Ive been trying to play rocket on for a while now, however I get uber tilted trying to beat baby pokemon. Many of my opponents are running 8-10 of them in their decks and it often degrades the game to whether I can hit heads or not. I have tried to run things like dark muk and The rockets training gym to keep their non attacker in the active but it often doesn’t matter.
It feels like agro is just not viable since any player can hide behind babies as they set up for little to no cost.
What are some good strategies to punish players that jam their deck full of babies?
There is broken ground gym. When it is in play basic and baby pokemon pay 1 more energy to retreat. Cards like dark golbat and dark crobat can put dmg counters on baby pokemon which can’t stop that dmg. If most of their babies have poke powers you can use pichu which can spread damage to all pokemon with poke powers. Any sort of decks that can spread damage are quite good against baby pokemon. You can also use cards like dark dugtrio or forretress to prevent your opponent from retreating into babies because of their poke powers. Best of luck!
Baby pokemon basically ARE rocket-on to the point I joke around by calling it baby wars. There are all kinds of methods to get around them, particularly with 2 types of forced switch, and balloon berrys free retreat, but it’s of course not perfect. Kingdra offers a powerful combo with genetic memory on top of a seadra with mudslap. With this combo its 30 for 1 energy, plus a chance to spread 10 extra. The above post by matty covers a lot more too. Dark Ttar (F) powered up can do 30 plus 30 spread potentially taking out two at once, but again you gotta get that flip. Best of luck and keep at it.
30 is the magical number in Base-Neo and Rocket-On because it’s enough to KO a baby in 1 hit.
There are a lot of basics that can deal 30 for 2 energy, but if you want to be really aggressive here are some basics that can deal 30 damage for just 1 energy (and potentially win you the game in turn 1 because a lot of people put Cleffa in the active and no benched Pokémon in order to avoid a Gust of Wind target):
Misty’s Goldeen
Blaine’s Rhyhorn
Sabrina’s Abra (Gym Challenge 94)
Cubone (VM)
Weedle (Neo)
Pikachu (Neo)
Tyrogue (is a baby, so has the added bonus of preventing a Cleffa’s eek if your opponent starts first)
With Double Colorless Energy this list will triple with candidates that can kill babies in turn 1.
You can also build an anti-evolution deck with Aerodactyl (FO) and Scyther (JU) both can one-shot babies.
A good strategy could be using a pokemon that can attack the bench.
I’m building a deck that use this strategy.
For example base set magnemite and magneton with trasparent walls and defenders is a way to do that. Second turn selfdestruction 10 hit to the bench. Brock’s Golbat Spiral dive and Dark Golbat/ Dark Crobat.
Anyway in rocket-on configuration you usually have baby pokemon so this is a problem also for your challeger.
I’m checking now the cards… i’m an expert of combos in base set, fossil, jungle and rocket but i’m new in gym’s and neo. There are many strategies.
The point is have a pokemon who can attack the bench.
The faint attack of murkrow or umbreon can help a lot but is difficult to get 2 darkness energies with the 4 limit. Promo Mewtwo is a real baby pokemon killer ( telekinesis one) but 60hp is really bad in that contest.
Fossil Gengar could be a real killer also when the challenger use focus band.