Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Hydreigon
#98 (Dragon’s Exalted)
Yesterday’s Garchomp wasn’t
too far behind its better version, but the same cannot
be said of Hydreigon #98 (or
‘Badreigon’). There is a
huge gulf between Dark Trance
Hydreigon, with its fantastic Ability and more
than useful attack, and this card.
As far as the basic stats go, the two cards are
identical. 150 HP is a bit better than average for a
Stage 2, Dragon Typing means that Weakness is only a
factor against its own Type, and three Retreat is too
much to ever pay in Energy, so you are going to need
Darkrai’s Dark Cloak
Ability, or a few Switches if you choose to ignore my
advice and run this card.
Hydreigon’s
first attack, Consume, costs a pretty hefty three Energy
(Dark and two Colourless).
For that you get just 40 points of damage, which is, by
modern standards, a very poor return. True, you do get
to heal the same amount of damage you do from
Hydreigon, and this could
help to keep it in play for an extra turn (against
Darkrai’s Night Spear, for
example), but the trouble is that it isn’t doing very
much for you in the meantime. 40 damage is easily
shrugged off by the big EX Pokémon, which often run
Potions and/or Max Potions of their own anyway.
Destructor Beam isn’t really any better. For
Psychic/Dark/two Colourless, it hits for 90 and gives
you a coin flip to discard an Energy
from the Defending Pokémon. The luck-based disruption is
a nice bonus, and 90 is a
‘magic number’ at the moment as it will two-shot any EX
Pokémon. Eviolite kind of
ruins those plans though, and Dark Patch and Eelektrik
take the sting out of the discard effect. Running the
Stage 2 Hydreigon for this
attack seems kind of pointless in a format where we have
Basic Dragons (Rayquaza DRV,
Giratina-EX) that can hit
for 90 with Shred and get to ignore
Eviolite.
Compared to the other options we have in the format,
this Hydreigon is just too
slow and not hard-hitting enough to be worth playing.
Rating
Modified: 1.75 (doesn’t do nearly enough)
Limited: 3.5 (if you can set it up, it will be tough to
KO)
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Jebulous Maryland Player |
Hydreigon (DRX 98/124)
Hydreigon is a Stage 2 Dragon Pokemon with 150 HP.
It is weak to Dragon and has a retreat cost of 3.
It is searchable by Heavy Ball.
'Consume' costs 1 Dark and 2 colorless energy. It
does 40 damage and heals the same amount done to the
Defending. The secondary effect can be be good and
bad. Hit weakness and you heal 80. Hit
Eviolite and heal 20. For 3 Energy I would expect
it to do more damage. It's a good effect, but kind
of useless when it only does 40. You can hit a
Dragon for 80, but that's not going to OHKO anything
significant.
More than likely they will just use that Dragon to OHKO
this one.
'Destructor Beam' costs 1 Psychic, 1 Dark, and 2
colorless energy. It does 90 and if heads, you
discard an energy from the Defending Pokemon.
Still too expensive for the cost. It's not that
great of an attack. It'll OHKO any Dragon
normally, and I'm not a fan of the flippy energy
discard.
A comparison with the other Hydreigon is a must.
The other one is better. We can all see that by
the success the deck has had. The other allows for
Energy manipulation as well as a 140 damage attack
(which OHKOs more than just Dragons).
Modified: 2/5
Limited: 2.5/5
Combos With: ...
Questions, comments, concerns:
jebulousthemighty@yahoo.com
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