Otaku |
Today we look at a card where my tendency to meander
back and forth between loving or hating it would be
appropriate due to its name: Wishiwashi (Sun &
moon 44/149). Wishiwashi is a Water Type; if
you have looked ahead, you know that we are not
likely to ever attack with this card, so it doesn’t
matter that it can hit nearly all Water Types and some
Fighting Types for double damage, or that only the bulk
of BW-era Grass Types are Water Resistant. This
also means most anti-Water effects won’t matter because
they are stuff like Parallel City; not the
bench-shrinking side, but the other one that reduces the
damage done by the attacks of a Water Type (and Grass
and Fire Types as well) by 20. What may matter is
Dive Ball, and that is about it. Even other
Water Type Pokémon or [W] Energy based support isn’t
going to make much of a difference with this card.
Neither is the Grass Weakness or lack of Resistance
because Wishiwashi only has 30 HP! This is
the minimum printed amount and leaves you open to being
donked if Wishiwashi is your only Active and you
face something like Hypnotoxic Laser with
Virbank City Gym (in Expanded play) or Forest of
Giant Plants plus two full Decidueye-GX lines
(in Standard). Many bonus Bench hits (via attack
or Ability) can take it out no problem at this size,
though at least it means Level Ball can target
it. The Retreat Cost of [C] is good, but on a
Pokémon this small I prefer a free Retreat Cost unless
it has something else that is amazing about it.
So… what effects are found on Wishiwashi?
One Ability and one attack. I’ll start with the
attack because it is blatant filler: for [W]
Wishiwashi may use “Water Gun” to do 10 damage.
That’s it. It is better than not having an attack
at all unless a lack of it would have lead to the
designers making another aspect of the card better.
The reason we are looking at this card is its Ability,
“Cowardice”; once per turn, you can bounce this card to
your hand, discarding any attached cards. It has
to be before you attack, and the text clearly
states you cannot use it right away; not at all
the first turn of the game, and not on any turn
Wishiwashi was just put into play. You can use
more than one in a single turn, however; it isn’t an
absolute “once per turn” effect, at least.
Cowardice has shown up only once before in the Pokémon
TCG, as a Pokémon Power (a precursor to Abilities) on
Tentacool (Fossil 56/62; Legendary
Collection 96/110). Tentacool was also a
Basic, Water Type Pokémon with 30 HP and an attack that
did 10 for [W], but it could Evolve into Tentacruel
(for what little that was worth) and had Lightning
Weakness. Back then attacks did less damage but we
had PlusPower, so the Weakness/HP probably even
out for effectiveness. As you could attack on the
first turn of the game back then, and we had Gust of
Wind, I’d say that made Tentacool worse,
but its version of Cowardice can be used regardless
of how long it has been in play. The only added
drawback is that it stopped working if Tentacool
was affected by a Special Condition.
So is there any purpose to Cowardice? Yes; it
allows Wishiwashi to be a placeholder Pokémon.
Did something just get KO’d? Promote Wishiwashi
and bounce it to your hand. If we had a good
counter moving effect for your own side of the field or
had to deal with self-inflicted Bench damage of 20 or
less (at least per Pokémon), Cowardice would allow
Wishwashi to safely dispose of it. We actually
do have such effects in the Expanded card pool (a
few attacks do the Bench hit thing in Standard as well),
but we don’t have a particularly good
option. For example, Reuniclus (Black &
White 57/114; BW: Dragons Exalted 126/124)
has “Damage Swap”, which is specifically is about moving
your damage counters around your side of the field. Zygarde
(XY: Black Star Promos XY129, XY152; XY: Fates
Collide 53/124) provides a decent enough example of
an attack that damages your own Bench for less than 20…
or at least less than 20 per Pokémon, as it hits
everything on your Bench for 10 damage each time it
uses its “Geostrike” attack. Geostrike also does
120 to the opponent’s Active, at a cost of [FFC], so it
isn’t too bad, actually, but you can deal with
the Bench damage through various other effects that can
heal or prevent it.
The best use for this card I have heard is as insurance.
Tying into how you can promote it then bounce it to
bring up the Active you really want for the turn,
including after you’ve used a bunch of other card
effects that would change what was desirable at the
start of your turn to something different by the time
you went to attack, think of all the times you need to
shrink your hand but are likely to need discard
fodder in hand, on the field, or in the discard pile.
If you have two of these in play, you can drop your hand
down to Ultra Ball, then bounce these two back
into hand to search out a Shaymin-EX (XY:
Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108). I’ve heard
some speculate that this could help out decks using
attackers like Vespiquen (XY: Ancient Origins
10/98), or Weavile (BW: Plasma Freeze
66/116). Of course, the latter would still rely
upon Exeggcute (BW: Plasma Freeze 4/116,
BW: Plasma Blast 102/101) for its primary discard
fodder. So why won’t your opponent KO
Wishiwashi before you bounce it? Unless the
only other thing you have in play is something your
opponent cannot significantly damage, odds are
Wishiwashi isn’t worth burning a Lysandre to
force Active; too many attackers can gain momentum if
left untouched for a turn. Tauros-GX or those
with protective effects are the obvious exceptions.
As for bonus Bench hits, that is a metagame thing and
can act a bit like the attack; if Umbreon-GX is
seeing heavy play, you might want to include Mr. Mime
(BW: Plasma Freeze 47/116) or Mr. Mime (XY:
BREAKthrough 97/162; Generations 52/83) to
protect your Bench, while it takes two uses of “Feather
Arrow” to KO Wishiwashi… and that is four damage
counters that could have gone towards weakening your
Active.
So am I sold on Wishiwashi? Nope. I
think being stuck in play for a turn kills off most of
these uses, especially with Ability denial being so
common. While you can see some of it coming, like
Alolan Muk (Sun & Moon 58/149) or
Garbodor (XY: BREAKpoint 57/122), Hex
Maniac and Silent Lab can shut down Abilities
with no warning and after you’ve already Benched
Wishiwashi. Bench protection isn’t
foolproof, and indeed any of the Ability denial also
shuts down our best Bench protecting option (either of
those Mr. Mime). As Alolan Muk is in
this set, it would take a pretty radical shift in the
nature of play for this to change; possible, but a long
time removed from the present. This is a nifty
trick for Limited play, so enjoy it there.
Ratings
Standard:
1.5/5
Expanded:
1.25/5
Limited:
3.5/5
Summary
Wishiwashi
could be one of those stealth good cards, not
great, but better than I realize. There are
uses for its Cowardice Ability, but I believe the
inability to use it immediately nerfs or flat out ruins
all of said combos. When I was previewing this
set, I gave Wishiwashi an F, which means I
expected to score it at 1.75/5 or lower, and in this
case, it was lower. Just don’t forget about this
card; some of the people saying it has a little (or a
lot) of potential have proven me wrong before.
|
aroramage |
You know, I remember my first
experience with Wishiwashi being, "Hmm, this guy has a
pretty cool gimmick, I wonder how the Ability affects
his stats."
Then I saw the stats...and I got
scared.
Wishiwashi on his little tiny
lonesome self, though, isn't that scary. In fact, this
is probably the equivalent of a TCG Magikarp these days.
30 HP, a weak attack in Water Gun that's 1-for-10 - it's
hard to take this thing with any sort of seriousness.
But then there's this weird Ability - Cowardice. Once
per turn, you can discard all the cards from Wishiwashi
to put him back into your hand, although you can't do
that on your first turn or the turn he comes into play.
On the one hand, this Ability is
terrible. Never mind that you wouldn't want to attach
anything to discard off of Wishiwashi anyway, but then
you can't even bounce him back when he comes into play?
What if you get stuck with him out front as your
starter? If you didn't have a Bench-sitter, would he
even be usable? And if he's on the Bench instead, what's
to stop your opponent from just taking an early Prize
card? Or better yet, late game, what's to stop them from
Lysandre-ing him out and then grabbing that extra Prize
they need?
On the other hand...the combos you
can make. Can you imagine what you could do when you
bounce this guy back to your hand? I've seen some places
discuss how you could use him to get that extra discard
for Ultra Ball or to fuel up a Sycamore with more
Pokemon for Vespiquen decks. The potential for
Wishiwashi is there - but the phrasing on the Ability,
the way it works, what you'd be setting up otherwise? It
just doesn't strike me as the kind of thing that could
bring this guy full circle.
But let's not be fooled by his
innocence right now, because chances are we'll see a
Wishiwashi soon that's going to...School us?
...I'll leave now thank you.
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (right now,
Wishiwashi is in that weird place where he's got
potential...)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (...but the deck or
the cards don't exist to benefit off of it majorly)
Limited: 1/5 (there's just no
reasonable way of saying he's good on his own)
Arora Notealus: I'll wait for
Wishiwashi-GX to be the ban of our existence.
Next Time: Say alola to a new
Alolan Pokemon!
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