Double Echo

Double Echo

By: Bulbasnore

22 Pokemon/11 Basic

4 Alakazam (Exp) Stage 2

4 Kadabra (3 Exp/1 LC) Stage 1

4 Abra Basic

3 Aerodactyl (Rev) Stage 1

3 Cleffa Basic

2 Elekid Basic

2 Tyrogue Basic

26 Trainers

4 Copycat

4 Pokemon Trader

3 Mysterious Fossil

3 Double Gust

2 Switch

3 Gold Berry

2 Focus Band

1 Energy Stadium

12 Energy

8 Psychic

4 Rainbow

Bulbasnore had this to say about his deck:

Here is a deck based on a combo that I've seen around (Revelation Aerodactyl's Prehistoric Power to allow the use of the attacks of earlier stage pokemon by further evolved PKMN with LC Kadabra(SuperPsy (50))/Exp Alakazam for big hitting (Psymimic power/Synchronize (80) attack) and self-healing (Kadabra's recover). I've put in the basics, but I'm not really wanting to put it on the table until I have an answer to Espeon (and speed or another evo line is not the answer). I'm thinking Lily Pad Promo Mew, but that is very incremental in its attack, more than Elekid & Tyrogue...is Mew the only answer to Espeon? Any other tune-ups appreciated as well.

Thanks,

Bulbasnore

Nova had this to say in response:

Sounds like a sound strategy to me, centering around the extremely powerful expedition alakazam as the primary source of damage, and letting it use the Kadabra’s similarly powerful attack to help it along in a pinch, thanks to the interference of a few revelation aerodactyls. It should work more or less okay, from the pokemon standpoint. Except for one little mishap: You don’t want to play it until you have some feasible answer to espeon, which doesn’t involve speed or another evolution line. I’m going to take that to mean that your deck has no elms (which it doesn’t) and you want to keep it that way. All right, I’ll take your word for it, but that still leaves us without a solution to your espeon problem. By my calculations, espeon, with its eighty HP, drops after a single hit from Alakazam with syncroblast takes it to school and leaves it there for a solid beating, by which I mean it dies instantly. Alternately, while they’re building up to attack with their espeon, you can hit it with its own attack, doing more and more damage as the espeon gets more and more charged. And even failing all that, you can hit the ingrate with kadabra’s attack, for a solid 50 damage. So your best strategy for wiping the floor with some serious espeon butt is, ironically, a pokemon you already have. But only if you have three energy on alakazam, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that that’s not going to happen all that easily. So what do you do in the meantime? This is probably the crux of the problem as you saw it anyway, but I thought I’d clarify the problem for our viewers.

The obvious answer is to toss a nimble, hard-to-hit baby in front of it. But that’s not always going to work either. And it’s a temporary solution at best. So you need something more permanent to chuck in its way while you’re charging things up.

The second-most obvious answer is something that’s resistant to psychic and has free retreat. Murkrow sounds good. BUT, and this is a major but here, ONLY put him in this deck if at least 60% of the decks in your area are psychic. At least. Murkrow will mostly get in the way of how this deck runs normally, and you should probably just toss an expendable baby in the way of those espeons until they eventually die by the hands of your alakazams. Also note that you should never attach energy to this murkrow unless it’s a life-shattering emergency, because once you do, the espeons can attack it again.

For the sake of argument, though, I’m going to drop the elekids for murkrows. Again, disregard this change unless it really, REALLY needs to be made.

As for the rest of the deck, I’m going to drop a pokemon trader for another energy stadium. You need those psychics, and you need them yesterday. Drop a gold berry for another focus band, which should serve you well on a baby or two. Other than that, I don’t see too much I can do, unless you’d be willing to drop the aerodactyl line, which doesn’t strike me as being particularly likely, as they make the deck better. So I’ll just say this: This deck shouldn’t have any real problems. If it does, it’s too bad, but faulty strategy is probably at fault, rather than shoddy deck-building.

That is, if you’re not bending on the Elm issue. It totally needs four Elms. Speed is the answer to everything.

Nova’s Fix: