aroramage |
HUZZAH!! Another new set, and
another Top 10 list to work our way through! Welcome to
the Steam Siege Top 10, let's just get right into it
with our little Twofer special - Yanmega and Yanmega
BREAK!
So what makes this ragtag team work
out the most? Well Yanmega starts us off with a little
work towards Assault Boom. At 3-for-50, it does have the
added bonus of getting 70 damage if your opponent's
Pokemon has a Tool attached to it. And hey, let's face
it, why wouldn't they have a Tool attached? Frankly you
should have one on Yanmega too!
But that's really not enough for
most people to play a Stage 1, even with the advantage
of being Grass-type and all that. Well, with the only
other copy of Yanmega (PHF) rotating out, this one's
gonna have to do something at least...decent. And that's
where Sonic Vision comes in. As long as you have 4 cards
in your hand, Yanmega's attacks don't cost anything.
Not a single Energy.
Effectively, having 4 cards in your
hand makes Yanmega's attacks free, meaning he can deal a
potential 120 damage - for FREE. That's a pretty big
Ability in and of itself, although with
Ability-shutdowns your opponent may have and the Ability
preventing you from overextending your hand too much,
lest you end up somehow with not 4 cards at the time of
your attack, it's relatively balanced.
Almost surprised the attack isn't
more broken to compensate, really. But I guess he does
have Forest of Broken Plants.
And now for Yanmega BREAK. Well
what benefits does he have? First of all, being a BREAK
Evo, he does boost up the HP score and add on something
new while adopting all the old stats like Weakness,
Resistance, but most importantly that sweet sweet
Ability from before: Sonic Vision.
Did I mention he's also got no
Retreat Cost?
Anywho, Yanmega BREAK brings with
it the Barrier Break attack. At the same cost as Assault
Boom, it deals 100 damage. That's it. No matter what
your opponent's got, Barrier Break isn't about dealing
damage. It's about dealing UNPROTECTED damage. No
Weakness or Resistance to change it, but it's also
unaffected by any effects on the Defending Pokemon.
That's pretty big, and considering he can do it for free
with that Sonic Vision?
Yanmega on his own is pretty good,
probably enough to see some play, but where he goes,
Yanmega BREAK is sure to follow
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (a solid Stage 1 in
and of itself)
Expanded: 3/5 (with a solid BREAK
evolution to compliment)
Limited: 4/5 (course I'd aim for
the Evo before the BREAK)
Arora Notealus: For a giant
terrifying death bug from Gen 4 as an evo to a bug from
Gen 2, I gotta at least admit Yanmega is...memorable for
being so scary looking. Odd that I keep thinking of
Yanma though instead of him when I see his name.
Next Time: THIS CLAW IS THE CLAW
THAT WILL PIERCE THE HEAVENS!!
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Otaku |
To begin with, that
article I wrote last week? After I was done
revising it I had enough new content that I split it
in
two.
So we have that the terror from HS: Triumphant,
Yanmega Prime! You see it could attack for
no Energy and… why are we reviewing it alongside a BREAK
Evolution?
Oh! At last
we are ready to countdown our Top 10 Picks From XY:
Steam Siege. 10th place is a tie between Yanmega
(XY: Steam Siege 7/114) and Yanmega BREAK
(XY: Steam Siege 8/114). We’ll start with
Yanmega before moving onto its BREAK Evolution.
It is a Grass Type and as it is not a Basic Pokémon,
that means Forest of Giant Plants could
potentially be a game breaking card for it, with
Revitalizer being another useful bit of Grass
Pokémon specific support. There is the incidental
support gained by being the same Type as other useful
cards like Vileplume (XY: Ancient Origins
3/98). No Type is universally or even mostly Grass
Weak, but many Water Types (including among the
competitive ones) are Grass Weak and so are some of the
Fighting Types (again, including among the competitive).
Nothing is grass Resistant, and there aren’t any really
strong anti-Grass effects; the main thing you might run
into is Parallel City which is run for its Bench
shrinking side, but the other side reduces the damage of
Fire, Grass, and Water Types by 20. Seems like a
good start to me.
Yanmega
is a Stage 1; thanks to Forest of Giant Plants
you can try and skip the turn wait to Evolve since all
legal Yanma are also Grass Types. It will
take twice the space per copy to run versus a Basic,
can’t be your opening Pokémon, and instead of Basic
support/counters it is Evolution (plus specific Stage 1)
support and counters with which Yanmega must
deal. Its 110 HP is almost but not quite to that
point where it seems more likely to survive than be
OHKO’d; I’d a crude guess based on my own anecdotal
experience is that the it’s about 20 points shy of
crossing that threshold. 110 is enough that it isn’t a
particularly easy OHKO, but few decks won’t get to a
point where they can pretty reliably deal that out turn
after turn, and with only a turn or two of prep.
Lightning Weakness is dangerous because it is shared by
some potent cards like Yveltal-EX; so decks
seeking to exploit it elsewhere get Yanmega
thrown in as a bonus. At the same time no Weakness
is safe, and this set is pumping up Fire Types something
fierce; being one of the few non-Fire Weak Grass Types
is ultimately a good thing. Also good is
Resistance; any is better than none and even though the
Fighting Types like to stack bonuses, better to make
them need one more Strong Energy or the like.
The Retreat Cost is perfect; a free retreat is a
wonderful thing.
Yanmega
has one Ability and one attack. “Sonic Vision” lets you
ignore the Energy requirements of this card’s attacks
but only if you have exactly four cards in hand.
Maintaining a precise hand size can be difficult
depending upon the circumstances, but four cards is a
moderate amount that neither requires maintaining an
engorged or emaciated hand. It also helps that you
only need to care about Sonic Vision on your own turn,
as opposed to your opponent’s turn when he or she could
use something like N to alter your hand. So
what is this card’s lone attack? For [CCC]
“Assault Boom” does only 50 damage, but its effect can
add 70 more if the opponent’s Active meets a particular
condition: having a Pokémon Tool attached. Pokémon
Tools are quite common and even if your opponent tries
to avoid having one, if they are using a Pokémon-EX you
could still use Pokémon Tool F cards to get the bonus
damage. If the damage split went the other
direction (70 base, 120 with the effect) this attack
would be better, but as is it is still reasonably good.
When you get to use it for no Energy, it is great!
Yanmega BREAK
is still a Grass Type, so what I said about that still
applies. As a the BREAK Evolution of a Stage 1 it
acts like a Stage 2 Pokémon except Stage 2 specific
support and counters won’t apply. Those that apply
to Evolutions in general will still apply to BREAK
Evolutions and I didn’t see anything specific to BREAK
Evolutions finally debut in this set. Yanmega BREAK
has 140 HP, which if it were a Stage 2 would be roughly
the middle of typical scores (they tend to be 130 to
160). This is high enough that taking it down in
one shot requires a bit of effort; 140 isn’t enough to
be remotely safe, but the odds have improved in a
significant manner. Yanmega BREAK will get its
Weakness, Resistance, and Retreat Cost from whichever
Yanmega it BREAK Evolves from, as well as access to
that card’s effects, but Yanmega BREAK does bring
an attack of its own as well. For [CCC] it can use
“Barrier Break” to do 100 damage, with the kind of
piercing attack that ignores Weakness, Resistance, and
all effects on the opponent’s Active. Ignoring
Weakness is a bad thing, and ignoring Resistance is
pointless since nothing is Grass Resistant, but ignoring
most protective effects is useful, with 100-for-three
being a solid return. When used with today’s
Yanmega so that it can attack for free, it also
becomes a great deal.
So how about
Yanma and the other Yanmega? For
Yanma we have BW: Dragons Exalted 4/124,
XY: Phantom Forces 3/119, and XY: Steam Siege
6/114, while for Yanmega there is BW: Dragons
Exalted 5/124 or XY: Phantom Forces 4/124
from which to potentially pick. All are Grass
Types with Lightning Weakness, Fighting Resistance, and
no Ability. Every Yanma is a Basic with 70
HP and a Retreat Cost of [C] while these two Yanmega
are both Stage 1 Pokémon with free Retreat Costs and two
attacks. Yanma (BW: Dragons Exalted
4/124) is the only Yanma that is not Standard
legal; its lone attack is “Whirlwind” which costs [CC]
to do 20 and force the opponent to change out his or her
Active with a Benched Pokémon. Yanma (XY:
Phantom Forces 3/119) can use “Air Slash” for [CC]
to do 30, but has to discard an Energy from itself when
it does. Last of the Yanma is XY: Steam
Siege 6/114 and it has two attacks; for [C] it can
use “Scout” to see your opponent’s hand or for [CCC] it
can do a flat 40 with “Speed Dive”. Yanmega (BW:
Dragons Exalted 5/124) can only be used in Expanded
play and has 100 HP. It can use “Agility” for [CC]
to do 30 and (on a successful coin flip) protect itself
from the effects and damage of your opponent’s attacks
until the end of his or her next turn, or for [CCC] it
can use “Cutting Wind” for a vanilla 70 damage. Yanmega
(XY: Phantom Forces 4/124) has 110 HP; its
“Windfall” attack has you shuffle your hand into your
deck to draw six cards while for [CCC] its “Surprise
Strike” will do 50 damage (plus another 50 if Yanmega
moved from the Becn to the Active slot this turn).
Only Yanmega (BW: Dragons Exalted 5/124)
has been
reviewed
before and it didn’t go well. For Yanma
pick whichever looks interesting and stick with today’s
Yanmega.
So should you use
Yanmega, and if you do should you also go with
Yanmega BREAK? Wish I had a firm answer but I
have to go with just “Maybe” to both. You’ll need
to make the deck capable of reliably exploiting Sonic
Vision. Enjoy running a deck with few or no Energy
but make sure you can deal with effects that will shut
down your Abilities. There are a couple ways to
make sure your hand is at four cards exactly, but the
one that might be most pertinent is Judge as it
drops your opponent’s hand to four cards after doing the
same to yours. Of course that means if you do you
can’t use anything you drew unless you can get your hand
back up to four cards. If we weren’t talking about
two or three cards per copy, I might try this in decks
built around Vespiquen (XY: Ancient Origins
10/98) and the previously mentioned Vileplume;
Forest of Giant Plants speeds it all into play and
as long as you can keep a four card hand you won’t have
to worry about Energy costs. Vespiquen is a much
better attacker though, so why add something that is
effectively another Stage 2? For now, you probably
shouldn’t, though Yanmega BREAK helps you deal
with protective effects; instead think ahead to whenever
we get Karen and so your opponent can send all
Pokémon in your discard pile back to your deck.
Then again, maybe my mistake is thinking we need
Vileplume; Vespiquen loses Night March in
Standard as soon as rotation occurs, so maybe Yanmega
BREAK can be the new extra attacker/discard fodder?
So why did it make
the list? Well besides the fact that I suddenly
became jaded about several other cards it was competing
against, it is very similar to a strong card I mentioned
earlier. Yanmega “Prime”, or officially
Yanmega (HS: Triumphant 98/102 is like a
combination of today’s Yanmega and Yanmega
BREAK. Obvious differences of course but it
was an amazing card in its day. You can get an
idea by reading its Card of the Day review
here.
This means a lot of folk are excited about it and while
I have my doubts, Forest of Giant Plants
certainly handles my biggest concern of speed. It
is deck space and reliability that now give me pause in
recommending it too strongly. Experiment with
these two in both Expanded and Standard. In
Limited it looks like a great pull to me; even if you
can’t trigger the Ability, the Energy costs are nice and
splashable.
Ratings
Yanmega
Standard:
3.35/5
Expanded:
3.25/5
Limited:
4.5/5
Yanmega BREAK
Standard:
3.25/5
Expanded:
3.15/5
Limited:
4/5
Summary:
Yanmega and Yanmega BREAK bring an old,
successful concept into the modern age, but that doesn’t
mean this old trick will still work. I think there
is enough going for the two together that it will see
competitive play, though I cannot say whether it will
succeed or fail. You’ll also notice I didn’t
provide any scores for the formats post-rotation; it is
too early for me to even try to guess.
Yanmega
and Yanmega BREAK as a team managed to earn four
voting points, which all came from me making them my
seventh place pick. It was not a firm seventh
place as you can tell by the tone of this review.
I still believe these two have potential, but I freely
admit the three cards I ranked under them may have
deserved better. Supporting that is how two of the
three actually made the final Pojo list in a higher spot
than Yanmega and Yanmega BREAK.
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