aroramage |
Following up from yesterday's card,
Omastar BREAK adds on another Ability that makes Omastar
much more highly sought after than you might initially
think. Dangerous Tentacles is a dangerous Ability to
have, acting out as a free Switch towards any Benched-EX
Pokemon once per turn. Since it targets ANY EX, this
makes things very difficult for anyone trying to keep
their opponents from getting those crucial KOs to get
the Prize advantage!
Course, it doesn't really solve the
basic problems Omastar has - being the Evolution of a
Restored Pokemon is still a major hurdle to go over, and
using Archie's to get Omastar into play, while easier,
is really only good for a Restored deck. Omastar BREAK
does add more to what Omastar can do, but he does it by
adding more to what the player has to do to reap the
benefits. At that point, why not just run Lysandre? Sure
it costs your Supporter for the turn, but you can run
multiple copies rather than the 1-1 line-up you'd play,
and it isn't restricted to just Pokemon-EX.
And come to think of it, he only
gets 20 more HP!! Omastar, BREAK out a bit more!!
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (just too hard to get
out for what he's ultimately worth - and that's saying a
lot)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (there's only so
much Omastar BREAK can really do)
Limited: 1.5/5 (...really, if you
can get Omastar BREAK out at this point, why don't you
just win?)
Arora Notealus: Omastar BREAK is
probably the hardest Evolution to get out in the game
currently. You have to evolve it from an Omastar, which
the easiest way is to use Archie's on it after Battle
Compressing it or Sycamoring it to the discard pile. The
harder way involves Omanyte, which relies on Helix
Fossil Omanyte to chance on getting it out from beneath
your deck. And that's not even including a quick
Evolution item like Evosoda or Wally. In other words, to
get out Omastar BREAK, you need at least 4 cards no
matter what. Most others will need at least 3, and the
others that need 4 don't need to rely on such overt
methods.
Next Time: Time to wrap this tour
up with a look at our flying friends!
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Otaku |
Today we look at Omastar BREAK (XY: Fates
Collide 19/124). A Water Type, which as
mentioned yesterday carries some solid benefits.
At least it normally does but a lot of it won’t apply to
Omastar BREAK. A lot of the nifty tricks
like Archie’s Ace in the Hole aren’t going to
matter for it (at least not directly). You have to
BREAK Evolve it from the Omastar we reviewed
yesterday,
so it isn’t going to get much benefit from Fire Types
being almost universally Water Weak or the chunk of
Water Weak Fighting Types, even if those two were to
gain a significant presence in the metagame. Yes I
did review the Omastar; hopefully that review
will be posted by the time you are reading this.
Most anti-Water effects just act like Resistance, and
neither are big deals… because we established you aren’t
really going to be attacking with this card. If
you were, it would be bad because while you only see the
Resistance on BW-era Grass Type (not all of them, just
most) you’d 4HKO (3HKO with typical buffs) something
like Virizion-EX.
Being a BREAK Evolution of a Stage 1 makes this a
pseudo-Stage 2, but it is not only worse than usual
because a real Stage 2 could use Rare Candy, but
because this line originates with a Restored Pokémon (Omanyte)
and not a Basic. Omastar BREAK has 140 HP,
pretty typical for BREAK Evolutions of Stage 1 Pokémon
and enough that it has a decent chance of surviving a
hit. Not a great chance, but surviving a shot or
two from decks not focused on raw damage or with an
incomplete setup is certainly better than not.
Weakness, Resistance, Retreat Cost, and potential
attacks and/or Abilities are supplied by the prior
Stage, so moving on we have its own Ability, “Dangerous
Tentacle”. Once per turn (before you attack) this
Ability allows you to select one of your opponent’s
Benched Pokémon-EX and force it into the Active
position. If you have two or more in play, each
may use its Ability once per turn. This effect is
very good; not every deck uses Pokémon-EX but most
do. The real issue is that you may not want
to promote a Pokémon-EX, and of course… it is on the
BREAK Evolution of the Stage 1 of a Restored Pokémon.
So running through Omastar from yesterday, it is
a Stage 1 Water Type Pokémon with 120 HP, Grass
Weakness, no Resistance, Retreat Cost [CC], the Ability
“Restoring Beam” and the attack “Spinning Attack”.
The Ability allows you to search your deck for a
Restored Pokémon and Bench it while the attack costs
[WC] and does 60 damage. The Weakness, lack of
Resistance, and Retreat Cost also will show up on
Omastar BREAK since again we only have this one
Omastar. Grass Weakness will mostly just make
it easier for Vespiquen (XY: Ancient Origins
10/98) to more rapidly and reliably score OHKOs against
it. No Resistance is typical; it would be nice to
have even one Type that has to work just a bit harder
for the KO, but that requires it move the card’s
effective HP outside of a particular KO range (OHKO to
2HKO, 2HKO to 3HKO, etc.). The Retreat Cost is
high enough you can pay it if you must but you should
really try to include other options. I guess in
Expanded you can use a Silver Bangle so that
Spinning Attack can 2HKO most Basic Pokémon-EX or OHKO
Jirachi-EX (almost relevant thanks to Omastar
BREAK) but mostly it means you use this card for the
Abilities. Restored Pokémon don’t count as Basic
Pokémon and thus a deck focused on them needs a lot of
space to work at least a few in, and the deck
still is likely to mulligan. Omanyte is needed
if you want Restoring Beam to have some use; it is a
Water Type 80 HP Restored Pokémon with Grass Weakness,
no Resistance, Retreat Cost [CC] and the attack “Water
Gun” which costs [W] and does 30. Putting
Omanyte into play without Restoring Beam or
Archie’s Ace in the Hole means Helix Fossil
Omanyte and/or Twist Mountain. The
former is the Item that works only with Omanyte
and puts it onto the field from the bottom seven cards
of the deck (provided there is an Omanyte among
those cards). Twist Mountain allows you to Bench
a Restored Pokémon from hand, but the effect is once per
turn and requires a successful coin flip.
Is the Ability worth it? Probably not, but at
least it is in the ballpark. You might try for an
Omastar BREAK deck. Mostly use Archie’s
Ace in the Hole to get Omastar directly into
play, setting up an Omanyte or two with with
Restoring Beam, to Evolve normally into spare Omastar.
Aerodactyl (XY: Fates Collide 76/124)
could be the other Restored Pokémon to keep
Benching from the deck, as well as either the deck’s
main or alternate attacker. You’ll need a Basic to
at least open, and perhaps be the main attacker in the
deck as well. We’ll discuss that Aerodactyl
some more
tomorrow.
For Limited, this card is mostly just an HP boost for
the regular Omastar; most of your opponent’s
won’t have a Pokémon-EX to force Active. Omastar
isn’t any great shakes here either. You’ll need
other Restored Pokémon to cash in on Restoring Beam from
Omastar and you’ll also need those Restored
Pokémon in your deck and not in your hand. This is
before we consider how difficult it may be to get
Omastar into play in the first place.
Ratings
Standard:
2/5
Expanded:
2/5
Limited:
1.25/5
Summary:
Seeing just the Ability, my thought is “See Shaymin-EX
(XY: Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108), promote
Shaymin-EX, OHKO Shaymin-EX!” but then you
realize what all it takes to reach this point, plus
additional attackers because Omastar BREAK can’t
do the job itself. This card secured two voting
points, taking 25th place out of the Pojo “extended” Top
10 list, so one of us thought it had potential… and it
looked like it did to me as well, before I thought about
how much is actually being invested and chose not to
include it on my own list.
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