Today we review Grimlock. No,
that isn’t right. I mean Beast Wars
Megatron. No, still not right.
How about Beast Machines
T-Wrecks? If this seems like a
strained opening gag, it is!
Nonetheless remember that in the United
States (among other places)
Transformers: Beast Wars actually
shares the same anniversary as the
Pokémon video games, and shameless fans
like myself still want to see some sort
of crossover because Pokémon with robots
in disguise would be awesome. Getting
certain vehicles or pieces of tech from
the series would be nice as well…
So if you didn’t guess yet, today we
look at Tyrantrum (XY: Furious
Fists 62/111). This is the first
Tyrantrum to be printed in the TCG,
so no worries about competing or
potential to combo with a past (but
still legal) iteration. The same goes
for its previous Stage, Tyrunt (XY:
Furious Fists 61/111) and that is
where I am going to start for this card
because Tyrunt is a “Restored
Pokémon.” For better or worse (I tend
to lean towards the latter), the Pokémon
video games insist on having a few
Pokémon that are prehistoric Pokémon
that have been revived from their
fossilized remains. It was cool when it
was first used in the original games,
but by now feels almost as worn out as
one of my jokes. The TCG always tries
to go the distance by introducing a
mechanic that represents how these
Pokémon are obtained in the video games
(thank goodness they don’t do that with
most other “special circumstance”
obtained Pokémon).
Restored Pokémon were introduced in the
BW-era sets and unfortunately, it has
not been an improvement over the
previous “prehistoric Pokémon”
mechanics. Tyrunt is labeled as
a Restored Pokémon in place of being a
Basic, and cannot be played directly
from your hand. To get it into play you
must use Jaw Fossil, a Trainer
that (like the corresponding Items for
other Restored Pokémon) you look at the
bottom seven cards of your deck and if
you find any copies of Tyrunt in
those seven cards, you get to Bench one
of them (and shuffle your deck
afterwards). Copies of Tyrunt
that reach your hand are effectively
“dead” cards, unless you are playing in
Expanded, in which case you could run
Twist Mountain, a Stadium that
allows you to Bench one Restored Pokémon
per turn… but only with a successful
coin toss. The good news is that this
set gave us Fossil Researcher, a
Supporter that allows you to search your
deck for up to two Restore Pokémon and
Bench them, a significant improvement
over the other options. Don’t forget
that since Restored Pokémon are not
Basic Pokémon, you can’t open with them,
and that means you can’t run a deck with
just restored Pokémon, and despite the
amount of space being dedicated to them
they do nothing for lowering your odds
of mulligans.
Tyrunt
is pretty much a filler card. I had
hoped it might retain the “Prehistoric
Call” Ability seen on the Restored
Pokémon from BW: Plasma Blast: it
allowed you to bottom deck that Pokémon
if it was in your discard pile. Instead
we get two attacks, Gnaw and Crunch,
both familiar attacks. Gnaw can hit for
30 with a cost of [FC] while Crunch can
score 50 for [FCC] and with a successful
coin toss discards an Energy attached to
the Defending Pokémon. It is good that
Crunch can use Double Colorless
Energy to be a bit faster, the
attacks aren’t as complimentary as one
would like; attach a source of [F] one
turn and without Energy acceleration of
another sort, you miss an attack and
then would want to jump to Crunch with
said Double Colorless Energy
being attached the next turn… except as
we’ll see Crunch actually risks clashing
with Tyrantrum. Note that the
discard is required if you get
“heads” on Crunch. Tyrunt isn’t
impressive in the Stats front either;
all that work to get a 90 HP
Fighting-Type with Grass Weakness, no
Resistance and a Retreat Cost of [CC].
The only thing really good about that
is the Fighting-Type; in Expanded you
can search it out with Level Ball,
but the only reason to do that is if
you’re feeling lucky enough to run
Twist Mountain.
So with all of that baggage, what does
Tyrantrum itself bring to the
table? It is also a Fighting-Type,
which you would hope for given we just
got a mess of Fighting-Type support.
For the record though, it could have
been a Dragon-Type as well: in the video
games Tyrnatrum are Rock/Dragon-Type
hybrids. That wouldn’t have been as
good given - in addition to the recent
surge in support - Fighting-Types hit
the most likely Weakness for three
different Types (Colorless, Darkness and
Lightning) while Dragon-Types currently
only hit BW-era Dragon-Types for that
double damage so ultimately Fighting was
clearly the way to go. Tyrantrum
also counts as a Stage 1 Pokémon; I
don’t believe anything currently
references Stage 1 Pokémon without also
affecting Stage 2, and compared to a
Stage 1 Evolving from a “mundane” Basic
Pokémon (as opposed to a Restored
Pokémon like Tyrunt),
Tyrantrum is definitely better being
compared to Stage 2 Pokémon.
Fortunately, it seems to stack up
reasonably well with such comparisons;
150 HP (as a printed maximum) is amazing
on a Stage 1, only equaled by Steelix
(BW: Plasma Freeze 79/116) and
surpassed by Wailord (BW:
Dragons Exalted 26/124), the latter
of which is only legal in Expanded.
Since I stated we should look at it
more like a Stage 2, 150 HP… remains
impressive; only a few Stage 2 Pokémon
equal or surpass it. Despite hitting
big numbers, it is important to remember
that Pokémon-EX, while being worth two
Prizes, usually clock in at 170 or 180
HP (220 or 230 for Mega Pokémon-EX) and
even before combos and Weakness, most
attackers are going to clock in with at
least 90 points of damage (average) each
turn in competitive decks. 150 is
sturdy, but still at risk for a OHKO; it
beats out how most Pokémon are at an
even higher risk. Its Grass-Type
Weakness isn’t “good” to have, but it
also is far from the worst right now.
The three most likely Grass-Type
attackers are Genesect-EX,
Virizion-EX and Leafeon (BW:
Plasma Freeze 11/116) and even
without Weakness, they were going to hit
Tyrantrum hard. It isn’t good to
move into OHKO range but it is better
that it is against cards that already
had the chance with their usual combos.
The lack of Resistance is a bit
disappointing, though perhaps it was
feared that it would overpower it for
key match-ups. The Rock/Dragon-Typing
of the video games would justify (in TCG
terms) Colorless Resistance (as it
resists both Normal- and Flying-Type
attacks), Fire Resistance and Lightning
Resistance. The first two don’t
currently exist in the TCG while the
latter would make any matches against
most Lightning-Types even more lopsided.
The Retreat Cost of three is a small
benefit… in Expanded, where you can use
Heavy Ball to get it (unlike
Tyrunt you actually want to get this
into hand). For Standard it is a
potential vulnerability but one that
most decks will end up covering to some
degree as much for its own sake as for
the need to shed Special Conditions and
attack effects. In fact, the latter
will be quite relevant.
Tyrantrum
has two expensive but amazing attacks.
For [FCC] it can use Chew Up to hit for
60 points of damage… plus 90 if the
Defending Pokémon has a Special Energy
card attached! Almost anything that
isn’t one of the larger Pokémon-EX or
enjoying some form of protection is
OHKOed… in many decks. It is important
to remember that while Special Energy
cards are heavily used, most decks can
be made to include at least a few Basic
Energy to give an attacker that is just
taking the base 60. This is by no means
a silver bullet that slays the beast’s
chances, but it is a tactic the
Tyrantrum player must be prepared to
deal with… which brings us to its second
attack. For [FFCC] it can use Giga
Impact for 150 points of damage, the
same amount as if it was using Chew Up
against something with a Special Energy.
Four Energy is hard to get on a card
and it is even harder to keep something
that already has four Energy alive (so
many popular attacks feed on the amount
of Energy your opponent has in play).
The Mewtwo-EX or Yveltal-EX
you are trying to take down on one hit
has good odds of taking you down just as
quickly; you come out ahead in Prizes
but they might come out ahead in
resources and field presence, because
prepping Tyrantrum is so
difficult. Still if you can manage it
is is impressive, and it gives you
another good reason to pack a trick to
easily change out your Active, possibly
multiple times so that a Tyrantrum
that uses Giga Impact and survives can
use it again (Benching resets the
effect).
So what can we do to help Tyrantrum
out? I think the most important thing
is Landorus (XY: Furious Fists
58/111), which may come as a bit of a
surprise since the attacks are so close
to scoring the vaunted OHKO against
commonly played Pokémon-EX. Landorus
both scores an easy 20 points with
slight Energy acceleration and while
safely soaking hits of under 120 damage
(60 if the attacker is a Water-Type).
Even if it is OHKOed, that is likely
enough for Tyrantrum to do its
thing the next turn, and even if
Tyrantrum goes down right away, if
you took out a Pokémon-EX you’ve broken
even two Prizes to two prizes. If your
opponent manages to get around
Landorus and start hitting
Tyrantrum, Landorus itself is
a decent spare attacker… and of course
has synergy with the usual other
supporting Fighting-Type attackers:
Hawlucha (XY: Furious Fists
63/111) and Terrakion (latest
printing BW: Legendary Treasures
84/113). If you’re trying to avoid
running any Pokémon-EX, Stunfisk
(BW: Dragons Exalted 70/124,
BW: Legendary Treasures 83/113) is
useful for setting up or finishing a
2HKO by attacking the Bench and Active
at the same time.
Of course, you should still be employing
Strong Energy and Korrina,
though your choice of Stadium and
Pokémon Tool can vary. You could try to
shut down Abilities with Garbodor
(latest printing BW: Legendary
Treasures 68/113) and if you are
not worried about giving up your “no
Pokémon-EX” edge, Landorus-EX
and/or Lucario-EX should fit into
the deck with ease, while Virizion-EX
(obviously not with Garbodor) can
use Grass Energy accelerated from
the deck to fill the [C] costs in the
attacks while enabling Virizion-EX
to protect Tyrantrum from Special
Conditions. In the end what prevents
this card from being higher is that this
is a lot of effort and no matter how
good you get the deck, the Restored
Pokémon mechanic is going to keep it
clunky and the more you add to avoid
this, the closer you get to just having
a different deck saddled with
Tyrantrum.
Do I think this card has potential?
Absolutely! Do I think it will become
a dominant player in Standard? No; the
restored Pokémon mechanic is that much
of a burden, and to be fair the fast
pace of the format makes it hard to get
buy on three and four Energy attacks.
In Expanded, I am still uncertain as to
what to expect. If the format ends up
being mostly “Standard+”, I think it
will mostly be a wash with the added
goodies and targets versus the added
potential counters and unfavorable
match-ups. In fact, the only way it is
worse is if VirGen decks reign supreme
by a significant margin and/or basic
Energy focused decks somehow become
dominant. As for Limited play, this is
not recommended; you need Jaw
Fossil or Fossil Researcher
to get Tyrunt into play anyway,
making Tyrantrum cumbersome even
if you do get what you need. Tyrunt
is dead if it hits your hand or don’t
have a Maintenance handy.
Ratings
Standard:
3.5/5 - Tyrantrum brings
significant OHKO potential and without
being a Pokémon-EX and possibly without
needing an Ability, but still needing a
massive investment and utilizing the
clunky Restored Pokémon mechanic.
Expanded:
3.5/5 - We might see Lightning-Type
decks make a comeback and Tyrantrum
gains access to Heavy Ball, but
we may see more competition in general
and decks that are less vulnerable to
Tyrantrum and its tactics.
Limited:
1/5 - It might be amazing if you could
get it out and powered up, but doing so
requires legitimate luck you then you
need to have started prepping it on the
Bench or risk it being overwhelmed
before it can attack.
Summary:
The recent Fighting support makes
Tyrantrum, with its impressive but
expensive set-up, a little more
impressive and a little less expensive,
but not to the point where I would
expect this to become a major tournament
presence. I do expect it to be a
presence; one of those decks that rarely
win an entire event due to periodically
collapsing under its own weight or from
crashing into one of its bad match-ups…
but especially if you aren’t one of
those bad match-ups you always have to
be careful, especially if you can’t
easily ready a back-up attacker.
