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The Cleaner:
A Status Effects Analysis
By the I-Man
(As seen on WizPog!!!)
ChinoMoreno: "The cleaner strategy is flawed. You
do not go into a battle saying, "I'm gonna KO 3 pokemon with status, the ko
them with my cleaner.""
Actually I already have gone into battle numerous times saying "I'm gonna KO
3 Pokemon with Status, then ko them with my Cleaner." And I still stand before you Mr. Chino to this day gaining
these victories.
My suspicions was correct on what you thought Status Effects are and man you could
be no more flawed in logic than any I have seen.
But first and foremost...
AND READ THIS PART CAREFULLY Mr. Chino... The Cleaner works in more ways than you have flawlessly can imagined. I have
proven since the Jungle Expansion of 1999 that the Cleaner's Strategy works. People have used it and won it and posted up their
own Tourney Reports that it works. I have witnesses from Pokegym,
Pojo, and Pokeschool In Real Life, Not Apprentice or
some Internet Program, that I have met personally and played them personally with
my Cleaner showing them
the Strategy works. Because you cannot grasp the true concept of Status Effects as
a whole does not warrant you to say that the Strategy of my Deck is Flawed after
having proved it's abilities and potential.
Now that that is out of the way let's get down to business.
One of the things you fail to understand is the true power of the Status Effects.
You have limited the Status Effects in your topic as Coin Flipping and High Costing.
But you don't know the long term effects. You are thinking with Beatdown knowledge.
Status Effects are not made for Beatdown they are made for Card Advantage. And what
great Card Advantage they give.
I am not going to argue about the Flipping. I mean come on don't insult our intelligence
about the Coin Flipping Aspect of Status Effect. We all know about that. Second you
did not fully explore Status Effects. You just looked at the cards and their cost
and look the Rulebook on how they work and drew conclusion from. I am betting you
never even played with the Status Effects at all in the benefit of giving your final
analysis of Status Effects.
Whether you wish to listen to learn or not is entirely up to you but I am going to
tell you how the Status Effects work. And what Bonzibomer told you is only half what
Status Effects can do Entirely.
Lesson #1:
Okay one of the cool things the Status Effects Act as... are Trainers. (go ahead
laugh away) Each Status Effects has Resemblance to some of the Disruptive Trainers
we come to know and Love. Let's begins with...
Poison: You so easily
stand there and say that retreating will eliminate the effect. You are right but
you see while your opponent Poisoned your Pokemon you are thinking he is just trying
to get that 10 Extra Damage so you say "I will retreat". You discard 1
to 4 Energy cards let's say you do the classic Scyther Switch, BAM you got rid of Poison. You stand there thinking that your Opponent just wanted that extra
damage. Never, never assume that 10 Damage is what your Opponent is getting. Look
carefully he just ER'd
you without using ER itself.
With 10 Damage Bonus.
Confusion: You and
your statistics cannot truely be the final conclusion. With Confusion you create the ultimate stumper on your opponent. Attack or retreat?
You can do both but you can only attempt retreat once and attack once. Okay so you
say HA I can retreat and win the flip and Eliminate Confusion. But once Again you give your opponent a free ER whether you win or lose the flip. As for the Attacking part well
you do 20 Damage to yourself but you forget that Weakness and Resistance is Applied
with Confusion. Poor MP Mewtwo
I Gust Your MP Mewtwo pit it against my Base Set Koffing you know The one with
the Win-win Confuse/Poison
flip. You forgot about that one did you? Especially when you said there is no Instant
Confusion . I confuse the
Mewtwo you think it was
a joke for that to happen. Now think before you Beatdown with Mewtwo. Do you want to risk a chance at Ko'ing your own Mewtwo? That is 40 Damage (Weakness to itself) and Koffing gets another cheap shot in. Will you risk retreating and go through
wasting your attack turn on Absorb or to risk failing thus having to go risk face
another Confusion again
on your next turn trying to Absorb you Energy cards back. So many unpredictable Situations
with Confusion it isn't
funny. And I haven't even gotten to how you Deplete Deck just to eliminate a Status
Effect.
Paralysis and Sleep
- They, like Confusion,
has a Lass like Ability.
You can't attack under those conditions, you can't retreat, so you need Scoop Up. The Problem is do you Scoop Up now or later. Well it is very
intricate(SP). What if you don't have a Scoop Up in your hand? You decide to Comp Search. You discard 2 cards and use Comp Search. You get Scoop Up
and you play it. Yeah you got rid of Confusion, Paralysis or Sleep
but at the expense of 4 of your own cards discarded.
Which now brings us to the cool part of the Status Effect -
Card Advantage.
When we talk Card Advantage it is always in the view of the Amount of Cards in your
deck and in your hand. There is no Card Advantage in the Discard Pile and "In
Play". So how does the Status Effects give you card Advantage? Well if have
read some of the above as to how Status Effects act like Trainers themselves then
you probably got the gist of the Card Advantage already. Let's start.
Lesson 2:
You play No Removal Gym,
The Gym gives you a chance at acquiring Card Advantage because you opponent has to
discard 2 Cards in order to Play ER
or SER. We are looking
at 3 to 4 Cards gone just to use (Super) Energy Removal. How do you get around this? Poison and Confusion.
Let say Poison it is the
easiest of the all to get rid. You never think twice about what Poison is truely doing to you because all you are thinking of is Beatdown
Mr. Chino. So Instead of me Getting rid of 2 of my own cards to use ER or 4 cards to use SER I Poison
your 2 Retreat Wigglytuff.
Now before you go on to say I will fight with it till its KO'd... you must think
about that strategy. So let's say you decide to do the Old Scyther Trick. You better have enough Energy on Wigglytuff because you only allowed 1 Energy Drop and doing a crapload of damage
with Wiggly requires 3
Colorless Energy. You retreat Discard 2 Cards and eliminate the Poison. At the same time I got around your No
Removal Gym and SER you. Don't laugh no one likes to retreat and waste their Energy
cards. Now here is the results of the Card Advantange under Poison:
A)You With No Removal Gym
try to force 3 Cards to be Used by Your Opponent with ER.
B)Your Opponent Poisons you with intent of Making you Retreat to discard 2 Energy
cards.
Result Your Oponent gets around No Removal Never Dropping a Single card from his
hand and forced you to lose 2 Precious Energy cards. Advantage your Opponent 0 cards
to 2 of yours.
Confusion/Sleep/Paralysis.
Confusion has the same
results of Poison but it
also can do what Sleep
and Paralysis can do also.
So let's begin.
Okay Lets say I want to get rid of your Hand without using Lass,
TR Trap, Sneak Attack. You laugh yet again? Okay here
is what happens when you suffer from these effects. You don't want those effects
to linger around you can't retreat so you Decide to get Scoop
Up. If Scoop Up is in your hand fine you use but in the Process hand your Opponent
a free SER as intended.
But what if it isn't in your hand what if it's in your deck. Okay Comp
Search is your Savior. Let the counting begin...
Comp Search - 1 card used.
Discard 2 - 2 cards used.
Get Scoop Up and Use it - 1 card used.
Let's say a fully Pumped Sneasal Darkness Energy Goes - 2 cards gone. (Ecogym Can't
save them)
Total cards gone 6 cards gone. And Commonly people are with an Average hand of 4
per turn barring Oak and
Bill. So there goes your
hand and your stuck topdecking. Plus Sneasel can't attack unless you retreive 2 Darkness
Energy which you can't get back in your Discard since they are not Basic Energy and
that means more serching which results in another 2 cards gone for Comp Search. Or
Sporadic Oaking which depletes your deck.
Overall I used 0 cards to get rid of 6 of your cards. +6 Card Advantage.
Now of course these are just some of the infinent(SP) of possiblilites presented
by Status Effects that can come out.
It is time for Lesson Three...
Another thing Status Effects can do is Stall (Licki especially). You can't attack under Paraysis and Sleep
and you risk doing 20 under Confusion.
In the meantime I am giving one card (Common Strategy) to each of My Pokemon thus
I have backup attackers when I lose my Active. At the same token you are ransacking
your deck just to get the Status Effect out and giving me the Deck Advantage of Beating
you by Decking. Trainers can only be used once and Item
Finder can only take you so far to avoid decking. Not
even Garbage Run can Counter
Consecutive Oakings and Garbage Runs
only gives Energy and Pokemon back with no Trainers. And well most Trainers are Win-Lose
Flips which sucks.
Lesson 4:
Okay now while you have limited Status Effects as a Means of Beatdown instead of
what they truely are let me explain to you what long term result is when you are
hit by a Status Effect.
With Beatdown Decks they have a Strategy. (You can't have a deck without a Strategy)
The Problem with Beatdown is that Strategy is set on the short term basis not the
long term or in between. People expect Beatdown to win within 5 to 10. (I am being
generous on 10) You waste about 10 to 20 Cards on average. (I have counted everytime
I played Turbo and beatdowns) Now you execute your Strategy. You can get your win
very easily within 5 turns. I hit you with a Status Effect and you once again use
Comp Search or Item Finder and got Scoop
Up and rid of it. You play your Oak again and did Beatdown once more. I hit you with a Status Effect
you go through the Process Again only this time now my Pokemon are powering up and
my Bench is Growing. I bet you don't even drop any Energy card to your bench every
turn and instead Concentrate your Energy on the Active Primarily.
Well now let's say it is tenth turn you got 2 Ko's. (Being Generous Again) You haven't
won the game, there is Bench full of Pokemon capable of attacking your Pokemon each
turn. Your Wigglytuff or
Electabuzz or some Beatdown
Pokemon is now Paralyzed.
Or Confused. Or Asleep. Almost half your deck is gone
now all your Oaks and Bills are used up because you did that
Millstone/Grind Tactic (See Magic) and now there is no more Scoop
Ups or (S)ERs to slow me down. You can't Beatdown consistently
and now your Opponent controls you. Sure you can get another KO but you basically
arrogantly screwed yourself.
BUT ONCE AGAIN that is one of Infinite of possibilities when it comes to Status Effects.
I probably now gave you every bit of an advantage on Status Effects but the question
is... how do you react when it happens? Reading and doing are two seperate things.
Final Lesson:
There is reason why Pokemon have low HP and High Energy Cost when it comes to Status
Effects. Come closer...
It is because Status Effects Are BROKEN. If they have No Flipping, capable of doing
20 to 40 damage on 1 to 2 Energy cards, and have 70 to 120 HPs that Pokemon is BROKEN.
Do you think that would be fun to get Paralyzed Every turn while suffering 40 with 2 Energy and never getting a
chance to attack back? Sorry Mr. Chino but we can't all have every single Pokemon
card featuring 20 to 40 Damage on 1 to 3 Energy Cost just like that.
Your Logic is very flawed in comparing Attack Costs with the attack itself. Status
Effects are VERY Powerful. The results are devestating. The Base Damage of Attacks
HAS to be low or looking at a Very Broken Pokemon. I would love for Base Set Koffing to deal 20 Damage instead
10 with a win-win flip but that would be Broken. The other thing you have forgotten
is that the Base Damage that goes with the Status Effects applies Weakness and Resistance.
Through Poison you can do 30 Damage on one Energy with Weakness applied, 40 if you
don't rid Poison effect on your turn.
You see the problem here is that you did not Base you Analysis of the Status Effects
on the results they can do. You are only basing them on what they can do, what Percentage
they have in execution and Energy Cost it takes to use them. All you did was read
the card and make your conclusion just like that. Plus you only analyzed a Couple
of Pokemon as if theose are the only ones in the TCG. I would safely say that 40%
of all the Pokemon in the game spread across the Basic 6 Colors (you forgot the Status
Effects are also used by Pokemon Beyond the Color Green)
And before you can stand here and say that you can Scoop
Up/Switch/Full Heal/Full Heal Energy to knock the Status
Effects away you have to ask yourself before using them will I need them now or later?
On a final note Status Effects are not something to laugh about or arrogantly mock
someone at. Those Status Effects are very Powerful once applied and it is never the
point of NOW in time of battle that the Effects will work... but in the Late Stages
of the game where you will find yourself face to face with a Fully Pumped, Healthy
No HP Damaged Arcanine
ready to Clean out your Bench. Where you have no Trainers or FHEs or anything else
for that matter that can protect your Pokemon because you wasted them all on eliminating
the Status Effects in the beginning of the game. And that is just the Cleaner can't
imagine what the results of the Other Status Effects Decks are like.
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