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Jigglypuff13 |
3/27 Altaria Lv.48 (PL)
Hello, and welcome to the end of the week, and a card
that has kind of interested me, but probably won't be a
major threat, the new Altaria! It's quite interesting,
but I'll get to the reason why later, since first, it's
the basics of the card. First of all, it has 90 HP,
which for a fully evolved Stage 1, is about average at
the moment, so you can't grumble. Still, wish it was a
little higher, so it might survive another hit, but you
can't have everything. +20 Lightning Weakness isn't too
bad, since there are few Lightning decks in the metagame.
-20 Fighting Resistance is nice, since Rampardos (PL)
and Machamp (SF) are still fairly big at the moment, so
will help stop OHKOs (or at least make them less
likely). 1 Retreat Cost for, what is essentially a
cloud, seems a little too high. However, it's still
quite low, so it's not too bad.
The abilities are what make this card interesting. First
of all, we have the rather uninteresting attack called
Midnight Eyes, which does 20 and automatic Sleep for C.
Quite nice, but until you read the rest of the card,
seems more of a back up attack or something to try and
stall for a bit, but not something you can build a deck
around.
Until you read Perish Song, that is. Perish Song does,
for CC, an automatic KO. However, there are some
conditions for this. First, the Pokémon being effected
by Perish Song must have been attacked by Midnight Eyes
last turn, and must also be Asleep when you attack with
Perish Song. It seems like an awful deal, but there are
some relatively easy ways of making sure you can fulfill
both of these conditions, which don't rely on the 25%
chance of your opponents active to stay Asleep from
Midnight Eyes, but I'll talk about them later.
Healing Song is another rather unspectacular attack. For
CC, you do 40 damage and get to remove a damage counter
from each of your Pokémon. If Healing Song did more
damage or Altaria had more HP, then it might have been
worth it (a bit like for Torterra (DP), then). However,
it didn't, so you really shouldn't use this attack since
there are better healers around.
So, combos, and these are all ones that allow you to do
the Midnight Eyes/Perish Song combo a bit easier, though
none of these will get rid of the fact that you have to
attack twice to pull of the OHKO combo. First, as
always, you will have to use Midnight Eyes, there's no
way round that. However, there are ways to make sure
your opponent's Pokémon is Asleep when you use Perish
Song. First, there's Darkrai (MD), who puts your
opponents active Asleep when you play it from your hand
to your bench. Good, but one use means you'll need to
pack Super Scoop Ups. Secondly, there's Wigglytuff (GE).
I would recommend it, just so you would play Jigglypuff,
but Wigglytuff can be a bit self-destructive as well.
Every turn, you can put your active and your opponents
active to Sleep. That's fair enough, but putting Altaria
to Sleep means you then can't use Perish Song, making
the combo pointless unless you put in Switch/Warp
Points/healing cards or Xatu (SW), at which point you
will probably be running a deck of at least 3 Stage 1
lines (at least 3 since you could use Claydol (GE) or
Uxie (LA) as your draw engine). No matter how you look
at it, it's going to be cluttered. The final combo is
with Vileplume (LA), who, upon attaching a G energy to
it, will put your opponents active to Sleep. Slower than
the other 2 due to being a Stage 2, and would need a G
energy to be attached every turn, but if you pull it
off, then it might be the best of the lot.
Of course, there is one counter that almost every deck
nowadays should be playing since it counters most of the
big decks: Unown G (GE). This card stops Perish Song
from ever taking effect, so you would get the automatic
2 turn KO, and thus would need to rely on other attacks
or Pokémon to do the job, which might end up being way
too slow. Even without Unown G, most main attackers will
be getting at least a 2HKO most of the time, with a fair
few getting OHKOs a lot. Also, with Switch and Warp
Point, it will be very hard to make sure you Perish Song
the right Pokémon, unless you are willing to play Palkia
Lv.X (GE), which would make any version of the deck
extremly crowded, especially when you consider bench
space.
Ratings:
Modified: I like the idea of this card. To be honest,
the main combo of the card takes after the original
Msidreavus (Neo Revelations, I believe), and I liked the
idea of that card originally as well. However, trying to
pull the combo off is another thing entirely. A simple
Switch/Warp Point or even retreating if they wake up
after Midnight Eyes stops Perish Song from doing
anything, and it just happens that the most widely
played tech at the moment (Unown G) also shuts Altaria
down. An automatic 2HKO sounds nice, but when you
consider that most main attackers in most decks are
doing that already with damage, you need to think "Is it
worth it?" My answer is I don't know since it's easily
countered, but would surprise a lot of people. 2.25/5
Limited: Slightly worse here since your main combo
(Midnight Eyes/Perish Song) will require you to rely on
the 25% chance of keeping your opponents active Asleep
with Midnight Eyes before Perish Song, which means you
will either be using Midnight Eyes as your main attack,
or Healing Song, and neither of which deserve that
status. Healing Song might be quite fun if your opponent
is struggling to do more than 10 damage per turn. 1.75/5 |
