Review is too long? Skip straight to the Ratings and
Summary!
Name :
Energy Removal 2
Set :
EX Power Keepers (most recent)
Card# :
74/108
Rarity :
Uncommon
Type :
Trainer
Effect Text:
Flip a coin. If heads, choose 1 Energy card attached to
1 of your opponent’s Pokémon and discard it.
Attributes:
Today we look at a “normal” Trainer, Energy Removal 2.
The obvious upside is that means that you can play as many
of it in a single turn as you wish, while the downside comes
from its diminished effectiveness as compared to the old
Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal. Still,
this makes it easier to squeeze into decks often crowded
with Supporters (in Modified).
Abilities:
Consider this a modified version of the classic Energy
Removal. Sorry, couldn’t resist the pun. ;) However, it
is an apt description, and not the only card to follow the
formula: take a card that was more or less a “staple” for
decks in the Unlimited Format decks and tone it down by
adding a simple but important coin flip to determine its
success or failure. It is not something I enjoy seeing,
since “tails fails” cards tend to either be too poor to play
or so good that everyone has to make room for as many copies
as possible in their deck to better “stack” the odds.
Generally, it seems better when the entire effect doesn’t
rest upon one coin flip and a result of “nothing” is no more
than 25% of the potential outcomes.
Still, it is more or less a “fair” deal: you only get one
normal Energy attachment per turn, so removing an Energy
card from any Pokémon is fantastically powerful. As such,
even with such an awful result of doing nothing half the
time, the half the time it works it can win games.
Uses and
Combinations:
To clarify about how it wins games, just think about all the
potent decks that were so strong because they could fudge
the once-per-turn Energy attachment rule. Based on the
success of this card, the converse appears to be true:
burning an opponent’s Energy attachment severally hampers
their ability to fight back, which in turn extends your
Pokémon’s HP, which then allows said Pokémon to get some
extra attacks in. Also, there are no restrictions on using
it so you can run it in any kind of deck and not worry about
it clashing with your Pokémon-ex, or Poké-Powers, etc.
So
we have a generic, flippy but useful card that can win games
when it works.
Ratings
Unlimited:
1/5 – Not a good idea. You can have four copies of each of
the original two kinds of Removal, and if that’s not
enough Item Finder can give you another four shots.
That would remove 12 Energy, which is about what many decks
run (outside of Raindance, which won’t care if you
remove its Energy).
Modified:
3.5/5 – This is a composite score. For decks geared towards
gaining and maintaining control quickly, like the Turn 2
Control decks (Medicham ex, Muk ex,
Hariyama ex, etc.) that were big last format, this is a
key component. For your average deck, it’s still pretty
handy… if you have room for it.
Limited:
3.5/5 – The potential of doing nothing can really hurt
here. If it works, it has a good chance of evening out a
losing game and turning around a close one. If it fails, it
becomes a wasted draw in a format with little draw and
search power. If the fact that it scored the same seems
odd, remember that most Trainers are “no brainers”: you’re
looking for reasons to not include them. In other
words its being docked from a perfect score.
Summary
Energy Removal 2
is a card that can be used in most decks but is only really
worthwhile in decks that can generate some synergy with it.
The popularity of Holon’s Castform and its ilk at the
moment does help it out: you can likely set your opponent
back by two Energy attachments instead of one.
-Otaku
