Pokemon Home

Pokedex

Price Guide Set List

Message Board

Pokemon GO Tips

Pokemon News

Featured Articles

Trading Card Game
- Price Guide
- Price Guide
- Card of the Day
- Professional Grading
- Killer Deck Reports
- Deck Garage
- William Hung
- Jason Klaczynski
- Jeremy's Deck Garage
- Johnny Blaze's Banter
- TCG Strategies
- Rulings Help
- Apprentice & Patch
- Apprentice League
- Spoilers & Translations
- Official Rules
- Featured Event Reports
- Top of the World
- An X-Act Science
- Error Cards
- Printable Checklist
- Places to Play

Nintendo Tips
- Red/Blue
- Yellow
- Gold & Silver
- Crystal
- Ruby & Sapphire
- Fire Red & Leaf Green
- Emerald
- SNAP
- Pinball
- TCG cart
- Stadium
- PuPuzzle League
- Pinball: Ruby/Sapphire
- Pokemon Coliseum
- Pokemon Box
- Pokemon Channel

GameBoy Help
- ClownMasters Fixes
- Groudon's Den
- Pokemon of the Week

E-Card Reader FAQ's
- Expedition
- Aquapolis
- Skyridge
- Construction Action Function
- EON Ticket Manual

Deck Garage
- Pokemaster's Pit Stop
- Kyle's Garage
- Ghostly Gengar

Cartoon/Anime
- Episode Listing
- Character Bios
- Movies & Videos
- What's a Pokemon?
- Video List
- DVD List

Featured Articles

Pojo's Toy Box

Books & Videos

Downloads

Advertise With Us
- Sponsors
- Links

Chat

About Us
Contact Us

Pojo's Pokemon Card of the Day

		Darkrai & Cressellia Legend HS Triumphant Date Reviewed: Nov. 19, 2010 Ratings & Reviews Summary Modified: 2.75 Limited: 1.75 Ratings are based on a 1 to 5 scale. 1 being the worst.  3 ... average.   5 is the highest rating. Back to the main COTD Page
Combos With:

Baby Mario 2010 UK National Seniors Champion	Darkrai & Cresselia LEGEND   Seeing these two Pokémon together on a LEGEND card seems a bit odd – aren’t they usually enemies (or at least opposites?). Still, I suppose it’s less random than pairing up Rayquaza and Deoxys.   Darkrai & Cresselia LEGEND (that’s right, I’m calling it DCL from now on), comes with all the usual difficulties associated with cards of this type. Difficulties that you are wise to bear in mind when considering how playable it will be. Getting it into play is not easy for a start, then there are the two very bad Weaknesses (Fighting and Psychic), and the fact that it gives up two Prizes when knocked out. When you add in that it is an unevolved Pokémon, and therefore a OHKO for Machamp SF’s Take Out (and unable to damage Mewtwo LV X), you can see that you are going to need some VERY good reasons to put this into a deck.   Well, the 150 HP is quite good, I guess, and from an offensive point of view, so is the type combination. Dark means Special Dark Energy, and Psychic means hitting a lot of common stuff for Weakness (Machamp, Uxie). The Retreat cost of two is a bit of a downside, but it’s not a deal-breaker if the card is good enough as you can always run Warp (Point or Energy).   In a strange departure from normal practice, DCL’s first attack is its (very) expensive one. Lost Crisis costs [D][D][C][C] and does 100 damage. It also discards two Energy when you use it (but hey, at least you have a choice and can lose the Double Colourless). On the plus side, anything knocked out by this attack is sent to the Lost Zone, rather than the discard. That’s a very nice bonus, because as yet there is no way for your opponent to recover them: KO your opponent’s only Regigigas or Garchomp C LV X with this, and they will have a very hard time for the rest of the game. The 100 damage seems nice, and with Special Dark, you can boost it to 110-120: enough to take care of those pesky SP LV X. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to one shot most undamaged Stage 2s, or the likes of Gyarados and Donphan. I really wouldn’t want to attach Expert Belt to a LEGEND (three Prizes!), so you may be stuck using PlusPowers or Crobat G if you want to use Lost Crisis as a main attack.   If the high cost and discard put you off using DCL, at least it has a second, cheap attack. For just one Psychic Energy, Moon’s Invite let’s you move around damage counters on your opponent’s Pokémon in any way you like. Although it doesn’t add any damage, an attack like this does have a possible use in a spread-type deck, where you can shift accumulated damage around and get an instant KO on something big. However, spread decks are not really popular at the moment and, even if they were, I’m not sure how feasible using a high-retreat LEGEND Pokémon as a tech would be.   Despite the scariness of Lost Crisis, and the interesting possibilities of Moon’s Invite, DCL doesn’t really do quite enough to be worth the trouble of playing it. Like most LEGENDS, it seems destined to fill the role of binder candy/trade bait . . . which is always a bit of a shame.   Rating   Modified: 2.25 (possible spread tech, but given all the drawbacks, I wouldn’t bother) Limited: 1.25 (I have yet to see anyone pull both halves of a LEGEND at a Prerelease)
conical	11/19/10: Darkrai/Cresselia Legend(Triumphant)   The common problem with the Legends has been that their attack cost is too high to justify their playability. Attack cost by itself is not a problem, since nearly every type has some form of energy acceleration, but considering that Legends are fairly difficult to assemble in the first place, the added hassle of getting energy onto them, short of a lucky Legend Box, is enough to dissuade people from playing them, apart from Entei/Raikou Legend.   Thankfully, Darkrai/Cresselia Legend is the only Legend with a one-energy attack. Moon's Invite lets you move your opponent's damage counters around at will. Since D/C Legend has no real way to abuse moving damage, apart from a 4-energy attack(Note: Don't use it), D/C Legend will likely be seen in a tech capacity, same as Entei/Raikou. Psychic is generally a good type for spread, with multiple Gengars, Gallade 4, and Metagross UL, all of which could use this as a potential tech. Don't expect this to make a major impact in the metagame, however.   Modified: 3/5 Limited: 1.25/5(You won't pull it, and if you do, what will you do with it? Combos With: Gengar lv. X, Metagross UL, Gallade 4 lv.X
Otaku	We end the week in style, with Darkrai & Cresselia LEGEND.  Like all LEGEND Pokémon, you’ll have to have both halves before you Bench it, and get used to it being an “Unevolved Pokémon” (but not a Basic Pokémon) and the rulings issues that can create.  For the hassle, you’ll enjoy the potency of a Darkness/Psychic hybrid: it hits a nice swath of Weakness as well as enjoying the damage bonus from Special Energy Darkness Energy.  I couldn’t find any Darkness-Type Resistance this format, but Psychic Resistance is the second most common, so those balance out fairly well.  In the end, I’d say this is a good Type pairing.   The 150 HP seems good: it isn’t the highest score in the game, but it is up there and tops many Stage 2 Pokémon.  The Weakness will hurt it: this card is both Psychic and Fighting Weak at the damage doubling level.  If you are hit by a Pokémon that is both Types at once (there’s a Kecleon for that), you’d take quadruple damage.  The more serious threat comes from many decks hitting just one of that particular pairing: many decks will have access to a solid attacker that is one or the other.  As Darkrai & Cresselia can’t be started with at least you don’t have to worry about fending off crazy OHKO combos right away, but the flipside is that by the time this LEGEND shows up, many Psychic and Fighting decks will be set up and thus capable of taking it down in one shot.  There is a solution: Azelf Lv.X will nullify the Weakness while in play since this card is half Psychic-Type.  It does hurt that the format won’t make this an optional combo and it means four less slots to work with for the rest of your deck.  It is a bit frustrating you don’t even get a single form of Resistance, though I guess we should be grateful the Retreat Cost is only CC: that is low enough you can pay it without trashing your set up, though it is big enough you really want to avoid it.   This card has two attacks.  Lost Crisis requires (DDCC), which means you can use a Double Colorless Energy to shave a turn off the build time and Darkness Energy (Special Energy version) to pump the already great 100 points of damage even higher.  Unfortunately, it requires you send two of your attached Energy to the Lost Zone!  It doesn’t state Energy card, so you should be able to drop a Double Colorless Energy to pay the entire cost: definitely a saving grace.  You also get the benefit of sending anything this card KOs with this attack to the Lost Zone.  As we’ve said with several other reviews, it’s annoying and disrupts recursion, but until we get Lost World – the Stadium released in Japan that allows a player to declare him/herself the winner on his/her turn if six of his/her opponent’s Pokémon have been sent to the Lost Zone – it is just that, an irritating form of mild disruption that won’t cripple a lot of decks.  All in all, a solid attack but not enough to make me want to put up with the hassle.   Fortunately the second attack, Moon’s Invite, is actually quite interesting and affordable: for (P) you can move the damage counters on your opponent’s Pokémon around as you like.  While this is nearly useless to use early game, once you’ve got some damage counters in play it can be an efficient way to score multiple prizes.  The downfall of spread damage is that it usually accumulates much too slowly to significantly disrupt strategy: that is to say you lose the benefit gained from normally slugging it out, that your opponent loses one Pokémon at a time and that Pokémon is usually their attacker that requires powering up another Pokémon to replace.  This attack eliminates that problem: spread the damage around, then force it onto the most important Pokémon if need be or else the smallest for maximum KOs!   This card screams for combos to support it.  If you wish to focus the first attack, you’ll need some form of Energy acceleration, pure and simple.  You’re sending Energy to the Lost Zone and not the discard, so skip recycling tricks.  You can’t open with this and as you might want to pack a healthy amount of Switch/Warp Point/etc. anyway, Leafeon Lv.X seems like a good candidate.  Building around the second attack is easier: you just need to spread damage, fast.  Coupled with the wonderfully low Energy cost, Darkrai & Cresselia LEGEND can fairly easily be worked into an existing strategy as a super cleaner or possibly even alternate main attacker.  Cards like Miasma Valley can fit pretty easily into a variety of decks, and depending on the direction you want to do (or if you have a good, pre-existing deck already doing it) you can get a lot of damage counters in play fast.  If Absol Prime is combined with Miasma Valley, that’s four damage counters on every non-Psychic or Grass Pokémon your opponent puts into play.  Even if you don’t want to attack with Absol very much, you don’t really have to: once your opponent tries to set-up you should be looking at enough damage for Darkrai & Cresselia LEGEND to drop into play and go for at least one Prize: no fuss, no muss.  Honchkrow (Supreme Victors) can use its Darkness Restore Poké-Power to grab your opponent’s smallest Basic and revive it just so you can shunt a minimal amount of damage counters over to it for a Prize.  Yes, I realize that Miasma Valley and Absol Prime won’t hit it since it isn’t coming from the hand: again, you’re taking advantage of the damage counters in play already.   The third deck idea would be to simply combine the above two.  It doesn’t look like an easy to build or run deck, but I am not seeing any signs that it is an impossible, either.  You’d want to keep the halves in hand as long as you could, and may even be able to surprise an opponent.  Moon’s Invite would ideally score two KOs the first turn it was used, “paying off” the Prizes you’ll give up when Darkrai & Cresselia eventually go down, but at least one KO should be expected if the deck is working as designed.  After that, a single good Lost Crisis would put you ahead or you can keep using Moon’s Invite if there are enough damage counters in play.   As for other formats, I’d actually like to see this tried in Unlimited.  The bad news: it is Unlimited and competition is fierce.  The good news?  You have all the greatest draw and search power at your disposal and Moon’s Invite should make the staple Baby Pokémon easy prey.  For that matter, Neo-classical decks like Mind Games are staffed chiefly with Baby Pokémon, Neo Genesis Sneasel (60 HP) and Neo Genesis Slowking (80 HP).  On the other side is Limited play where… for once a Legend looks really, really good.  Of course you’ll probably have to sit on it almost all game before you dare play it.  That’s okay: you’re running it for Moon’s Invite.  In Limited play it is vital to retreat a severally damaged attacker and have them hide on the Bench.  You should have a good shot at breaking even with your first use of Moon’s Invite, maybe even pulling ahead.  As a virtual win condition, it is worth the hassle.  Should you be able to use Lost Crisis, it is all the better!   Ratings   Unlimited: 3/5  Modified: 3/5  Limited: 4/5  Combos with: Miasma Valley, Absol Prime   Summary   This Pokémon LEGEND actually has an effective, Energy efficient attack, albeit one that requires something spread damage counters first to be of any use.  We have many options to spread damage counters, and the lower average HP scores of other formats means this may be best LEGEND we really have: a super Sniper that can take a Prize for a single Energy.  The required set-up, two Prize penalty, and extremely dangerous dual Weaknesses keep it from being something to splash into all damage spread decks, but as far as I can tell it has a lot of potential.   I am still selling my former collectables on eBay.  I’ve had a lot of hobbies over the years, so at various times I’ll have comic books, manga, action figures, and video games on the auction block.  You can take a look at what’s up for bids here.  Just a reminder, Pojo is in no way responsible for any transactions and was merely kind enough to let me mention the auctions here. ;)