aroramage |
So for the next few days, we've got
some dragonic Pokemon-EX to work our way through!
Today's comes to us in the form of Flygon-EX, which was
released in the Flygon-EX Box. Nifty! Maybe this is a
sign that one day we'll get ourselves a Mega Flygon!! :D
...okay, maybe not.
In any case, Flygon-EX has an
Ability and an attack, which partially work in tandem
with each other. The attack Spiral Buzz is a hefty
4-Energy and does 80 damage, but interestingly enough it
also has a "Stone Barrage" effect. You get to flip a
coin until you get Tails, and for every heads that comes
up, you get to add 30 damage onto your attack. It's
nothing special, but it's a lot better than most Stone
Barrage-esque attacks; usually you won't deal any damage
if you flip Tails on the first toss, but with Spiral
Buzz, you're at least guaranteed to deal 80. On average,
you should be dealing 80-110 damage, but there's
definitely potential to OHKO most anything with enough
luck.
But maybe you don't want to risk
trying your luck against something like M Rayquaza-EX.
Maybe there's something on the Bench you wanna take care
of right now, or maybe it'll be more difficult for the
opponent to switch them out! That's where Voice of the
Sands comes in - if Flygon-EX is your Active Pokemon,
you can do some swapping to get your opponent's Pokemon
out into the open. It oughta be pretty easy too! And if
you're lucky, you might just OHKO something right off
the bat.
Here's the thing though: while
Flygon-EX himself can do a lot of good switching things
around, I don't think you'd want to necessarily go for
the KO. I think you'd wanna use him as a set-up for one
of your other guys to sweep, swapping things around on
your opponent's field so they aren't sure what to power
up before switching to your main attacker and halting
their plans all at once! Combined with the right partner
and some strategic usage, Flygon-EX could potentially be
a devastating switcher.
He may not be the best Dragon out
there, but he's definitely one of the better Promos.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (a switcher with a
decent flipping attack? not too shabby!)
Expanded: 3/5 (about the same here)
Limited: N/A (he's a promo, so
there's no using him in the set)
Arora Notealus: One of these days,
Flygon's gonna just be amazing. I dunno, get some attack
that just decimates opponents, one that completely opens
things up for him. Who knows? Maybe his evolution will
be awesome enough to warrant use!
Next Time: There's only one dragon
that hasn't been mentioned yet...
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Otaku |
Time to push
through the middle of the week with a promo. Why? Well
we only had eight XY: Roaring Skies Dragon-Types
left to review that looked like they were worth a review
and we need to keep up with the promos so why not? So
that means Flygon-EX (XY Black Star Promos
XY61) is of course a Dragon-Type with the same pros
(good-but-not-great Type support, no Resistance) and the
same con (Weakness only found on BW-era Dragon-Types)
that do result in a net positive, but along with the
actual metagame have resulted in them enjoying little to
no success in the recent competitive scene. Being a
Basic is the best; as good as it gets for deck space and
for ease/speed of getting the card into play. It is
also the only guaranteed benefit of being a Pokémon-EX
(but also not a Mega Evolution): a Pokémon that is
actually an Evolution in the video games and typical
examples of it in the TCG still ends up as a Basic: no
need for Trapinch and Vibrava. Usually
being a Pokémon-EX also includes better attributes
and/or effects than non-Pokémon-EX cards receive, but it
isn’t guaranteed and there are three drawbacks that are
assured because of either rules text or cards already in
the metagame: giving up an extra Prize when KOed, being
the target of negative card effects and being unable to
access certain forms of support. Unless you run Life
Dew or avoid being KOed, you can’t escape the extra
Prize clause, though how many “anti-Pokémon-EX” cards
you slam into will depend on the rest of the metagame
and only a few cards with beneficial effects state they
won’t work with Pokémon-EX (which is probably why those
cards don’t see a lot of play).
Flygon-EX has 170 HP; although this is the lower
of the two most common HP scores printed on Basic
Pokémon-EX and only 10 less than the higher such score.
There aren’t a lot higher than the 180 without going to
Mega Evolutions and 170 is probably going to survive a
hit, so I’d call it pretty good (but not great).
“Probably survive” includes hits from decks that aren’t
fully set-up (including early game) or that aren’t
trying to score a OHKO (such as many lock decks), so be
aware that sometimes Flygon-EX will go
down in one hit. That brings us to Weakness:
unsurprisingly it is to the Fairy-Type (the default
Weakness for Dragon-Types in the XY expansions). No
Weakness is the best Weakness, but if you’ve got to have
one, the Fairy-Type (at least for now) probably falls in
the middle of the pack (at worst): they seem confined to
Fairy-Type decks and said decks often use off-Type
attackers or were trying to go for a OHKO
strategy, even when we stick to the more competitive
decks. This means Weakness is still going to help your
opponent but its “You need a less intensive set-up”
instead of “Unheard of offensive capacity”. Yes,
Weakness is so powerful that “I only kill ya a lil’
faster” is seen as not so bad. No Resistance is
disappointing but typical so we’ll move on to the
Retreat Cost: [CC] is high enough you’ll want to find a
workaround but low enough that if you can’t, you’ll
probably be able to afford it. It also is low enough
that Hydreigon-EX and its Dragon Road Ability can
lower it to a perfect free Retreat Cost, assuming no
mitigating effects and a Stadium in play.
Flygon-EX has no Ancient Trait but it does have
an Ability: Voice of the Sands. This is an interesting
name for a somewhat familiar effect: Flygon-EX
itself must be Active in order to use this Ability and
it is once-per-turn, but not the “absolute” kind but the
form where if you can either reset the effect (such as
by returning Flygon-EX to hand, Benching it
again, then finding a way to promote it to the Active
slot again) or simply promoting another Pokémon with
Voice of the Sands to the Active slot, you can use Voice
of the Sands again. Odds are rare you will want to use
it more than once though, because it is just Pokémon
Circulator: if your opponent has anything on his or
her Bench, he or she selects one of those Pokémon and
makes it his or her new Active; unless your opponent has
no Bench you’re guaranteed to force his or her current
Active out of your way, but it is unlikely you’ll
benefit from doing so more than once per turn. So is it
worth using once? Sometimes - it will depend on the
card’s attack or whether you can get it out of the way
efficiently so a different card can take the Active
position (whether to go on the offensive or try and
wall).
Flygon-EX has only one attack (Spiral Buzz): it
requires [GFFC] and hits for 80+ damage, where the “+”
means a “flip until ‘tails’” clause good for 30
additional damage per “heads”. Even with Double
Dragon Energy this is pricey and it isn’t good but
neither would I call it bad: it is unreliable. If you
get statistically average results, half would hit for
80, falling short of OHKOing even some smaller,
supporting Pokémon. The other half hit for at least
110 damage, 2HKOing all but the biggest (or defensively
buffed Pokémon). Half of the half (or a quarter of the
overall results)the hit for at least 140 damage, OHKOing
most non-Pokémon-EX (printed, not necessarily that see
play) as well as the smallest of the Pokémon-EX. With
some additional boosting, you can start hitting OHKO
range on Pokémon-EX. Halving the results yet again (so
an eighth of the overall possible results) hit for at
least 170 damage, which is a great amount that OHKOs a
good chunk of the basic Pokémon-EX and almost everything
that isn’t a Pokémon-EX and lacks protective effects.
The odds of this are not great, but the threat is
there. If the Energy costs were easier to meet, the
base damage was a bit higher or damage added per heads
just a little more, this could have been a very annoying
part of our metagame because it would shift from “eh” to
“Oh yeah!”.
There are no
other cards named Flygon-EX… so what is this
card’s competition? There really aren’t a lot of
specific examples in terms of attack but rather a few
broad categories:
- Other “flip until
‘tails’” attackers
- Other Dragon-Type
attackers
- Other Grass and/or
Fighting Energy using attackers
- Other useful Abilities
The first
category is a bit tricky; I don’t know all the attackers
that use this mechanic off the top of my head and in
fact I only can distinctly remember a few. I lack a
good resource to quickly look it up (sadly
pokepedia.net
hasn’t been updated in about nine months now) and while
there are other resources, they tend to take longer to
use and… this isn’t exactly an established competitive
strategy so even I am unwilling to commit the time to
it. For Dragon-Type attackers… we’ve been discussing a
lot of competition and we’ll have even more tomorrow.
The short version is that the combination of Energy
requirements and the amount of Energy just make this
very unappealing when compared to the proven quantities
and even some of the other “iffy” prospects. Even other
useful Abilities, you’ve got the question of whether to
run this or say Reshiram (XY: Roaring Skies
63/108); if you’ve got no real use for Turboblaze then
Voice Of The Sands can make use of the same set-up (less
having basic Fire Energy in hand). You get a
Hydreigon-EX (or something else to enable a free
retreat) and a few additional switching cards so that as
needed you can get Flygon-EX Active, use the
Ability and then change out into the Active you do need.
If you are
determined you can build a deck around Flygon-EX
or rather its attack. Use Altaria (BW:
Dragons Exalted 84/124; BW Black Star Promos
BW48; BW: Boundaries Crossed 152/149) and while
you won’t be powering up any faster, you’ll up your
damage even when you whiff on coin flips. Victini
(most recent printing BW: Legendary Treasures
23/113) and its “Victory Star” Ability or Trick Coin
can improve your coin flips… but you need multiple
“heads” to get into remotely competitive range, so I
wouldn’t rely on this alone but perhaps stack it with
the Altaria. Using Victini allows you to
use your Pokémon Tool slot for something else; whether
it is something to make powering Flygon-EX up go
a bit smoother (Exp. Share), take more hits (Hard
Charm) or hit harder without the added set-up (Muscle
Band). All of it together is likely overkill, but
the point is to have multiple methods of boosting to
improve the odds of getting enough of a cumulative bump
to reach OHKO levels. Landorus (XY: Furious
Fists 58/111) can help some with Energy acceleration
or you could hand the task over to Virizion-EX
(which would also allow you to tap its Ability to block
Special Conditions), with either supplementing Double
Dragon Energy. Special Energy has its own drawbacks
so you’ll still want at least a single TecH copy of
either Fighting Energy or Grass Energy
(whichever of the two you aren’t accelerating) “just in
case”.
Mostly though
it seems like something you might include because the
rest of your deck makes the Ability a nice option in
Standard or Expanded. In Expanded it faces added
competition, but I am talking general and not specific…
enough to warrant a slightly lower score. It can’t be
used in Limited to my knowledge; I don’t know of any
sanctioned Limited Events that use the gift box this
game in as part of the product from which you would
build a deck. If it were re-released in a set, it
wouldn’t be good enough for a +39 deck - too slow
powering up - and most decks would lack an easy way of
getting it into and then back out of the Active slot,
but if a deck is already running sufficient Grass
Energy and Fighting Energy it would be a
welcome addition and strong presence.
Ratings
Standard: 3/5
Expanded: 2.9/5
Limited: N/A
Summary: Not a good card but certainly not a
bad one, Flygon-EX has some use but not enough to
justify working it into most decks. We are better off
for having it as an option, but don’t expect to make use
of that option very often (if at all) for competitive
play. The scores may seem a bit high for what I just
said, but remember the scope and quality of the
competition it faces; we are at a point where there are
just too many cards that score higher for “average”
cards to see a lot of competitive play.
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