Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Hydreigon
(Legendary Treasures)
Hydreigon’s
been around for a while now (this is a reprint, of
course), and has formed the basis of a deck that has
always been pretty solid without quite making it to the
top tier. The concept behind it is simple: you can use
his Dark Trance Ability to move Dark Energy around and
this allows you to both conserve Energy in play and use
Max Potion to completely heal your Pokémon without the
discard penalty.
Obviously a large part of the reason why this deck works
at all is that we have a
fantastic
Dark Type attacker in Darkrai
EX. However, Blend and Prism Energy do give the deck
some flexibility so the tech possibilities are fairly
wide-ranging, though most players prefer to stick with
non-attacking options like Virizion
EX and Mr Mime, while focusing on consistency. It
doesn’t hurt that Dark Pokémon already
have some very nice support
from cards like Dark Patch either: being able to
accelerate and
conserve your Energy is a very attractive combination.
Unlike most Bench Support Pokémon,
Hydreigon comes with a useful attack: 140 damage
is enough to take care of most Stage 2s, any Dragon
Pokémon (thanks to Weakness), and even a lot of EX’s
with a little help from a previous Night Spear snipe.
The new rules benefit the card quite a bit too: it’s not
so easy to drag active now that Catcher needs a coin
flip, and the ‘no first turn attack’ rule means your
lone Deino starter isn’t so
much of a liability.
Of course, any deck that uses a Stage 2 is going to have
speed issues compared to all-Basic decks, and
Hydreigon is also vulnerable
to Garbodor’s Ability lock
(I recommend Tool Scrapper). The real Achilles’ heel of
the deck though are Pokémon
that can OHKO your active and make the Dark Trance/Max
Potion combo irrelevant. Black
Kyurem EX, Rayquaza
EX, and Genesect EX with G
Booster are all serious threats which may continue to
make this deck a risky choice. Even so,
Hydreigon can be the
foundation of a pretty good deck that can compete at the
higher level.
Rating
Modified: 3.75 (Nice Ability, and it has the partners to
work with)
Limited: 2 (not really the format for making the most
out of Hydreigon)
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