Luxray
(Next Destinies)
Hello, and welcome to the week on
Pojo’s
CotD. Not
long to wait before we start looking at
the exciting new cards, but until then
there’s work to do . . . and as far as
today’s card is concerned, it isn’t
going to be pretty.
Luxray
is a Stage 2 Pokémon, and that just
isn’t good news right now. Previously
playable Stage 2s like
Chandelure
NV and even the mighty
Magnezone
Prime have all but disappeared from
tournament play, thanks to the influx of
the powerful Basics that offer vastly
superior speed and take up much less
room in a deck. Only
Vileplume UD
is clinging on to playability by finding
a space in Mew Prime lock decks and a
few surviving Truth variants. But this
Luxray has
more than just its Stage to drag it down
. . . it’s also Weak to the popular
Fighting Type (see
Terrakion NV,
Landorus NV,
and even Donphan
Prime for details), meaning that even
its decent 140 HP won’t save it. It’s
also lacking an
Ability so nothing short of mind-blowingly
brilliant attacks are going to prevent
this card from going straight to the
binder.
The first attack is really painful to
review. Most players will recognize it
from one of the best and most dominant
cards of the last few years –
Luxray GL LV
X. Here, Flash Impact is actually
cheaper (costing just one Lightning
Energy), and it still does 60 damage
with 20 damage to one of your own
Pokémon (you choose which). The trouble
is that what was good on a blisteringly
fast Pokémon with a game-breaking
PokéPower,
is just worse than mediocre on a Stage 2
in a format where 130-180 HP attackers
are the norm. It almost feels like a
joke in bad taste to see a brilliant
card like Luxray
LV X recycled as something that no
competitive player would ever want to
use.
Crunch, Luxray’s
second attack isn’t really helping
either. It’s pretty expensive at [L][L][C],
and for that you get just 80 damage and
a coin flip to discard an Energy from
the Defending Pokémon. When Stage 2s
that can OHKO everything in the format (Magnezone
Prime) are no longer playable, then you
know that something like this (which
can’t even 2HKO a
Mewtwo-EX) just isn’t going to
make the grade.
I don’t mind Pokémon printing a poor
Luxray
card, I just
wish they hadn’t given it Flash Impact.
It reminds me too much of a card I loved
playing, and to see it here makes me
angry enough to do something I rarely do
and give this
Luxray the lowest score that
Pojo allows.
Rating
Modified: 1 (a travesty of a
Luxray)
Limited: 2.25 (eh, to be fair the one
Energy attack is ok, but the effort of
getting out a Stage 2 in limited isn’t
really rewarded too well by this card)
