Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
#7 Head Ringer
Though I love the card and think it’s criminally
underrated, I’m a little surprised to see it feature
this high on our top 10 list.
Head Ringer hasn’t really had much time to make an
impact since its release last month, but it should be
clear how disruptive the card is. Thanks to its unique
mechanic which allows it to be attached to
opponent’s
Pokémon, it does all kinds of good things, such as
setting your opponent back an Energy attachment and
blocking their use of Tools like Muscle Band an Spirit
Link. It’s very difficult for an opponent to deal with
it, and it combos nicely with Enhanced and Crushing
Hammers in denying your opponent the Energy the need to
attack.
When I first saw Head Ringer, I thought it was
ridiculously good. I still think that, but I can see why
it isn’t getting widespread play. Disruptive effects,
nice as they are, tend to take a back seat in a fast,
hard-hitting format as players look to increase speed
and consistency before turning to this kind of technical
trickery. Nevertheless, Head Ringer still finds its way
into Seismitoad EX decks,
where they can really turn the screw on the lockdown,
and in some very fast decks to create an even bigger
speed gap between them and an opponent’s deck.
It’s a card that is likely to go in and out of fashion
during its time in rotation, according to the nature of
the format. I just hope it gets a chance to reach its
full potential.
Rating
Modified: 4 (massive potential, great design)
Expanded: 3.5 (Tool Scrapper exists here)
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aroramage |
Strange how when you first look at a card to try and
determine its potential, it ends up falling short, and
then later on down the line some sort of combination
comes up that you didn't expect to see, making that card
look much better than it did originally! Such is how
card games go, and such is the path of Head Ringer, who
didn't make the Top 10 list for Phantom Forces yet has
risen above its brother Jamming Net into the Top 10 for
2014!
So the biggest question naturally is, "What changed
between its release a month ago and now?" And the answer
is surprisingly more simple: Seismitoad-EX. See, rumor
has it there's a big deck circulating that runs
Seismitoad-EX alongside Enhanced Hammer and Xerosic to
cripple any offensive force outside of regular Energies
as well as Garbodor to cancel those pesky abilities. On
top of that, they run Head Ringer against other EX!
So why Head Ringer over Jamming Net? As you may recall,
Jamming Net reduces damage from the equipped Pokemon's
attacks by 20 while Head Ringer increases their cost by
an extra Energy. See what's happening? It's not
necessary to run Jamming Net in these "Garbotoad" decks
because Enhanced Hammer and Xerosic are keeping Special
Energies at bay, Seismitoad-EX is locking down Items,
and Garbodor is doing his usual thing. So what makes
things harder? Giving every attack an extra Colorless
Energy to the cost, and that's why Head Ringer's become
such a big threat these days.
Head Ringer is invaluable in Garbotoad, and it can be
very useful in other decks as well. I imagine the
general consent is to run Jamming Net for the damage
reduction, but now the question's become less about how
much damage a Pokemon can do and more of how much are
they willing to spend to get that Energy? And combined
with all of this crippling madness, it's no wonder Head
Ringer's jumped to #7 on our list!
Rating
Standard: 4/5 (even with acceleration, Head Ringer has
made a very big splash)
Expanded: 4/5 (even with Eelektrik's inclusion, Head
Ringer's proven to be much more competent than first
given credit)
Limited: 4/5 (alright, we lose its biggest partner but
also cut off the majority of acceleration cards, so Head
Ringer does well here)
Arora Notealus: Coincidentally, the last time we
reviewed this was on a Thursday. It's like we've
been...plotting this the whole time. Hehe, hehehe,
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!...okay, no, we haven't.
Next Time: Alright, enough of these noisy shenanigans,
time to punch things!
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Welcome as we wind down the first week of the Top 10 Cards Of 2014
Countdown! The lists were collected and averaged out
from the CotD to create the master list for reviewing.
As with our Top 10 lists for individual sets, reprints
are excluded: without this rule cards like Double
Colorless Energy place (possibly take it) most
years. For my own list, my main guideline was card
impact. I evaluated the card according to breadth of
impact (how widespread its usage/response to its usage
was), depth of impact (how deeply it affected the decks
that used it/needed to counter it) and time of impact
(how long did it affect how we played).
Our fourth review this week and our 7th place finisher is… Head
Ringer (XY: Phantom Forces 97/119),
originally reviewed
here
five weeks ago. Exactly. For those that don’t want to
click, I’ll run through the card quickly; its a Pokémon
Tool F, which means its a subgroup of Pokémon Tools
which are a subgroup of Items which are a subgroup of
Trainers. If an effect specifies works on Trainers,
Items, Pokémon Tools or Pokémon Tool F cards, it works
on Head Ringer (for the record, nothing yet
released references Pokémon Tool F cards). Pokémon Tool
F cards are to my knowledge the only cards you actually
attach to your opponent’s Pokémon: the designers were
big on avoiding that and the potential confusion that
can bring to clean up, especially for younger players.
There is only one other Pokémon Tool F, Jamming Net,
a card that revealed how many players (myself included)
hadn’t been paying enough attention to how terms were
being redefined and clarified in the latest revision of
the rules book.
Oh, and the actual effect of Head Ringer is that it can only
be equipped to an opponent’s Pokémon-EX. The Pokémon-EX
to which it is attached pays [C] more for its attacks:
so Mewtwo-EX would need [CCC] to X-Ball. Since
it still fills the one Pokémon Tool “slot” all Pokémon
technically have (yes, there is at least one exception
but isn’t a Pokémon-EX), you can use this to also block
an opponent attaching their own Pokémon Tool. So to
continue the earlier example, not only will Mewtwo-EX
need [CCC] to X-Ball, but it can’t slap a Muscle Band
on to further boost the damage. As such, this effect
can cause huge swings in advantage or… be absolutely
meaningless, changing nothing and even being a dead card
in hand. Both helping and hurting their usage, Pokémon
Tool F state that if any effect would remove Pokémon
Tool F then it sends itself to the owner’s discard pile
instead. No using Tool Retriever to add your
opponent’s card to your own hand. Also both a blessing
and a bane, Startling Megaphone can only hit your
own Pokémon Tool F cards since it discards all Pokémon
Tools attached to your opponent’s Pokémon; it can’t save
you from one on your side of the field or spare your own
while taking out an opponent’s Muscle Band, which
is another reason why Tool Scrapper is still used
at least some of the time in Expanded… even by decks
using Pokémon Tool F (leave your Head Ringer in
play, discard their Float Stone and Muscle
Band so you can slap down some more Pokémon Tool F).
Breadth: Pokémon-EX are widely played. Pokémon Tools are widely played.
Seems like this would affect everyone, right? Nope.
The only major event we’ve had since the release of
XY: Phantom Forces are City Championships. I’ve
been referencing a list of compiled results from
The Charizard Lounge.
You’ll notice that with all the decks that scored a Top
4 finish, while most still feature or even focus upon
Pokémon-EX, quite a few don’t… including what has (at
least the way the list is divided) taken the most Top 4
and first place finishes, Donphan (BW: Plasma
Storm 72/135) decks. I am not an expert on that
deck; I’ve seen it used but lack the cards for it
myself. Maybe I just am ignorant of the most widely
accepted build but from what I can tell, they try to run
light on (or skip entirely) Pokémon-EX. Sure the next
two most prominent finishers (Yveltal-EX decks
and VirGen decks) clearly are focused on Pokémon-EX
attackers, you’ve got to get Head Ringer onto a
Genesect-EX before it attaches a G Booster
(or in some builds, even just a Muscle Band)
while Yveltal-EX is known for loading up on
Energy, meaning you might block a Muscle Band or
you might slow it down a turn or you might do neither.
Depth: Even though Tool Retriever can help one better manage his
or her own Pokémon Tools while combatting Pokémon Tool F
cards, even while Xerosic is a Supporter that a
Battle Compressor plus VS Seeker allows
one to treat as reusable TecH to discard any Pokémon
Tool (including Pokémon Tool F) or Special Energy in
play… they aren’t widely played. Why? Well, its nice
because Pokémon Tool F haven’t made a huge impact, at
least not yet. Again they can be devastating or they
can be a waste. I’ve heard of two decks that really use
them well; Manectric-EX decks (specifically those
focused on attacking with Assault Laser) or control
decks which according to the other reviewers are seeing
results by stacking it with Seismitoad-EX and
Garbodor (BW:
Dragons Exalted
54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze 119/116; BW:
Legendary Treasures 68/113). Those two are already
an established deck, but apparently there is a more
control focused variant now that Enhanced Hammer
has returned. This messes with a lot of decks, but some
actually aren’t too badly affected. The three elements
that are being disrupted (Abilities, Pokémon-EX
attackers, Special Energy cards) are common and
widespread, but not universal to all decks. In fact
conditions were already such that decks that can avoid
relying on at least one of those three were already
incentivized.
Time:
This is a card we just looked at five weeks ago because
XY: Phantom Forces is still pretty new,
especially for use in competitive Organized Play. Even
if it was a card every deck needed to run four of, it
would take a hit here because we are reflecting upon all
of 2014, not just how it finished. Even if some of the
rumored potency of this card is out there, even if I’m
just ignorant of what the metagame is like for the
serious competitive scene (it isn’t like I can
participate in tournaments right now)... its still only
the last two months of the year. That is great, but
compared to some of the cards that have helped to define
2014 within the first few months of the year, it isn’t
as large an impact.
Summary
Standard:
3.25/5
Expanded:
3.25/5
Limited:
3.25/5
Summary:
As is hard to ignore in my review, I’m not overly
impressed by this card. The gimmick is novel but that
will eventually wear away as either we get more cards
like this or the mechanic is abandoned. It might become
huge next year… but that’s next year. From what I can
tell, how I scored it in the original review seems to
correct, save that I actually messed up my own
explanation for why Standard and Expanded score the
same; the Expanded card pool makes a difference, but
Tool Scrapper both helps and hurts the usage of
Pokémon Tool F cards (as opposed to making no
difference).
Most decks can make use of these cards in general and a
few can make very good use of it, so they don’t score
low, but it is a strategy reliant upon what your
opponent is playing and using them well does require
certain other cards that may not already be in your
deck. Head Ringer didn’t make my list at all.
It might have deserved to simply for the sake of
novelty, but its way to high on the combined list for
that, and even if it is an important up-and-comer now,
that isn’t the same as some of the cards that shaped
longer stretches of this year, as much or even more.
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