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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Top 10 Cards of 2014

#2 - Seismitoad EX

- Furious Fists

Date Reviewed:
Dec. 30, 2014

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 4.62
Expanded: 4.62
Limited: 4.65

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being the worst. 
3 ... average.  
5 is the highest rating.

Back to the main COTD Page

Baby Mario
2010 UK National
Seniors
Champion

#2 Seismitoad EX 

With 40-50% of pretty much every deck made up of Items, any card which stops an opponent from using them has always been an extremely powerful. From various Vileplumes, through Manectric ex (the old one) and even the otherwise depressingly weak Zebstrika NEX, players have always sought to exploit Item lock whenever it was available. 

Well, now thanks to Seismitoad’s Quaking Punch attack, it’s available on a 180 HP EX, and all you need is a single Double Colourless Energy, making it usable from the first attacking turn onwards. The pitiful 30 damage might have been a problem in a format without Muscle Band and Hypnotoxic Laser, but this isn’t one of those formats, so feel free to inflict decent damage while denying your opponent access to Tools, Switch, Max Potion, Ultra Ball etc., etc. for the entire game. 

Splashable enough to play in any deck that runs DCE; powerful enough for that to be worth doing, Seismitoad is perhaps the first Item Lock card that doesn’t really need a deck built around it. Pair it with Garbodor LTR or Pyroar FLF for even more locking fun, or just shove it in Yveltal or Fairy decks for some easy disruption. It’s a total headache to play against, and was the final nail in the coffin for Stage 2 decks with their reliance on Rare Candy. When a card makes other things outright unplayable, you can question whether it is a good thing for the game, but you can’t question its impact. 

Rating 

Modified: 4.5 (Trainer locking has never been so easy)

Expanded: 4.25 (versatile enough to find a place here)


aroramage

Oh yeah, big beefy Seismitoad-EX hits our #2 spot on the list for being such a heavy-hitting master. When you've got a format where you can lock down your opponent's Abilities and Items and keep them from attaching enough Energy for attacks on top of that - you know somebody's gonna dominate! The fact that Seismitoad-EX manages to do this as a Basic is unbelievable! 

The scary thing is, as good as his Quaking Punch is at keeping opponents on lockdown, it's not even his strongest attack! Grenade Hammer does even more damage, and if you've got ways to avoid the recoil - whether that's by having nothing on the Bench or keeping a Mountain Ring or Mr. Mime handy - it's pretty much a vanilla 130 that can get powered up higher! 

I don't need to list off the number of Items Seismitoad-EX can lock, and I probably don't need to mention how much more powerful he's gotten with the reprint of Enhanced Hammer in Phantom Forces. And I know I've mentioned Head Ringer as being high up on a Garbotoad list when we reviewed that for the Top 10 of 2014! It's amazing what a few cards can do to unleash total devastation - Seismitoad-EX is good! Really good! 

Rating 

Standard: 5/5 (Item lock has proven to be critical, and with Garbodor, Enhanced Hammer, AND Head Ringer? He doesn't need specialty support - just give him DCE, and let him run wild!) 

Expanded: 5/5 (all those tools in Standard help Seismitoad-EX so much more here! Even Rayquaza-EX can't deal that well without his Eels!) 

Limited: 4.5/5 (once again, he's so close to perfect - if only he was Fighting! He could've been even scarier, though, so maybe it's for the best...) 

Arora Notealus: Funny, he was #2 when we reviewed him in Furious Fists, and here he is at #2 for 2014. If nothing else, he's really consistent! 

Next Time: What beats out a toad that locks Items, a bird the destroys everything, a megaphone, a jamming device, a deck thinner, a better Catcher, an anti-EX powerhouse, a powerhouse energy, and an energy accelerant?


Otaku

Welcome to the runner up entry for our Top 10 Cards Of 2014 Countdown!  If you decided just to jump to this review, know that the CotD crew submitted individual Top 10s that were averaged out to create the rankings for the Top 10 list we actually reviewed.  As with our Top 10 lists for individual sets, reprints are excluded: without this rule cards like Double Colorless Energy and VS Seeker would have not just made the list, but probably placed quite high.  For my own list, my main guideline was card impact.  I evaluated each 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 in 2014). 

The second overall best card of 2014 is… Seismitoad-EX!  Some may be shocked it didn’t rank higher, but I’ll explain what went into my own ranking for it.  The review crew’s first CotD for Seismitoad-EX can be read here, but don’t forget its second review (already) here if you need a refresher: my apologies as rereading them reveals I either didn’t read my own reviews before submitting or did a bad job of it as the typos (including where I obviously changed thoughts mid sentence) are frequent and painful.  The first review was an extremely early look at the cards from XY: Furious Fists due to the earliest released scans, while the second is our actual Top 10 list for the set… where Seismitoad-EX was again number two.  It also appears I was mistaken about Benching an opponent’s Seismitoad-EX that just used Quaking Punch ending the Item blocking effect.  So… has anything else of relevance changed since that last review? 

Quite a bit, but I’m not sure if the net difference is noticeable in terms of something like a CotD score.  Seismitoad-EX is still a 180 HP Basic Water-Type Pokémon-EX saddled with Grass Weakness and a Retreat Cost of three and lacking any form of its own Resistance.  Grenade Hammer, as predicted, is rarely used (from what I can tell, especially in serious competitive play) but Quaking Punch has made it a card that shaped the format; suddenly all the powerful Items we have been getting and continue to get almost make sense as with this kind of easy, splashable Item lock you never know when you’ll be punished for using them. 

Breath: All decks are affected by the risk of their Items being blocked, but it is a bigger concern for some decks more than others, which will be addressed in Depth.  You don’t see Seismitoad-EX in all decks, but if something runs Double Colorless Energy or has another compatible form of Energy acceleration, its quite likely to appear.  Overall, its got a noticeable effect on every deck played. 

Depth: It really is important to remember how much losing access to Items affects a deck.  It rarely stops everything a deck can do… but then again before its reveal I was working on a deck where most of the Supporters weren’t draw power but other useful effects like Lysandre, while cards like Bicycle and Roller Skates helped pick up the slack.  Needless to say, I had to give up on that idea, but the point is that such Trainer Engines (especially now that we have Battle Compressor and VS Seeker and Lysandre’s Trump Card) might have been realistic without the fear of Item lock via Quaking Punch and most decks had to adjust their builds with such an easy and potent Item lock in mind.  Garbodor (BW: Dragons Exalted 54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze 119/116; BW: Legendary Treasures 68/113) partners up so well with something that protects Pokémon Tools like Quaking Punch, making it just that much harder to counter either.  I wish more of my decks could pack something to easily croak us some toads but when two key resources are missing, most such counters become too clunky.  I often get that feeling of righteous indignation (okay, sour grapes) when I lose because my opponent managed an Ability/Item lock for more than just a few turns because I choose not to play a simple beatdown deck that wasn’t reliant on two almost fundamental aspects of the game.  Also if you were wondering, yes I forced in not one but two Bucky O’Hare references. 

Keeping Seismitoad-EX from dominating the format is the raw power of other cards compared to its own offense while it locks down at least your Items; even with Hypnotoxic Laser, Virbank City Gym and Muscle Band, its barely doing an effective 110 per turn.  That is well within the competitive sphere of course, but if your opponent can remove the Poison from their Active (even by just retreating) that knocks it down to just 80.  Without a Hypnotoxic Laser it is just 50… and of course Quaking Punch alone is just 30.  Its Grass Weakness didn’t prove too bad overall, though perhaps it has oddly helped VirGen decks; it doesn’t like losing access to Items either, but Virizion-EX is Water Resistant and can still acceleration Energy even under a total lock and even without a G Booster or Muscle Band Genesect-EX scores a OHKO. 

Of course, I would be remiss not to point out that while Stage 2 decks were already hurting and expected to struggle post rotation to the current Standard Format, Seismitoad-EX and the threat of Item lock blocking both common search and Rare Candy seem to have helped to all but eliminate them from the competitive scene. 

Timing: This is probably the only area where Seismitoad-EX isn’t one of the best and as one of the newest cards on my list, tied with Strong Energy for eighth and ninth place (Battle Compressor was the only even newer card to make mine) in just this one section.  If Seismitoad-EX had released earlier it would have scored higher and if it had released later the entire list would likely be different.  For one thing, Seismitoad-EX (and its prominence) are part of why other hopefuls in XY: Furious Fists failed to live up to expectations (or had expectations lowered).  Had it released in XY: Flashfire the Charizard-EX and Pyroar (XY: Flashfire 20/106) decks wouldn’t have enjoyed the time they did have on top, and who knows if we would have bothered if the best they could do is where they are at now.  Miltank (XY: Flashfire 83/106) likely wouldn’t have had its brief time in the sun; the decks that used it well were necessarily Item heavy after all.  An even earlier release would have shaken things up even more, at least relative to what happened Yveltal-EX being denied Dark Patch and all and again, an even earlier weeding out of most Stage 2 decks.  In the end though, Seismitoad-EX only got to be hugely important for half a year. 

Ratings 

Standard: 4.35/5 - With the shifts in the card pool and some rulings I had wrong at the time of this last review, I am only giving the card a slight boost in rating.  Fortunately while the lock it enables is devastating, Seismitoad-EX doesn’t hit quite hard enough, so a sufficient amount of decks can still set up and overwhelm it if someone tries to rely on it… and as just a nasty opener, its still a good but less imposing card. 

Expanded: 4.5/5 - I might be wrong, but I think there are just enough key Items being relied up here (I know I love having access to Level Ball) that that I’ve got to up the score a little. 

Limited: 4.8/5 - Slightly lower than I last scored it because I forgot that with the Fighting- and the Grass-Type support, you still might have enough reason to risk running say Lucario-EX or Heracross-EX should you be so lucky as to pull a second Pokémon-EX.  Lucario-EX has built in draw while Heracross-EX has built in damage reduction with its first attack and exploits Weakness.  Other Grass-Type attackers might be a slight problem, especially Leafeon (XY: Furious Fists 7/111) because Eevee (XY: Furious Fists 80/111) makes it easier to get Leafeon out.  All in all though, Quaking Punch to block what few Items the opponent has and then shift to Grenade Hammer for a barrage of 130 damage shots with no drawback due to your lack of Bench. 

Summary: Seismitoad-EX has had a major impact on the game and is worthy of being our second place finisher, though it only made my list at number six.  Sounds terribly low but again, it missed the first half of this year plus while its fairly general usage, it still isn’t as easy to fit into most decks as Lysandre, Startling Megaphone, or tomorrow’s card.  I also feel it important to mention I don’t like the direction it takes the game, but at the same time realize its probably keeping some other problem cards in check.


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