Worlds is over; I would like to
congratulate all who participated
(seriously, just earning an invite or
grinding in is an accomplishment), and
of course even more is due those who
finished well.
Now, time for our Top 10
Promising Picks of Dragons Exalted with
number 10…
Gabite (BW: Dragons Exalted
89/124)?
Stats
Gabite
is a Stage 1 Dragon-Type Pokémon.
It can tap the small amount of
Dragon support, in part because it is
half of Dragon-Type support! As
Dragon-Types have existed for all of one
set, having two pieces of Type specific
support is great; it isn’t even
pseudo-Type support, where it actually
works for any Type even if it favors its
own.
If it ever has to attack, at
least can exploit the currently
universal Dragon-Type Pokémon Weakness
to their own
Type.
Being a Stage 1 does slow it down
a bit, but not enough to render it
useless.
80 HP is low, even for a transitional
Stage 1 Pokémon, though with
Level Ball I would settle for just
90; in fact remaining
Level Ball “compliant” is pretty
important, as I will address in the
Usage section.
Any main attacker can OHKO it,
unfortunately, while the various
spread/snipe attackers will take
advantage of the situation to set-up
some multi-KO combos if you don’t
Evolve
quickly enough.
There is no Resistance to help
balance that out so we’ll just have to
move onto the single Energy Retreat
Cost; this is fairly painless to pay and
quite useful.
Effects
Gabite
has one Ability and one attack.
The Ability is what makes this
card shine; Dragon Call allows the
player to search his or her deck for a
Dragon-Type Pokémon and add it to hand
once per turn.
This allows you to spend a
resource on
Gabite and “redeem” it for a
Dragon-Type Pokémon.
Simple, but powerful… which half
describes the attack; Dragonslice only
does 20 points of damage for two Energy,
and those Energy are even two different
Types (Water and Fighting)!
It easily could have hit for 40
and still be balanced.
Usage
Sad but true; TPC does not have a track
record of making “good” Evolving Stage 1
cards.
Most exist purely to get to the
related Stage 2 form(s) into play;
coupled with
Rare Candy existing as not only
Evolution acceleration, but as a
complete and total alternative to using
a Stage 1, it regularly is the superior
choice.
This is the inherent flaw in
introducing a form of generic Evolution
acceleration to the game, especially as
an Item that completely bypasses the
Stage 1 form; the solution to making all
Pokémon that don’t Evolve function as
equals is to actually start with that as
the design premise.
Things like not making
non-Evolving Basic Pokémon that can
wrack up KOs before Evolutions hit the
field and fill all “areas” of a deck
(set-up, main game, end game), and
making lower Stages worth using without
overshadowing the final form.
That is an article for another
time, however.
I don’t think
Gabite can stand on its own; I’ve
had people refer me to
Sunflora (HeartGold/SoulSilver
31/123) which is a very similar,
non-Evolving Stage 1 Grass-Type Pokémon
whose Poké-Power searched out Grass-Type
Pokémon.
Obviously
Gabite can Evolve into
Garchomp and the importance of that
cannot be understated, but I must add
that
Sunflora existed in a format
where a Grass-Type Pokémon (Vileplume
HS: Undaunted 24/90) that blocked
Item usage to protect it.
Gabite really does need
Garchomp, because an 80 HP
Bench-sitter is just too tempting.
The best known
Garchomp deck uses
Altaria (BW: Dragons Exalted
84/124) alongside
Garchomp (BW: Dragons Exalted
90/124) to get into OHKO/2HKO range for
just one or two Energy.
I finally got to use the deck
once, and I’ve gone against it a handful
of times.
The deck must constantly set up
replacements for each of those two, to
the point that you will regularly
need Dragon Call.
I found relying on Dragon Call in
these situations to be both a bane and a
blessing, as with the obvious importance
of setting up either initial or
replacement
Altaria and
Garchomp, taking out an 80 HP
Gabite is a high (if not top)
priority when facing the deck.
If you can keep the replacements
coming, you’re probably going to win; if
not, expect to lose quickly and
painfully.
At first I didn’t see how important “Level
Ball =>Gabite=>
Altaria,
Gabite, or
Garchomp (as needed)” was to the
deck.
With as tight as most builds I’ve
seen run,
Ultra Ball would tear it up pretty
bad.
The only Pokémon regularly run
that
Level Ball doesn’t hit in the build
I ran is
Garchomp, and the only Pokémon that
Dragon Call misses are
Emolga (BW: Dragons Exalted
45/124) and
Swablu (whichever version from
BW: Dragons Exalted you choose);
between the two is total coverage.
There are two
Gible to pick from right now: BW:
Dragons Exalted 86/124 and BW:
Dragons Exalted 87/124.
Both are Dragon-Type Basic
Pokémon with Dragon-Type Weakness, no
Resistance, Retreat Cost of one, and two
attacks.
BW: Dragons Exalted 86/124
has just 50 HP with two vanilla attacks
doing 10 for (C) or 20 for (WF).
That is rather lackluster, but I
suppose if you anticipate seldom failing
to set-up your except then we have
BW: Dragons Exalted 87/124, the
superior choice.
For (F) it has Sand-Attack; no
damage but it forces a coin flip
requirement on the Defending Pokémon if
it attacks next turn.
This plus having 10 more HP (that
is, 60) to slightly improve its chance
of survival, and if you’re stuck
attacking for damage with it, (WC) gives
you 10 with a 50% chance at doing 30
instead.
Now what about the other
Gabite and
Garchomp?
Gabite (BW: Dragons Exalted
88/124) comes close to being totally
forgettable; it has the same Stats as
today’s CotD, other than possessing two
attacks instead of one attack and one
Ability.
Tackle does a vanilla 20 for (C);
not enough to be impressive or overly
relevant, especially since the set gives
us two
Garchomp that best this: why not
just use
Rare Candy and hit even harder?
The second attack, Shred, could
have been useful but unless an effect
totally blocks your damage, you’re
better off powering through with a
Garchomp.
I am sure we’ll get around to giving
both
Garchomp full reviews, so I’ll try
to keep this short (at least by my
standards); both are Stage 2 Dragon-Type
Pokémon with 140 HP, Dragon-Type
Weakness, no Resistance, and two
attacks.
BW: Dragons Exalted 90/124
is the preferred version and has a
Retreat Cost of just one.
For (F) it his for an impressive
60 points of damage and discards a
Special Energy (if present) attached to
the Defending Pokémon.
For (WF) it hits for 100, but
makes you discard the top two cards from
your deck.
BW: Dragons Exalted 91/124
has a free Retreat Cost, only needs (C)
to hit for 40, but needs (WFC) to hit
for 80 while blocking the Defending
Pokémon from retreating.
Honestly both are potent, but
extra damage done on the two attacks
(and effect of the first attack) is
worth the difference in Retreat Cost,
the specific Energy requirement of the
first attack, and drawback of the
second.
Unlimited play is pretty irrelevant for
Gabite, due to the dominance of
First Turn Win decks.
Still, if something happens that
would slow them down enough give even
the old, slower-but-still-brutally-fast
decks of Unlimited a shot again,
Broken Time Space would love this
line!
For Limited, what Dragons did you
pull?
The usual “lower average HP”
scores factor helps it, but its own
attack is still overpriced even here. If
you don’t have either a lot of Dragons
and/or an especially good Dragon to go
with it, you’re not going to get good
use from it.
The
Garchomp Evolution line has two
versions of each Pokémon; two Common
Gible, two Uncommon
Gabite, and both a Rare and a Holo-Rare
Garchomp, increasing the likely hood
of a well fleshed out line, and if you
have this
Gabite it’s phenomenal.
The rating will reflect all these
possibilities, good and bad.
Ratings
Unlimited:
1/5
Modified:
3.5/5
Limited:
3.5/5
Summary
Today’s
Gabite is one of the times when they
do a Stage 1 right:
Gabite enhances its Evolved form to
the point skipping it with
Rare Candy should only be done when
it must.
That being said, on my own list I
rank it at Top 30.
My list is technically a bit in
flux (and originally before play-testing
I had it several places lower).
While the search effect is good,
in a fast format with nothing to protect
it,
Gabite
needs
Garchomp to justify its place in a
deck.
That being said,
Garchomp appears to need this
Gabite as well, so it still scores
well.
Please check out my eBay sales by
clicking
here.
It’s me whittling away at about
two decades worth of attempted
collecting, spanning action figures,
comic books, TCGs, and video games.
Exactly what is up is a bit
random.
Pojo.com is in no way responsible
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