Article #70: “Oww! My BACK!”
Neo Destiny: Broken Ground Gym
That poor Elekid! And look at the little Jigglypuff in the background,
he’s in PAIN! Poor little guys…
Well, the art on this card is really quite descriptive of the card’s
ability. This throws a SERIOUS monkey wrench into a lot of the decks
that are out there in Standard right now, and makes running mostly evolutions
a bit more lucrative in theory. Right now free retreat for support
Pokemon is one of the major advantages a veteran Standard player strives
to attain. Babies, Scyther, Gligar, and several main-attacker Pokemon
are used so frequently simply because their having a free retreat cost
makes them easier to play and splash into so many different decks.
Standard decks are generally built around one or two main theme Pokemon
(SneaselKingKrow being an exception) with a bunch of maneuverable back-up
(namely Cleffa, Gligar, Scyther, Tyrogue, and/or Iggly if you’re a wuss)
to stall, take hits, and generally be annoying as hell . Well, doesn’t
THIS just screw with that idea, eh? A few decks could seriously benefit
from running three of these as a default and 3-4 Item Finder. Anyway,
let’s grab that reading…
Broken Ground Gym
Stadium Card
This card stays in play when you play it. Discard
this
card if another Stadium card comes into play.
Each player pays 
more to retreat a Baby Pokemon or
Basic Pokemon.
So, let’s see which decks could be
hurt by this, and why:
SneaselKingKrow: Let’s
just start by saying that this is a relatively low-energy deck. It
thrives on speed, a turn-two build, and being able to switch strategies
(attacking the bench with Murkrow or the Active with Sneasel) on the fly
makes it wickedly unpredictable in the hands of a good player. Once
two or three energy hits the table, loading up a full Sneasel or a Krow
(and half of something else), this archetype gets to really start having
fun as the SERs begin to flow. One of the strengths of this deck
is that since it will never use energy to retreat (TRY getting three recycles
on a Slowking, it won’t matter… can you spell “Taunt”? I can…
“F-U-T-I-L-I-T-Y”) you’ll pretty much have convincing candidates for all
the energy used in the deck (normally just Recycle, Rainbow, and Dark)
at all times. This means you can drop a rainbow or a dark onto a
Krow or Sneasel and leave it there without doing anything, leaving your
opponent to guess whether or not next turn he’ll face another attacker
or a Super Energy Removal. However, once you lose the ability to
play around with your limited energy base (because you’ll be using it to
pay retreat costs), you lose a major psychological edge. Which is
bad news.
Chansey: Ugh…
If you’re running straight Chansey then all you’re using is The Big Egg,
Rocket’s Meowth, and some Babies. All of which are of course affected
by Broken Ground Gym. Yet again, this faces the same problem as SneaselKingKrow:
the deck just doesn’t run enough energy to be throwing it away on stuff
it didn’t plan for. And like SneaselKingKrow’s Rainbows and Darks,
Chansey’s Metals and DCEs can be quite hard to get back into your deck
if they get discarded. Now given, Chansey normally sees play with
Recycle Energy expressly for retreat, but if you need to attach two of
them instead of one it’s obviously going to set you back a turn.
This situation gets even worse if you’re running Chansey with Rocket’s
Zapdos: Two colorless retreat? Workable. Three?
Shoot me. In the head. Make it clean. Steelix/Chansey
would see some trouble too, as now the deck can be stalled with ease by
bringing in an un-energized Chansey (or alternately, bringing in an energized
Chansey and then ERing it to heck).
Haymaker: Uhhh…yeah.
If this wasn’t dead enough already, it’s probably pretty dead now.
The only serious advantage here is that any really old-school hay is going
to be running the standard 2-3 Switch, as WELL AS Scoop Up. So you’ll
have four to six methods of replacing your Active via Trainer use instead
of two to three. But still… it creates a good deal of disruption.
Wigglytuff: Normally
backed up by Scyther/Rocket’s Zap to protect against fighting types, as
well as Hitmonchan/Gligar/Tyrogue for anti-Fable tactics, this thing gets
royally stung by Broken Ground Gym. It’s a deck that forces you to
have at least a few Basics on your bench at all times, or else it doesn’t
work. This means that if someone’s running Broken Ground and needs
to keep you from dealing damage, they’re gonna Gust something that can’t
retreat. Especially susceptible is loveable ol’ Hitmonchan.
A DCE no longer swipes him from the Active position on its own, which means
you’re going to have to either waste an extra turn to get him back or you’ll
be burning a Switch. The same goes for his feathered friend Rocket’s
Zapdos. Baaaad medicine.
So, what could possibly use Broken
Ground Gym? Two things mainly:
Clefable: The deck only
needs a single colorless on the Active to work. It stocks four Recycle
for the exclusive purpose of wasting them on Super Energy Removal and retreat,
mostly because it just CAN. Having one of the free-retreaters from
this deck (normally Gligar, Tyrogue, and Cleffa) Gusted into the Active
position just means that you drop a Recycle next turn, retreat whatever
your opponent thought was going to stay put, and then shove out the Clefable
again. The beating resumes at this point. I could definitely
see Clefable using Broken Ground quite a bit, and quite well.
Typhlosion/Arcanine:
If all you’re running is a couple of babies and two evolution lines which
you’re intending on evolving to at LEAST a Stage One on all accounts by
the second turn, you might as well run Broken Ground. This nicely
screws with Typhlosion/Blaine’s Arcanine’s main enemies, namely SneaselKingKrow
and its abuse of Recycle and SER to buy the extra turn it needs to Beat
Up whichever of your Pokemon seems to be helping you out the most.
If played well, this card could mean the difference between having to Firestorm
or gaining the luxury of being able to just lie about building up fire
energy while you Heat Tackle the opponent’s Pokes to death. And energy
advantage is a good thing.
Heh, wasn’t that a pretty big understatement?
Anyway, I’ve got the feeling that
this is one of those cards that will be used really creatively and spectacularly
by someone brighter than me. There are more uses for this card than
what I listed here, and once they start coming out of the woodwork Broken
Ground Gym could see a lot of play. Me, I’m just looking forward
to seeing how Typhlo/RK9 are going to use it, if at all. Heck, no
one used Suicune Trapper, and now it's dead. *weeps quietly*
Missing the GOOD SUICUNE,
-Gloom
Note to Modified Players: Evolutions….evolutions
everywhere! Bad, bad Gym… But it will be a nice default for
Anti-Crobat, that’s for sure. The main problem is that you kind of
have to pick one of the following for your Gatr deck: Are you going
to use the Gym, or the free-Gust Suicune? I’d probably pick the Suicune.
I suspect anyone else with a pulse would as well.
