Beastite – Cosmic Eclipse Pokemon Review

Vince

Ratings:

• Standard: 3/5
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 3/5

Otaku

Beastite (SM – Cosmic Eclipse 185/236) is a new Pokémon Tool that can be attached to anything but has an effect that only applies to Ultra Beasts.  The attacks of an Ultra Beast with Beastite attached do an extra 10 damage per Prize you’ve taken, before applying Weakness or Resistance.  A damage bonus that becomes larger the more you’re winning might sound too good to be true, but you have to have taken at least one Prize to get any damage bonus at all (no explosive opening, less effective against stall tactics) and the bigger the bonus, the fewer times you’ll likely enjoy it.

Even when you have a damage bonus coming from Beastite, remember that it only matters if:

• It reduces how many turns are required to take a KO.
• Triggers an effect.
• Avoids Triggering an effect.

Pretty simple, but it took me years to realize that bigger numbers were not always better.  They can be a waste, and worse still, sometimes can be turned against you by other card effects!

In Expanded, there are more pieces of Tool support but also more and better Tool counters than Beastite will face in Standard.  Anti-Item effects are also stronger here.  Lucky for Beastite, there’s a decent chance you can play it at a time when discarding it will seem like a waste for your opponent and/or before Item-lock goes into effect.  It is the added competition that really hurts, but even while facing the likes of Choice Band, Float Stone, Muscle Band, etc. Beastite still has a solid niche role.

In Standard, Beastite is competing against other kinds of supporting Tools, like Choice Helmet, Karate Belt, U-Turn Board, etc. but there’s nothing like Choice Band or Muscle Band.   I don’t think four Beastite are going to become an automatic must-run for Ultra Beast decks here, but it is more likely than in Expanded… and including one or two in Ultra Beast heavy decks seems like a given.

With respect to the Limited Format, things are a bit simpler.  Going against Beastite is how the Limited Format has players set down only four Prizes (instead of six) at the beginning of the game, and the Ultra Beasts available.  There are eight Ultra Beast cards this set, but they’re all Rare Holos or better: no Commons, Uncommons, or even “normal” Rares!  One of the Ultra Beasts doesn’t even do damage, but it should be handy for the others, even though the damage bonus maxes out at +30.

Ratings

• Standard: 3.5/5
• Expanded: 3/5
• Limited: 3.5/5

Beastite joins the existing Ultra Beast support, and while I don’t expect it to be the game changer Beast Ring has been, it should help at least a few Ultra Beast decks, and probably more than few.  This wasn’t good enough to make any of our individual Top 11 lists, however… so why did we include it in the Runner-Up Week?  Almost any Ultra Beast from this set we’d review would require a mini-review of Beastite, so we figured we’d better cover it on its own first!