aroramage |
Delinquent is one of those cards
that's seen some play and has had pretty good results.
In a format where Stadium Wars are a thing, this is the
sort of card that can not only tilt things in your favor
but even ruin your opponent's strategies.
Once you use Delinquent, the
Stadium card in play is discarded, and if you do discard
a Stadium with her - which...why wouldn't you play this
at a time when you could? - your opponent is forced to
discard 3 cards. Against decks like Night March and
Vespiquen Vengeance, this might not always be the best
idea, but against decks like Greninja BREAK and
Volcanion-EX, it can severely hamper their ability to
continue messing with your line-up, meaning you can take
advantage of a moment of weakness to really lay down
your lead.
Ideally you're using this to
discard your opponent's Stadium and discard the last 3
cards in their hand, thus cementing your comeback or
dominance or what have you. Keep in mind though that
this can also profit off of your Stadium being discarded
- say like with discarding a Silent Lab to turn on your
Basic Abilities while getting rid of your opponent's
hand. Such is just one application of the card, and such
is the appeal of having a copy around.
She'll be continually useful
throughout her lifespan, and it's a great card to
acknowledge just barely skipping out on the Top 10 list.
Just keep in mind what deck you're using her against.
Rating
Standard: 3.5/5 (a very relevant
card that ended up seeing more use thanks to what was
around)
Expanded: 3.5/5 (and I suppose it's
going to see more use as long as Stadiums are relevant
and defining)
Limited: 3.5/5 (useful to get rid
of the, like, 2 Stadiums in this set, so I guess don't
underestimate that advantage)
Arora Notealus: Delinquent's got a
lot to work around, but she's also got a lot to work
with. Gotta love when you can mess people up with
something so readily available...like ketchup vandalism.
Next Time: PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS OH
THANK GOODNESS
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Otaku |
Just missing out on being in the actual top 10 for 2016
list is Delinquent (XY: BREAKpoint
98/122), coming in at 11th place. You can see her
original review
here;
she wasn’t part of the top 10 list for XY: BREAKpoint
and I literally apologized for it. If that sounds
like an overreaction, remember what
topped the list;
by now I think almost everything else on that list has
had at least 15 minutes of fame except for our
number one pick, Psychic’s Third Eye.
Thankfully that isn’t a problem here because an
end-of-year list is reporting what happened, not trying
to predict it. So what can Delinquent do?
She discards the current Stadium in play and then forces
your opponent to discard three cards from hand.
Besides eating up your Supporter usage for the turn, the
main drawbacks to this are that she must do the
former to do the latter and your opponent picks
which cards he or she discards. She can lead to
some pretty big swings in overall advantage; an opponent
can go from having the exact Stadium in play that he or
she needs and a hand with the perfect three cards in it
to topdecking and needing to replace a Stadium
card. Of course you may discard your own Stadium
card as well, which brings us to the worst case scenario
(give or take Delinquent just being dead in
hand); you discard your own Stadium card you could
really use because you think you can nail three
important cards in your opponent’s hand, but instead you
discard three they wanted in the discard pile.
Unless you’re a bad player with bad luck, it will
usually be somewhere in between.
So why would someone use this card? Besides
forcing your opponent to discard, which is handy for
control and/or mill decks, not every deck has room for
several Stadium cards. What is more, we have
Stadium cards with two different effects, one assigned
to each side of the card and applying only to one
player. Some like Parallel City are quite
common, and they follow the normal rules about Stadium
cards; the current Stadium in play is discarded when
either player puts a new Stadium into play but
the new Stadium must have a new name. If we are
both using Parallel City but I want the other
side facing me, I cannot play my own copy down
while another Parallel City is in play, whether
it is my opponent’s or my own. There is an Item
card that can discard Stadium cards as well, called
Paint Roller. It lets you draw a card after
you use the discard effect; again, Item versus
Supporter. She seems like she ought to be a bit
handier in Expanded (Battle Compressor + VS
Seeker) but she also faces more competition;
my personal experience with her, on either end of the
effect, is in Standard play. I myself have been
using her with a Bunnelby (XY: Primal Clash
121/160) and Houndoom-EX based mill deck, with
enough success she’s made it through multiple revisions.
About the only place where I am unsure of her is in
Limited play; not a huge issue as most folks don’t play
the format outside of Pre-Releases, but I personally
would be tempted to include her on the off chance my
opponent did pull a Stadium and I needed to be rid of
it.
Ratings
Standard:
3.5/5
Expanded:
3.5/5
Limited:
2.5/5
Summary:
Delinquent has earned her place as one of the
many TecH supporter options in both Standard and
Expanded play. The key to using her well is a
skill I personally lack; anticipating the immediate
metagame with a high degree of accuracy. This owes
to the steep competition for deck space in general.
If your deck expressly needs an additional means of
discarding Stadium cards, it is a bit more obvious, but
most could use Delinquent or a Pokémon Center
Lady or a Team Flare Grunt or an extra
Lysandre or any of several other options, and that
is just sticking to Supporters.
Delinquent
clocks in at 11th place with seven voting point, beating
out the tie in 12th and 13th place by two points and
missing 10th place by a copy/paste error. Yes,
that is the surprise I mentioned at the beginning of
this countdown; the short version is that while
calculating the voting points, a simple error meant two
cards were flipped in one list, and Delinquent
received one less voting point than she ought to have
(six instead of the proper seven). Personally, I
do think Jolteon-EX and Special Charge
deserved to outrank her, but if I had caught my error,
she would have taken 9th place, Jolteon-EX would
have been 10th place, and Special Charge would
have taken 11th instead. She didn’t make my own
top 10, either. So that is twice she’s been
cheated out of making a top 10 list; no wonder she’s a
delinquent.
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