Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Raichu
(XY)
Do the Wave is one of the best known attacks in Pokémon TCG history. Partly
because of its awesomely goofy name, but mainly because of how powerful it was
back in the very early days of the game with Wigglytuff
Jungle. Pokémon have made a couple of fairly recent attempts to revive it with
Cinccino BLW and Zoroark
DEX’s Brutal Bash, but it hasn’t really made much of an impact.
Raichu XY represents another attempt to resurrect
this iconic attack, and this time they might just have succeeded.
This time around, it’s called Circle Circuit, costs two
Colourless Energy, and does 20 damage times the number of Pokémon you
have in play. It’s easily paid for with a Double Colourless Energy, but even so,
why would it be any more viable than the previous efforts? The key lies in
Raichu’s Typing. The massive HP inflation that we
have seen over the years meant that it was relatively difficult for
Cinccino and Zoroark to
score OHKOs, as Colourless and Dark Types did not hit much (or anything) for
Weakness. Raichu, on the other hand, has two very
popular EX Pokémon in his sights in the shape of Lugia
and the new, obscenely powerful, Yveltal. Both of
these Pokémon are one-shot by Raichu if you have
five Pokémon on the field. Slap on a Silver Bangle or a Muscle Band and you
don’t even need that many, and because it isn’t an EX itself,
Raichu can achieve a very advantageous Prize trade
for you.
Like the Dugtrio we reviewed last week,
Raichu isn’t capable of getting the job done on his
own. He’s a weak Stage 1 with an expensive second attack that you won’t really
want to use. He really belongs in decks as a tech against those big EXs, or as
part of an anti-metagame strategy which always aims
to hit for Weakness. Dugtrio is an obvious partner
for him, along with the Leafeon and
Flareon from Plasma Freeze.
Would such a deck be competitive? Potentially, but it depends on your ability to
read the metagame. Like all 4-Corners/counter style
decks, it really has no answer to anything even slightly outside of its Type
coverage such as Emboar /Rayquaza,
Trevenant XY, or Fairy decks. In a very narrowly
defined metagame, it could be a good choice, but in
a more varied environment, a couple of unlucky pairings will ruin your chances.
Rating
Modified: 3 (cheap attack that targets a key Weakness at the moment)
Limited: 4.5 (DCE is in the set, so go for it)
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HEZ
Intro to
Unlimited 150 |
Raichu.
Standard.
For such a popular Pokémon, Raichu hasn’t had many
good cards… it tends to just discard all of its own
energy then die. OK, so the new Raichu can do that
but you should never be using Thunder Bolt, it’s all
about Double Colorless Energy and Circle Circuit! For
just 1 special energy card you can be putting out 100
damage a turn with a full bench!
This is very similar to Zoroark (Dark Explorers) who did
see a little play for a while but power-creep proved to
be too much for the Stage 1, even with a Basic that
evolves itself via Ascension.
Raichu doesn’t even have the benefits of being a Dark
Pokémon or have a Basic that evolves itself, its
strength comes in being used as a tech against Lighting
weak Pokémon. The one thing it has over Zoroark is that
it doesn’t care what type your benched Pokémon are so
you can activate Circle Circuit in any deck. If there’s
lots of Lightning weak Pokémon in your local meta such
as Tornadus EX or Lugia EX you can slip a Raichu into
your deck to counter it.
Unlimited 150.
I think it’s finally happened, we’ve hit critical
mass on playable Raichu cards, a Raichu deck might be
playable now! Filling your bench is never a problem in
this format, in fact it tends to fill too fast! Churning
out 100 damage a turn should be pretty easy, if there
was just an Ascension Pikachu then Raichu could spread
the same sort of terror as Zoroark does.
The main reason you play Raichu in this format is for
Raichu LV.X and this new addition is a fine thing to
level it up from. Raichu LV.Xs Ability allows it to
attack twice the turn it levels up, meaning you can
snipe for 80 and hit the active for 100 all at once.
Building around Raichu LV.X means setting up KOs turns
in advance then taking out 2 Pokémon at once, suddenly
crippling your opponent giving it an interesting play
style.
Ratings.
Standard: 3
Unlimited 150: 4 |
