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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

 

Honchkrow
- S&M: Guardians Rising

Date Reviewed:
June 21, 2017

Ratings & Reviews Summary

Standard: 2.00
Expanded: 2.00
Limited: 3.50

Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale.
1 being horrible.  3 ... average.  5 is awesome.

Back to the main COTD Page


aroramage

Well now here's an interesting card. Honchkrow's always been a really neat evolution, one of the few from Gen IV that doesn't seem out-of-place or downright strange. Could he be wanting to step up his game? 

His first attack, Feint Attack, is just a basic snipe at 1-for-30. It doesn't do anything, just adds on the 30 damage without getting affected by anything - Weakness, Resistance, effects on the Pokemon-heyyyyyyyyyy! I wonder if that means this gets around stuff like Bench Barrier? Maybe, but all things considered, 30 damage ain't gonna be that threatening to anybody. 

What might end up being curious is Raven's Claw. It's a 2-for-10 attack with an additional 10 damage coming in...from every damage counter on your opponent's Pokemon. Now that's what I find strange about this card - the damage gets added on from your opponent's Pokemon instead of your own? So you'd be stacking on damage to your opponent via Feint Attack...and then use Raven's Claw to finish them off? Potentially. 

Luckily for Honchkrow, there are a number of different ways to rack up damage to add-on to this attack, as opposed to just using his Feint Attack. There's Sharpedo (SM)'s Rough Skin Ability,  Umbreon-GX's Shadow Bullet, Alolan Rattata and Alolan Meowth can put damage down for free...there's uh, Mandibuzz (FCO) who snipes for 60 on Ability Pokemon...or Yveltal (BKT) for Pokemon-EX...uhhh...Absol (ROS) can move 30 damage around? 

If it's any wonder why I'm running low on ideas for damage, it's because in Standard...well, Dark-only builds don't have that much to go with, outside of Umbreon-GX's Shadow Bullet which is likely the best option, at 120 damage per shot. This gives Honchkrow at least 130 damage for his attack, so that's a positive. If you mix in something like Espeon-GX, who can spread out 100 damage more evenly than a snipe between 2 Pokemon, then you can wield Honchkrow's massive damage output more readily, albeit at the cost of potentially losing consistency and having a big target for Garbodor decks to take advantage of. 

In fact, you might as well play Garbodor...seems likelier that the opponent will have lots of Items in their discard pile rather than let you get away with just damaging and not-KOing anything just for one attack. 

Rating 

Standard: 2/5 (Honchkrow's a bit of a win-harder card - if spread damage is a big factor in your deck) 

Expanded: 2/5 (you want him to be really good...but right now, he's severely outclassed) 

Limited: 3.5/5 (either by Pokemon who rely on a reliable factor of your opponent's, or that rely on a factor you can reliably control within your own deck) 

Arora Notealus: In another time and place, Honchkrow might have been a powerful contender in the game. He still has potential, but you have to have things set-up in his favor to make his attack work out, and at the current pace of the game where OHKOs and 2HKOs are all settled after the set-up procedure, which maybe lasts a turn or two? Let's not kid ourselves - Honchkrow demands MUCH more set-up to take advantage of. 

...and a slower format. 

Next Time: An oldie from the good ol days of Base Set!


21times

Honchkrow (Guardians Rising, 79/145) swoops into the meta from the Guardians Rising expansion set.  A 110 HP Stage 1 Pokemon, it has two attacks.  For a single Dark energy, Feint Attack does thirty damage to any of your opponent’s Pokemon, and nothing can prevent that damage.  Honchkrow’s main attack, Raven’s Claw, for two Colorless energy, does damage to the active Pokemon equal to the total number of damage counters on all of your opponent’s Pokemon plus ten.  Basically, this means that if there are ten damage counters on all of your opponent’s Pokemon combined, then Raven’s Claw does 110 damage to the active Pokemon.

I paired Honchkrow with Tapu Koko (SM Promo 30) to capitalize upon its attack Flying Flip, which does twenty damage to each of your opponent’s Pokemon in play.  As I’ve mentioned previously, I love spread attackers, and I really hoped that these Pokemon would combo well together.  Unfortunately, I went 1-5 in six matches.  I did run into a couple of Water box decks that used Rough Seas (Primal Clash, 137/160) to erase all of the damage I did with Flying Flip, and I also went up against Tapu Koko GX (Guardians Rising, 47/145) and Metagross GX (Guardians Rising, 85/145), two decks that usually run Max Potion (Breakpoint, 103/122) as a four of.  I will also say that I probably used Tapu Koko too much – when I did get to attack with Raven’s Claw, I found that I was hitting for well into 300 or even 400 damage.  I probably should have been more cognizant that you only need two or maybe three Flying Flips to OHKO almost every Pokemon in the game with Raven’s Claw.  I also ran a 2-2 line of Honchkrow.  I was really thinking that I could just spread damage with Koko and then swoop in with Honchkrow and clean up.  The strategy, though, should probably be to run a 4-4 line of Honchkrow and rotate them.  Use Flying Flip once or maybe twice and then bring up a Honchkrow.  Then bring Koko back up again and repeat once or twice before bringing Honchkrow back up again.  They should probably alternate, not play all Kokos first followed by all Honchkrows.  Something for me to think about when I try this deck again in the future.

Rating

Standard: 2 out of 5

Conclusion

I definitely think Honchkrow has a place in the meta.  It may very well be able to stand by itself as a four of in a deck.  I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else has success with Tapu Koko and maybe comes up with better strategy or a better deck list than I had.  I also believe that you could tech in a 1-1 line of Honchkrow into a number of different decks (especially decks that run the Eevolutions or rely on DCE to power their attacks).  Two out of five is probably too low of a grade for Honchkrow, but given that I only had one win in five matches with it, I really can’t justify giving it anything better than that.


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