|
Solrock
(Triumphant)
Experienced players will remember the old
Lunarock deck that was very
successful about four or five years back. The cool thing
about it was the fact that it countered all the popular
blinged-out EX decks like
LBS (Lugia/Blastoise/Steelix)
with nothing but a bunch of cheap
rares and uncommons.
This Solrock isn’t like
that: its purpose is to be a tech rather than the
centrepiece of a deck. It’s a Fighting type Basic
Pokémon with 70 HP (all good so far), a Grass Weakness
(not bad either – not too many Grass decks around), and
a Retreat cost of one (eh, can’t complain). That’s a
decent place to start, but let’s see what else
Solrock has to offer.
Well, Solrock does have a
semi-decent attack (Sunflash)
which can offer it some protection if it ever finds
itself in the active slot, but the big selling point is
the PokeBody, Heal Block. If you have a
Lunatone in play, this
PokeBody comes into effect and prevents both players
from removing damage counters from their Pokémon. That
means no Garchomp C LV X
Healing Breath, no Nidoqueen
RR Maternal Comfort, no Poke Healer+, and it makes
Solrock (and
Lunatone) a very attractive
play in a deck that relies on spread damage to take KOs
over the course of a few turns. The trouble is that
spread decks have almost died out in this format; partly
because of some of the cards I just mentioned, but
mainly because there are a lot of very fast and
disruptive decks around which can take their six Prizes
before spread has much of a chance to work. Could this
new Solrock combination fix
things and see spread decks return once more?
Hmmmm . . . maybe . . . it’s
certainly something to consider and is probably worth
testing with some of the better spread Pokémon we have
available (Abomasnow SF and
even Gallade 4 come to
mind). Really though, I think this is a card you should
definitely hold on to for future use: the format may not
be kind to it now, but there may well come a time when
this will be a highly sought after tech.
The remaining question is; what
Lunatone should you play with it? There is really
only one good answer to that:
Lunatone SV has a nice
Solrock-dependant PokeBody which prevents both
halves of the combo from being damaged by LV X Pokémon,
stopping Garchomp C’s from
sniping your tech off the
Bench and forcing Luxray GL
to retreat for something else if it wants to drag it
active for the KO.
Rating
Modified: 3 (near auto-inclusion for spread decks, and a
sound counter to tanking/healing strategies)
Limited: 2.75 (the attack’s pretty nice, but it doesn’t
really shine here except to stall for a bit)
Combos with . . .
Lunatone
SV
Spread decks
|
