Let's play Who's that Pokemon?

wugapodes wugapodes Premium Unlimited 8,611 views Jul 15, 2023 Updated Jul 15, 2023
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Deck Primer

Win condition is getting 35 cards in hand and using the Unown ability, and the draw engine is making your opponent play "Who's that pokemon".

Blaine's Quiz Show (Guess pokemon from move): Declaring "Call for Family" is a toss up given all the cards with that attack. The attacks "tail smack", "tail slap", and "tail whip" are all on different cards in here and likely confusing.

Oranguru's Sage's Riddle (Guess type): Colorless is an obvious guess, especially given the type distribution of this deck,

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Win condition is getting 35 cards in hand and using the Unown ability, and the draw engine is making your opponent play "Who's that pokemon".

Blaine's Quiz Show (Guess pokemon from move): Declaring "Call for Family" is a toss up given all the cards with that attack. The attacks "tail smack", "tail slap", and "tail whip" are all on different cards in here and likely confusing.

Oranguru's Sage's Riddle (Guess type): Colorless is an obvious guess, especially given the type distribution of this deck, so avoid colorless pokemon for this riddle. Dragon types are ace in the hole unless you've played or shown your dragons. Use the mix of energy cards to clue your opponent into the fact that you have a lot of different types making this whole thing harder.

Cedric Juniper (Guess height from pokemon name): No one knows this, only way is if they have the card or a copy is already on the field. One trick is that the two dragonairs in this deck actually have different heights.

You can get about 5 cards per turn with a combinatino of these, giving you 35 cards in hand around turn 6. There are additional draw supporters to help you dig and defend: worker discards hostile stadiums, Avery clears benches, Caitlin cycles your massive hand. Cinccino or Sordward & Shielbert help bring supporters back out of the discard pile but depends on your opponent. Nest ball gets whatever basic pokemon you need onto your bench.

Only basic pokemon worth using nest ball on are Oranguru, Dratini, Pyukumuku, and Unown. The rest are there for holding and making your opponent guess.

Main Deck (60 cards)

Pokémon (28)
1 Dragonite sm9-119
$8.60 Dragon 160
3 Oranguru sm11-182
$0.20 Colorless 120
1 Tauros sm11-164
$0.25 Colorless 110
1 Dragonair sm11-150
$0.48 Dragon 100
3 Cinccino sm4-86
$0.23 Colorless 90
1 Dragonair sm1-95
$0.30 Dragon 90
1 Minccino swsh1-145
$0.15 Colorless 70
1 Nickit swsh3-112
$0.05 Darkness 70
1 Nickit swsh35-46
$0.16 Darkness 70
3 Pyukumuku sm10-53
$4.47 Water 70
1 Salandit swsh5-27
$0.22 Fire 70
Pokémon (28)
2 Dratini sm1-94
$0.24 Dragon 60
1 Minccino bw11-104
$0.55 Colorless 60
1 Minccino swsh9-124
$0.17 Colorless 60
1 Minccino xy10-86
$0.36 Colorless 60
1 Salandit sm75-13
$0.29 Fire 60
4 Unown sm8-91
$0.99 Psychic 60
1 Alolan Diglett sm8-122
$0.25 Metal 50
Trainer (22)
2 Avery swsh6-130
$0.16
4 Blaine's Quiz Show sm11-186
$0.32
3 Caitlin swsh6-132
$0.15
4 Cedric Juniper bw11-110
$0.28
3 Nest Ball sv1-181
$0.22
3 Sordward & Shielbert swsh5-135
$0.11
3 Worker swsh12-167
$0.03
Energy (10)
2 Basic Water Energy sv2-279
$10.34 Water
1 Darkness Energy sm3-168
$54.33 Darkness
1 Fire Energy sm1-165
Fire
1 Grass Energy sm1-164
Grass
2 Lightning Energy bw1-108
$4.46 Lightning
1 Psychic Energy sm1-168
Psychic
2 Reversal Energy sv2-192
$0.24

Card Types

Pokémon 28
Trainer 22
Energy 10

Energy Types

Colorless 11
Dragon 5
Psychic 4
Water 3
Darkness 2
Fire 2
Metal 1

Energy Curve

Distribution of attack energy costs in your deck

0 Energy 1 attack
2.3% of attacks
1 Energy 29 attacks
29
65.9% of attacks
2 Energy 5 attacks
5
11.4% of attacks
3 Energy 8 attacks
8
18.2% of attacks
4 Energy 1 attack
2.3% of attacks

Opening Hand Probability Calculator

Calculate the probability of drawing specific cards in your opening hand

%
Probability of drawing at least of in your opening hand

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Comments

PlasmaFists11 avatar
PlasmaFists11

I get the guessing thing for Cedric, but why not just play a Hop clone or something? (Barry, Friends in Sinnoh, etc.)

wugapodes avatar
wugapodes Premium

Think of the deck as like a test: the more material you need to study for, the harder the test will be overal. Cedric is included not just for its draw effect but because it creates a threat that makes all of the "quiz" cards stronger.

The deck has an obvious hard counter in Iono (Paldea Evolved) , but it has a soft counter in Lavender Town (Team Up) and Polteageist (Sword & Shield) which reveal your hand (or if you play against the same opponent a lot who has time to learn your deck as well as you). Opponent asks to see your hand and gets to study your cards before you quiz them on your next turn: what is their strategy? If Sage's Riddle is in play, they study the types in your hand. If they see you have a Quiz Show, learn the names of all the pokemon in hand and try to notice any that have duplicate or confusing move names. If they see Cedric, learn the heights of every pokemon in hand.

Any one of those, alone, isn't all that hard. Combine 2 and it gets harder. Combine all 3 and your opponent needs to memorize your entire hand down to the fine print, and by having Cedric in the deck you always create the threat that you drew into Cedric after the reveal which makes the reveal strategy even harder.

So a Hop clone would be a more consistent draw 3, but it would actually weaken the draw 4s by making the "test" easier to study for. They also would do less defensively compared to Worker which counters Lavender Town or Avery which makes a deep bench more costly for decks that rely on abilities.

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