(Modified) Current Water/Psychic deck, working towards poison themed

[Rhonder]

Hey there, so I'm just getting back into the TCG after like a year and a half or so off. My deck right now's pretty decent and performs relatively well against my friends and at league (just went for the first time since I started back up yesterday) but I'd like to increase the consistency some. Also at the end I'm going to post some ideas I have for moving this deck towards a semi-poison theme'd deck~

Pokemon (21):

3 Squirtle (Boundaries Crossed)
2 Wartortle (Boundaries Crossed)
1 Blastoise (Boundaries Crossed)
1 Cubchoo (Emerging Powers)
1 Cubchoo (Next Destinies)
2 Beartic (Emerging Powers)
1 Minccino (BW Promo 13)
2 Minccino (Next Destinies)
2 Cinccino (Black and White)
2 Golett (Dragons Exaulted)
1 Golurk (Dragons Exaulted)
1 Kyurem EX (BW Promo 37)
1 Keldeo EX (BW Promo 61)
1 Mewtwo EX (BW Promo 45)

Trainers (19):
2 Energy Retreival
1 Escape Rope
1 Float Stone
2 Pokemon Communication
2 Switch
4 Cheren
4 Cilan
2 Colress
1 Skyla

Energy (20):
12 Water
5 Psychic
3 Double Colorless

----------------------------------

So yeah, that's my current deck. Trying to make my deck modified really killed my consistency, having to switch from supporters that let me freely search for things (Mainly Celio's Network and Bebe's Search) to ones like Cheren and Colress that let me draw a solid amount of cards, but no guarantee of what I'll get. So one thing I'd like to know is what good cards for searching are now (this is including pokemon attacks/abilities). One card I wanna get my hands on is like 2 copies of Milotic from Dragons Exaulted. 3 searches for 1 water energy sounds pretty good to me.

Another thing is the poison theme that I said I was wanting to work towards. I'm wanting to incorporate Crobat from plasma storm, as well as virbank gym and hypnotoxic laser into my deck to get some serious poison damage going on. After the format switches to Next Destinies and on, my Cinccino and Beartic wont be useable in Modified so I'll have some room from them (for the crobat line, I'm planning on just swapping some trainers/energies out for the trainers as i get them) So far I have... 1 golbat and 1 laser. I'm going to keep getting packs for a little while, but if I still don't get the rest of the line I'm willing to just go and get the singles offline.

A few other pokemon I was thinking of adding were Toxicroak (Boundaries Crossed), Muk (Next Destinies and/or plasma freeze), Garbodor (Plasma Storm, the one that poisons and discards energies), and Giratina (the starter deck one, also comes with a hypnotoxic laser~).

Any advice on how to swap my deck around to be more consistent overall and also incorporate my new poison theme would be much appreciated, thanks~

 

[ven?]

Now you said you wanted it to be consistent and run smooth, well I can't guarantee that anyone of my personally built decklists will do anything for you but I'll give you as much advice as I can.

Running pokemon evo lines, consistency. Always running a equal amount of basic to stage 1 or stage 2 (respectable evo) to be equal, so lets say you run 3 basic, 1 stage 1, 3 stage 2 or 3-1-3, or even 3-3-3, this greatly helps increase the playability of the final stage evo and helps use you're pokemon to the full potential, as having so called "extra basic pokemon" create un-needed bench space, you're opponent could/can take as a potential prize. Also just as a general rule to increase the playability of anything in you're deck run more of that card, not so much run less.

Colress and cheren are lower tier supporters, Juniper, N, shadow triad, Bianca, skyla, those are some really good ones, that let you grab decent sized hands at various parts of the game, or create disruption (like N), they also create some good in game synergy once the deck gets going.

 

[Rhonder]

A bit late on the reply, but thanks for the rate~ I definitely get where you're coming from with the equal number of Basic pokemon to their stage 1 or 2 evolutions idea. I definitely end up with excess things like those squirtles which really become dead weight after Blastoise is already out. I've modified my deck a bit since I posted this list, but I'll definitely go back in to look at my pokemon lines in those terms.

As far as supporters go, I definitely agree with Cheren as being lower tier, but colress seems just about as good as something like Bianca in a majority of situations. I just recently got back into playing and going to my local League so I'm kind of new to the current meta game. As I mentioned I'm more used to using search cards over draw cards, so I don't know a whole lots about the pros/cons between them. I watched the world championships and noticed that a lot of the top players were using Juniper. Why is she so popular over something like Colress? Besides the fact that Colress' draw amount varies based on the number of benched pokemon at that point in time, is it also because it makes you shuffle the unwanted cards back in therefore cluttering up your deck? That's the only thing that really comes to mind. I have a few Junipers though so I'll definitely try them out and see how they work.

 

[ven?]

4 N and 4 juniper really is the best synergy for pretty much every deck out there as it makes some mean inner consistency for you're deck regardless of you're opponent, or 4 juniper and 4 colress for decks that want to burn through more. It really comes down to thinking about what you get in you're hand and also reducing you're deck size to increase the chances of bettering you're ability to draw better hands, what you have to work with, looking at deck combinations and seeing if they're truly suitable. Such as lets say you have 4 cards in hand, 2 pokemon a supporter and an energy, most of the time if it's a juniper or an N, or Bianca, colress, you're really going to want to drop the pokemon and the energy if possible (if you can yes, if you cannot try to discard them or put them back in, as you should be running less pokemon over all so you don't have to draw into it so commonly) especially if you want to increase the draw rate for trainers or should I say item cards from you're deck if you want to use more of you're enegine (either that or just juniper or ultra ball it away for something you do need). It is a different format, so there is a lot of different game play to think about as opposed to the past.

Using ultra ball is a good play to use before using a supporter, running 3-4 in any deck is fairly crucial in making things happen, if you find you're draw vs re-draw rate is less then it should be when using cards like juniper or Bianca add ultra ball, I know of players who have this issue when playing, and this seems to be the call from a lot of other experienced players as well, I've never really had this problem (lots of people say that play style is a myth, well that is one play style confirmed).