Gengar (BKT) / Bats

[fr33land]

There's been a few threads about Gengar EX / Bats but surprisingly none about BKT Gengar / Bats, did I miss something?

 

I've been trying it, it seems pretty slow and if you are up against an opponent that has status condition immunities it would probably lose a lot.

 

The deck features three pokemon with free retreat, Golbat, Crobat and Gengar, which is nice. It seems pretty easy to set up pokemon for knock outs with Gengar's Creep Show attack, which requires them to have 3 damage counters already.

 

Haunter is able to confuse both active pokemon when it evolves from Gastly, which can be very helpful in stalling your opponent possibly and you can often have a Bat active and evolve it out of confusion, then either retreat it to Gengar or attack to try and spread some damage across the opponent's bench.

 

Healing can ***** big damper on your plans, but it doesn't seem Pokemon Centre Lady, Potion, Super Potion and so on are all that common, there are a few pokemon whose attacks can spoil the set up easily, the new Cresselia, Damage Change Mewtwo, Gardevoir EX I believe has some kind of heal 'em type attack, but with one Crobat you can put the required 30 damage onto their monster, retreat to Gengar and Creep Show them, all in a single turn.

 

 

 

Pretty potent.

[samuraison]

It's just really slow to set up but once it gets going, it's pretty hard to stop. 

I faced one last night. Haunter's confusion works but only if you aren't 

evolving. 

 

To me, it's slow setup compared to all the Mewtwo running around makes

it not worth it now. 

[fr33land]

Yeah, I would agree with that, part of the strategy is evolving through the stages.  Maybe Gengar in Expanded, with Laser Bank might be good. 

I tried Gengar with Noivern FFI, but it kind of sucked, to be honest.  Trying to sort out the energy for the dragon properly and really being at the mercy of coin flips. . .

Yeah, recently I've been getting a 50 damage Muscle Band Scatter Shot on turn 2 right in the face and Gastly and Zubat don't survive.  It gets a little stupid. I might try it with 4 Brigette Battle Compressor and so on so I can have a big bench turn 1 and have a decent chance of evolving Gengar and the Bats.

I wish Creep Show had a more interesting 'animation'. 

[royalebouquet]

Noivern / Gengar does work, but you need the proper trainers to do so. Right now the internet is full with wrong builds. I have found a build that is consistent, fast and good against almost anything. I don't see Gengar working with the bats. The bats really need a basic attacker or a stage 1, but stage 2? No way

[Chroniton]

I find the best thing to run with Gengar is Greninja from XY, it puts consistent 3 damage counters on opponents pokemon to allow for Gengar to ohko, using Archies to get out the Greninja makes it less clunky than having an extra stage 2 line, also have Smeargle to fix the energy, this way you can run little Psychic energy and dump it with the Battle Compressors you'll be running to set up Greninja for Archies and have mostly water energy for discarding for damage.

[fr33land]

I thought maybe just basics able to attack for low energy that have a low retreat cost, the only problem is you have to attack and you give them a turn to switch out or heal.  Deoxys, I faced a deck that used Latios EX, don't think an EX is great for this job, Scatter Shot Mewtwo would fill the same role, but the bats can also snipe and deal bench damage by attacking and often have free retreat, so I figured they can do double duty protecting Gengar and Haunter until the conditions are met.  Bats also help against Night March some I've found. . . I dunno. 

I can see maybe Smeargle helping so Noivern isn't so desperately reliant on Double Dragon, but I'll be the first to admit my own builds did not work.  The nice thing is the bats are a way to put the damage on that is very hard to avoid and it still leaves you open to attack in the same turn. 

Greninja would be awesome, but I can't see trying to have a stage 2 in a deck designed to pull off Archie's.  Stage 1 and 2 pokemon can be dead cards that you must discard to make Ace successful.  Part of what makes Archie's do-able is basics, which can be benched immediately and don't clog your hand.  Even with rare candy, you put yourself in a position of having to discard too much to have both ends of the strategy come together.

Is there a combo that combines the speed of rare candy but work outside of item lock also?  Is having a copy or two of Wally and an evosoda alongside rare candy good?  Reliance on Rare Candy often backfires on me, maybe more often it works on turn 2, but. . .

Anyways, it seems advantageous to have both evolve through the stages, since Haunter can inflict a status condition and 'Bites' don't work with evosoda and Wally.

I see what you mean about the Bats working best from the bench and not ever having them active though.

The problem is inability to deal damage in a conventional manner, Gengar / Bats has real problems with swarms of pokemon and trying to set up Creep Show 6 times is exhausting or impossible.

People do rage quit a lot when you get their Mega.  . . which is . . . nice, I suppose.

[Chroniton]

There's always KyuremEX from Ancient Origins, fills the same role as Noivern for spreading 30 to everything but is a basic, I don't think Gengar is going to be greatly competitive anyway, stage 2 attackers rarely work with EX's in the format but any of the builds listed here can easily make a deck that's fun to play even if not greatly competitive.