Dracovish – Darkness Ablaze
Date Reviewed: June 11, 2021
Ratings Summary:
Standard: 2.00
Expanded: 2.00
Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 is horrible. 3 is average. 5 is great.
Reviews Below:
Otaku
Dracovish (SW – Darkness Ablaze 053/189; Shining Fates SV036/SV122) is a 150 HP, [W] Stage 1 Pokémon with [L] Weakness, no Resistance, Retreat Cost [CCC], one Ability, and one attack. That all ignores somethign, though; this is a “Fossil” Pokémon, which means it gets saddled with whatever the current generation’s “Fossil evolution” gimmick is. We’ve gone back to having them evolve from Item cards that are put into play like Pokémon. It also means Dracovish indirectly benefits from Rare Fossil support, which is… well, most of the support is to compensate for Item cards being harder to search out and/or recycle than Basics, so yay?
Dracovish’s Ability is “Primal Law”. While it is Active, your opponent cannot play any Pokémon from their hand to evolve their Pokémon already on the field. This stops traditional manual Evolution, as well as effects that still play the Evolution from hand. What it does not stop are effects that snag an Evolution from your deck or your discard power to evolve one of your in-play Pokémon, or effects that grab a Pokémon (Evolution or not) from anywhere to directly field it. This is mostly handy because it can deny your opponent’s their Pokémon VMAX while Dracovish is Active. Unfortunately, even with 150 HP, Basic attackers should 2HKO Dracovish, if not OHKO it.
Having to be Active not only makes Dracovish vulnerable to simply being KO’d, but means you’ll have to rely on its attack, or a porter (attacks then sends self to the Bench), or a deck built around not attacking at all. Dracovish’s “Hammer In” attack is decent if your opponent is relying fairly heavily on evolving; 120 damage for [WCC]. As your go to, repeated attack, though, it is lacking if they manage to evolve before Dracovish hits the field, don’t need to evolve, or just have some Basics in their decks that are decent attackers.
So… yeah, Dracovish is waiting and hoping we get to an Evolution heavy metagame, because until then, it is mostly a hopeful for some kind of kooky lock deck. Just enough to save it from minimal scores. Oh, and it is actually a bit better in Expanded; as it does count as a Stage 1, you can drop this onto a Ditto {*}.
Ratings
- Standard: 2/5
- Expanded: 2/5
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