Silvally's Sanctuary

CountyGibbon798 Here is my quick take on using Silvally GX to the best of its ability. It's incredibly makeshift and going with instinct, if there are issues, especially obvious ones, please leave a comment. 

Yes this is a lot more consistent, however, there are two things that I'm kind of worried about:

- the deck is consistent but Kukui/Iris/Powerful buff isn't, what if the opponent runs consistent 280 HP pokemon?

- There are certian matchups that are unwinnable - Anything that walls GX, Cornerstone, etc. 

However, overall it is definitely an improvement to the 4x weakness build. I only use it for Kecleon because Kecleon's weakness damage is nowhere near enough. The deck also uses Silvally more if gibbon likes that.

I love this! I probably tunnel vision'd too much on the weakness thing, since 240 + modifiers can usually do the trick because most attackers are either basic/stage 1 or ex's or VSTARS. The outlier to this is Mew VMAX with it's annoying 310 HP, and a weakness that doesn't have a type memory, period.

The only "obvious" issue with this deck is that Powerful Colourless Energy doesn't work if Silvally has a type memory attached. Because the tool outright replaces Silvally's type with the memory's, it's no longer Colourless, and PCE loses its effect. I might replace it with Jet Energy, since I found switching without CIN Silvally or Float Stone to be difficult, especially with the very limited pool of DCE, even with Special Charge.

I'm also wondering if Fan Rotom + 100HP Type: Null is better, because when playing with my Kabutops build, getting 3 Type: Nulls at once is very useful, even if you don't have to play them all at once. It also looks like Kukui is cheating on his wife with Battle Compress again!

Overall, I think I'll keep working on a quad weakness build for fun, despite it being kind of sad all things considered. If I wanted to be more "competitive" about it, I'd probably use this one. Great job!

Yeah thanks! CountyGibbon798 

Ye thx for the advice about PCE I totally overlooked the fact that the type is replaced and is no longer a normal type. I would hold on Jet energy though. I have u-turn board for that purpose which works better since it can be searched via town store. You can even use blower on it it swap to a different pokemon if they try stalling. Might add another board in its place, since jet means that you cannot charge a silvally that turn which downright sucks for speed which is what the deck is supposed to capitalize on.

Fan rotom is actually good advice. The deck does need lots of silvally in play to activate the "sanctuary" of consistent draw. The only worry is bench space, but then again, bench probably isn't a problem since the common setup is 3+ silvally and maybe 2 supporting pokemon, which does leave one spot for rotom. 

Imma make some changes so its a convenient copy-paste for competitive gameplay.

Also ye finally managing to fit Kukui in a deck was crazy funny especially since I'm the Battle Compressor lmao (seems like you get it)

No issues with the PCE oversight. As you said, you made this on a time crunch so something like that is easy to miss. Another funny thing is that in the description you refer to me as a "Silvally Enthusiast," which is what I wanted to name my second YT channel after to fit the naming scheme of my primary one. Anyways yeah, I read your user description and got the Professor Burnet (SWSH Black Star Promos) reference immediately. Funny how this deck of all things is what puts Battle Compressor and Kukui together!

Siegislash Honestly though, those two are both very legitimate concerns, and I got a solutio... ...

No I don't. Honestly if the opponent somehow gets consistent lugias or regidragos more consistent than Kukuis, imma admit defeat but the chances are slim. Same with Walls, not worth it running stealthy hood just for this.

CountyGibbon798 Ye thats cool, having a YT channel is always fun, especially if the channel name describes you. I never got the hang of YT mostly because of time constraints since I'm still in school and on top of a lack of motivation. 

for Kukui and me being in the same deck and working together... ironic. I'd say.

I don't do much about Pokemon on it anyways, but I do reference it a fair amount.

https://www.youtube.com/@TwilightChomperEnthusiast/

Okay, so I tried this deck out to simulate starting hands (I have yet to play any real opponents), and this is working very well! Out of the 15 or so I tried yesterday, most of them were playable. I only had about 2-3 bricked/unplayable hands. Those usually involved drawing into 3+ tool cards at the start and no searching options. I don't think there's much that can be done about those possibilities, so I'll just accept it as a flaw within the Silvally archetype itself.

Against potential opponents, this is my idea on how things go:

Active Regidrago V: Difficult to KO turn one because of the required Clefairy in play, and your supporter HAS to be Wally if you want to swing for enough damage. It's definitely not impossible, but you have to dig really hard to get it.

Active Wobbuffet: Quite difficult! This deck absolutely HATES ability lock, but you can actually cheese your way out of it by using Psychic Memory to get your draw engine running again, since it can't turn off Psychic abilities. Losing Dedenne and Fan Rotom hurts, though (oh yes, I'm using the Fan Rotom build, and it feels 100x more consistent to get 3 Type: Nulls at once. Just don't bench them all instantly or else you'll run out of bench space).

Active Gouging Fire: Depends on how the opponent's first turn goes, it's very likely that it will be impossible to KO. If it has no booster capsule attached to bring its HP up to 290, then it's a lot easier. Even easier than Regidrago because you don't need Clefairy for it. If it does have the added HP, then it's impossible. That is because on t1, you have to use Wally to get Silvally, locking you out of all of your damage boosting supporters. When stuck in matchups where you can't get the t1 KO, I feel it will be more effective to pivot into a more defensive build while you set yourself up to take big Knockouts.

Active Mew V: Game's over. Can't hit it for weakness, and knowing Mew VMAX, it will vomit out something to plow through literally anything, like that deck always does.

I'll add more soon!

how do you simulate a deck

Urshifu2415328 There are a couple different ways. The first is to just print a proxy deck and play it, which is what I did. The others are to use the "test starting hand" button that's included with every deck on the site, but it doesn't really do much outside of the initial start. The other website is ptcgsim.online which requires a lot more interaction, but it can also work.

(When replying to me, please tag my name with an @, or else I won't be notifed. Thanks!)

CountyGibbon798 Glad you could make good use of this. Also from experience at unofficial locals, Mew is much more popular than ADP, however, people run ranger significantly more than Drapion, which really doesn't make sense, especially since Drapion absolutely destroys Mew while ranger doesn't completely destroy ADP, since most decks that run ADP have ADP as a supporting pokemon. (its 2024 if you still run ranger your decks are crippled asf, although I wouldn't recommend Drapion in most decks either)

I hope you're not too worried about Mew, but if you are, adding a Drapion V could be helpful but it does slow down your deck and cripples overall consistency, so me personally, its not worth it. 

If you replaced PCE with Leon or smth, then Gouging fire can be KOed. Or replace Iris with it as Iris isn't crazy consistent.

Yes the deck does hate ability lock, but I'd give a low B tier in terms of ability lock resistance, which means it does better than 55% of other decks. So this isn't exactly a large problem. Then again, Wobbuffet isn't crazy popular nowadays as most meta decks have a central strategy that doesn't involve ability lock. There are only two decks I can think of that actually use wobbuffet effectively. 

Yeah Drago and Fire are still both shitty matchups even if you do have a memory for them. Drago you would need clefairy and Fire is crazy consistent.

I wonder if PlusPower (Black & White) is worth using, since it's a +20 damage modifier on an item that can easily be tossed out to fix math. Can also be used in tandem with a supporter. Overall, I don't think it makes too much of a difference, but it's food for thought.

Anyways, since Mew is out of standard, printing a better counter for it (apart from the 3 we already "have") is probably not a priority for them. What would be interesting is a card with an ability or something that prevents the opponent from copying attacks, as it would destroy Regidrago in standard which is floating around BDIF, and it's probably a top 3 deck in Expanded. Mew is also a stupid braindead deck that abuses attack copying, so it would be affected as well. 

Since it's a pretty niche effect, I'd imagine it to be the ability for either a stage 1 single prize Pokémon, basic if they're generous, or on a basic 2-prizer with a decent attack. I'll be testing Silvally a lot more in the future, so I'll keep you posted on the results. 

CountyGibbon798 Good thinking with pluspower, it was my initial instinct when realizing that Kukui sometimes isn't enough in certain matchups, however, there are a couple reasons its not worth running:

- There is no possible way the deck can search for it so you're likely gonna get it at a useless time, and it would be wasted.

- The deck is pressed for consistency for a consistency based deck, so no need to make it worse.

- The deck doesn't have the space, any more cards would be a blow to consistency.

- Playing Leon instead of iris or kukui solves this without the need of an extra card so pluspower would be further down the list of possible options.

The prevent attack copy would ideally be something like "Pokemon (both yours and your opponent's) can only use attacks displayed on their active pokemon. (abilities or attacks that copy another pokemon's attacks cannot be used)" this could potentially be possible due to the rise of TMs and how popular cards like evolution and devolution are in standard (regidrago is crazy popular in standard too). Gonna be honest they don't even gotta be generous to make it a basic single prizer, since it wouldn't broken in any way. 

I was actually considering using Leon over Iris, since I feel I like +30 at all times vs +40/50 when the opponent is on the brink of already winning, or +10/20 when you're already in a more comfortable spot most of the time. That, and I already own a Leon card and didn't want to look for Iris. Anyways, after more testing, I feel like Legacy Energy could be scrapped for a better ACE SPEC like Computer Search or Dowsing Machine (Honestly I could go for the latter because of how much this deck TEARS through its contents, so getting an extra something back would be nice). In 90% of matches, I never end up attaching it out of wanting to go for DCE instead, and wasting a turn for potentially attacking I don't find is worth being less 1 fewer prize every once in a while. Too bad that Silvally is a GX, making it honestly the worst subset for Unintended Rule Box Restrction Bypassing (URBRB for short), as it can't benefit from neither Twin Energy nor Counter Energy, and is stuck with only having access to 4 DCE and the anti-synergistic Double Turbo Energy for its attaching options.

On the topic of the custom card, I would give it 80 HP, and most likely based on a small mythical Pokemon (let's say Celebi, since its whole shtick is time travel, including letting you copy attacks from prevolutions). 80 HP makes it unable to be called by Poffin, making it require a direct attention instead of a one-and-done to instantly shut down certain decks.

CountyGibbon798 Honestly just run another GandH maybe if you find yourself not finding energy, because you only need wally first turn, the engine should be running smoothly after the second. Ye I was skeptical of the energy at the beginning for the same reason, all of which you explained. Go with Dowsing machine. Its better for decks with consistent draw. 

In one match, I actually managed to make use of Wally in a tight situation by immediately setting one up against my imagnary opponent. I hope to actually test against some friends soon. I will add Dowsing Machine, which is fortunate since I picked one up just as I got back into my Expanded kick!

Guess what, I'm BACK with more stuff to say. Anyways, this deck has a major damage output issue when you're facing something it cannot hit for weakness, which leads into the main issue with the deck's strategy as a whole: it's too linear. By that, I mean that this deck can only do one thing, and it's swing for adequate damage at the best of times. When you're in a situation without that, you're completely helpless. While I feel it's unfair to ask so much of a card that has quite evidently been powercrept to the brink of oblivion, the idea still has promise and it just hasn't been fully realised yet.

The number one thing this deck needs is a backup plan, namely one that can run on DCE in order to not require any special strings. The first candidate that comes to mind is Bloodmoon Ursaluna ex, as it can swing for big damage (unfortunately just shy of the magic 280 when it comes to Expanded meta decks), with increasing leniency as the match progresses. The main issue with it is that it has a hefty retreat cost, and this deck has very limited switching options.  

Option 2, and the one that probably would require an entire deck revamp is Terapagos ex, where it can hit for large damage with a full bench (240 for one DCE if you have a full bench of 8, but in doing so you'd either need Sky Field or AZU). This could also synergize with a non-CEC Silvally, since its GX attack does 50 damage for each of your opponent's benched Pokémon, which could lead to a clean 300+ damage punish if they try to take advantage of the increased bench space. Its ability also turns all of your basics into pivots, which is a nice bonus.

So yeah, that's my next mini-analysis of this deck since I had the time to test it a bunch. I'll see if I can make a colourless box Silvally hybrid that works!