Otaku |
Wormadam
(XY: Fates Collide 59/124) is our third card for
this shortened week. This entire week is covering
a related set of cards, so remember to take a look at
Tuesday’s
and
Wednesday’s
reviews because Mothim and Wormadam (XY:
Fates Collide 3/124) are relevant, and I’m trying to
minimize how much I repeat myself.
Wormadam
(XY: Fates Collide 59/124) is a Metal Type.
Good for hitting all Fairy Types and a subsection of the
Water Type for double damage. Resistance is found
on XY-era Lightning Types. Anti-Type effects
aren’t that big of a deal. Some solid Type support
but the best they have isn’t exclusive and sees more use
supporting non-Metal Types than their own Type.
Note that “best” includes ease of use; they have some
fantastic effects that are restricted to the Metal Type,
but they aren’t as easy to use. So again, a solid
Type but not as great as I would think given all the
little bits that go into it. If you want a more
detailed explanation,
last Friday
I went into a lot of detail covering the Metal Type
Genesect-EX (XY: Fates Collide 64/124,
120/124). Being a Stage 1 is normally not too bad
as it just means one more card and one more turn;
Evolving Basics usually don’t carry their own weight
like the game needs if we want some balance between the
Stages, but it isn’t too large of a hurdle. Burmy
is a Grass Type so besides Wally, you can use
Forest of Giant Plants to speed things up at the
price of your Stadium instead of your Supporter (and for
anything which Evolves from a Grass Type). This
Wormadam has 100 HP; high enough not to be a
guaranteed OHKO but low enough it’s probably going down
in one. Fire Weakness makes it even more certain,
which is better than Weakness actually making a serious
difference by turning a bunch of 2HKOs into OHKOs.
Psychic Resistance is far better than nothing and helps
a little. The Retreat Cost of [CC] is high enough
you do not want to pay it but low enough if you
absolutely must, you likely can.
Wormadam
has the attacks “Strikes Back” and “Iron Head”.
For just [M] Strikes back does 20 damage for each damage
counter on it. If you can load it up with eight
damage counters, a Muscle Band gets it into OHKO
range for almost all cards with 180 HP or less.
Exceptions are things with protective effects, but that
includes most Basic Pokémon-EX. The catch is of
course getting plenty of damage on it without it
actually being KO’d, and the fact Wormadam is
almost certainly a gonner next turn. Iron Head
needs [MCC] does 60 base damage, which is low for three
Energy. It sports a flip-until-tails effect that
adds 20 damage per “heads”, which allows it to threaten
just about anything but means half the time you’re just
hitting that 60 damage. Sure that means half the
time you’re doing 80+ damage but for three Energy, it
really needed to be doing 70-90 points of damage before
the effect. Which still wouldn’t make it great,
just means you could try for surprise, low chance OHKOs
while still doing steady 2HKOs. The attacks only
compliment each other in pricing; a single [M]
requirement is pretty easy to meet and a follow up
Double Colorless Energy then pays for Iron Head.
With the addition of today’s Wormadam you start
to see a potential strategy emerge. Strikes Back
is exactly what the doctor ordered… well almost.
It needs a specific Energy Type even if it is only one,
and we still need help to get Wormadam into a
range where it can be up front and survive. We
can’t toss something else up because Mothim only
moves damage counters off of Wormadam
cards; we can load up a Wormadam, but only from
another Wormadam. We could shift gears
(...no, not
that)
to other Metal Type support, like Shield Energy
and possibly Reverse Valley so that 100 HP
suddenly is borderline for KOs (preferably just on the
happy side of the divide). Tomorrow we’ll cover
the last Wormadam to see if it offers any other
answers, but since I’ve got the space I’ll bring up an
alternate method of helping these Pokémon exploit more
forms of Weakness: Flareon (XY: Ancient
Origins 13/98), Jolteon (XY: Ancient
Origins 26/98), and Vaporeon (XY: Ancient
Origins 22/98). Each of these Eeveelutions
have an Ability that causes your Stage 1 Pokémon to
count as an additional Type (matching the Eeveelution in
question) on top of what they already are. Now
today’s Wormadam can use Strikes Back to score
double damage against many more targets. Of course
aside from Mega Evolutions, that only matters because it
would allow you to score the OHKOs with about half as
many damage counters. Could help for the secondary
attacks, but running another split Stage 1 line takes up
a lot of room, and I mentioned
before
some additional attackers that work with the damage swap
plan. Oh, and I should probably add Rotom (XY:
Fates Collide 24/124) which we looked at
here;
as it moves damage counters from your Pokémon to the
opponent’s.
Ratings
Standard:
2.75/5
Expanded:
2.5/5
Limited:
3.75/5
Summary:
Wormadam (XY: Fates Collide 59/124)
actually works with the combo we are building, but only
so much. Still a vital piece missing, and we’ll
see tomorrow if Wormadam (XY: Fates Collide
44/124) is that piece. So for Standard and
Expanded, today’s Wormadam seems like a near
miss, important if we get a deck working based on these
cards but not in the grand scheme of things, except in
Limited play. As is often the case, here its
attacks will just work better as its HP lasts longer.
|
aroramage |
Alright, who wants a short and
sweet review over this trash-heap of a Wormadam?
As opposed to the other two
Wormadams, this one has the least HP at 100. She also
has Strike Back, which is an okay counterattack, dealing
double the damage she's taken. This maxes out around 180
HP by itself, which while that's not bad...it's also not
likely your opponent is going to leave her at 90 HP
without going the full 100 HP at that point. And Iron
Head? Really? That ain't happening.
So with that in mind, can she work
in a Wormadam deck? There is the idea that you could use
Mothim to transfer damage counters from one Wormadam to
this Wormadam, but would your other Wormadam survive the
blows to let you use it? Also keep in mind that you're
gonna have to be running one or two different kinds of
Energy to be successful with a Wormadam deck, depending
on what Types you add in.
So is it gonna be Grass/Metal or
Metal/Fighting?
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (oh yeah, in the
meantime this one's not that great)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (she needs the help
of her friends to make herself work best)
Limited: 3/5 (and while she could
do well enough to KO something, you do have to figure
your Energy requirements)
Arora Notealus: OKAY I MIXED UP MY
WORMADAMS!! There's three different ones, and I assumed
we were reviewing them in order, but we WEREN'T, so I
got thrown off. DETAILS THOUGH, IT'S STILL BAD!!
Next Time: THE REAL LAST WORMADAM
IS DIRT
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