Durant - milling day & night

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It’s refreshing to be back to normal. Noble Victories will be released in a few days and as promised I’ll have lots of new decks because of that. Today I’m concentrating on one of my favorite cards of the new set – Durant. Durant is one of my favorite cards in the new set just because it’s a milling card. It wins by decking out your opponent. And it’s very suitable Pokémon to be analyzed in my blog when you think about my blog’s name, don’t you think? I have said previously that I love different ways of winning games like milling or lost zoning and that’s why I waited Durant to be released for a very long time. I’ve had Durant deck together over a month already so I have done some serious testing with it.

In this article I will reveal 2 different ways to build a tournament-viable Durant deck that has a chance of beating any deck regularly in the format (except for one deck but about that later on in the article).


First, let’s start off with the first Durant list.

Pokemon:

4x Durant
2x Rotom(Undaunted)
=6

Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
2x Pokegear 3.0.
4x Dual Ball
4x Professor Juniper
3x N
3x Judge
2x Twins
4x Revive
2x Lost Remover
3x Crushing Hammer
2x Pokémon Catcher
4x Junk Arm
3x Eviolite
1x Alph Litograph (prize peaker)
=41

Energy:

4x Special Metal Energy
9x Basic Metal Energy
=13


Strategy:

The strategy is obviously to deck out your opponent. But how can you do it by only discarding 4 cards per turn? That’s where the trainers come in handy. Thankfully this format has a handful of good disturbing trainers, which can buy you time. If I do some simple math, you need usually 6-8 turns to deck out your opponent but the number of needed turns depends on how your opponent plays that the numbers aren’t exact. If they use cards like Juniper or Electrode, they help decking themselves out very much.

Lost Remover, Crushing Hammer and Catcher all work here as buying you 1-3 extra turns you need to deck out your opponent. The less experienced your opponent is against Durant deck, the more better use you can make out of these disturbing trainers.

The other things that has to be explained in the strategy is why there is Rotom in the deck. The reason is obvious. You can’t take prizes with this deck but at the same time you need all your Durants to be in your deck. With Rotom you can get the prized Durants quickly into play and start milling for 4 cards per turn. The difference of milling 3 cards compared to 4 cards is so huge that it’s even difficult to imagine. Rotom combined with Alph Litograph helps you also get things from your deck that you may need in certain points of game (e.g. Revive).


Card explanations:


Durant

Durant is the main attacker of the deck and the only Pokémon you can even attack with in this deck. You need 4 Durants to your deck because Durant discards as many cards from the top of your opponents deck as you have Durants in play. So, in practice you want always that there are 4 Durants on your field at the same time. If you would be allowed to run 8 Durants in your deck, you would like to run 8 Durants here. So 4 Durants, no less – obviously.

Durant has 70 HP which isn’t that much but combined with energy and trainers from the deck, you can very well get the Durant out of the OHKO range of some Pokémon. Durant has a retreat of 1 but that really isn’t a concern because you always want to have Durant as your active Pokémon. The weakest point of Durant is its weakness which is unfortunately the most common type in the metagame – fire. This weakness – as I’ll tell you later – is the reason why Durant has some serious issues with some decks in the format. 

Rotom

As mentioned earlier Rotom is here because of its Poke-Power. With its power you can change one of your prize cards with your topdeck once a turn. This way you can get the Durants from the prizes quickly. Rotom is a must in this deck because you need the Durants out of the prizes. This deck doesn’t draw a single prize during the whole game so Rotom is the only way to get in-touch with your prizes. You need at least 2 Rotoms in this deck because you can’t afford having all of your Rotoms AND Durants prized at the same time. If you don’t have Rotoms and you have Durants in your prize cards, you can scoop the game – you’ve already lost. Durant can’t win by discarding 3 cards per turn as long as your opponent has any clue what he/she is doing.

Pokémon Collector - Pokegear 3.0. - Dual Ball

As mentioned, you want Durants as fast as possible. That’s why the basic search in this deck seems so hardcore. 4 Collectors, 4 Dual Balls and 2 Pokegears guarantee that you’ll have T1 4 Durants in play. That’s all this deck needs to. After that you just have to keep discarding and taking the killed Durants back to play with Revive. This may seem like overkill but with this deck one turn and one card is so important that you must maximize everything. If you can’t get 4 Durants out T1, something has gone wrong. Even though you aren’t able to use these cards in the late game, it really doesn’t matter. The deck runs 4 Junk Arms so these are perfect cards to discard with Junk Arms.

Professor Juniper

Professor Juniper is the best straight draw there is in this format and I belongs to this deck. This deck’s all non-draw cards are trainer so they can always be used before Juniper and be taken back with Junk Arm. This deck doesn’t have any evolved Pokémon so you won’t be discarding any Pokémon lines either in this deck. I can’t think of a better deck to fit in Junipers than Durant. Durant is a perfect deck to play Juniper.

N – Judge

These 2 cards are very interesting in this deck. They serve multiple purposes in the deck. First, they are draw cards. N is a funny card here because unlike in other deck, it will draw you total of 6 card every time you use it. You don’t take a single prize during the whole game so N works as a PONT through the whole game. Shuffle&Draw is so good in this kind of deck which can play all of its cards in to the play easily that even Judge’s 4 card draw is usually enough to keep the game going.

Second, N and Judge are great disturbing cards. The more prizes your opponent has taken the less cards he/she draws and with a combination from N and Catcher you can buy yourself a lot of time to deck out your opponent. Judge will always “let” your opponent draw a whopping 4 cards but it might still be able to slow your opponent’s game down.

Third, these cards might help you with decking out your opponent. It’s true. In the early game your opponent might have less than 6 cards in your hand. That way you can use N and force him/her to draw 6 cards from his/her deck and make his/her deck a bit smaller. However, in the late game your opponent might have run out of resources and have a small hand. In these cases Judge is a great card because it can force your opponent draw 4 cards from his or her deck. I think some people might have experience with Magnezone/Yanmega deck from cases where you don’t want to draw 4 cards from Judge but because you have to, you lost the game. I have experienced this in the World Championships (even though the losing one was my opponent but anyways).

Twins

You don’t draw a single prize during the whole game so this should be obvious. The reason why I don’t run 4 Twins might be a mystery for you but the reason is quite simple. This deck works better with shuffle&draw cards because it needs all kinds of cards all the time. You don’t win the game by searching Rare Candy and X and start hitting for high damage. You need all of your deck to win games and Twins isn’t the best card for this function because you only get 2 cards instead of 6 random cards. However, Twins are used for the situations where you need some certain things from your deck like for example Revive. Twins is a nice addition to the deck but it isn’t a must in this deck.

Revive

Well, probably you have to use Revive 5 times during the game so running 4 of them shouldn’t be a big surprise. You also need Revive already in the early game so running 4 of these is pretty much a must. Getting 5 Durants back from the discard pile requires to use at least 1 Junk Arm for Revive so you must keep on track how many Revives and Junk Arms you have used during the game in order to the game.

Lost Remover - Crushing Hammer -Pokémon Catcher

My favorite part of the deck – disturbing. Lost Remover and Crushing Hammer serve the same purpose, to keep your opponent from attacking. Lost Remover is very effective against things like Zekrom/Tornadus. If they start attacking with Tornadus that has DCE attached, Lost Remover does some heavy damage and slows down their game very much. In best case scenarios and with good flipping Crushing Hammer may very well buy you even 2-3 turns, which makes you automatically win the game.

Pokémon Catcher is there to buy you some more time but in a different way.  With Catcher, you can use it like Pow! Hand Extension in the early days of Pokémon and drag something that has a big retreat and no energy attached to it in the active position. This way you can buy 1-3 turns which can help you a lot. Catcher combined with the energy discarding trainers can keep your opponent from attacking that the same Durant can attack many times.

Durant really can’t work without disturbing. The fact is that if you don’t disturb your opponent’s game, they’re guaranteed to OHKO Durants once they have a decent set-up (which happens in this format fairly fast) and you don’t have chance on winning the game. Disturb or lose, that’s pretty much a fact with this deck.

Eviolite

I don’t consider Eviolite a necessity in this deck but it helps a lot against many decks. Things like Tornadus quickly have problems with a Durant that has Eviolite but things like Zekrom or Reshiram don’t care if you have Eviolite attached to a Durant or not. The problem with Eviolite is that you can get around it easily with Catcher and that way even Tornadus can get a prize even though you have a Eviolited Durant as your active Pokémon. However, this version of the deck should run Eviolite just because it has space for it. It’s a nice addition alongside Special Metal Energy but by no means necessary to win games.

Alph Litograph (prize peaker)

This should be obvious. You have Rotom so looking at your prizes helps you a lot. That way you can get the most important things from your prizes when you want them. I love Alph Litograph and I think it’s underrated but the fact is that many decks don’t have space for it even though they would like to play it. However, this deck has room for it and it really helps the deck’s main strategy so there is no reason not to play this card here.

Junk Arm

I don’t even want to count how many times I’ve written something about Junk Arm. One day I should make an article only about Junk Arm and put the link to the article every time I want to analyze this card. But for now, this deck has lots of trainers and as mentioned earlier you need Junk Arm for Revive because you have to revive 5 Durants during the game. You can also use Junk Arm for recovering from a bad Judge and reuse a Pokegear 3.0. The rest of the Junk Arms can be used for disturbing purposes even though it might be frustrating to flip 4 Crushing Hammer tails in a one turn…



Energy

The deck uses only Metal Energy and of course you want to run 4 Special Metals. The thing that might have caught your eye is the amount of energy. It seems high when you think about it. You probably need only 6 energy in the whole game and Durant attacks with a single Energy so why run 13 energy? The reason to this has been mentioned earlier in this article. You can’t afford missing a turn attacking with Durants. This includes first turn. You need to have energy in your opening hand because you’ll probably use your first turn’s supporter for Pokémon Collector. 13 may not be the optimal number for you so there is always tweaking to do but for me it has worked very well so far. I think there Is no reason to increase the numbers of energy so if you want to do something about the energy amount you should try to decrease it one by one and find the amount that’s the most suitable for you.




Problem?

Indeed, Durant and this Durant especially has its own problems. First of all the low basic count is a serious problem. Since this deck runs only 6 Basics it can easily be donked if it doesn’t go first and the opponent is playing a deck like Zekrom. There is no real solution for the low basic count other than playing more Basics and that’s where the next Durant deck has a good solution.

The other problem with all Durant decks is ReshiPlosion and a good playing piloting Reshiboar. Things that can easily OHKO gives this deck huge problems. Durant with Eviolite and Special Metal Energy is OHKOed by an Outrage from Reshiram that has 3 damage counters on it. This will happen so fast that Durant has no way winning the game when your opponent just draws and attacks during his/her turn. This deck has no solution against working ReshiPlosion, which is very unfortunate. Reshiboar will also just tear Durant apart with one fully loaded Inferno Fandango Emboar. It doesn’t even need Reshiram to attack – that’s just sad.

Third, the deck may have some serious problems with its prizes even though the list has tried to reduce the problems with prizes to minimum. Sometimes even maximized risk management isn’t enough. There are games (even though these things happen very seldom) that your all Rotoms AND 1 Durant is prized. In these cases the game is over when you have put your prize cards on the table.






There is more!

As promised, there is also a different way to play Durant. Playing Durant doesn’t have to be monotonic. It can be challenging and fun at its best. Here is the second list of Durant, I’ve tested even more than the first list. I prefer this deck over the first list because with this you can do more. Well, let’s see what this ant has eaten.


Pokemon:

4x Durant
2x Rotom(Undaunted)
4x Sneasel(Undaunted)
3x Weavile(Undaunted)
=13

Trainer:

4x Pokémon Collector
2x Pokegear 3.0.
3x Dual Ball
2x Pokémon Communication
3x Professor Juniper
4x N
2x Judge
3x Twins
2x Super Scoop Up
4x Revive
4x Junk Arm
1x Pokémon Catcher
1x Lost Remover
=35

Energy:

4x Special Metal Energy
8x Basic Metal Energy
=12


Strategy:

The strategy is pretty much the same as the first Durant lists with a small twist. With the help of Weavile you can get the most important cards of your opponent into the discard pile. Combined with Durant’s attack this can be devastating, It may slow down your opponent’s set-up so much that it can give you the win in the early turns. Sometimes the discards from Durant are awesome because you can hit pockets of energy or even pockets of Typhlosion Primes and combined it with Weavile’s power you may get rid of your opponent’s key Pokémon before they get into play. Other than that the main strategy is the same – deck out your opponent.



Card explanations:

There is no real reason to cover all the same cards that are in the first list so I’ll just concentrate on the cards that differ from the first list.


Weavile (Undaunted)

As explained in the strategy Weavile is to add some different kind of disturbing. The discarding of Weavile works also in a way as milling because for every additional card your opponent has in a discard pile, your opponent has less cards in their hand + deck. You can make real use of judge after that. Weavile is great here also because it can slow down your opponent’s set-up. The slower your opponent set-ups their OHKOer, the better chance you have winning the game. Weavile also solves the problem of low basic count. The greatest thing about Weavile is its basic version Sneasel which has a free retreat. This is a very rare asset that you really should make use of. Along the decrease in donks, it also decreases the “bad” starts in this deck (Rotom starts). Weavile is a great partner with Durant because it helps it in so many ways.

Pokémon Communication

Pokémon Communication is a natural addition because now the deck has stage1 Pokémons and its Pokémon count is higher. Running 2 Communications should be enough and you don’t want to run more of them just because you can’t. The Pokémon amount is still a bit low so Communication isn’t that effective. Few of them is the play here.

Super Scoop Up

Super Scoop is for Weavile as well. You can use Weavile’s power again with Super Scoop Up. SSU can also help in the Rotom openings and get your Durant attacking T1 if you feel like flipping the Rotom back to your hand. This way you can also use the Rotom’s power 2 times a turn! Super Scoop is a super card with Weavile.

Twins

I mentioned Twins in the earlier article but I will mention it here as well. Why? Since it has much more meaning in a deck where you need to search for stage1 Pokémons. With Twins you can search for 2 Weaviles  at the same time. Discarding any 2 cards from your opponent hand + discarding 4 cards from the top of your opponent’s deck during the same turn is huge and can hurt your opponent’s game very much. Twins also serves the purpose for this deck better because it has only 1x Catcher and Lost Remover. Twins is the only card that gives you these cards when you need them. Otherwise they would be unnecessary in the deck.









Teches / Cards to consider

These cards are great additions to any Durant deck and they help the deck achieving the decking out goal even faster. All these has their pros and cons and that’s they didn’t fit in to the original lists. But you should try all of these out and find YOUR way to play Durant.

Spiritomb(Triumphant)

Spiritomb’s Spooky Whirlpool forces your opponent to shuffle their hand draw 6 cards. This can be game-changing in the late game because your opponent may have a small hand (at least against the Weavile variant). Drawing 6 and discarding 4, it’s 10 cards in one turn. However, there is a reason why Spiritomb didn’t fit in the lists of this article. As an opener it’s horrible. It has 2 retreat and is incapable of attacking. If you don’t open with it and don’t have it quickly away from the active position, you’ve lost the game. If you like risks, this is your card.

Team Rocket’s Trickery

The only reason why Trickery isn’t in these lists is that I haven’t done enough testing with them. They combined with Weavile and Durant discards A LOT from your opponent’s deck. These 3 cards combined with cards like Spiritomb can deck out your opponent in a very quick manner. Trickery also works very well with Rotoms Power because it’s straight draw. The reason why I haven’t tested Trickery yet is because I want to guarantee the consistency before going hardcore with the lists. Trickery isn’t a draw card – it’s a disturbing card.


Cheerleader’s Cheer

Cheerleader is mind gaming as its best. Your opponent can choose if he/she wants to draw a card. Playing Cheerleader is reasonable only if you like straight draw. it may tempting to draw a card from Cheerleader because “1 card can’t hurt that much, can it” but once you have played enough against Durant, you’ll soon realize that 1 card is all that matters. I would go with Trickery if I should choose between Cheerleader and it.

Switch

Switch is for the first deck or for the decks that want to run Spiritomb. It may save you from an annoying Catcher (no, you don’t always have energy in your hand) or from a horrible opener. It’s a good addition to any deck and even though Durant is a weird deck, it’s no exception when it comes to Switch.

Kyogre&Groudon LEGEND

I have seen people discussing about this option in a Durant deck. I – myself- don’t like the idea. You don’t have enough resources for KGL and it has no synergy other than discarding the cards from your opponent’s deck. It also ruins the deck’s consistency etc. Just not worth it.


Match-ups

It’s difficult to make match-ups because NV’s impact to the metagame hasn’t been witnessed yet. But anyways I’ll go through the most important match-ups at the moment with some predictions from NV. I’ll look for the results from the U.S. Regionals and decide which match-ups are the most important at the moment.





Favorable
Mew/Vileplume
Trainer lock/Reuniclus
Electrode decks


Slightly Favorable
Magnezone/Yanmega
Magneboar

Even
Zekrom/Tornadus
Stage1 variants (Depends on the variation)



Slighly Unfavorable


Unfavorable
Reshiram/Typhlosion
Reshiram/Emboar


Few notes from the match-ups. First, trainer-lock decks match-ups are great for Durant because of 2 factors:
1) Their Twins won’t ever activate because you don’t take prizes
2) If they use tropical Beach as a set-up trainer, they will just deck themselves out

Trainer lock decks can’t really even set-up in time against Durant and that makes it so good match-up for Durant. Also, Electrode based deck are of course favored match-ups for Durant because tehy just blow up their deck so fast with Electrode. If they don't blow up their deck, they are too slow. Either way, you win the game.

Also, all the Magnezone decks are slightly favorable for few reasons. Their damage out-put is very low unless they set-up Magnezone which uses a lot of resources. They also need Magnetic Draw almost every turn and they will just deck out themselves in 6 turns as well. Magneboar may become a problem if they manage to play it with Inferno Fandango but it’s not probably going to happen in time because they can’t use Twins for set-upping. Most stage2 decks are ruined against Durant.

Against stage1 decks it pretty much is all about their attackers. Donphan can’t start OHKOing Durants fast enough. Neither can Yanmega or Zoroark. If they donät run Cinccino you have the upper hand. However, it comes a lot tougher if they play Cinccino.

And as stated earlier Fire decks give a too hard time for Durant. I hope that top-notch Durant, which has been tested over 9000 games may have a chance beating ReshiPlosion with a bad start but at the moment beating ReshiPlosion isn’t realistic if the ReshiPlosion players knows what he/she is doing.




Conclusion

I hope this article gave you lots of thinking and helped you to get-to-know to Durant better. I’d love to see Durant in the top placements of the tournaments and I hope people will tweak Durant decks as long as they can reach the top spots. I hope this gave a lot of new insight for all the Durant lovers (and haters) about how the deck works, how it should be built and what options you have for it.

Please leave comments and questions, any feedback is welcome as always and I’ll answer to everything personally!




This week’s second entry will be the Japanese monstrosity: Virizon/Terrakion/Kyurem/Reshiram/Zekrom etc. deck so be sure to look forward to it! I’ll also try to release the “Eye on Japan: Part 2” next week and there are lots of more VERY interesting and unknown things from Japan once again so keep an eye on The Deck Out daily for it!

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