aroramage |
Oh yeah, that's right, it's
Stantler! He's just not been around in the TCG that much
at all. Heck, last we saw him was back in Undaunted, so
he's been overdue for a reprint I'm sure!
Not that there have been any
deck-breaking Stantler released in years. He's not that
stellar of a Pokemon to begin with, but his design is
pretty cool, and I think that deserves some credit! That
being said, we're not here to talk Pokemon designs,
we're here to talk about card games, and Stantler isn't
going to be at the top of everyone's wish list.
To start off, his Mystifying Horns
attack is already pretty low-key. It's a nice shout-out
to the original Stantler's attack from Neo Genesis,
though it sacrifices damage for a much better cost of 1
Energy compared to 3. Not that it would do much damage,
but now it's only up for flipping a coin to maybe
Confuse the opponent's Pokemon, and that's not good
enough to justify running him.
Big Charge on the other hand might
be something to take a closer look at. For 2 Energy,
Stantler can use it to dish out 30 damage, or if you
have a Mega Evolved Pokemon on your Bench, it can deal
80 damage. It reminds me a lot of Miltank (FLF)'s
Powerful Friends attack, which for 1 Energy could do 10
damage or, if you had a Stage 2 Pokemon on your Bench,
80 damage. The main difference though is that Stantler's
has more base damage for an extra Energy, but then it
doesn't really pay off in a bigger way.
The other downside would be
relevance, and while Stantler's attack is more relevant
to the game nowadays, Miltank was better timed. Back
when Flashfire came out, there wasn't much threat coming
from Mega Evolutions, and there were actually a couple
of decent Stage 2 decks such as Empoleon (DEX) and
Infernape (PLS) that could benefit from Miltank's
presence. Nowadays, Mega-Evolution decks are...pretty
good on their own. There's no real need to throw in a
tech like Stantler, whose damage output isn't as
fantastic as those Pokemon and who doesn't really add to
their strategy in any big way.
Novel as a reprint idea, but
ultimately not enough to give Stantler relevance.
Personally, I'd skip on this one, as he's just not good
enough for your Mega deck.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (if it had come out a
little earlier, Stantler might have actually seen play
in some of the early Mega decks as a means of possibly
justifying playing them)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (but at this point,
Megas are already well-supported enough to handle
themselves, and Stantler doesn't really add much to the
table in regards to that)
Limited: 2.5/5 (and it's not like
people were playing Megas in spades in Limited here)
Arora Notealus: The majestic
Stantler, once again outplayed by his own
impotence...one day you'll get a good card,
perhaps...one day...
Next Time: ANOTHER OF THE MIGHTY EX
APPROACH!! BEHOLD THEIR POWER
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Otaku |
As a reminder,
CotDs are written ahead of time and I’ve only been able
to glance at a few results from the first weekend of
State Championships.
Our second card
this week is Stantler (XY: BREAKpoint
91/122). It is a Colorless Type, which means it
won’t encounter Weakness or Resistance unless we get
crazy and discuss cards from the Unlimited Format
(spoiler: we aren’t). There are a few cards that
explicitly reference the Colorless-Type, both to help
and to hurt it. Altaria (XY: Roaring Skies
74/108; XY: Black Star Promo XY46) removes the
Weakness of Colorless Type Pokémon, Aspertia City Gym
gives Colorless Types +20 to their HP, while Winona
allows a player to search his or her deck for up to
three Colorless Type Pokémon; all three have seen
successful competitive play at one time or another,
though none are must-play cards for decks heavy with
Colorless Type Pokémon. Exeggcutor (XY:
Roaring Skies 2/108) has an attack that does damage
based on the amount of Colorless Type Pokémon in play
while Haxorus (BW: Dragon Vault 16/20) has
an attack that simply hits Colorless Types for extra
damage; unlike the Type specific support, these haven’t
ever proven worth it in competitive play, even when
Colorless Type decks have been popular. The
non-explicit (implicit?) Colorless Type support is… odd.
The Colorless Type has returned to a point where nearly
all of its Pokémon have Colorless Energy requirements,
but many Pokémon have them as unlike all other Energy
requirements they can be met by any Energy Type (as
opposed to Energy cards with a matching Type symbol).
If you are not using specific Colorless Type support,
there is no additional synergy between the cards. Double
Colorless Energy tends to be welcome here, but that
is true of just about any card with [CC] in its attack
costs, regardless of its Type.
Stantler
is a Basic Pokémon which is the best. Basic
Pokémon just need a slot for each copy you desire, can
be put it into play directly with no other card effects,
can function as your opening Pokémon (potentially
important for deck legality), enjoy better functionality
with many card effects/game mechanics simply be being a
single card, and there are even some effects that
specifically benefit Basic Pokémon. It is true
that there are card effects designed to punish players
for using or at least relying on Basic Pokémon, with the
most recent being Jolteon-EX, but such cards tend
to be very metagame dependent and so far just need an
Evolution to be dealt with effectively. Stantler
has 90 HP, which is not enough to survive a hit from
most competitive decks once they have even a half decent
set-up, though sometimes you will be fortunate and
Stantler will encounter just that. Slight
benefit is that it is Level Ball legal, but
Level Ball is only really worth it in decks right
now that have a lot of other, important Level
Ball legal targets and still would not be
better served by Ultra Ball. There aren’t a
lot of decks like that. Fighting Weakness is
typical and dangerous; while the Fighting-Types that can
manage a OHKO for a single Energy and nothing more are
Evolutions, it is a Type that usually begins with a
solid, damaging single Energy attack and then layers
multiple damage buffs so pretty much any Fighting-Type
that can do damage will also be able to score a OHKO
with just one or two other cards. No Resistance is
typical so no sense worrying about it, while the Retreat
Cost of [C] is nice and affordable.
Stantler
has two attacks but no Ancient Trait or Abilities.
For [C] it can use “Mystifying Horns” to flip a coin;
“heads” and it Confuses the opponent’s Active, while
“tails” means it does nothing. For [CC] it can use
“Big Charge” to do 30 damage; if you have a Mega
Evolution in play, the attack does 30+50 for a total of
80 damage. Mystifying Horns is far too weak; it
should really just Confuse automatically or perhaps do
some damage as well if it doesn’t want to have a
guaranteed effect. That would not actually be
good, it just would not be bad. Big Charge is
similar to “Powerful Friends”, an attack found on
Miltank (XY: Flashfire 83/106). Some
pretty key differences though. To begin with,
Powerful Friends only requires [C] but also only hits
for 10 points of damage normally, but does 10+70 if you
have a Stage 2 card in play. Getting a Stage 2
Pokémon into play isn’t easy; cards like Archie’s Ace
in the Hole and Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick
have been a huge help for Water and Fighting Types
(respectively), but even they require decks with a
particular build to work reliably (and “reliably” still
allows that they fail some of the time). So does
that mean Big Charge is better as Mega Evolutions are a
hair easier to put into play normally (via Mega
Evolution) than Stage 2 Pokémon are?
Nope. I am
not talking about needing a Spirit Link card to
avoid the “Your turn ends.” part of Mega Evolving, but
rather the difference in role. Are any Mega
Evolutions meant to sit on the Bench? Miltank
was not just useful as an alternate attacker, but as the
main attacker in some decks, where the Stage 2 it was
paired with could try to hide on the Bench, providing
useful Abilities. Stantler still might be handy
in some Mega Evolution decks, but only as an
alternative, Colorless-Type attacker. Good, but
not great; in fact only somewhat good. Still it is
probably worth some experimentation in Standard and
Expanded play. For Limited, it lucks out that
average damage output and HP scores are naturally lower
as you are making do with what you can pull from your
booster packs. Special Conditions and having all
Colorless Energy requirements are also more important
here. You are unlikely to pull both a Mega
Evolution and its Basic form, though unlike past sets
you might be more inclined to run the options from
XY: BREAKpoint in decks than focusing on their Basic
forms run completely on their own.
Ratings
Standard:
2.75/5
Expanded:
2.7/5
Limited:
3.25/5
Summary:
Stantler is an okay bit of Mega Evolution
support, providing a universal backup attacker for Mega
Evolutions that can hit hard for a single Double
Colorless Energy. The big issue is that as
Mega Evolutions are meant to be main attackers and/or
already have less generic alternates backing them up
and/or might not have Energy acceleration, Stantler
is not as useful to them as Miltank was and is
for Stage 2 Pokémon (and Miltank is not
universally used with Stage 2 cards).
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