Deck Review – zoruacards24 - Yanmega Zoroark Donphan

3-3 Donphan Prime (2 Phanpy with the body and 1 Flail)

3-3 Yanmega Prime
2-2 Zoroark (Zorua being Mc Donald)
2 Cleffa
1 Tyrogue
1 Reshiram

Total pokemon = 20

4 PlusPower
2 Junk Arm
1 Switch
3 Pokemon Comm.
2 Reversal
1 flower shop lady

1 Juniper
3 Judge
2 Collectors
4 CopyCat
1 Twins
2 PONT
2 Seeker
1 Elms

Trainer/Supporter total = 29

2 DCE
2 Darkness
7 Fighting

Energy = 11

Strategy

The main starter is cleffa to ‘eeeeek’, shuffle in and draw a new hand of 6.  Tyrogue allows you to potentially get the donk on your opponent’s cleffa.  Your first attacker is yanmega, who can attack without energy as long as your hand size is the same as your opponent, which you can easily do with judge and copycat.  Donphan and zoroark are secondary attackers.  Donphan is a heavy hitter that can easily take out most lightning pokemon, like magnezone and zekrom.  It’s weak to water, which could be a problem with kingdra being a popular pokemon in this format.  The one reshiram in the deck is to reduce the base damage of kingdra from 60 to 20, ensuring that donphan survives.  Since you run double colorless energy, you can potentially use it as an attacker as well.

Pokemon Analysis

I would include 3 phanphy with the pokebody.  With an energy attached, it won’t be affected by an earthquake from donphan, which could prevent snipe decks from taking it out in one hit.  I would also replace the zorua from mcdonalds with the set zorua.  That extra 10 HP will ensure that your opponent can’t get an easy snipe (example – one spray splash from kingdra and one linear attack from yanmega).  I would recommend reducing your line of cleffa down to one.  If you have a manaphy, I would also try swapping it out.  Manaphy will decrease the chances of you getting donked by your opponent.  However, if you’re struggling with the hand size of 5 instead of 6, I’d just return to the cleffa.

Energy analysis

Change your dark energy to special darkness.  That will allow you to one shot reshiram and zekrom, and you never know when a little extra damage will help out.   I would run 3 DCE if you can find the room for it.

Trainer/Supporter Analysis

Increase your number of collectors to 3 to ensure that you can draw into one early game.  Since you run 3 donphan, adding another switch in case they’re reversal’d up is necessary.  I would also increase your number of junk arm to 3, possibly 4, so that you can reuse as many trainers as possible.  Increase your reversal to 3 as well since a lot of games in this format seem to rely on being able to drag up your opponents benched pokemon. 

To make room for these increases, I would decrease your line of pluspower to 2.  With the special dark, you’ll be doing the extra damage that you’d typically want the pluspower for.  I would also drop the seeker.  While it can help you, it’s also going to help out your opponent.  The deck’s speed and ability to run to the bench should ensure that you don’t need them.  If you need to drop anything else, I would suggest the PONT.  It’s not necessary since you run the judge and copycat, and you can always increase your judge to 4.

Overall

This is an extremely strong deck!  Since you’re doing to worlds, I think it’s the best play, but there will be lots of other variations of this deck to look out for.  Be sure you get lots of practice in the mirror match. Speed and reversals are what will win the mirror match. Hope this helps and good luck at worlds!