Supporter based Draw Engine!

Yesh, no Unown G, but Machamp is still legal. No more SP?

SP is still here, quit whining.

Machamp (Dickhead) is still legal but not splashable anymore since there is no Roseanne's, also no speed since there is no Claydol.

Just worry about Sableyes more. This happened to me in Regs-
- I open with nothing, mul, he draws a card.
- I still open with nothing, mul, he draws again.
- I FINALLY got 1 Ralts to start with (60 HP)
- He starts with Sableye.
- Top decks the Special Dark and drop a Crobat G for game.

So now that this is actually happening here's some serious thoughts as I try to build decks with this fucked up setup.

1. It's obvious as fuck but no Roseanne's Research is a big fuckin' deal. There is no other sane way to tutor Energy cards. You could get away with a deck with only like 10 energy in it in the fastest of SP decks. Now there is NOTHING but draw engines to help you so you need 20+ in pretty much any deck that isn't Gyarados. Cards like Interviewers Questions or even basic refreshers like Oak's New Theory go a bit of the way to help you out but you still need an energy dense deck to use either. You'll quickly see how fast your deck space dwindles when you only have 36 card slots to play with because you need so much energy.

2. The death of Claydol isn't that big. Just add more Uxie and supporters and you get basically the same combing functionality with a modest decrease in deckspace in decks that would traditionally use it. Faster decks obviously never even touch it so they don't really change!

The most effective replacement for Roseanne is just dropping more energy into your deck, adding some interviewers q's and if you run an SP deck with multiple basic energy types Energy Exchanger will come in handy

It's annoying but a bearable rotation.

In terms of what decks will be effective, it's obvious that SP is still a motherfucking beast. They only really lose Unown G, and they keep all the cards that make them effective. They also have the benefit of having the only reliable Energy search option in Cyrus' Conspiracy.

Non-SP decks are a lot slower with Claydol out of the format. Sure, Uxie is here to stay and there's draw supporters such as PONT, but Claydol is honestly a card that cannot be truly replaced. Lock decks will probably be the more effective non-SP deck, seeing as they now get Vileplume UD for Trainer-locking goodness. Faster decks like Kingdra or Jumpluff don't get anything new to compensate for the loss for Claydol, so until Magnezone Prime is released, non-SP decks will be much less effective.

part 2 of above post

as for your point about claydol maybe i just play fast but a card you can't reliably tutor or have 4 of is a card you can't build a deck around. claydol lets you cycle through your deck to what you really need, but i always found it more reliable to stock up on the cards for your strategy than to make a bit of everything and cycle through. basically my counter to that is "you should have been faster anyway"

3. roseanne being gone tempts people to just add pokemon collector in it's place but it's a lot less simple than that. You need a high volume (3+) to get them early game when you really need them to start setting up, but unlike Roseanne they don't have late game help in the form of energy tutoring. you basically need to decide if you need "4 or 0" collectors in your deck, though keep in mind you can stock up on pokemon communcation (which should get a lot better in the format with decks needing to run more bases) and use it in tandem with collector

imo a much better replacement than "pokemon collector" is call energy, which preserves the same "energy and optional pokemon" dealyo and seriously who attacks t1 anyway

sp's will take a bigger hit than you think simply because their deck space has gone down 5 or 6 cards, so they can't tech their way out of all their problems anymore

4. using cyrus's conspiracy in a non sp deck makes a lot of sense just because a free supporter plus energy is helpful any time in the game

I've just been using Cyrus's Conspiracy + a lot of drawing to get my energies. I don't know if its the most plausible but it gets the job done. Sort of.

20+ energy is still crazy <_<

10 is good. Also I think Cyrus is still not a great play in other decks, unless you are playing staraptor FB. Just make that another energy, and it won't use your supporter of the turn. I do like Interviewer's Q though, grabs DCEs like the bomb.