Name: Regice ex

Set: Hidden Legends

Card#: 97/101

Type: Water

Stage: Basic

HP: 90

Weakness: Metal

Resistance: None

Retreat: CC

Poké-Body: Crystal Body

Prevent all effects of attacks, except damage, done to Regice ex by the Attacking Pokémon.

 

Attributes: Regice ex is a Basic Pokémon ex.  The upside: he can be put into play directly from hand if you have room on your bench.  The downside-basic Pokémon ex tend to have relatively low HP: this one is in the middle of the pack at 90, but most under 100 tend to be too small.  Remember, since it’s worth two prizes, it needs to last about twice as long.  Were this not a Pokémon ex, 90 would be quite good.

 

Regice ex is a Water Pokémon.  This is pretty good right now, as Water decks are common counters to the Firestarter variants.  However, most “anti-BAR” decks tend to perform close to average again Firestarter decks, get slaughtered by certain “rogue” decks, and only do a little better than Firestarter does against other Firestarter decks.  In the end though, its better than a lot of other types.

 

Something that is pretty bad is Weakness to Metal.  This set had some fierce Metal Pokémon.  I can’t believe that none of them are capable of playing with the big boys, so I am betting I am just not hearing about them as much as the normal whining. :-p No Resistance is the worst Resistance, and seems almost lazy.  A Retreat of two is costly enough you’ll want to avoid it, but low enough that you will more often than not be able to pay for it-in other words, average.

 

Abilities: Regice ex has a very solid Poké-Body.  Crystal Body means that Regice ex only has to worry about effects of attacks that aren’t applied to the Defending Pokémon.  Note, damage in general is not considered an effect.  This will block Special Conditions, and things like Smokescreen.

 

Regice ex also has a solid attack that inflicts 60 damage, and has a 50% chance of preventing the Defending Pokémon from having Energy attached from the controllers hand.  The problem?  Even though this is greatly discounted (normally the 60 damage alone would require four Water Energy), we must remember that it is this Pokémon’s only attack, and as such it will be nearly dead if forced to power up while active.  More over, it is a Pokémon ex, so its attack is expected to be quite potent.  The effect of the attack, while nice, it easy to circumvent on most popular decks (Energy attachment from the hand only is prevented).  So while neither ability is bad, they don’t compliment each other.

 

Uses/Combinations: Not a lot I can think of: Suicune ex is better for most Water decks as a high HP (10 more) big damage Basic Water Pokémon ex.  There are several sizable Basic Water Pokémon too that can be considered.  I guess you could run it with High Pressure System to make the Retreat affordable.

 

Ratings

 

Unlimited: 1.25/5-I think it’s just a bit too big and awkward.  Blastoise makes it faster, but so many other Pokémon work better in that deck.

 

Modified: 1.5/5-Same as above, but insert Water Call Swampert in for Blastoise.  Even here, there is a lot of competition.

 

Limited: 4/5-Fantastic.  There is some Metal that could hurt it (even without the Metal Energy), and it’s still slow to power up, but here it likely will get the time.  The effect is great in this format, where Special Conditions and attack effects become so much deadlier.  Once it’s powered up, most basics from the set won’t have a chance to hurt it significantly unless they two have three energy on them.  To take down the one I faced at the Iowan Hidden Legends Pre-Release required a lucky, last minute Medicham.

 

2-on-2: 1.35/5-Now the Energy denial aspect is much harder to fully utilize-they’ll just power whatever you don’t hit.

 

TMP: Pending-I am still learning the new rules for this, and need to actually test it.

 

Summary

Another good idea, poor execution, except for Limited.  So unless it was made for Limited, it’s a bit of a letdown, even outside or major archetypes.

 

-Otaku