Diancie Prism Star #10 – Top 11 Pokemon Cards of 2018

aroramage

Every time there’s a card that increases damage, it seems to end up on these lists at some point. Muscle Band, Strong Energy, Choice Band, and now we’ve got Diancie <Prism>. As though the Fighting Type needed more ways to boost their damage through the roof.

Diancie <Prism> is a Basic Fighting Pokemon, 120 HP, with a Grass Weakness, no Resistance, and a Retreat Cost of 2. Princess’s Cheers is the damage boosting Ability, granting your Fighting Pokemon 20 more damage to their attacks as long as Diancie <Prism> is on the Bench. Meanwhile, Diamond Rain is a 3-for-90 move that heals off 30 damage from your Benched Pokemon.

It’s useful in the Active slot, but it’s way stronger on the Bench. No Fighting deck should be without its various damage boosting options, and Diancie <Prism> will always be around to provide it! So it’s probably a good thing they keep the numbers lower on purpose.

Rating

Standard: 4/5 (really good in its own Type, strongly recommended)

Expanded: 4/5 (its main downfall is being a one-of, but being a Pokemon, it’s easily searchable)

Limited: 4.5/5 (if you get a good Fighting Pokemon here, it’s very useful)

Arora Notealus: I was definitely generous with my scores the first time around. Certainly, in the light of newer Pokemon, Diancie <Prism> does look alright. More than anything, I think it’s the impact of other cards in other Types that see Diancie <Prism> and the Fighting Type as a whole decrease in usage, outside of Buzzwole-GX for the most part, who still remains present in a relatively large part of the metagame. 

Next Time: Wait, didn’t this card just come out?

21times

Diancie Prism (FLI 74) ushered in the golden age of Fighting decks.  Similar to what Forest of Giant Plants had done a year earlier to Grass decks, Diancie Prism served as a major component of why Fighting archetypes dominated Standard play over the last three months of the 2017-2018 season.   In addition to having several of the best Pokemon in the format, a twenty damage spif – not counting if you had any Strong energy attached – helped to boost damage output from Fighting Pokemon to absolutely ridiculous levels.  We all know that Buzzwole GX with a single Strong Energy and Diancie Prism on the bench would do seventy damage to its opponent’s active Pokemon (one hundred if a GX with Choice Band) AND pop thirty onto a benched Pokemon as well.  The only thing I didn’t get is why so many Buzzwole GX players chose to go first.  It was the same with Volcanion – I always went second because I knew there was a very high chance that I was going to be able to get off Jet Punch turn one and immediately put significant pressure on my opponent.

And we still have plenty of good Fighting Pokemon in the Standard format:

• Buzzwole GX – always a formidable card (unless up against Sceptile CES)
• Buzzwole FLI – same
• Garchomp FLI – I’m 3 W 1 L with it since LOT dropped
• Regirock CES – I went 4 W 2 L with it back in October
• Zygarde FLI 72 – got to return to this deck at some point
• Onix LOT – I see this in a Malamar deck as a Zoroark GX counter

So if you haven’t played a Fighting Deck in a while, dust off your copy of Diancie Prism and break out your favorite Fighting type.  You just might want to pair combinations of the Psychic weak Fighting Pokemon and Grass weak Pokemon – I’ve gone up against Grass type Pokemon as the featured attacker 34 times in 129 matches this month (26% of the time).  Grass Pokemon are the most common feature attackers I’ve come across so far this month, more than twice the number of any other type:

• Grass 34
• Fighting 16
• Fire 15
• Psychic 14
• Water 14
• Lightning 13
• Dark 12
• Dragon 12
• Fairy 11
• Metal 9
• Colorless 5

Rating

Standard: 3 out of 5

Conclusion

A staple in Fighting types that cemented the dominance of many archetypes in the meta during the last season, Diancie Prism remains an essential piece of every Fighting deck and will continue to help them in 2019 as well.

Otaku

Welcome to the 10th place card in our Top 11 Countdown of 2018! Why are we ending the year with a Top 11? Because December 31st falls on a Monday this year. Back to 10th place, it is Diance {*} (SM – Forbidden Light 74/131). Having released in a little over half a year ago, Diancie {*} has had plenty of time to prove itself, and it did just that. It isn’t a must-run for every deck, but it pretty much is for [F] Type decks. Let us run through the card to better understand how it has done so well. Being a Basic makes it easier to work into decks, but being a Prism Star restricts you to a single copy that sends itself to the Lost Zone if it would go to the discard pile… though is sometimes nice that Lisia can fetch it from your deck. Being a [F] Type matters because of Brooklet Hill (you won’t be attacking with Diancie {*}). 120 HP is okay; it isn’t a super-easy OHKO but it is a probable one once most decks get even a partial setup. [G] Weakness isn’t the worst, but it does show up in a few somewhat competitive decks lately; at times it was quite dangerous to have this year. No Resistance is the worst but is typical. A Retreat Cost [CC] is mediocre; you can often pay it if you must but sometimes you’ll be stranded and most of the time you’ll wish you hadn’t had to spend the Energy.

The Ability, “Princess’s Cheer”, is what makes this card. As long as Diancie {*} is on your bench, attacks from your [F] Type Pokémon do +20 damage before Weakness/Resistance. Always remember, damage boosts only matter if they shift KO counts or trigger certain effects. Overkill doesn’t help you and can even backfire if you’re crashing into Sigilyph-GX. As the half-year has proven, however, there are many attackers like Buzzwole and Buzzwole-GX where this damage bonus is quite relevant… unlike some similar boosts we’ve seen in the past. Other Bench-sitting “boosters” haven’t seen anywhere near as much success, because they buffed the wrong Type and/or weren’t easy enough to run You should rarely if ever, attack with “Diamond Rain”. It costs [FFF] to do 90 damage and heal 30 damage from each of your Benched Pokémon. The damage plus the effect aren’t really worth the Energy, and Diancie {*} isn’t worth risking by having it up front.

[F] decks were doing well before Diancie {*}; the card did help but at the time they did already have cards like Strong Energy and Regirock-EX to boost damage. Post-rotation, both of those are gone, so Diancie {*} is even more clutch. Of particular note is how at least some successful Buzzwole and Buzzwole-GX decks have used Lisia to grant +50 damage with some reliability. Especially with the [F] Weak Zoroark-GX being a massive part of the metagame, [F] decks are still loving this small boost. Plus, it creates a pressure situation that can lead an opponent into making the wrong call; do they take out whatever is attacking them and leave Diancie {*} alone, letting it boost future attackers, or use a card like Guzma and a solid attack to deal with Diancie {*} but then the previous attacker is still ready to go, just doing 20 less damage… or maybe doing more damage if it just needed a turn to attach another Energy and power up.

Ratings

• Standard: 4/5
• Expanded: 4/5
• Limited: 4/5

Diancie {*} is a great card in [F] Type decks in the Standard Format, and it either complements or outclassed other [F] Type support in Expanded. As long as you’ve got other [F] Type attackers, it is a nice pull for the Limited Format as well. Diancie {*} probably has a bright future, but it isn’t totally secure. [F] Type decks might lose traction. Counters might overwhelm it; Alolan Muk does counter several other cards along with Diancie {*}. HP scores and/or damage output might shift to where +20 isn’t worth the deck space. Power creep might also just give us a better Bench-sitter for [F] Type decks; as I said, Diancie {*} replaced Regirock-EX in decks, either completely or one copy of it.

Vince

Any card that boosts damage output will see play because it could helps you achieve certain numbers to secure OHKOs and/or 2HKOs that your main attack would fall short of. Today’s 10th place pick is no exception: Diancie Prism Star from Sun & Moon Forbidden Light, which was the 2nd best card of the set. Being a Prism Star means you could only have one of that card in your deck, but it was very well worth the slot because it’s ability, Princess’s Cheers, grants Fighting types the ability to deal 20 extra damage to the Defending Pokémon before factoring Weakness and Resistance.

When it came out, other cards that support Fighting still exists such as Regirock-EX and Strong Energy. When you stack multiple damage boosts on top of Diancie Prism Star, it will turn puny attacks into monstrous attacks for just a single energy. What if it’s four Regirock-EX, Diancie Prism Star, a single Strong Energy, and a Choice Band? Then that’s 110 damage that you additionally do on top of your base damage! For Buzzwole-GX and regular Buzzwole, that’ll be 2HKO territory regardless if they benefit from Sledgehammer or not (Even better if it did). If you decide to do that, then you just filled up your entire bench, which may be bad.

The annual rotation had retired he remains of XY, and suddenly Diancie was necessary for Fighting decks because it’s the only damage boosting card for a specific deck. That massive boost drops from 110 to 50 due to Regirock-EX and Strong Energy being out of the picture. Another drawback is that once Diancie gets KOed, then it gets sent to the Lost Zone, never to be retrieved. And with 120 HP, it’s not hard for your opponent to prey on it. Ability denial still exists in the form of Alolan Muk from Sun & Moon. Still, Diancie will continue to be essential for Fighting Decks. You will need it against the upcoming Tag Team Pokemon with absurd HP, so you’re going to make every boost count!

Ratings:

Standard: 4/5 (Always nice to have in the game)

Expanded: 4/5 (Here’s the tricky part to evaluate it. While Diancie adds in even more support for Fighting Types, Garbotoxin shuts off all abilities)

Limited: 4/5 (I don’t think it can do well in a +39 deck, but it’ll help out vanilla Fighting types in this set)

Notes: I had this as my 9th place pick.

Next up: Get your other hand ready, cause we going to use twice as much!