Name:
Rayquaza*
Set:
EX Deoxys
Card#:
107/107
Rarity:
Pokémon*
Type:
Colorless
Stage:
Basic
HP:
90
Weakness:
Colorless
Resistance:
Water, Fighting
Retreat:
CC
Pokémon* Rule:
You can’t have more than 1 Pokémon* in your deck.
Attack#1:
(LR) Spiral Rush [30x]
Flip a coin until you get tails. This attack does 30 damage
times the number of heads.
Attack#2:
(RRLL) Holy Star
Discard all Energy cards attached to Rayquaza*. This
attack does 100 damage to each of your opponent’s
Pokémon-ex. (Don’t apply Weakness and Resistance for
Benched Pokémon.)
Attributes:
Starting with the obvious from the name, this is a
Pokémon*. That means if you want to use this, you can’t use
any other Pokémon*, and you can only use one copy of
itself. Next, we see that this Rayquaza follows the
previous versions by being a Colorless Basic (that wasn’t
exactly apt to changeJ). Being Colorless, as I mentioned on
Monday, is pretty good. While there is Resistance to that
type, said Resistance is very rare: only two Pokémon
currently have it! Weakness is also fairly rare, but is
more common than Resistance, and seen on many highly played
Pokémon. Sadly, there is a draw back, but it’s something of
a “technical” thing; Crystal Shard allows any Pokémon
to “fake” being a Colorless Pokémon, lessening the type
advantage and also meaning that Colorless Pokémon are the
only type to lack away around Resistance.
Rayquaza*
has 90 HP. This is a very good number for a non-Evolving
Basic Pokémon (on either “end”), and may in fact “tap” into
some of the “credit” it builds by being so restricted. That
is, being restricted to one per deck is a disadvantage since
that means the card can’t be much of a deck focus, at least
not without a lot of extra work that, say, a normal Basic
wouldn’t require.
Rayquaza*
has a Weakness to Colorless Pokémon. This is probably the
worst Weakness to have right now, as not only are there some
potent Colorless Pokémon, but any Pokémon can “fake” being
Colorless Pokémon, but any Pokémon can use Crystal Shard
as mentioned early to exploit this Weakness and avoid
Resistance. Speaking of which, this card has a double
Resistance. Both Fighting and Water Pokémon will (barring
other effects) do 30 less damage. Both types have very
solid decks behind them in Modified (and either a dominant
deck or über-TecH in Unlimited), so this is very, very good
and at least matches the painful Colorless Weakness.
Last for attributes, we have a retreat cost of two. This is
low enough you should usually be able to pay it if a
situation requires it, but will usually want to use a card
like Balloon Berry or Switch to avoid it when
possible.
Abilities:
Okay, Rayquaza* appears to have ever-so-slightly
above average attributes when compared to a “plain” Basic
Pokémon, it still hasn’t proven itself good enough to
warrant being a Pokémon*. Let’s see if it has
attacks worthy of its stature.
Spiral Rush is a decent attack. “Flip until tails” attacks
aren’t so great when they have no minimum damage, unless
they have a ridiculously high base. This has a solid base
of 30, which would be good if it was priced a little lower.
For two different Energy types (Electric and Fire), it is a
hair sub-par. It really needed to be base 20 damage with
“flip until tails” for +20 per “heads”. Still, half the
time you’ll hit for at least 30 damage, and it means that
there’s always a chance, no matter how remote, of a OHKO.
Holy Star is the real reason to use this card. It costs a
gargantuan four Energy, and requires you discard them all.
Not only that, but the attack requires two different Energy
types (again, Electric and Fire). Now, adding that all
together, you should be doing a gargantuan amount of
damage. Normally, (RRLL) would yield 70-80 points of
damage. Factor in that this is a non-Evolving Basic Pokémon
(with no pre-Evolutions) would get another 20 or so points
of damage on top of that. Factoring in the discard means we
should be getting double the damage. That means we need to
be seeing 200 or so points of damage by now. We haven’t
even gotten to the part about it being a Pokémon* yet. So
what does the attack do? 100 points of damage for all that
effort. It’s not even a flat 100 points of damage, but
rather to a single category. Now, given how I seem to be
bad mouthing this card, but my tendency to try and make you
think, you know there has to be something redeeming this.
There is. First, that “restricted type” affects all Pokémon
of said category. Yes, that is a little better. Being able
to bit multiple targets means you could be doing as much
damage as required. So what is the restriction? Perhaps
not the best restriction, but close to it: Pokémon-ex.
That’s right, the Pokémon worth the most in terms of getting
ahead, and heavily relied upon for many, many decks, will
get slammed for 100 points of damage. Is that good enough?
I count over 70 Pokémon ex. I “cheated” and used Apprentice
to help me, so it’s possible I missed a few. Of those
Pokémon, a little over half of all Pokémon ex. Of what’s
left, I counted 8 Basic Pokémon-ex. Why does that matter?
Well, excusing an Active Gengar ex (which is
Colorless Resistant) and Pokémon Evolved from Fossil
cards, you can de-Evolve them with Ancient Technical
Machine [Rock] the next turn (using a different Pokémon,
of course) to finish them. You could also just use
Desert Ruins to tack on some more damage. So as you can
see, it’s a pricey yet devastating attack when played right.
Uses and
Combinations:
What is playing it right? Well, aside from the above
tricks, any deck that can fight a reasonable amount of Fire,
Electric, or compatible replacement Energy cards (Rainbow
Energy) should consider Rayquaza*, at least in
Modified. If you have a way to attach more than one Energy
card at a time in those decks, it becomes a very reasonable
card, much like EX Dragons’ Rayquaza ex, whom you may
recall I grossly underestimated. ;) A Firestarter deck could
even consider running one of these, so long as they are
willing to toss in a few real Electric Energy or some
Rainbow Energy. For a more focused deck, try using
it in a manner similar to how I recommended using Latios*;
Electrode ex could power up this quite easily.
Ratings
Unlimited:
1.5/5-I almost never see any Pokémon ex played in this
format, and there are more efficient ways of taking them
out.
Modified:
3.5/5-I am not entirely sold upon it, as you can see by the
seeming split personality of this CotD. However, I do
believe it has potential, especially if we continue to see
decks with at least one Pokémon ex in the OHKO, or multiples
in the “Holy Star then Stone Generator” range, or even
double Holy Star for some decks.
Limited:
4/5-A good pull. This is mostly because of the first
attack, which is good for this format despite being so
flippy, and the great stats for a Basic in this format. I
did add a bonus since Pokémon-ex are so formidable in this
format, and having something so strong to possibly finish
them in one shot, netting half your starting prizes, is so
enticing even if it is unlikely.
Summary
This may be the only Pokémon* we’ve seen that was really
done right, at least so far. This definitely should be a
discouraging factor for decks that would try to abuse
multiple Pokémon ex: the classic and even some modern
Firestarter decks fear this because, though unlikely, its
Holy Star attack will likely cripple much of their offense
while netting two to six prizes (six would be rare though).
