Haxorus
(Noble Victories)
Up for review today is a card that got a
fair bit of interest when the spoilers
for the set first leaked (people do love
a cool-looking Dragon). However it seems
to have been mostly, if not completely,
absent from the tournament scene.
Haxorus
is a Stage 2 with a pretty good 140 HP
(making it reasonably safe from
Reshiram and
Zekrom OHKOs
. . . they’ll need two
PlusPowers).
In fact that HP is even better than it
seems, thanks to
Haxorus’ lack of a Weakness:
anyone wanting to OHKO it will have to
hit for the full amount of damage. The
Colourless Typing is a fairly neutral
thing: on the one hand it makes
Haxorus
capable of fitting into a deck alongside
virtually any other Type, but on the
other, Colourless is hitting nothing
significant for Weakness right now.
If you like coin flipping, you’ll love
Haxorus’
Dual Chop attack. For the cost of a
Double Colourless Energy, you get two
coin flips with 50
damage for each heads. It’s not
something you would want to rely on
(even with Victory Star
Victini on
your Bench), but as a quick way of doing
(potentially) 100 damage before you had
the Energy for anything better? Sure,
why not?
The attack you really want to use here
is Giga Impact. For the very reasonable
cost of three Energy of any Colour,
Haxorus does
120 damage.
That is Unova
Dragon levels of damage efficiency and
as you would expect, it comes with a
drawback: Haxorus
cannot attack on the next turn . . . not
even with Dual Chop. This is annoying as
it means having to run Switch or
Dodrio UD if
you want to attack on consecutive turns
(which you most definitely do).
Haxorus
could really have done without that
drawback too. It’s hard enough for a
Stage 2 to be playable in this format
and the only ones that really get used
are either a) bench sitters like
Vileplume UD
and Typhlosion
Prime, or b)
OHKOing monsters with built-in
draw engine (Magnezone
Prime). If you do want to go down the
Dodrio
route, then
Chandelure NV, with its spread
damage and Status effects is the
superior choice.
What the card designers have done is
made a card that is a bit like the
Unova
Dragons . . . and then turned it into a
Stage 2. That’s not a good thing. In the
past this would have been a formidable
Pokémon . . . now it’s outclassed by
Basics.
Rating
Modified: 2.5 (came out dressed for the
wrong format)
Limited: 3.5 (Colourless big hitter –
good for a Stage 2)
