Flame Dragon

I'm kind of shocked how one sided this is against Snom. Snom was an internet darling when it was learned about. I guess people share a similar bias as I do against NFE Pokemon. That and just being an evil doggo doesn't mean Doom isn't still a good doggo.

Of the first batch of choices this is the hardest for me since I really like both Pokemon. I'm going to have to give it to Fros, but Bee is pretty great. 

Honestly not sure how this would look in a week or two. Could easily have missed something when reviewing, but type and Gen break down

Type

Rock: 3

Water: 5

Electric: 2

Grass: 2

Poison: 1

Psychic: 2

Fire: 3

Ground: 2

Flying: 2

Bug: 6

Normal: 0

Ghost: 2

Fighting: 3

Steel: 3

Ice: 2

Dragon: 3

Dark: 4

Fairy: 4

Gen

Gen 1: 1

Gen 2: 4

Gen 3: 4

Gen 4: 4

Gen 5: 2

Gen 6: 2

Gen 7: 7

Gen 8: 6

Gens 7 and 8 are easily overrepresented since this definitely has a correlation with "how badly do I want to breed a competitive version". Anyway, did anyone do the Favorite Pokemon quiz on Google? They're going to announce the results on Pokemon Day. It was broken down by Gen and I'm pretty sure my votes line up with them showing up in the above (it one a point of reference for me when I was working on the list)

Gen 1: Charizard

Gen 2: Scizor

Gen 3: Blaziken

Gen 4: Lucario

Gen 5: Galvantula

Gen 6: Greninja

Gen 7: Lycanroc

Gen 8: Corviknight

Pretty sure I'd have Alolan Ninetails as favorite of the Gen if it was allowed

I wrote this up a little while ago and figured I could post it here to see what people think.

I've always enjoyed building commander decks and the new Athreos really excited me as a fun build around to make a deck idea I've had really come together, mono-interaction. Since the card is still really fresh and not a lot of references exist to help with building him I thought I'd try my hand at writing up my thought process in putting together my take on what an Athreos deck could look like

-Why Athreos

As I said the starting line for the deck was to play as many interaction cards as possible. That would push me towards WB since it has the strongest interaction pieces. None of the existing commander options really felt like it would work for the deck though. Playing a million pieces of removal is good at shutting down what the opponents might be doing, but it doesn't do much to move you ahead. Thats where Athreos comes in. I feel Athreos does a lot to patch up that weakness since turning your removal into permanent Mind Control effects allows you to move further and further ahead as you push your opponents further and further back.

-The targeted removal spells 11

This was the obvious place to start since WB has some of the best “remove anything” answers. Despark, Anguished Unmaking, Vindicate, Utter End, and Generous Gift are the obvious go to removal spells since they are universal. Pass that White also offers Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile as hyper efficient removal options. Since I'm pushing the theme to 11 I'm rounding it out with Dismember, Go for the Throat, Victim of the Night and Reprisal. All of these have various limits on what they can answer, but their efficiency makes up for the restrictions.

-The wraths 9

One for one removal is powerful because it is often really cheap, but in commander you can still fall behind if that’s all you’re doing. Luckily WB also offers the best ways to clear a board of anything. Merciless Eviction, Austere Commander, and Cleansing Nova can all pick what you clear depending on what the board state demands while Hour of Revelation is a no questions “everything is gone” button. Tragic Arrogance also falls into the destroy everything group and while it might sometimes miss something important it will more often than not get rid of everything you want and unlike Hour you’ll still get to keep your best cards. To supplement this Toxic Deluge and Day of Judgement are cheaper clear options, Rout flexible, and Decree of Pain serves as both removal and draw.

-The creature based removal 18

One of the things that really makes Athreos powerful is that it not only lets you steal whatever it is you’re killing, it also lets you get even more value out of creature ETBs and death triggers. To keep on theme I decided to focus on creatures that removed things when they come in. If you aren't grinding your opponents out by using their stuff against them, getting multiple uses out of an ETB that destroys something should do the trick. The first group I want to highlight are the ones that can send themselves to the yard making it easier to get value out of them with Athreos. Bounty Agent, Mangara of Corondor, and Magus of the Disk are a turn delayed but represent pretty powerful repeated removal. Agent is the weakest, but it is cheap to set up and in a format of legendary creatures it will always have a target. Banewhip Punisher and Necrotic Sliver don't have a turn delay ( though Necrotic is mana intensive) and lastly Bone Shredder is just really easy to loop if you want to and still fine without Athreos. Shadowborn Demon can also eat himself depending on where you are in the game so it too can act as an easily repeatable removal source. Past that Ashen Rider, Angel of Despair, Meteor Golem and Cavalier of Dawn are more universal answers, Luminate Primordial provides a controlled culling and Ravenous Chupacabra and Big Game Hunter are just efficient as far as the creatures that eat other creatures go. Lastly Cavalier of Night and the edict trio (Fleshbag Marauder, Merciless Executioner, and Plaguecrafter) can kill off one of my creatures I’ve given gold to while also helping to deal with my opponents boards.

-The card flow 11

In order to keep killing stuff you need a steady stream of cards coming in and this is where Black shines. Phyrexian Arena, Necropotence, and Greed provide a constant stream of cards and Promise of Power gives you a nice burst for a pretty reasonable rate. Wretched Confluence gives less but it more versatile since it can be a removal spell or to just rebuy my removal creatures. Liliana, Dreadhorde General also provides draw that doubles as removal while also resetting my creatures with a gold counter. I’m playing Disciple of Bolas, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, and Diabolic Intent for similar reasons. Lastly Harvester of Souls rewards me even more for doing what my deck wants to do while Mind’s Eye is just kind of a catch all even if it is a little mana intensive.

-Mana Acceleration 10

Over all the deck needs a healthy amount of mana with a commander at 6 and a number of expensive cards I’m looking to get out. As such a healthy number of mana rocks is in order. None of them are honestly that surprising. Sol Ring, both Signets (Orzhov and Arcane), Talisman of Hierarchy, and Mind Stone are standard fair. I like Everflowing Chalice for the ability to have it make more mana later and Coalition Relic and Worn Power Stone can enable a turn 4 Athreos. Lastly Knight of the White Orchid and Solemn Simulacrum provide ramp that I can get a little more value out of with Athreos if I have nothing better to put a gold counter on.

-Miscellaneous 4

That covers the vast majority of the deck. All that remains are a handful of cards that don’t really fall into any of the above categories. Strionic Resonator lets me get more value out of Atheros. Dance of the Dead abuses the fact that he can return stuff even if they get exiled with Karmic Guide acting as a secondary way to keep rebuying my dead creatures and thanks to Echo plays very well with Athreos. Lastly Vedalken Orrery is right at home here since it gives me a lot more flexibility on how I use my removal since most is sorcery speed.

-Lands 36

The mana base is pretty standard and not worth delving much. Mostly whatever I felt was good but not super expensive. For utility lands Myriad Landscape and Temple of the False God can get Athreos out a little faster, Bojuka Bog is always nice to have, and Castle Locthwain is pretty free to include and provides a little bit of extra card flow in a pinch.

Put it all together and this is the deck list. 

https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/28-12-19-athreos-edh/

And in a bit over 1000 words that what is my initial take on building Athreos. I built the deck because I wanted to play a deck that was nothing but removal and adding Lili and Confluence into the count the deck has 40 cards that can interact with what my opponents are doing. So, mission accomplished. This is very likely too much though, but for the start line I’d rather start high and cut the weaker stuff as I play test and patch whatever holes the deck might have. Over all though, I think this is a solid place to start. The pillars of any deck are three things; mana, interaction, and card flow and this deck certainly does a good job checking all those things off. At the very least you should always be ready to answer whatever it is your opponent does. 

I know nothing about Pioneer, but if Rhino just not good enough for this type of deck? I know I really liked the look of Abzan Megamorph when that was thing so 

Vigilantes is well worth a read. The original cast is fun and the stuff with the MHA characters has mostly just been cute little stuff showing them before we meet them in the main series. It was only with the recent chapters that it went from "cute background stuff that doesn't add a ton" to "you really want to check this out for the full impact". As for it ending, given its pacing it likely has another year or two left so it will be around for a bit longer still. 

Part of the focus issue is that half of the year was spent with the villains. The joint training did try to give a little moment to all of the 1-A kids at least, though obviously the core half dozen or so got the major focus.

So, let's see if I can't bring this back. For those that read the most recent chapter, I HIGHLY recommend looking at the Vigilantes spinoff series chapter 59 to the end of the flashback. Will make the recent chapter have 100x more impact.

Hit me

I only really care about fully evolved Pokemon since those are what we spend most of our time with so I'm only doing those. Also makes it a fair bit cleaner to read. 

Coviknight and Zacian are my two favorites. Basing it mostly on design, but competitive builds factor in. The fish for example would have been C tier, but its stats and move pool are both great so it shot up. No idea how I feel about the fossils. I love them, but the designs are still ???? so thats how I classified them.

1 minute ago, LordCowCow said:

It's funny because the "I'm weird so I want to keep it all in one place" point probably resonates with me more than anything else.

My thesis on humanity is that we are are emotional creatures that play at being logical. Even if the draw back of doing something is relatively negligible, if it feels wrong we don't do it. Our emotions lead are choices far more than we are willing to admit. Like, my friend offered to rip himself off and trade me a $30 at the time, now even more expensive, MTG card for like $5 of cards from me. But one of mine had a special prerelease stamp so I didn't want to part with it even though it basically has zero real value to me. Basically what I'm saying is humans are dumb. 

Anyway, as is I'm leaving the living dex in Gen 7 (still is missing some stuff anyway) and it isn't like it's hard to make a bunch of stuff I don't care about with Ditto that I can send forward to Gen 8. It adds more steps which is annoying but I use breeding as a way to kill time listening to podcasts so I don't mind. 

1 minute ago, LordCowCow said:

That's fair but as far as competitive goes the competitive is more limited too now right? So you'd still be able to breed the Pokemon that will be in the competitive. Unless I'm misunderstanding.

The limited competitive doesn't really matter. So long as I liked it I'd breed a competitive version. Because of how I was breeding my living dex I also ended up with competitive versions of stuff I didn't especially like and some of those grew on me too. Not to mention I still had a number of old Pokemon I wanted to breed and I'm not sure which of them I can and which I can't. I'm also weird and don't want to move my living dex unless I move it all together and as things stand I'd have to break it up which I'm not willing to do (again, because I'm weird). I just liked having accumulated basically every resource in the game and being able to do what I want when I want how I want. 

3 minutes ago, LordCowCow said:

To be fair...what do they usually do when they're in the main game? I'm not saying everyone of course, and it sucks some people lose out on something they enjoy doing in the game, but I notice there are people who want it just to put them in the box which feels like the same thing as home (except possibly less if home has things you can do with the mons, like play with them or something)

You can still use the Pokemon if you leave them in boxes. Personally, I wanted to breed stuff. I made my living dex such that it would let me breed competitive versions of basically anything and not only would I lose that option if I put them there and not leave them in Gen 7, I also lose access to all the easy egg moves I've breed around. Losing total access to the Pokemon isn't worth some minor play function imo.

3 minutes ago, LordCowCow said:

From what I've seen they intend to rotate which mons are in future games.

I wish we had more info about Home but there were implications it'll be more than storage.

My hope is for minigames or pokemonamie like stuff.

They've said the Pokemon that didn't make it in here can still be in later games. It doesn't fix all the issues though. Rotation could still see Pokemon missing out on whole Gens. Not to mention it still limits which Pokemon you can use with other. And in the end people don't like have the limits placed on them after 20 years.

My pie in the sky ask is it has a battle simulator that keys off the Pokemon you have stored. The UI will be a lot more simple and they can use simpler sprites instead of models. Basically just Pokemon Showdown. It would also be cool if you could breed. This is super greedy though. I'm expecting you're right and it is just mini game, but that still begs the question why I'd put old Pokemon in there if they'll just be trapped for however long it takes for them to show up in the main games again.

I will freely admit the dex cuts are a lot larger than I was expecting. That said, having seen the new Pokemon they all seem really cool and it looks like a lot of them are really strong. While I'm super sympathetic to the people boycotting over the national dex thing and while I hate the fact we lost so much, it isn't enough to keep me from playing the games. The look really strong and I'm hopeful Home will in some way make up for the national dex not being in the game proper. Seriously, what is Home even suppose to do if move the majority of Pokemon into it right now will just trap them.

We have no arrived at the prerequisite flashback portion of the arc. Thinking about it I think every major arc has had one. While the small arcs don't have them the only major stretch I can think of without one is really the stuff when the crew separated but that still ends with Luffy's full backstory. Also, god damn Oden might be the most "larger than life" character in One Piece. 

One of my favorite little bits from the recent chapters is learning Garp never became an Admiral because he hates the Celestial Dragons. Like, it really makes me happy. Learning about Rocks was something else too.

I think my favorite thing about this is how it shows GF does know what they are doing when they make shots for competitive play. The abilities, items, and move all are stuff I can see being used if they find a home (and the move if it has decent power).

I'm really happy regional Pokemon are back. They are really cool and Weezing looks amazing. Curious what the national dex would do with Obstagoon. For all intents and purposes they are similar to past evos added to old Pokemon so my guess is they'll be somewhere in the Galar part of the dex. Pikaclone is interesting. Curious exactly how the ability works.

All the people that have wanted an asshole rival seem to have finally gotten what they wanted. Marnie looks pretty goth. Team Yell basically confirms the leak.

I agree on Yooka-Laylee. I played and 100%ed it so I got what I wanted, but I know it was pretty mixed. I've never played MN9 but 5/10 seems generous from what I've heard. Honestly, I'm just happy we finally have a huge success.

(yes I know a lot of Kickstarter games go to be praised, but those were the 3 headliners and only 1 really got there) 

So, that back story. The current arc is looking to be nearing the end and I'm looking forward to reuniting with class 1-A, but man was this a spectacular arc.  

Guess I'm waiting then. Shame since the game really does look great and of the big Kickstarter games from several years back this is the only one that got such a warm reception. 

So, does anyone know if the Switch version is still trash? I really want to pick up the game, but the only way I have to play is Switch and it didn't come out of the gate too hot.

Since no one brought it up Gigantamaxing is SUPER narrow. Not only is it limited in game to gyms and raids it has an additional restriction. For example the Alcremie you catch/evolve might not be able to Gigantamax. Honestly this seems like a needless restriction and makes me care a LOT less if Maxing Pokemon doesn't get brought back in future Gens. While that is certainly AN upside, it isn't really a good thing. Side from that I'm curious what exactly it does. The descriptions we have for them read like they get stat buffs, but we also know that it unlocks special moves that seem like the special Z-Moves from last Gen. Time will tell. The forms look pretty cool. Though assuming Giga is locked to fully evolved Pokemon I'm sad the turtle won't evolve. 

As for the Pokemon

Alcremie looks cute. Going with what I said about assuming it is fully evolved  which is kind of a shame, but I'm not sure how you could evolve and keep it looking adorable.

Rolycoly looks cool and I'm excited to see how it might evolve. Steampower is an interesting ability that doubles speed when hit with a water or a fire move.

Duraludon is a breedable Steel/Dragon and I am SO happy about that. Really hope it evolves, but it starts out giant some I'm not sure if it will or not. Both abilities suck but maybe it will get a move to make them suck less? At least it has its HA.

6 hours ago, Sleepy said:

Hmm Dynamax being a multiplayer event that needs 4 people, and some Pokemon stated to only appear as Dynamax, makes me think even within the Galar dex, there's gonna be a number of pokemon one simply can't get, and it'll be a very bad mechanic once the rest of the world moves on to a newer gen and one wants to revisit the game.... Seems like a lot of the wild area is gonna become useless pretty quickly. Not one of their best mechanics I have to say.

They've confirmed you can do Dynamax stuff solo. 

4 hours ago, LordCowCow said:

Meanwhile I'd rather have the new models. To me I feel if I want to use those others I'd just replay the old games. Which is something I often do anyway.

Personally I get new games for new experiences.

Not to mention in the other games they have limited amount you can catch during normal gameplay anyway. Transferring them from other games to me feels like its taking away from the game.

I get it from a collector standpoint but in that case I don't get why where the collection is matters. They don't delete the previous games.

Plus from what I hear about Home you can play with the Pokemon in ways you can't in the games which sounds pretty nice.

Sorry I seem to have fallen into a rant lol

Even if the old Pokemon were transferable to the games, you'd still get a new experience. Home isn't coming out well over a month after SwSh launches. Late January is the earliest I see it coming out. Meaning you'd have had 2 months where you couldn't use old Pokemon anyway. Also, while I doubt they could do this with home, Gens 4 and 5 also had the transfer function locked to the post game. This also just feels like an argument that ignores the actual point anyway. Most people don't want the transfer function to use for actual main game stuff. Even if they did Home is still allows you to send over like half the existing Pokemon. I can still breed and train Pokemon a team in Galar and send it to a new game. This change doesn't stop people from cheesing it. 

I want to play with my Pokemon in Galar, not Alola. I want to have my old Pokemon take advantage of the new additions Gen 8 brings. I'm missing like 7 Pokemon from having a finished living Pokedex. I made it with the intent of moving the whole thing to the new games as they come out and I was excited of seeing all of that work on my Switch. I'm a Pokemon breeder, I wanted to breed updated competitive versions of all my Gen 6 stuff in Gen 8 while also breeding all the stuff I never did in Gen 7. 

The only thing we know about Home is that Pokemon will have "an active role" in it. We don't know if that function is going to be something that isn't in the games. And what ever the role is though it needs to be substantial since sending a Pokemon into Home that isn't in Gen 8 is literally sending it into the void since it is trapped there for the timing being.

2 hours ago, Sleepy said:

I heard they over-achieved the models back when they transitioned from gen 5 into XY so that they'd be usable in future games, and that they pretty much cover the requirements for usage in the Switch with walk cycles and everything. I don't doubt they'd still need work to accommodate for the new features Sword & Shield might have, but it's still a huge amount of work pre-made for them right there. Ideally they should have updated their assets when Sun & Moon came around and would only need the textures to update there. I don't think after all that that it would have been unavoidable to sacrifice part of the Pokedex in favor of the experience.

If Pokemon Home is gonna use them, I would imagine it'd be some sort of evolved version of the island you could visit and collect jelly beans at, maybe with more minigames and stuff like the Pokathlon of HGSS or contests of some kind.... or it'd be amusing to see an Animal Crossing esque game but with Pokemon, though it is only my guesses here, but tbh the better whatever we get at Pokemon Home ends up being, the more people will probably ask why the resources to do that weren't directed into the main game...
 

I honestly don't know anything about programming, but I imagine the jump from the 3DS to the Switch meaning even if they can use some of the old work, it likely won't even be half of what they'd need to do. We'd need over 910 Pokemon done to maintain the same competitive options that we have in Gen 7 and that is a lot of work assuming only like 350-400 of them are going to be in SwSh.  

As much as I'd like for it to not be the case, yea, I can't see the "active role" we've been promised for Home-stuck to be all that substantial. Though saying they should have been spending those resources elsewhere feels disingenuous. In all likelihood a different group is working on home. And assuming it is pretty minor taking that out of Home wouldn't have made much of a difference for SwSh.