Vileplume

So, what's the deal with this Vileplume? Isn't that the thing that stops Items? Sadly, no. We're not getting a reprint of that monster of a card right after it was rotated. This Vileplume has 140HP, a Fire Weakness, Water Resistance, 3 retreat, another terrible attack. At least it's better then Dusknoir's. The Ability is of course what we're here to look at. Allergy Panic states that all Pokemon in play have X4 weakness instead of X2. It's similar in some ways to the Item locking one, in that both players get a horrible defect, but the Vileplume player is gonna be more prepared for it. So, let's be that guy who's using Vileplume, and prepare for your opponent having X4 weakness. So let's take a look at some of the top decks right now, and see what they're weak too, then we'll try to find the best Pokemon for each of those types. Eelektrik is of course, weak to fighting. The main attackers of Eelektrik usually consist of Raikou (Fighting weakness), Mewtwo (psychic), Zekrom (fighting), Rayquaza EX (dragon), Rayquaza (dragon), and Bouffalant (fighting). Next, we have Darkrai decks (this includes straight Darkrai and Hydreigon). Which is weak to fighting, Sableye is weak to nothing. Terrakion is weak to grass. Hydreigon is weak to Dragon, Shaymin is weak to fire, and Cresselia EX is weak to psychic, some of the time. Keldeo Blastoise is next up for no apparent reason. Both of them are weak to grass, and the occasional Kyurem is weak to Metal. For the fighting decks, Landorus is weak to Water, Terrakion is still weak to grass, as is his EX counterpart. Oh right, there's that deck with the Tornadus EX and them there First Ticket's that everyone forgot about. He's weak to lightning, and Mewtwo is still weak to psychic. And to add on one more, Empoleon is weak to Lightning. So, I'm sure you've figured this out even before I tolled you this. But the top decks are weak to Fighting and Dragon, those decks being Darkrai and Eelektrik. Grass seems to be another popular one, Psychic is always a prime target for weaknesses, Lighting also has popped up there a few times too. Water and Metal as had a few appearances as well. First, we'll look at a good fighting Pokemon. That should be easy, Landorus EX, Terrakion EX, and Terrakion are all very good at hitting for weakness, but since they'll be having a X4 weakness, 90 damage is pretty pointless, so Terrakion's out. Terrakion EX hits for 50, which with X4 weakness is enough to one shot anything that's weak to fighting. Landorus EX has the lowest energy cost, but Hammerhead isn't doing significant damage to fighting weak things, only 120, Land's Judgment does enough, but has some pretty high energy costs. Next up is Dragon, Rayquaza, Garchomp and Rayquaza EX are are 3 contenders. While Rayquaza EX does enough to one shot all of them for just 2 energy (that's 2 total, not 2 you have to discard), but since it's also weak to Dragon, other Dragons will one shot it for 2 prizes, and the only point of using him in a Vileplume deck is to attack Dragons, so the X4 Weakness will usually hinder Rayquaza EX more then other Dragon types. Garchomp seems to have the perfect attack, but it's a stage 2, 2 stage 2's just to hit Dragons for weakness isn't going to be worth it. Especially when we have a much better Dragon type, Rayquaza DV. He does 40 for 1, which is very close to one shoting every Dragon, but a PlusPower can fix that. He also doesn't have the drawback of being an EX, being a stage 2, or needing more then 1 energy. Rayquaza is the clear winner for this type. For grass, we have Shaymin EX, Virizion EP and Virizion NV. Shaymin after only one prize can take out anything that's X4 weak to it, but you don't want to be using Shaymin in the early game, it also can't start doing this until your opponent knocks something out. Virizion EP can heal itself for 120 HP

after attacking a Pokemon that has X4 weakness to Grass, but it only has 100HP, so that's not going to be very helpful. Virizion NV has Double Draw to help out with slow starts, or when you can't get the right Pokemon out. Leaf Wallop is a PlusPower away from one shotting every Grass weak Pokemon, and can one shot Blastoise without it. But if you can get 2 Leaf Wallops in a row, then it won't be needing PlusPowers anymore. Next up, the Psychics. We have the infamous Mewtwo EX, Sigilyph, and Meloetta. Mewtwo would be stupid, since it also get's the X4 weakness, which is never good when the only thing you'll be using it against is other Mewtwo's. Sigilyph is pretty good at dealing with other Psychic weak's, especially since most of them can't hit Sigilyph back for X4 weakness. But it does take 3 energy to start attacking with it. Meloetta can one shot things with X4 Psychic weakness if that Pokemon has 2 energy on it, and the X4 weakness really won't effect it since it dies in one hit to every Psychic Pokemon anyways. For lightning, they all really suck. There's Zekrom BW and Emolga from NV. Zekrom does only do 20 on average, but he does do more if he can take a hit from something. Emolga does 30 for 1 if there's a lightning Pokemon on your bench. If you want to try and fit in a stage 1, we also have Zebstrika ND and Jolteon. Zebstrika with a PlusPower can KO any lightning weak Pokemon (except a Tornadus EX with Evioltie and Aspertia City Gym), while providing some very good disruption with Item lock. Jolteon can do 60 for 1 if you discard a lightning energy. For Water and Metal, we've got Basculin ND and Kyurem EX for water, and Cobalion NV for Metal. Basculin does 40 for 1, but only if the defending Pokemon already has damage on it. It can do actual damage, though. So all you need is one Bite, then a Bared Fangs to KO a Water weak Pokemon with X4 weakness. Kyurem EX does 60 for 3, so if you really hate Basculin, he's the next best thing. Cobalion does some decent damage to Kyurem's with X4 weakness, it should one shot them with Enregy Press every time with the X4 weakness. Since there were only 2 types left to cover I'll just give you a few Pokemon for them as well. Fire can use Victini with V-Create. And Dark types can use Darkrai EX. Yes, are Dark types are that bad other then Darkrai. I guess there's Bisharp NV too. Now for the part where we make the deck. I think the best way to make a deck with this guy is to just put some of the best attackers of the right types to beat the top decks in either your personal meta, or just overall. Here is the deck I fashioned up. 2-1-3 Vileplume 3 Landorus EX 2 Rayquaza DV 2 Virizion NV 1 Basculin ND 1 Meloetta BC 4 Catcher 4 PlusPower 3 Switch 3 Rare Candy 3 Ultra Ball 2 Heavy Ball 1 Super Rod

4 Juniper 4N 3 Cheren 2 Skyla 1 Computer Search 4 Prism 2 Blend WLFM 3 Fighting 2 Grass The attackers I chose for this deck were Landorus EX, Rayquaza, Virizion, Basculin, and Meloetta. Landorus is fantastic for some early game pressure, as well as a great Pokemon to take down the 2 tops decks, Darkrai and Eelektrik. It's also your backup strategy in a way, if your opponent doesn't have any Pokemon that are weak to yours, you use Landorus, since it's your best attacker assuming weakness won't be involved. The reason I chose Landorus over Terrakion EX is mostly because Landorus only needs 1 energy to attack. It's also better as the backup plan I talked about earlier. I pretty much already talked about the attackers, so let's just get straight to trainers. Since most of your attackers only do 40 damage, rather then 50, which is just shy of knocking out EX Pokemon with there respective weakness, PlusPower allows you to get those 1 shots. 4 is very helpful to have, it makes it more likely you'll have it in your hand when you need it. A lot of your Pokemon have high retreat, so I included 3 Switch, which is standard. For the search, I have 3 Ultra Ball and 2 Heavy Ball. Ultra Ball is good is the all purpose search card, and can discard Pokemon that aren't going to be hitting for X4 weakness during the game. As I said earlier, a lot of your Pokemon have high retreat, so I included Heavy Ball. Landorus EX, Rayquaza, even Vileplume have 3 retreat, so Heavy Ball would seem like a good fit for this deck, would it not? The Super Rod is just for emergencies. The supporters are 4 Juniper, 4 N, 3 Cheren, and 2 Skyla. I've found that Skyla is usually better run in lesser amounts, 3 just seems to much for me for such a situational card. The energy line is 4 Prism, 2 Blend WLFM, 3 Fighting and 2 grass. Prism is great for substituting all types of energy. 3 of your 5 attackers use the WLFM energy, so that's why that's there. I chose Fighting and Grass energy since Landorus and Virizion are your best starters, and the basic energies makes it more likely you'll get a turn 1 hammerhead, or turn 2 Leaf Wallop. So, how exactly did my testing turn out...? Meh, it's alright. I often just found problems getting out the correct attackers for there respective defending Pokemon. And some of the attackers just used to much energy to stream consistently, mostly Virizion, but the deck would get wrecked by Keldeo otherwise. I also rarely was able to get off a Shred or Land's Judgment, not so much Land's Judgment. I guess you could count Meloetta's Echoed Voice, but I never tried setting that up because it's a pretty bad attack. I would definitely not recommend it for Cities, but it's probably above the league of other fun league decks. I also tested out one more list of the deck, but I'm not going to go into much detail, since I haven't really tested it much. It's basically a Fighting variant with Vileplume as more of a tech. Here's the list. 2-1-3 Vileplume 3 Landorus EX 2 Terrakion EX

2 Terrakion 1 Ho-Oh EX 4 Catcher 4 PlusPower 4 Switch 3 Rare Candy 3 Heavy Ball 2 Ultra Ball 4 Juniper 4N 3 Cheren 2 Skyla 1 Computer Search 11 Fighting 1 Grass The Ho-Oh and grass energy are in case a Shaymin EX decides to unleash hell on your Terrakion's, Landorus wouldn't be very helpful since Shaymin has fighting resistance. I really can't say how good it is. I think I played 2 game's against a Blastoise/Keldeo deck, and went 11.