Eevee-GX – Promo Pokemon Review

Vince

Welcome to a Theme week….suggested by me: cards that are from their respective Eeveelution GX boxes that just came out January 18! And we also look at a card that will eventually be banned from Expanded. As a Eeveelution lover, I preordered those respective boxes just to fill it in my binder (would probably have to create a frame of cards to hang it in my wall). As far as my Eevee collection goes, one notable Pokémon that I had the most is Sylveon, clocking in at 125 of them (73 GX, 43 EX, 9 regular). Uh-oh, going off too far about the Eeveelutions, I’ll look at them one by one.

So, today’s review is Eevee-GX, which is pretty interesting, as despite being a evolving Basic under normal circumstances, being a GX means that you can’t even put a Stage 1 Eeveelution because their Stage 1 cards didn’t reference “Evolves from Eevee or Eevee-GX” unlike what Blissey-ex did back in the EX era series. It does have an ability that mitigates that, as we shall see. That’s not the only Pokémon that’s an evolving Basic; Onix-GX was also revealed from a Japanese structured deck, so looks like we’ll see more of those unevolving Pokemon. Going through the other aspects of this card before the ability, Boost Dash does 100 damage for CCC, which is alright, being able to 2HKO anything not named Tag Team Pokemon, and Joy Maker GX costs C and puts 3 cards from the discard pile onto your hand. The GX attack makes Decidueye-GX and Banette-GX cry due to their GX attack being outclassed……due to being a higher stage and requiring a specific energy.

Ascension DNA is the meat of this card, as it allows you to put the Pokémon that Evolves from Eevee on top of Eevee-GX, which is considered evolving. Before you do that, you heal all damage from Eevee-GX before you evolve. Obviously, you can’t do that on the first turn of the game or the turn you play Eevee-GX, so you’re going to wait for one turn regardless. If you’re familiar with what the ability does, it reminds me of Baby Evolution Poke-Body that I used to see since Neo Genesis until the end of the Platinum series. Anyways, this let you play any Stage 1 Eeveelution undamaged whatsoever; even if Eevee has 150 damage in it, it will all be healed! And yes, you won’t accidently knock out your own Eeveelution, even if you evolve it into a non-GX Eeveelution.

Normally, I would compare it with Energy Evolution Eevee, but what I realized is that you can run both of them together. With four Eevee and four Eevee-GX, you can potentially run eight Eeveelutions in one deck (or nine with Ditto Prism Star). Eeveelution decks were cursed with the four-per-copy rule, but Eevee-GX fixes that problem to some degree. I guess some things to watch out for is ability denial, being a GX which can invite couple more roadblocks, and that Fighting weakness can still be problematic before you get to evolve. But other than those inherent issues, this will be an automatic inclusion for Eeveelution focused decks. No Limited score because it is a promo card.

Ratings:

• Standard: 3.5/5
• Expanded: 3.5/5
• Limited: N/A

21times
PokeDeck
Central

Eevee GX (SM 174) enters the Pokemon TCG as a promo card.  This 160 HP Basic Pokemon will pretty much exclusively be used for its ability Ascension DNA.  Ascenion DNA is better than Energy Evolution in that it allows you to heal all damage that might have been incurred upon Eevee GX when it evolves into whatever Eeveelution you’re running.  Ascension DNA is NOT as good as Energy Evolution because:

• You can’t evolve from Eevee GX on the first turn you put it into play.
• You have to have the Eeveelution card in hand.

So I guess that shows you how much we’ve been spoiled by Energy Evolution Eevee for the past two years.  We’ve come to take it for granted, but we’re now seeing just how broken that card really is.  Makes me want to go play some Sylveon GX while I still can (BTW my Sylveon deck now includes a couple of Florges FLI) .  That turn 1 Eeveelution is pretty awesome.  Losing that will be a hit to the Eeveelutions we will still have in the Standard format after August.

Eevee GX’s main attack, Boost Dash, does an extremely unimpressive 100 damage, and its GX attack Joy Maker is just a replica of Hollow Hunt.  Considering we have other non GX Eevees available to use, I’m doubting that Eevee GX will see much play.

Rating

Standard: 1.5 out of 5

Conclusion

The couple of videos I’ve seen featuring the new Eeveelutions so far have used regular Eevee cards and not Eevee GX.  That seems to confirm to me that this card really isn’t that good.

Otaku

Eevee-GX (SM – Black Star Promos SM174, SM175, SM176) officially released last Friday, so let’s review it! Unfortunately, Eevee-GX doesn’t lend itself well to my usual review style, as so much of it only makes sense in light of the rest of the card. The most important parts of Eevee-GX are:

1) Its Ability
2) Its name

“Ascension DNA” lets you pick any card you have in hand which evolves from Eevee and play it onto that copy of Eevee-GX to evolve Eevee-GX. Why not just evolve Eevee-GX into its own Evolutions? Because it does not have any natural Evolutions! Pokémon like Espeon-GX, Flareon-GX, etc. state they evolve from “Eevee”, not Eevee-GX. There is a bonus to Ascension DNA over manual Evolution as well; all damage is removed from Eevee-GX immediately before you evolve it using this Ability. This is similar to a Poké-Power known as the “Baby Evolution” introduced way back in EX – Sandstorm, which allowed pre-Evolutions to “evolve” into the correct Basic Pokémon, like a Pichu into Pikachu. Ascension DNA clearly states you cannot use it on your first turn OR the first turn Eevee-GX is in play; it isn’t about an Eeveelution hitting the field faster, but having another way for one to hit the field.

Being a Basic Pokémon makes it pretty easy to run Eevee-GX, but also means you’ll need to worry about anti-Basic effects… like Alolan Muk shutting down Ascension DNA. Being a Pokémon-GX carries the usual baggage. Besides giving up an additional Prize when KO’d, other card effects will punish you (and/or reward your opponent) for you running a Pokémon-GX, because being a Pokémon-GX usually means better HP and effects than that card would otherwise possess. In this case, Eevee-GX has 160 HP; some early Eevee cards only had 30 HP, and the biggest ones only have 60! Eevee-GX can still be easily OHKO’d by [F] Types thanks to its Weakness, and of course, decks that specialize in OHKO’s are still taking it down, but that’s definitely an upgrade. Expect that [F] Weakness to be exploited fairly often both now and in the foreseeable future. No Resistance is the worst, but it is also the norm, so we’ll move on to the Retreat Cost of [C]; while not a perfect “free” Retreat Cost, this is good an easy to pay. Eevee-GX probably won’t get stranded unless you’ve got absolutely no Energy to spare… or an Escape Board, which would make Eevee-GX into a free-retreater.

Eevee-GX also has some decent attacks, though the [C] Typing blunts the effectiveness of the first one; you’ll never have to worry about Resistance, but Eevee-GX can’t exploit Weakness for double damage. There are some pieces of [C] Type support in Expanded, though it has been a while since they came in handy; some cards that punish [C] Types as well, but again they don’t see much play. Just remember Necrozma-GX because it DOES see some competitive play AND its Standard-legal. For [CCC] Eevee-GX can use “Boost Dash” to do 100 damage, a good return for the Energy invested and not too difficult to pay with cards like Double Colorless Energy around. Slap a Choice Band on Eevee-GX and it can 2HKO almost anything in the game, even some of the new Tag Team Pokémon-GX that are about to release. That isn’t overly competitive, but for what should be a “filler” attack, it is nice. “Joy Maker-GX” may live up to its name; for [C] this GX-attack adds any three cards you want from your discard pile back into your hand. That’s the same trick Decidueye-GX pulls with its “Hollow Hunt-GX” attack… relevant because it has proven useful there, but on a Stage 2 Pokémon and priced at [G].

Okay, time to put it all together; what this means is that Eeveelution decks can reach new heights. Eevee (Sun & Moon 101/149) and its “Energy Evolution” is still the Eevee of choice, as it does let you get an Eeveelution into play the first turn Eevee is in play, EVEN if it is the first turn of the game. You can run four of it and up to four copies of Eevee-GX… and we’ve got Ditto {*} as well. I’m not saying it would be worth aiming for in a competitive deck, but you could theoretically have nine total Eeveelutions in play thanks to these three and Sky Field! Getting to competitive play, leading with the Energy Evolution Eevee and backing it up with Eevee-GX (and a Ditto {*} is now a real option. Don’t forget that Eevee-GX does not have to use Ascension DNA on an “Eeveelution-GX” card; since the Ability heals all damage from Eevee-GX before evolving, you can safely drop a single Prize Eeveelution, even if Eevee-GX was down to its last 10 HP before starting the process. This will completely remove the GX-side of things from the equation; the former Eevee-GX will become a non-Pokémon-GX.

Ratings

Standard: 3.5/5

Expanded: 3.5/5

Limited: N/A

I cannot be certain, but I think this card has some real potential for the Standard and Expanded Formats for these reasons. At least certain Eeveelutions have proven competitive in the recent Expanded and relatively recent Standard Format.  The only place you won’t want to use Eevee-GX is in the Limited Format… because you can’t use a promo like this there.