aroramage |
Whoa whoa whoa, wait, wait, hold
on, gotta talk with somebody here, we let in one of
those fake Pokemon cards on here. Dangit, I thought we
were better than this, alright? Let's get this out of
here, bring in the real #1 card.
...wait, this is real? You're
serious? What kind of shenanigans is THIS?!
Yep, your vision's not deceiving
you - this is Volcanion-EX, a HYBRID Fire/Water Pokemon
card. Now this isn't the first time we've seen these
dual-typed hybrids - Delta Species, Holon Phantoms, and
Crystal Guardians had their own versions of the
dual-type cards! Steam Siege is bringing them back, but
these guys don't work quite the same way. Of the few
hybrids we've got, they are all appropriately typed
(sorry, no Fighting/Steel Blastoises coming back from
the look of it), and the first type dominates the Energy
costs of all the attacks that Pokemon has.
Take Volcanion-EX's Volcanic Heat
attack, for instance. If he was a Delta Species era
Hybrid, he'd end up having Fire and Water Energy in his
attack, but here he's only needing 2 Fire Energies and
an Energy of any other type. So for 3 Energy, he deals
130 damage and can't attack during your next turn. That
does make things very difficult if we made Volcanion-EX
the main attacker, but luckily for us, that's not the
only reason to end up bumping into him.
Steam Up is a powerful Ability
that, at the cost of a Fire Energy from your hand,
increases the damage of your Basic Fire Pokemon's
attacks by 30 points. And yes, that's before Weakness
and Resistance. Notable to this is that this effect can
stack - you're not limited to one Volcanion-EX "Steam
Up" per turn. Combine that with our #3 Volcanion's
Energy acceleration, add in a little #2 Ninja Boy
swaparoo, and this deck is extremely viable as its own
archetype!
Now here's the real kicker though -
being both Fire and Water has its own advantages!
Volcanion-EX can use any remaining Flashfire support
until it rotates out before relying on anything else,
but most notably he's got a good bit of Water support to
work with. Aside from stuff like Palkia-EX, who'd just
be overpowering him anyway, or Manaphy-EX, who actually
would be EXTREMELY useful in combination with some Water
Energy, there's also Archie's Infamous Ace-in-the-Hole
to just get him out and Dive Ball to search for him
whenever you need him! Wow!!
So will he be more successful in a
hybrid Fire/Water build, or is pure Fire just the nature
of his game? Whatever way works best, Volcanion-EX will
definitely be seeing some big plays!
Rating
Standard: 4.5/5 (pretty good
overall, just needs that extra bit of support to work)
Expanded: 4.5/5 (after all, he's
not gonna be your main offense with Volcanic Heat, but
as support, well, he's like an extra Muscle Band and
Fighting Fury Belt in terms of damage for just 1 Energy)
Limited: 5/5 (don't know about you,
but that's a LOT)
Arora Notealus: Volcanion is making
a huge presence here in his debut, and I gotta say
that's really nice to have! it shows he's not gonna be
some pushover and will even have a starring line-up in
decks to come! In the end, he may become one of the
better decks post-rotation, so keep an eye out for him.
Weekend Thought: What did you think
of our Top 10 list? Think some cards should be higher?
Some lower? Or maybe there's a card in the set you think
ought to have made the list? As always, feel free to
discuss!
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Otaku |
Without further ado, our top pick from XY: Steam
Siege is Volcation-EX, which is XY: Fates
Collide 26/114… and 107/114... 115/114. S’like
its the face of the set or something.
So Volcanion-EX is a Fire Type… and a Water Type.
This is the first of the new Dual Type Pokémon we’ve
looked at, and as a formatting note I’ll capitalize the
“Dual” in Dual Type from now on to make it more clear
I’m discussing a Pokémon. The card makes it
pretty obvious with two Energy symbols in the Type area,
and on the regular and Full Art versions, the background
is split between the appropriate Colors. So when
it comes to exploiting opposing Weakness, the Fire side
allows Volcanion-EX to hit nearly all Grass and
Metal Type Pokémon, while the Water side hits nearly all
Fire and a chunk of the Fighting Type. For
Resistance, it only has to deal with BW-era Grass Types
(and then not even all of them). There aren’t a
lot of good anti-Water or anti-Fire effects, in fact the
main example is the same for both: Parallel City.
It can reduce the damage of either by -20 (as well as
for Grass Types), but it sees play for the effect on the
other side of the Stadium: shrinking the opponent’s
Bench down to three spaces. For the record, based
on
this ruling
Parallel City ought to only reduce the damage by
20 (not 40), but I could be mistaken as I am
extrapolating from another card. I don’t recall
anything having double Weakness or Resistance; it has
been a while since it has been relevant, but if the old
rules are not revised then you apply all Weaknesses
first, then all forms of Resistance.
So what does being both a Fire Type and a Water Type do
in terms of support? Just to get what worried me
out of the way, Type specific support (yeah, even those
temperamental Burning Energy and Splash Energy)
only care that the correct Type is present, but it
doesn’t need the Type to be exclusive. So Dual
Types will indeed enjoy the best of both worlds.
This means you’ve got Blacksmith to attach two
basic Fire Energy from the discard pile and… um…
well unless this finds its way into a mostly Water Type
deck, I’m not sure if the support for Water Type Pokémon
will actually matter: this card can use Archie’s Ace
in the Hole or Dive Ball but it doesn’t need
them, and Rough Seas only makes sense if most of
the deck is Water or Lightning Typed. I mentioned
both Burning Energy and Splash Energy
earlier as working with this card, but I just meant they
would not automatically discard themselves; as we’ll see
Burning Energy doesn’t help it at all and
Splash Energy is probably unneeded. Peeking
ahead, we see this card mostly needs [R] Energy, and in
fact it wants it in hand at times as well so basic
Fire Energy cards and perhaps their support will be
of use. The Water side is weak in this area, and
as I have not worked them all out (since most do not yet
exist) this could be a poor Dual Type combination but
compared to most of the mono Typed cards, it is good.
Being a Pokémon-EX means Volcanion-EX gives up an
extra Prize when KO’d, has to deal with certain
anti-Pokémon-EX effects, and cannot make use of some
(very few) supporting effects. It also explains
the 180 HP, as the max printed without a special
mechanic like this is 140; regular Volcanion only
has 130, so a +50 bonus is pretty good, giving
Volcanion-EX a good chance of avoiding a OHKO (at
least until most decks implement the bulk of their
strategy). The Water Weakness is dangerous with “Bluebox”
decks (what normal people call “Water Box”) running
around, plus I’m not counting Greninja BREAK
based decks out yet. Mostly because when I do that
in an actual game they come from being down by four or
five Prizes to take the win if they don’t have an
obvious advantage and pull ahead after only two or
three. There is also an increased risk from often
splashed Water Pokémon like Seismitoad-EX and
Keldeo-EX; frequently used off Type, their damage
output won’t be OHKO range but it is on top of their
real purpose in the deck. If it is a deck that can
meet two [W] Energy requirements, then both can
get to OHKO range. Lack of Resistance is typical;
it is still technically the worse but Resistance isn’t
potent enough for that to be a huge drawback. On
the other hand, the Retreat Cost of [CCC] is a
huge drawback as will be clear once we get a little
further in the card; just know that even before card
specific consideration, it’s too much to pay and not be
hurting from the Energy loss in the long term, or
usually the short term if you can afford it up front at
all. Include some outs to manually retreating at
full price, preferably several or at least one you can
reuse.
Volcanion-EX
has an Ability and an attack; both are important but I’m
telling you now, the Ability is key. That Ability
is “Steam Up” and considering how long Japanese scans
(with translations) and English scans have been
available, you probably already know exactly what it
does… but I’m going to tell you again anyway for the
sake of being thorough. Once per turn you can use
Steam Up to discard a [R] Energy from hand, which then
increases the damage done by attacks from your Basic
Fire Type Pokémon by 30 until the end of the turn.
It doesn’t target a Pokémon but places an effect on your
side of the field. At least that is how I would
explain it before Pokémon Ranger; I am thinking
it would count as an effect on you or all your Pokémon.
This is significant not only for Pokémon Ranger,
but for Fire Types that hit the field after it has been
used. Pretty significant as this can affect how it
interacts with Ninja Boy as well as Basic Fire
Types simply played normally after it has been used.
With what we do know, I can tell you it stacks and that
is is pretty impressive. Just one of these can add
some pop to a weak, supporting move like say “Power
Heater”, the attack from
Wednesday’s
Volcanion that hits for 20 damage while attaching
an [R] Energy to up to two of your Benched Pokémon.
Two of these puts most opposing Active Pokémon into 2HKO
range, some of those into OHKO range even. If you
have four Volcanion-EX in play and the Fire
Energy in hand to pay to use each Steam Up Ability
once that turn, the total damage bonus is +120, which
means Power Heater swings for a mighty 140… or in
Expanded with Silver Bangle you can hit that
magic 170 to OHKO several Basic Pokémon-EX!
So what about the attack on Volcanion-EX?
It is named “Volcanic Heat” and for [RRC] it delivers a
good 130 damage. Unlike say Deoxys-EX or
Regirock-EX, the Ability on Volcanion-EX
can boost its own damage, so with a Muscle Band
and one Steam Up, its Volcanic Heat can OHKO most things
other than Wailord-EX, Wailord (BW:
Dragons Exalted 26/124), Mega Evolutions, and
Pokémon with defensive buffs. A swarm of these can
get Volcanic Heat to the level that only things with
full on protection like Safeguard or already large HP
buffed (such as Wailord-EX with Fighting Fury
Belt) can hope to survive. I have however
saved the worst for last; Volcanic Ash has a big
drawback in that it places a condition on
Volcanion-EX that prevents it from attacking again
the next turn. There are of course ways around
this, but they eat up deck space, especially the
reusable options. The alternative though is
letting it sit there and do nothing, or discard three
Energy to retreat. With a the right support, this
is totally worth it, as are the right circumstances; if
you win or know this Volcanion-EX is going down
after attacking, that clause means nothing.
So… this and Volcanion may be the new Fire
deck. A few other familiar faces may grace it as
well, but this allows low Energy attackers to
potentially hit big numbers, and if you can still afford
the big Energy attacks then they can hit even bigger
numbers. Volcanion will probably be at least a
loose staple in future Fire decks post rotation, maybe
even now; a big Basic which is not a Pokémon-EX
and accelerates Energy while attacking has been useful
for multiple Types, so it shouldn’t be a surprise it is
good for the Fire Type as well. Volcanion-EX may
be more hit or miss; if you’re not focused on a Basic,
Fire Type attacker then Steam Up means nothing. At
the same time though the damage buff is less common than
the Energy acceleration for the Fire Type (we still have
Blacksmith). In Expanded there are more
Energy attachment options. I just realized that
perhaps Entei-EX could make a comeback; its
“Grand Flame” attack defies expectations as it does 90
for [RRC] and attaches an [R] Energy from the
discard pile to one of your Benched Pokémon. Three
Volcanion-EX, a deck built to keep enough Fire
Energy in hand, and a Fighting Fury Belt
could hit big damage while being able to survive a big
hit and prepping the next attacker. A
fourth Volcanion-EX (and Steam Up) leaves very
few targets that could survive a single hit.
Fire Type Evolutions though gain no bonus, and therein
lies the rub, but not for the reasons you might expect.
Few Fire Type Evolutions are worth running, but what I
am really worried about is Weakness; the only Fire Types
I can find which are not Water Weak are
Talonflame and Fletchinder cards. Mono
Weakness can be a terrible thing. Still,
Volcanion-EX has a lot to offer Standard and
Expanded play. It also should be great for Limited
as well; don’t try running it on its own though as even
with the powerful hits and 180 HP, needing three turns
to build to begin attacking, plus being unable to attack
every other turn, gives your opponent too long to try
and score the KO. With all the Fire Types this
set, odds are you can fit this in somewhere, and even if
it is the only Fire Basic, you can still use it for a
big hit or two or three, even with the turns of “lag”.
I just don’t think it has quite enough HP to survive to
take Prize number four.
Ratings
Standard:
4/5
Expanded:
4/5
Limited:
4.75/5
Summary:
Yes, I am scoring this card lower than I did Ninja
Boy from
yesterday:
being a big deal in Basic Fire Pokémon decks just
doesn’t rate as highly for me. In fact these are
the same scores I gave Volcanion (except for
Limited) on Wednesday, and on
Tuesday
I gave Yveltal BREAK the same Standard score, a
higher Expanded score, and (again) slightly lower
Limited score. What is up with that?
Volcanion-EX
earned 18 voting points, just edging out Ninja Boy
by one point. Volcanion was my number two, and I
think that is what happened: together the two can
give Ninja Boy a run for his money as most
influential card. Plus the Fire Type has been
largely absent again, so at least in the short run this
probably will have a bigger impact. I also
already stated that Ninja Boy may have deserved
first, but despite my waffling I am convinced that
Volcanion-EX and Volcanion are going to be
quite significant for at least a little while.
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