Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
#1 Strong Energy
PlusPower,
Expert Belt, Crobat G,
Muscle Band, Special Dark Energy. What does the
popularity of those cards tell you about the Pokémon
TCG? If you said ‘that effects that add damage can be
incredibly good’, then you win this week’s Star Prize.*
Really, Strong Energy is like Special Dark on
performance-enhancing drugs, giving
+20 damage to the attacks of any Fighting Pokémon to
which it is attached. With just this card,
Landorus EX’s Hammerhead
does 50 + 30; Hawlucha FFI
hits EXs for 80 damage for a single Energy;
Lucario EX’s Corkscrew Smash
does 80; Tyrantrum FFI
becomes a one-shot EX killer . . . heck you can even
Retaliate for 110 with
Terrakion LTR if you really
want to. The effect stacks so you get plus 20 for every
Strong Energy: factor in Muscle Band and maybe
Hypnotoxic Laser and those
cheap Fighting attacks are hitting some really silly
numbers.
Any drawbacks?
Well, you can’t attach Strong Energy to a non-Fighting
Pokémon (it just gets discarded), which means it can’t
be used to retreat other Pokémon or fuel Colourless
attacks like Mewtwo EX’s X
Ball. Being a Special Energy also means that it can be
discarded by certain attacks (like
Cobalion EX’s Righteous Edge). Nevertheless,
there is no reason why a deck with a substantial number
of Fighting Pokémon wouldn’t run four of these. They can
turn a mediocre attack into something devastating and
give Fighting Types a huge boost at the start of this
new format.
*Star
Prize not an actual thing.
Rating
Modified: 4.5 (makes Fighting into the format-defining
Type)
Expanded: 4.5 (Enhanced Hammer is a slight issue, but
Fighting Types will still love the card)
Limited: 5 (you’re sure to pull Fighting Pokémon from
this set)
|
aroramage |
Welcome to our #1 card of Furious Fists! Now what could
beat out a damage-boosting Stadium, a Supporter that
brings out a Pokemon AND an Item, and hefty strikers
that can Item-lock? Well, an Energy, of course! Like
Strong Energy!
Strong Energy is one of two Special Energy in the set,
the other being Herbal Energy, and in a sense they work
similarly in that they have to be attached to a specific
Type of Pokemon. Naturally being the Fighting set, this
means that this gets attached to Fighting Pokemon. And
then it boosts their damage by 20. For every attack.
Against ANY Pokemon, so long as it's Active.
That's right, Strong Energy doesn't have the same
limitation that Fighting Stadium has in that it only
affects Pokemon-EX; rather, it gets to deal 20 damage to
ANY Pokemon. Now we've talked many many times about
Lucario-EX's power stacking up colossally so with Strong
Energy attached, but then you have to consider Pokemon
like Landorus-EX who can deal 50 to the Active with
Strong Energy AND set-up for another 30 on a Benched!
That's pretty insane!
Forget about Weakness and Resistance, especially if you
get multiple copies on the same Pokemon! Yveltal-EX is
powerful, but taking away 20 damage is only a single
Strong Energy away from being neutralized! Seismitoad-EX
may have your Items sealed up, but Strong Energy can
still be played down, making it more likely that you'll
annihilate him super-fast! You may not be able to search
Strong Energy with Korrina or bring it along back with
Landorus from this set, but you can always add the
Fighter you need, boost it up with Landorus, AND attach
Strong Energy to it!
This Energy is what is going to make Fighting decks a
major threat; having one or two of these makes the deck
scary, but running even three of them makes it more
likely that your Pokemon won't be around for much
longer! And with strong powerful attackers like Lucario-EX
and Landorus-EX around - and no Enhanced Hammer to
readily thwack it off - Strong Energy is looking to
become powerful support for a new powerful deck!
...well, maybe that's a good reason to run Team Flare
Grunt.
Rating
Standard: 4.5/5 (pretty powerful support for a powerful
deck, with maybe one card to remove it!)
Expanded: 4/5 (only gets a downgrade since Enhanced
Hammer is available here)
Limited: 5/5 (you WILL run this card if you get a
Fighting-type, ESPECIALLY Lucario-EX!)
Arora Notealus: This Energy is so strong, it breaks
through the rocks on the card! Crazy!
Weekend Thought: Do you agree with our Top 10? What
cards do you think should've made the list?
|
Otaku |
Today marks the 13th anniversary of the “9/11” terrorist attack
against the U.S.A. that helped to define the modern era.
Other terrorist activities have also happened in the
years since on this date, and other such tragedies have
happened on different dates in different countries.
Especially for those either not alive or too young to
really remember the incident when it occurred, I don’t
expect it to evoke quite the same feelings, just like
for someone like me who was still far removed from what
was happening can’t relate to someone that actually lost
someone directly to the event. Given all that has
resulted from it in this world, affecting people
globally, I ask that you take at least a brief moment to
contemplate the event and its ramifications.
The number one most promising card of XY: Furious Fists is
Strong Energy (XY: Furious Fists 104/111).
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone,
but a Special Energy card that increases damage is great
in a format that tends to be about hitting hard and
fast!
Although it is a brand new card and not a reprint, it feels
familiar to me; its effect increases the damage of
attacks, not unlike the old, Special Energy version of
Darkness Energy. The short version is that the
basic Energy version of Darkness Energy actually
released six and a half years years after the
original Special Energy version of Darkness Energy.
I won’t worry about minor errata, but there were also
three major iterations of this card, all providing [D]
Energy and plus 10 points of damage after applying
Weakness and Resistance to attacks that did damage in
the first place. The original granted this bonus to
anything with it attached, but if the Pokémon wasn’t a
Darkness-Type or didn’t have Dark in its name, a
damage counter was placed upon it between turns. Dark
Pokémon were the original Team Affiliation mechanic, and
why the TCG refers to the Type as “Darkness” (also why I
prefer to use italics when writing a card name).
The next version got rid of the pseudo-Poison mechanic
but also restricted the damage bonus to Darkness-Types
and Dark Pokémon, and the damage bonus applied
before Weakness and Resistance. The final version
restricted things further, so that the bonus only worked
for Darkness-Types (Dark Pokémon had not only
rotated out, but the last iteration of them were also
made as Darkness-Types or Dual-Typed Pokémon with one
Type as “Darkness”).
How does all that relate to Strong Energy? It explains a
lot about why the card works how it works and why it is
so good and yet how that may not last into the long
term. Strong Energy provides [F], but only while
attached to a Fighting-Type Pokémon as per the text of
the card… even though the symbol in the upper-righthand
corner suggests otherwise (so much for that being a
useful way of understanding how Special Energy work).
It can only be attached to Fighting-Types and if
it were to somehow bypass that, it instantly discards
itself via its own effect. These are all “nerfs” to the
later iteration of Special Energy Darkness Energy.
There is one buff, however: Strong Energy
provides +20 to damage instead of a mere +20. If HP
inflation had kept pace with damage inflation, that
would be necessary, but instead, even though HP scores
for Pokémon have risen (even those without special
mechanics), we still have many Basic Pokémon with 60,
50, 40 and even 30 HP. Even before Weakness and
Resistance, many a OHKO is there to be had.
Darkness-Type Pokémon generally appeared to have been “pre-nerfed”,
since everyone knew they could raise their damage via
Special Energy Darkness Energy. Originally the
fact that you needed said Special Energy (or a
Rainbow Energy) to meet [D] requirements was
supposed to balance out, but especially once Basic
Energy Darkness Energy was released, that wasn’t
going to work. Future Fighting-Types may end up in a
similar boat, but for now Strong Energy is
amazing with many older and freshly released
Fighting-Types! Due to Fighting Weakness being so
common (most Colorless- and nearly all Darkness- and
Lightning-Types have it) and almost ironically Fighting
Resistance being less rare than other Types makes the
damage boost quite significant. Fighting-Types were
already likely to have low Energy/high damage attacks,
and this set gave them two other means of bumping up
that damage: against Pokémon-EX only you can use
Fighting Stadium for +20 and Machamp (XY:
Furious Fists 46/111) boosts the damage of all
Fighting-Types in general by +20 per copy. Like all
other Pokémon, Muscle Band is available for an
easy +20, and for all non-Pokémon-EX Silver Bangle
provides an easy +30. This means that Fighting-Types
can hit even harder and faster than they already were!
Landorus-EX already made its
comeback before XY: Furious Fists became
tournament legal, and players are gleefully able to use
Strong Energy and friends to get its Hammerhead
attack hitting amazingly hard. There is a diminishing
return to using multiple Strong Energy past the
actual Energy requirements of an attack, but it isn’t
too bad: using Hammerhead as an example, two Strong
Energy mean [FF] yields a 70/30 split before other
effects, while three basically fake Nightspear (attack
on Darkrai-EX which also costs three Energy)!
The main disincentive to using multiple Strong
Energy on a single target is that - as Special
Energy - there isn’t an easy way to get them back into
play and there are multiple cards your opponent can run
to “punish” you for using them (on top of still more
cards that hit harder for having more Energy in play or
on your Active to begin with!).
Expect to see a lot of Strong Energy in Standard, though
only in Fighting-Type heavy decks since it can’t even be
used as Retreat Cost fodder for non-Fighting-Types. For
Expanded, it will have to face Enhanced Hammer;
even with some of the additional opportunities Expanded
may afford Strong Energy, that is a significant
drawback. For Limited, the only reason to skip it is to
get no worthwhile Fighting-Types to run in your main
deck and while possible, it is highly unlikely.
Ratings
Standard: 4.5/5 - Even
though I think this card is overpowered, I can’t bring
myself to give it a perfect score; it has defined limits
and vulnerabilities, and it is actually pretty
tempting/easy to use in a suboptimal fashion. It is a
must for any mostly or pure Fighting-Type deck, unless
for some reason none of said Fighting-Types are doing
damage.
Expanded: 4.25/5 - As for
Standard, but now you have to worry about not only
increased competition for Fighting/mostly Fighting-Type
decks, but Enhanced Hammer. Still a must in the
appropriate decks, it just carries a slightly greater
risk.
Limited: 4.9/5 - A tenth of a point shaved off; you might be the player
running a +39 deck build around Heracross-EX, or
that failed to get a Fighting-Type you can play or that
is worth the hassle of using in Limited. Mostly you’re
easily making space for it even if its only helping a
mediocre Fighting-Type be a little more adequate when
you’re fortunate enough for the two to show up at the
same time.
Summary: Strong Energy is an amazingly potent card that only
slightly suffers due to the built in restrictions of the
card since you can’t use it to meet Colorless Energy
requirements for non-Fighting-Types and you have to deal
with the Special Energy counters that Double
Colorless Energy and Rainbow Energy already
made tempting. I already think it so potent it will
cause balance issues, probably until it eventually
rotates out (if it ever rotates out) but am also
grateful it is a mere Uncommon as even someone like me
has a play-set on the PTCGO already.
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