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| MagneBoar is as horrible as my painting skills. |
Hello and welcome back to The Deck Out – one of the best Pokémon TCG blogs on the Internet.
Today’s subject is the World’s winning deck – Magneboar. I already buried Magneboar alive in one of my previous blog update so now I’ll look into if there is anything to do about it in this format.
First, into the skeleton of this deck.
Pokémon:
2x Cleffa
3x Tepig
1x Pignite
2x Emboar(Inferno Fandango)
3x Magnemite
2x Magneton
3x Magnezone Prime
=16
Trainer:
3x Twins
3x PONT
4x Rare Candy
4x Pokémon Communication
1x Professor Elm’s Training Method
4x Pokémon Collector
3x Junk Arm
=22
Energy:
5x Lighting
10x Fire
=15
As you can see, I took the build from David Cohen’s list. And why not – it won Worlds. Magneboar needs Twins because it doesn’t even try to get T2 Magnezone every game. Twins help you with this. As long as you use T1 Eeeeeek, you’re almost guaranteed to use Twins T2 or T3 so you can get Magnezone up fast. Magnezone is the most important card while set-upping this deck because with it you can draw the rest. It sounds nonsense to play to huge retreat having stage2 Pokémon in this format and while Catchers are all over it’s even more nonsense.
Even though Magneboar just won Worlds just one set ago, it struggles with many decks. Against which decks it struggles and most importantly why? I’ll guess we’ll have to find out.
Yanmega/Magnezone
The archenemy #1 of Magneboar. Yanmega/Magnezone pretty much ruins everything Magneboar is trying to accomplish. They can OHKO Emboar easily from Magneboar’s bench and they can successfully kill anything on the field with Catcher and Yanmega. They can even KO the Magnezone Prime and Judge right before it. Without Magnezone, there is no coming back for the Magneboar with a 4 card hand.If Magneboar is facing a Kingdra and Jirachi version of this deck they can pretty surely just scoop the game. Devolving and spreading are something that a deck full of thin stage2 lines can’t handle.
Stage1
Before Catcher Magneboar already autolost to Stage1 decks so after Catcher… Well you know – there won’t be a game. Catcher + Pluspowered Donphan OHKOs Magnezone Prime with 1 energy. There is no need for stage1 deck to even bother killing Emboar because it can get early prize leads and counter OHKOs against whatever Magneboar is bringing as an active Pokémon. I don’t think there is anything for Magneboar to do in this match-up if the Stage1 player has any clue what to do.
ReshiPlosion
I hate to admit the fact that the deck Magneboar once had an autowin is nowadays a pretty difficult match-up for Magneboar. Once again the reason for this is the same as earlier – Pokémon Catcher. Catcher makes it impossible to keep different 2 stage2 Pokémon in play alive for over 2 turns without trainer lock. ReshiPlosion can now easily target on Emboars and kill them off so Mageneboar has to attach energies manually. That won’t obviously work so ReshiPlosion has an edge in this match-up.
Zekrom/Tornadus
Zekrom/Tornadus was analyzed in the last blog update and if you read through it, you understand that Zekrom/Tornadus outspeeds Magneboar easily. T1 Tornadus is too much, unless Magneboar has T2 everything. Reshirams are very important in this match-up but if Zekrom is able to kill off all the Magnemites/Tepgis with Catchers before they can evolve, the game is over. Zekrom is just too powerful and quick against Magneboar. The only thing that can save Magneboar is a god start.
So where’s the problem?
Well, if you paid any attention to the previous part you have noticed that Catcher plays a huge role in destroying Magneboar. But why? Couldn’t Magneboar play Catcher to gain back the edge? This question is excellent Theorymon and gives some food for thought when thinking of what kind of decks benefit from Catcher the most.
The weakest link in Magneboar is Emboar. Magneboar usually only plays 2 of them. Even though it plays only 2 of them, it still needs Emboar every game all the time. It has a horrible retreat of 4 and it isn’t capable of KOing anything because its max (and only damage) is 80. Thankfully it has 150 HP which makes it almost impossible to OHKO. If you have solved the retreating problem with 2 or more Switches in your deck, you need to think only about how to get KOed Emboars back to the game every turn. Magneboar is a slow deck in the beginning of the game so it can’t give free prizes in the mid game. If you can’t use Inferno Fandango one turn because your Emboar was just KOed, it probably means you can’t attack that turn either and you have lost the game.
So, we need Emboar every turn once set-upped. Well, is it manageable in a prudent fashion? I’m pretty sure it isn’t. But if I try as hard as I can the first thing to do is thicken the deck’s Emboar line from 3-1-2 or 2-1-2 to something like 4-2-3 or 4-1-3. Since format has Catcher we need to max out Tepigs to prevent the negative effect of an early Tepig KO. We need to put the thick Emboar line in to the Magneboar skeleton. Let’s look how the deck’s Pokémon skeleton looks like.
Pokémon:
2x Cleffa
4x Tepig
2x Pignite
3x Emboar(Inferno Fandango)
3x Magnemite
1x Magneton
3x Magnezone Prime
=18
As you can see, I took 1 Magneton off to get some room. In fact, it doesn’t look that bad – but remember – this is only a skeleton.
The other way to increase the chance to get Emboar back to the game ASAP is a card called Rescue Energy. Since you can attach fire energies with Inferno Fandango, you can attach Rescue energy as you turn energy. If you attach Rescue to Tepig, it’s a waste of energy so you must be sure to attach the Rescue to a fully evolved Emboar. Tepig is a lot easier to get to play than Emboar. If you play with Rescue energies, you must be sure to have a Tepig on your bench all the time. It’s a bad thing because that way your opponent can take an easy prize every turn with Catcher from Tepig and he/she doesn’t even need to concentrate bringing out the Emboar because he/she will be in the prize lead. But if your Emboar is brought as an active Pokémon and your opponent isn’t able to OHKO it and you can’t switch it, you can predict the KO and play Tepig on your bench the turn before your opponent is able to KO the Emboar. Rescue energies are a bit inconsistent way to get Emboar every time back but it may work if your opponent doesn’t know what you are up to. Let’ see what the skeleton’s Pokemons and energies could look like after these changes.
Pokémon:
2x Cleffa
3x Tepig
2x Pignite
3x Emboar(Inferno Fandango)
3x Magnemite
1x Magneton
3x Magnezone Prime
=17
Energy:
3x Rescue Energy
4x Lighting
9x Fire
=16
The third option against Catcher is the most obvious one – Vileplume. It sounds awful to run Vileplume in a deck that already has 2 different stage2 Pokemons in it but because of Magnezone’s Magnetic Draw it could work. I’ll no longer show you the skeleton of this version because it would be pointless. The whole deck changes so much because of Vileplume that I have to do the whole list so you can understand what my goal is.
Pokémon:
1x Cleffa
3x Tepig
2x Pignite
2x Emboar(Inferno Fandango)
4x Magnemite
3x Magneton
3x Magnezone Prime
3x Oddish
1x Gloom
2x Vileplume
1x Pichu
2x Reshiram
=25
Trainer:
4x Twins
3x Rare Candy
2x Professor Elm’s Training Method
3x Pokémon Communication
4x Pokémon Collector
2x Fisherman
1x Sage’s Training
=19
Energy:
2x Rescue Energy
4x Lighting
10x Fire
=16
This list is untested and it’s only theorymon so forgive me if it lacks anything. But from this you get the main idea. I would like to fit Rayquaza&Deoxys Legend there because Twins+ it+ Vileplume= pwnage. But there is no room. Another note: I don’t like Rescue energy in Magneboar but with Trainer lock it’s a must. Killing Reshiplosion’s with Reshiram is just too good and because of Vileplume Reshiram takes always 2 prizes.
Against faster decks it’s probably safer to begin with Cleffa/Pichu and give a 2 prize lead to them with Baby and Reshiram. After that you can mount comeback with Trainerlock, Magnezone and Emboar. As you also can see, I have maxed out pretty much every good Supporter for this deck. 2 PETM seems bad but it’s the only way to search evolved Pokémon in late game so drawing it from Magnetic Draw is surprisingly good in this deck. Fisherman is the only way to get back discarded energies and it works through trainer lock so it’s great. There are many questionable decisions in this list but I encourage trying this out if you feel like playing with Magneboar. Playing with Magneboar is fun but it lacks something because of Catcher. Maybe it’s Vileplume, it was missing?
Conclusion
Well, I did my best. If these 3 options don’t work, I can say that Magneboar should be forgotten as a competitive deck. It needs help from the upper powers (come on PCL, help Magneboar out!) or it will die trying in the beginning of the season. If I went to a tournament with Magneboar, I would play the Vileplume version. In theory it makes few match-ups favorable for it but its only problem would be its slowness. In my opinion Magneboar is a fun deck but it’s too difficult to build in this format.
That’s it for today. Thankfully, I managed to make a bit shorter update this time so hopefully everyone was able to make through it! See you next time!
// Be back to The Deck Out this week because there will be more info of the upcoming Eye on Japan series!! I will also check the poll results and develop the blog the way you want.
Today’s subject is the World’s winning deck – Magneboar. I already buried Magneboar alive in one of my previous blog update so now I’ll look into if there is anything to do about it in this format.
First, into the skeleton of this deck.
Pokémon:
2x Cleffa
3x Tepig
1x Pignite
2x Emboar(Inferno Fandango)
3x Magnemite
2x Magneton
3x Magnezone Prime
=16
Trainer:
3x Twins
3x PONT
4x Rare Candy
4x Pokémon Communication
1x Professor Elm’s Training Method
4x Pokémon Collector
3x Junk Arm
=22
Energy:
5x Lighting
10x Fire
=15
As you can see, I took the build from David Cohen’s list. And why not – it won Worlds. Magneboar needs Twins because it doesn’t even try to get T2 Magnezone every game. Twins help you with this. As long as you use T1 Eeeeeek, you’re almost guaranteed to use Twins T2 or T3 so you can get Magnezone up fast. Magnezone is the most important card while set-upping this deck because with it you can draw the rest. It sounds nonsense to play to huge retreat having stage2 Pokémon in this format and while Catchers are all over it’s even more nonsense.
Even though Magneboar just won Worlds just one set ago, it struggles with many decks. Against which decks it struggles and most importantly why? I’ll guess we’ll have to find out.
Yanmega/Magnezone
The archenemy #1 of Magneboar. Yanmega/Magnezone pretty much ruins everything Magneboar is trying to accomplish. They can OHKO Emboar easily from Magneboar’s bench and they can successfully kill anything on the field with Catcher and Yanmega. They can even KO the Magnezone Prime and Judge right before it. Without Magnezone, there is no coming back for the Magneboar with a 4 card hand.If Magneboar is facing a Kingdra and Jirachi version of this deck they can pretty surely just scoop the game. Devolving and spreading are something that a deck full of thin stage2 lines can’t handle.
Stage1
Before Catcher Magneboar already autolost to Stage1 decks so after Catcher… Well you know – there won’t be a game. Catcher + Pluspowered Donphan OHKOs Magnezone Prime with 1 energy. There is no need for stage1 deck to even bother killing Emboar because it can get early prize leads and counter OHKOs against whatever Magneboar is bringing as an active Pokémon. I don’t think there is anything for Magneboar to do in this match-up if the Stage1 player has any clue what to do.
ReshiPlosion
I hate to admit the fact that the deck Magneboar once had an autowin is nowadays a pretty difficult match-up for Magneboar. Once again the reason for this is the same as earlier – Pokémon Catcher. Catcher makes it impossible to keep different 2 stage2 Pokémon in play alive for over 2 turns without trainer lock. ReshiPlosion can now easily target on Emboars and kill them off so Mageneboar has to attach energies manually. That won’t obviously work so ReshiPlosion has an edge in this match-up.
Zekrom/Tornadus
Zekrom/Tornadus was analyzed in the last blog update and if you read through it, you understand that Zekrom/Tornadus outspeeds Magneboar easily. T1 Tornadus is too much, unless Magneboar has T2 everything. Reshirams are very important in this match-up but if Zekrom is able to kill off all the Magnemites/Tepgis with Catchers before they can evolve, the game is over. Zekrom is just too powerful and quick against Magneboar. The only thing that can save Magneboar is a god start.
So where’s the problem?
Well, if you paid any attention to the previous part you have noticed that Catcher plays a huge role in destroying Magneboar. But why? Couldn’t Magneboar play Catcher to gain back the edge? This question is excellent Theorymon and gives some food for thought when thinking of what kind of decks benefit from Catcher the most.
The weakest link in Magneboar is Emboar. Magneboar usually only plays 2 of them. Even though it plays only 2 of them, it still needs Emboar every game all the time. It has a horrible retreat of 4 and it isn’t capable of KOing anything because its max (and only damage) is 80. Thankfully it has 150 HP which makes it almost impossible to OHKO. If you have solved the retreating problem with 2 or more Switches in your deck, you need to think only about how to get KOed Emboars back to the game every turn. Magneboar is a slow deck in the beginning of the game so it can’t give free prizes in the mid game. If you can’t use Inferno Fandango one turn because your Emboar was just KOed, it probably means you can’t attack that turn either and you have lost the game.
So, we need Emboar every turn once set-upped. Well, is it manageable in a prudent fashion? I’m pretty sure it isn’t. But if I try as hard as I can the first thing to do is thicken the deck’s Emboar line from 3-1-2 or 2-1-2 to something like 4-2-3 or 4-1-3. Since format has Catcher we need to max out Tepigs to prevent the negative effect of an early Tepig KO. We need to put the thick Emboar line in to the Magneboar skeleton. Let’s look how the deck’s Pokémon skeleton looks like.
Pokémon:
2x Cleffa
4x Tepig
2x Pignite
3x Emboar(Inferno Fandango)
3x Magnemite
1x Magneton
3x Magnezone Prime
=18
As you can see, I took 1 Magneton off to get some room. In fact, it doesn’t look that bad – but remember – this is only a skeleton.
The other way to increase the chance to get Emboar back to the game ASAP is a card called Rescue Energy. Since you can attach fire energies with Inferno Fandango, you can attach Rescue energy as you turn energy. If you attach Rescue to Tepig, it’s a waste of energy so you must be sure to attach the Rescue to a fully evolved Emboar. Tepig is a lot easier to get to play than Emboar. If you play with Rescue energies, you must be sure to have a Tepig on your bench all the time. It’s a bad thing because that way your opponent can take an easy prize every turn with Catcher from Tepig and he/she doesn’t even need to concentrate bringing out the Emboar because he/she will be in the prize lead. But if your Emboar is brought as an active Pokémon and your opponent isn’t able to OHKO it and you can’t switch it, you can predict the KO and play Tepig on your bench the turn before your opponent is able to KO the Emboar. Rescue energies are a bit inconsistent way to get Emboar every time back but it may work if your opponent doesn’t know what you are up to. Let’ see what the skeleton’s Pokemons and energies could look like after these changes.
Pokémon:
2x Cleffa
3x Tepig
2x Pignite
3x Emboar(Inferno Fandango)
3x Magnemite
1x Magneton
3x Magnezone Prime
=17
Energy:
3x Rescue Energy
4x Lighting
9x Fire
=16
The third option against Catcher is the most obvious one – Vileplume. It sounds awful to run Vileplume in a deck that already has 2 different stage2 Pokemons in it but because of Magnezone’s Magnetic Draw it could work. I’ll no longer show you the skeleton of this version because it would be pointless. The whole deck changes so much because of Vileplume that I have to do the whole list so you can understand what my goal is.
Pokémon:
1x Cleffa
3x Tepig
2x Pignite
2x Emboar(Inferno Fandango)
4x Magnemite
3x Magneton
3x Magnezone Prime
3x Oddish
1x Gloom
2x Vileplume
1x Pichu
2x Reshiram
=25
Trainer:
4x Twins
3x Rare Candy
2x Professor Elm’s Training Method
3x Pokémon Communication
4x Pokémon Collector
2x Fisherman
1x Sage’s Training
=19
Energy:
2x Rescue Energy
4x Lighting
10x Fire
=16
This list is untested and it’s only theorymon so forgive me if it lacks anything. But from this you get the main idea. I would like to fit Rayquaza&Deoxys Legend there because Twins+ it+ Vileplume= pwnage. But there is no room. Another note: I don’t like Rescue energy in Magneboar but with Trainer lock it’s a must. Killing Reshiplosion’s with Reshiram is just too good and because of Vileplume Reshiram takes always 2 prizes.
Against faster decks it’s probably safer to begin with Cleffa/Pichu and give a 2 prize lead to them with Baby and Reshiram. After that you can mount comeback with Trainerlock, Magnezone and Emboar. As you also can see, I have maxed out pretty much every good Supporter for this deck. 2 PETM seems bad but it’s the only way to search evolved Pokémon in late game so drawing it from Magnetic Draw is surprisingly good in this deck. Fisherman is the only way to get back discarded energies and it works through trainer lock so it’s great. There are many questionable decisions in this list but I encourage trying this out if you feel like playing with Magneboar. Playing with Magneboar is fun but it lacks something because of Catcher. Maybe it’s Vileplume, it was missing?
Conclusion
Well, I did my best. If these 3 options don’t work, I can say that Magneboar should be forgotten as a competitive deck. It needs help from the upper powers (come on PCL, help Magneboar out!) or it will die trying in the beginning of the season. If I went to a tournament with Magneboar, I would play the Vileplume version. In theory it makes few match-ups favorable for it but its only problem would be its slowness. In my opinion Magneboar is a fun deck but it’s too difficult to build in this format.
That’s it for today. Thankfully, I managed to make a bit shorter update this time so hopefully everyone was able to make through it! See you next time!
// Be back to The Deck Out this week because there will be more info of the upcoming Eye on Japan series!! I will also check the poll results and develop the blog the way you want.
IMMA DEH FIRST Okay back to the seriousness.
ReplyDeleteIt's sad for Magneboar to be reduced as an Item-Lock deck. I feel like item-locking decks are just too slow and heavy for the metagame. This comes to your opinion « Magneboar is a fun deck but ti's too difficult to build in this format », which I totally agree.
Great article, like the others. It's interesting to look at how a deck falls from World Championships Winning deck to become a fun deck.
You said it was tricky to fit everything in! That's 27 Pokemon, not 25, making 62 cards in all. Can't really see where the 2 card saving's going to come from, without it breaking.
ReplyDelete