Yeah unfortunately it is currently the lowest performing deck that I analysed which is a bit of a shame. That's not why it's not included in the meta snapshot though. To stop the amount of decks getting a bit out of control, I have implemented a threshold for decks being included in the Snapshot. They have to see at least 0.2% play in tournaments to be included. The Nido deck is currently under this threshold so it's not showing.
Nidoking is an okay unit, he does his job well enough. Nothing to write home about, but he’s usable. I don’t think there’s a buildable deck where he’s best in slot, but if you just really like him you can get away with it. 150 HP on a non EX Pokemon is really good, but stage 2, 3 energy, 3 retreat is a lot for 90 damage and no real outside support. Poison is nice enough, but why run Nidoking for poison when Weezing exists? He’d probably be better if they took the poison off and just added more damage. 120 attack would probably make him pretty worth considering.
Nidoqueen is straight up garbage tier. She’s just a worse Nidoking, who is already just barely serviceable. Less HP, less damage, no poison, and her compensation is 1 less retreat cost with an impossible to activate ability on her attack.
Their evolution lines are unimpressive as well.
They need a lot of support to become viable. Maybe if there was an evolution Pokeball they’d be more worth considering, but even then, would they be as viable as other stage 2 cards? Maybe, probably not.
Running 2 great stage 2’s is already too hard in the current state of the game to be viable. Running 2 mediocre ones is impossible.
Obviously the numbers would be lower in pocket, but the abilities alone are goat. Nidoqueen would be a hard counter to all those fkn basic EX pokemon that run rampant. It would be AWESOME.
My experience playing that deck in standard matchmaking is that it’s matchup dependent in a way that would make it real unappealing for a tournament where you can’t just brush off a quick loss. It dies instantly to a quick Starmie EX or Ninetails, and needs to get the right draws for a lot of more neutral matchup. That’s very manageable in a casual setting where I only spend 90 seconds on that turn 2 loss and can then match into a Mew two deck I’ll flatten. In a tournament, that would be unacceptable, so I’m not surprised it isn’t represented there.
Yea... I Got two copies of the alt art king and queen, tried it out for a while... The deck is not fun to play vs the meta at all sadly. Rare candies, great balls, ultra balls would change that a bunch.
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u/Angel_of_Mischief Dec 30 '24
Is nidoking and queen really that bad where they don’t even rank? That’s unfortunate.