on the bench over Tympoles, since they have Round. Hmmm. Maybe you're right to go with Evosoda. I honestly have no idea the best way to balance Candy and Soda (LOL), but I'll give it a try below. We need to balance speed with... spam. Round spam... of Palpitoads.

 

Frozen City IS a good counter to Blastoise, isn't it? We'll see if there's room; you could run two maybe just to have a counter-gym. I don't either, but if you had Tropical Beach, I'm guessing Round is a good place for it, since you usually can't attack first or even second turn unless you get kinda lucky. Otherwise, I might consider switching to a different counter-Stadium... Maaaaybe Skyarrow, but even that is kinda useless. So here's my 2 cents: I have a PLASMA Seismitoad deck (does 30 to all benchs, combos with Mime!) that is highly similar in setup to Round, and I used to use Fairy energy backing up the DCE instead of water or psychic (I ran it with the damage-stacking Sigilyph I think), mainly so that I could never be tempted to attach the "wrong" kind of basic energy at one point and miss it later (or try and attack with Tympole lol). BUT a very interesting situation now arises for you: you want to run a counter gym or two, and you also have to run some off-type basic energy of some kind. Therefore, unless there's a better gym I'm forgetting, I would pick between running either Dark or Fairy alongside one of the new XY gyms. I forgot about those two new stadiums, too. (Shadow Circle and Fairy Garden: either cancels weakness or gives free retreat.) I would lean toward Fairy Garden, because...

 

Float Stone? Hmmm. This is really personal preference, but these days I kinda prefer Switch just because everyone is so Scrapper-happy. The only use of Float Stone is retreating damaged Seismitoads and removing Poison, kinda useful), but I usually just prefer Switch, and 4x.

 

But Fairy Garden + fairy energy would really help with that, too. Shadow Circle would certainly help prevent OHKOs from Genesect EX sans G-booster, though.

 

Dowsing Machine > Computer Search (if you have it, I don't either!) for Round I think, yeah. Get those Candies back, and other useful items, including Catcher.

 

I would just take out Bianca entirely... too often it nets you too few cards. Might add a Random Receiver for consistency?

 

2x Catcher is not a bad choice. The arguments for running some Catchers even today revolve mostly around situations where you can stand to get an impending KO, so I'm not gonna argue with it haha. I wish we had room for more, though.

 

Bicycle can be kinda situational, hmm.

 

I would up Tool Scrapper count to 2 at least, what with all the opponents' muscle bands, too!

 

Oh, and what I've already covered indirectly: IMO it's not worth running psychic energy at all, both since getting 3 on a Meloetta takes too long and because she is so incredibly vulnerable. It's really kinda impossible to make worth without Ether, and even then, she goes down faaast, especially to Mewtwo. :/

 

One other big thing: Search balls. This deck is unique in that it can actually make use of Heavy Ball... sort of. Either way, we absolutely must max out on Ultra Balls, or getting a decent number of Meloettas out is too difficult. But Level Balls should probably also be upped from 2 IMO in order to help get Tympoles when needed, since we can all agree that in most games there's a good chance at least one Seismitoad will get KO'd.

 

I like the 3 Muscle Band count!

 

So let's see what my changes might look like:

 

POKEMON (15)

 

4x Tympole

3x Palpitoad

4x Seismitoad

4x Meloetta EX

 

TRAINERS (35)

 

4x Skyla

4x N

3x Juniper

2x Shauna

1x Colress

 

2x Fairy Garden

 

3x Rare Candy

2x Level Ball

4x Ultra Ball

3x Evosoda

2x Tool Scrapper

3x Muscle Band

2x Pokemon Catcher

 

ENERGY (10)

 

4x DCE

6x Fairy

 

Phew! So my Palpitoad-Candy-Level Ball-Evosoda lineup may be somewhat overkill, and it could likely be streamlined by a real deckbuilder (or someone who likes to take chances ), but I think it's overall pretty reasonable. You have options, that's what's important; 4x Ultra Ball allows you to search out whatever you need, but 3 Evosodas helps to get Seismitoads and leave the Ultras for Meloettas instead. I took out a Candy indeed, because space is tight and I guess the setup of Round can afford an extra turn anyway, since it takes longer to fill the bench.

 

I don't have all these cards , but feel free to work in some of my changes and let me know how they work!

 

P.S. Yeah, so I didn't fit in any Float Stone OR Switch. I'd see how banking on the Fairy Garden for your Poison-removal needs goes. It could be important not to drop the Stadium right away, and wait until they put one down (probably Virbank), because there really is not room for more than 2 Stadiums. But that really does help solve the switching problem with fewer cards.

 

Also... I forgot to include Max Potion. But that's ok, since there's no room. My preference is to heal Seismitoad and throw another DCE on, but of course that isn't always possible (you need both at the same time), and of course it might also just get OHKO'd. So it's probably much better just to streamline the arrival of more Seismitoads, as we've done.

[mightywesley]

Sounds good! Yeah, the reason for psychic energies was for an emergency attack with meloetta if it had to come to that. She is very weak (especially to mewtwo) and can almost get OHKO by anything being played now-a-days. We forgot to mention "Jirachi EX". Personally, the only good thing about this card is the supporter search for emergency draws but the bad thing is if it gets catchered or something than it could be really bad. Mewtwo EX would also be a great attacker if there was any room (while you set up). I like these changes! I think i might print and proxy this deck in real life and play a few people and see how it does. thanks so much and I look forward to building more decks with you in the future