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Xatu (Unleashed)
Hello, and welcome to a full week of Unleashed card
reviews on Pojo’s CotD. I’m just back from prerelease,
and I found it to be a very nice set for Limited, with
tons of helpful Trainers and Supporters. The box ratios
aren’t quite as good as they were in HGSS, but it’s a
small set and the Legends and Primes aren’t too
hard to pull.
Mostly, though, it’s modified play that interests
players, so that’s what I will be concentrating on in my
reviews.
First up is Xatu. It’s a Stage 1, so it better have some
good stuff on offer if it wants to see play.
Well, 80 HP is a worry for a start, and when you combine
that with a X2 Weakness to the most popular Pokemon in
the format (remember, Lightning = Luxray!), you have
serious reasons to doubt this card’s playability before
you even glance at the attacks. It’s not much of a
consolation, but the -20 Fighting Weakness is helpful,
and the single Retreat Cost isn’t bad.
No PokePowers or Bodies here, so it’s straight on to the
attacks. For the low, low price of one Psychic Energy,
Psywave will do 20x the amount of energy attached to the
Defending Pokémon (and yes, DCE does count as two). This
might be halfway decent if it wasn’t for the fact that
you rarely see Pokémon with much Energy attached in this
format. Psywave will do nothing to Donphan (thanks to
its Body) or Gyarados and very little to Gengar,
Garchomp C (because it discards to attack) or Luxray.
Even a Dialga G LV X loaded with Special Metal has
nothing to fear from this card, thanks to the Special
Metal and its Resistance to Psychic. Even if you do run
into a big Stage 2 with three Energy attached (such as .
. . ummmm . . . .Flygon?), Xatu will only be doing 60
damage and will almost certainly get KO’d next turn.
At least Psywave is cheap though, something you can’t
say about Confuse Ray. For [P][C][C], this attack offers
a poor value 50 damage and a flip for Confusion. Since
they changed the rule ages ago, allowing you to retreat
from Confusion without having to flip, Confusion has
been the weakest of all the Status Conditions and will
likely cause little or no inconvenience to your
opponent.
Underpowered and uninteresting, Xatu has practically
nothing to recommend it.
Rating
Modified: 1.25 (Not worth the effort of Evolving it)
Limited: 2 (still weak, but at least there isn’t much
Lightning in the set)
Combos with . . .
Nothing, really.
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