From Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.
MagneRock was a semi-popular deck archetype in the Pokémon Trading Card Game toward the end of the 2010-2011 season. It saw a considerable amount of play in the Regional Championships event series, going on to win at least one of them in the Masters age division. The deck's name is derived from its main attacker, Magnezone Prime, and its main support Pokémon, Regirock.
Strategy
MagneRock's strategy revolved around using Regirock's Regi Cycle Poké-Power to power Magnezone Prime's Lost Burn attack. The deck's ideal starting Pokémon was Spiritomb, both for its Trainer-negating Poké-Body and its Darkness Grace attack, which allowed for quick evolution. Spiritomb or no Spiritomb, MagneRock attempted to get multiple Magnezone Prime in play as fast as possible, along with one or two Regirock and Fighting energy in the discard. Cards such as Bebe's Search, Pokémon Collector, and Engineer's Adjustments were useful in these regards. From there, the player would simply attach energy from their hand to Magnezone Prime while using Regi Cycle to recover energy from the discard onto Regirock. Once there was a sufficient amount of energy in play, the deck functioned to take six knock outs in six turns. Magnezone Prime's Lost Burn was able to one-shot any opposing Pokémon, within reason. Judge was useful in the deck since it disrupted the opponent while allowing MagneRock to setup as normal, assuming the MagneRock player could use Magnetic Draw to draw more cards.
Key cards
- Magnezone Prime - As the deck's main attacker, Magnezone Prime had the ability to knock out literally any Pokémon with its Lost Burn attack, depending on the number of energy cards the MagneRock player had in play. It also provided significant drawpower in the form of its Magnetic Draw Poké-Power, which allowed the player to draw cards until they had six cards in hand. Magnezone Prime possessed a downside in its
Retreat Cost, but overall was the most critical card in the deck.
- Spiritomb - Spiritomb was the deck's ideal starting Pokémon, since its Keystone Seal Poké-Body prevented both players from using Trainer cards as long as it was in the active position. While this did somewhat disadvantage MagneRock, it provided a fantastic counter to the Trainer-reliant Pokémon SP decks such as LuxChomp that dominated the format. Additionally, while hindering the deck's setup in that it disallowed Trainer cards, Spiritomb assisted MagneRock with its Darkness Grace attack, which, for no energy cost, allowed the player to search their deck for a card to evolve a Benched Pokémon.
- Regirock - The other half of MagneRock's namesake, Regirock, provided the means to attach more energy each turn that would typically be permitted. With its Regi Cycle Poké-Power, Regirock let the player discard two cards from their hand to search the discard pile for a Fighting energy, and attach it to a Pokémon. After discarding an energy with Engineer's Adjustments, Regirock could inundate MagneRock's field with energy quickly, making for massive Lost Burns.
- Pokémon Collector - For Spiritomb to function as an effective starting Pokémon, the deck needed some means to get Basic Pokémon on the field for Spiritomb to evolve with Darkness Grace. Pokémon Collector, arguably the deck's most crucial Supporter card, simply provided those means.
- Engineer's Adjustments - Unless a given MagneRock list ran Junk Arm, Engineer's Adjustments provided the only way (other than a Pokémon with an energy attachment being knocked out) to place an energy card in the discard pile to initially be able to use Regirock's Regi Cycle Poké-Power. It also provided for fairly strong drawpower, allowing the user to draw four cards.
- Broken Time-Space - Broken Time-Space complemented a Spiritomb-based evolution engine very well. Instead of focusing on Rare Candy like many Stage-2 decks, Spiritomb and Broken Time-Space forced a player to evolve including the middle stage, Magneton in this case. However, as a Stadium card, Broken Time-Space circumvented Spiritomb's Keystone Seal, and thus allowed a player to evolve into Magnezone Prime easily under Trainer lock. Broken Time-Space also worked well with Rescue Energy, since a knocked out Magnezone Prime would return immediately to the player's hand included all its evolution stages. At that point, Broken Time-Space allowed the player to immediately evolve to Magnezone Prime again, losing nothing but any energies attached to it upon initially being knocked out.
Typical decklist
The deck list appearing below is not official; it is meant to represent an average build of the archetype, not specifically constructed for any regional metagame. Being that this is merely an archetype, a player may wish to change any part of this deck when building his or her own version. The list shown assumes a Majestic Dawn through Triumphant format. Potential later additions may be listed in the Possible tech cards section.
Possible tech cards
- Junk Arm - For players who found that Engineer's Adjustments and Regirock's Regi Cycle did not provide enough means to discard energy from the hand, Junk Arm could provide a powerful way to accomplish that and recover discarded Trainers.
- Sunyshore City Gym - At the time of MagneRock's viability, Donphan Prime, Machamp, and a handful of other Fighting-type Pokémon were prevalent at the time. By negating the weaknesses of Lightning-type Pokémon, Sunyshore City Gym rendered Magnezone Prime much less vulnerable to Fighting-type attacks and turned near-autolosses into neutral or even favorable matchups.
- Magnezone LV.X - Magnezone LV.X was used primarily to eliminate the type disadvantage against Fighting types. Its function was essentially the same as that of Sunyshore City Gym, but was searchable through Bebe's Search and other cards. Magnezone LV.X also had the Electric Trans Poké-Power, which was occasionally useful for conserving energy if a Magnezone was about to be knocked out. Generally, though, the card was rarely played.
- Magnezone - This Magnezone, although generally less useful than the other Stormfront Magnezone, saw occasional play for its Magnetic Search Poké-Power. Since MagneRock only ran a handful of Lightning energies, which were necessary for Magnezone Prime to attack, the ability to search for one came in handy. Its Speed Shot and Crush Voltage attacks, while nothing special, were useful in certain situations.
- Crobat G - Garchomp C LV.X and other popular attackers of the era often had 110HP, and Magnezone Prime's Lost Burn only hit in multiples of 50. Crobat G's Flash Bite allowed for Lost Burn to take knockouts discarding only two energy cards instead of the three that would normally be necessary.
- Sableye - Some MagneRock players chose to use Sableye over Spiritomb as a starting Pokémon, as Sableye had several notable advantages. While it did not prevent the opponent from player Trainer cards as Spiritomb did, it also did not prevent MagneRock from playing Trainer cards. By letting the MagneRock player go first and giving them access to an instant Supporter with its Impersonate attack, Sableye allowed for a faster, more aggressive setup.
- Shaymin - Since Regi Cycle was incapable of attaching to Magnezone Prime, Lost Burn took two turns of energy attachment to power up under normal circumstances. Shaymin's Celebration Wind could allow Lost Burn to be charged up in one turn by moving energy from a benched Regirock to Magnezone Prime, in addition to other benefits.
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