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Man, sure has been a nice week to
just...accidentally forget to write a review for a
couple of days, am I right? Guess it's just that time of
year or something. Anyways, what was I saying? Oh right,
it's Ho-Oh-EX!
Now Ho-Oh has always been an
interesting Pokemon in the TCG. He's almost always had
some sort of correlation with having lots of different
Energies on him. Maybe it's got something to do with his
rainbow features or the idea of him being a fire bird?
Something like that. Rainbow Wings aside, Ho-Oh just
hasn't been extremely playable if only because there are
so many different basic Energies now - heck, we've got
Steel, Dark, and Fairy Energy introduced since his
introduction into the game!
But I digress: here, Ho-Oh-EX
is...well, a monstrous hybrid of Types culminating into
just the Colorless Type with ridiculous Energy
requirements. At the very least, being Colorless means
he can benefit from the support in Roaring Skies, so
he's got that going for him at least. On top of that,
he's not weak to Electricity like most Colorless
"Flying" Pokemon are - he's weak to Water instead. Still
keeps that Fighting Resist though, and at least he's got
the full 180 HP instead of the 160 HP his last
incarnation had.
Once again, he's got an Ability,
but it is so very different from Rebirth. Remember that
I started this out with "ridiculous Energy
requirements". Purifying Fire is just the beginning of
that, requiring Ho-Oh-EX to have Fire Energy on him. If
you do, he can heal himself off for 50 damage. Normally,
I chastise this sort of Ability for just recovering HP,
but 50 is still a significant portion. After all, if
something like Rough Seas can see play in decks just to
heal off 30, then Purifying Fire can easily be used in
something like a Ho-Oh-EX based deck.
...I say that, but then we get to
Elemental Feather. It's a 3-for-130 hit that hits a
Benched Pokemon for 30 damage, which is pretty awesome
to be honest. I mean it's an attack that can 2HKO
anything in the format! How can you say no to that?
Don't worry, I'll give you 3 reasons to say no to that:
GRASS. ELECTRIC. WATER.
Those are the 3 Energy requirements
you need to use for this attack. Never mind that you
would also need Fire Energy to use his Ability, the fact
that you need to have 3 DIFFERENT ENERGIES on him to use
his one attack is just absurd! I would have vastly
preferred something akin to Rainbow Burn, only making it
a decent attack with more power based on the different
Energies you attached. Or maybe having an effect that
changes or adds on based on the Energies attached to
Ho-Oh-EX, simplifying it down to these three, since they
seem to be so important.
Ho-Oh-EX is just unplayable at this
point. You might be able to get away with teching him
into a Fire deck to stall out with Purifying Fire while
fueling up your Benched guys, but that's about it. Man,
Ho-Oh, get your Energies straightened out.
...then again, there is that
Smeargle. With it, you could be able to fuel Ho-Oh-EX's
ridiculous Energy cost by switching around the Energies
you need to. And if you've got multiple Smeargle in
play, well that'll make it go by faster. Then maybe -
MAYBE - you can play Ho-Oh-EX. Don't expect that deck to
top any tournaments though.
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (...I won't say
he's the absolute worst EX ever)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (I mean, he's got
minimal usage with that attack, and Smeargle's existence
alleviates that a lot)
Limited: 3/5 (but still...)
Arora Notealus: Seriously though,
if they just gave Ho-Oh-EX one really big complicated
attack that changes effects based on the different BASIC
Energy it's got, I'm sure it'd be played. It'd be weird,
and if they make it too good people will wanna play
around it, but hey, they can't make the Energy
requirements too strict on him, ya know? Then again,
that'd be such a Yugioh thing to do in Pokemon...
Weekend Thought: Care to know my
thoughts on the other cards review this week?
Charizard-EX isn't too bad, and Floral Crown...exists.
Anything else you wanna know about this week's cards?
Think any of them are useful? You think any of them will
see play? I mean they might! You never know! Just saw a
Floral Crown the other day in PTCGO, dunno what that was
about...also I'm terrible at PTCGO.
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