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Pojo's Pokémon Card of the Day

Baby Mario 2010 UK National Seniors Champion	Lucario EX (Furious Fists)  Yesterday I wrote about how Furious Fists has a ton of Fighting support, and today we take a look at the card that seems best placed to make use of it. As you would expect, this is getting a huge amount of hype right now.  Lucario EX comes with the big 180 HP and three attacks – something we haven’t seen for a long time, usually on a Tyranitar. All of them have their uses: Missile Jab is a cheap early-game attack that does 30 and by-passes Resistance (which may be useful against things like non-EX Yveltal); Corkscrew Smash does 60 for just two Energy and can also function as the deck’s draw engine with its built-in Bianca effect allowing you to draw until you have six cards; Somersault Kick is the biggest thing on offer here, though a vanilla 100-for-three may seem a little below par.  What you have to consider with all these attacks, however, is that the damage can be easily ramped up in scary ways. With Strong Energy, Fighting Stadium, and a Muscle Band, you are adding 60+ damage per turn, and that’s without even considering Hypnotoxic Laser or the Machamp we saw yesterday. What does this mean? Well, Missile Jab can take out any evolving Basic plus a lot of Fighting-Weak stuff like Miltank FLF. Corkscrew Punch will now draw you cards while two-hit KOing just about anything. Meanwhile Somersault Kick can be made into something which will get you the magic OHKO on the vast majority of EX Pokémon.  Lucario EX is a card that will probably justify the vast majority of its hype. It’s not invincible: Mewtwo EX is a serious threat and Yveltal and Lugia will at least force a heavy resource investment due to their Resistance. Nevertheless, expect Lucario to see a massive amount of play come September, and be prepared to deal with the huge threat it poses.  Rating  Modified: 4.75 (the new big archetype of the set) Limited: 5 (Even better than the standard ‘1 EX + 39 Energy’ if you pull a few Strong Energy and Fighting Stadium)
aroramage	Welcome back to our preview of the upcoming Furious Fists set! Today we're going to look at the big Fighting Pokemon EX of the set, Lucario-EX! Chances are that with all the Fighting-type support coming in, Lucario-EX here will see some play, so we might as well check him out to see what's up!   First thing of note is that, unlike most Pokemon, Lucario-EX has 3 attacks. We've seen this sort of thing a couple of times before, but it's always interesting to see something like this come out of nowhere. So now we get to look at all three of these attacks and how they work with each other!   First is the 1-Energy Missile Jab, which only does 30 damage but isn't affected by Resistance. Now remember in Machamp's review how I was mentioning how nice it'd be if that damage went up to 70-90? Throw in the fact that there's no reduction for this attack by Pokemon like Yveltal-EX (XY), and you can imagine just how devastating this attack can be! And that's the cheapest one!   Corkscrew Smash adds another Energy and deals 60 damage, but the best part about this attack is the effect: you get to draw until you've got 6 cards in hand. That's non-Supporter draw on par with Delphox (XY) - and it does damage! Again, 60 doesn't look that great, but combining Lucario-EX with support like Machamp and the Energy can bring this up to 100-120 damage - all for just 2 Energy!   And then there's the vanilla Somersault Kick. Yeah I know it's not fantastic without an effect, but 100 is still a lot of damage, and again you're ideally adding up more damage from support to make it 140-160 damage! Looks like it's short of Pokemon-EX territory? Don't forget you can tack on Muscle Band or Hypnotoxic Laser to add even more damage! Never mind that you're going to be quickly punching your way up into this attack with the other two attacks, though those two combined already dealing anywhere between 90-210 damage (the latter number being a potential combination of attacks and circumstances).   So does this make Lucario-EX a good Pokemon-EX? Certainly! He's not exactly a lead giving the new rules about going first, but he's able to bring a balance of offense and support to the Fighting deck that makes it consistent. Is he a great Pokemon-EX? We'll have to see about it, but with the support he's got going for him, I'm willing to bet he's going to bring about a whole new revolution of hyper-offense to the game!   Rating   Modified: 4/5 (with little energy acceleration, the Fighting-types aren't #1 here, but Lucario-EX likes setting up for the big KO anyway, and given what he'll be able to do, he's gonna bring it on home!)   Limited: 5/5 (undeniably one of - if not THE best card to grab in this format, especially with the new support)   Arora Notealus: Funny enough, Lucario-EX doesn't have any "aura" attacks even though he's clearly charging one up in his regular print. His full art doesn't, from what I've seen~   Next time: What? Lucario-EX is evolving!!
Otaku	This week we are reviewing five cards from the not-yet-released XY: Furious Fists.  These cards won’t be tournament legal until September 3rd, if I counted right (August 13th release date plus 21 days), and outside of Pre-Releases and apparently a Charizard-EX Gift Box that went on sale in (some) European locations, you won’t have English language cards of it until the Pre-Releases at the earliest.  I don’t know about the other reviewers, but since I waited until the last minute to do the review, at least now we do know that the 2015 Modified Format will be BW: Boundaries Crossed and later sets, plus BW Promo BW55 and later (and of course all XY Promo series cards).  Though the 2015 season has apparently already started (July 14th), the rotation will not happen until September 3rd… which  is the exact date that XY: Furious Fists becomes tournament legal!  Today we look at one of the “Poster ‘mons” for the set, Lucario-EX (XY: Furious Fists 54/111, 107/111).  The Fighting Weakness and Resistance are both frequent appearances, though the latter is relative to the actual scarcity of Resistance; head to head Resistance shows up a lot less than Resistance, and unsurprisingly, the insane damage doubling of Weakness is significantly more important than simple -20 Fighting Resistance provides.  Fighting-Type support is established this set, making it one of the best supported Types now; possibly the best supported.  You’ll find true, only-applies-to-Fighting-Type Pokémon support in the form of Pokémon, Trainers, and even a Special Energy now.  Being a Basic is still great; the pacing of the game hasn’t slowed that much since last year (remember when you could attack first turn and Pokémon Catcher didn’t require a coin flip?): you just have to worry about Pyroar (XY: Flashfire 20/106) and its Intimidating Mane.  Being a Pokémon-EX is technically all draw back if you ignore how they tend to be allowed significantly higher HP and (at least on the good ones) better Abilities and or attacks; there are some beneficial card effects that won’t work for Pokémon-EX and some negative card effects that specifically target them.  One such thing is having 180 HP, 20 higher than anything printed on a Stage 2 and 50 higher than a non-Pokémon-EX Basic.  With this much, you’ll usually be able to survive a hit.  Not always, though, and one of the exceptions will be Weakness: Psychic Weakness allows a couple of different cards to bring the hurt, but the two most likely to be encountered are Mewtwo-EX and Deoxys-EX.  The latter is less scary, due to it usually being run as just a Bench-sitter in Team Plasma decks, though most such decks to have the capacity to power them up and attack with them.  Mewtwo-EX and its X-Ball are the real scary ones, as they can be worked into most decks and even if you don’t have any Energy on Lucario-EX yet, it may be possible for a deck to just load up Mewtwo-EX itself; four Energy between the two of them plus a Muscle Band means a OHKO.  No Resistance is disappointing but how it is for most cards, so its not something I count against the card.  The two Energy Retreat Cost is also fairly standard, and while it is neither easy nor especially difficult to pay, most decks can’t spare two Energy just to retreat.  Fortunately most decks also will be packing something to lower or bypass said cost.  Lucario-EX shakes things up by being the first modern card with three attacks, and they conveniently follow a one, two, three Energy scheme using all Fighting-Type Energy requirements.  For [F] Lucario-EX can use Missile Jab for a quick 30 points of damage that ignores Resistance.  For [FF] it can use Corkscrew Smash for 60 points of damage (a respectable amount) plus you get to draw until you have six cards in hand.  The big attack for [FFF] does a straight 100 points of damage.  Separately these are all solid attacks, but not something to build a deck around; having them all on the same card, when that card is Lucario-EX, is a different matter.  Lucario-EX has one other trick as well; it can Mega Evolve into M-Lucario-EX.  Like all Mega Evolutions, Evolving ends your turn instantly.  The trade off is 220 HP and losing your three attacks in exchange for one new one that costs [FFF]; Rising Fist scores a clean 140 points of damage (easy enough for Fighting-Types to bump to 180) and if whatever you hit survives, you get to discard an Energy attached to it.  I doubt this will be overly useful as Lucario-EX strikes me as being suited for a speedy assault that won’t appreciate skipping an attack to Mega Evolve, but if you need to you get a solid Pokémon out of the deal, and you won’t even need any extra Energy (unless you were relying on just Missle Jab and/or Corkscrew Smash).  So how might this card be used?  Missile Jab allows for a speedy assault beginning whatever turn you’re first allowed to attack; thanks to the myriad of damage bonuses XY: Furious Fists and some older tricks provide, it is feasible (though it does require a little effort) to get Missile Jab into OHKO/2HKO range range.  If you can quickly power-up Corkscrew Blow, you should easily get it into 2HKO range and possibly even OHKO.  Just remember that you’re out of luck if an N or Red Card or similar effect messes with your hand before you get to access your new draw, or if your hand becomes cluttered so you just can’t draw that many cards.  With the high aggression style of play, you can fill the deck mostly with cards you can quickly play out and/or a few that discard to thin your hand down before the next “fill-up”.  Even without that, this could become to Fighting-Type decks what Yveltal-EX is to Darkness-Type… though probably not as effective (in fact, Yveltal-EX won’t be as effective by this point; it loses Dark Patch).  In Limited, if you pull this, you run a deck built around it, probably with 39 non-Basic Pokémon; odds are low that your opponent will be able to overwhelm your 80 HP before you’ve taken four Prizes, though it is a possibility.  Ratings Standard: N/A  Modified (BCR-On): 4.5/5 - Like Seismitoad-EX this card has a lot of potential, though its expressed a lot differently with Lucario-EX, which would require a specific Energy consideration to splash into off-Type decks, and isn’t meant as disruption but for a fast offense, possibly with bonus draw.  Limited: 5/5 - Its a big, Basic Pokémon-EX with a single Energy with three great attacks.  One of the attacks even provides draw power!  Summary: Lucario-EX is very impressive, though I don’t expect it to be Yveltal-EX, Darkrai-EX, or Mewtwo-EX level spectacular (referencing each of those cards when they were introduced, not necessarily as they are now).  Three good attacks plus great HP and Typing make for a winning combination, though not something to arbitrarily add into just any deck.  If its second attack doesn’t prove worthwhile, I’ve probably greatly oversold it as we’ll still have Landorus-EX to combine with all the new support.
Joe Hollywood Chicago, IL	How's it going everyone? Today we have one of the most hyped cards to come out of "Furious Fists", Lucario EX! With all the fighting type support in this set, this card is destined to be one of the major players throughout the next format! Speaking of which, the modified format rotation will be Boundaries Crossed-on! This card will definitely be one of a kind since this card has 3 attacks, one of the very few pokemon to ever have it!    Let's first start out with its stats. All of them are to be expected for an EX. 180 HP so it can take a little bit of punishment. It's weakness to psychic is going to force some players to run counters to this card seeing as this will be one of the most popular cards to play. A simple solution most players are going to see to stop this card is running 1-3 Mewtwo EX's with some Double Colorless Energies or running Pyroar with the Intimidating Roar ability. A 2 retreat cost isn't that bad.    I'll go through all three of the attacks pretty quick since they are all straight forward. The first attack, Missle Jab, does 30 damage for one fighting and it bypasses resistance. It's a decent attack just to get some damage in no matter what the opposition is. The second attack, Corkscrew Smash, does 60 damage for 2 fighting energy, and then allows you to draw until you have 6 cards! This attack is what I think makes this card so good. Corkscrew Smash allows you to play very aggressive while still netting cards from your deck, making a deck around this card so consistent. The third attack, Somersault Kick, is a basic attack that does 100 damage for 3 fighting energy. With all the damage increasing cards (Strong Energy, Fighting Stadium, Muscle Band, Machamp, etc.) in the Furious Fists set, Somersault Kick can take out most threats in one attack.    Given all the hype going for this card, this card IMO will change the game. Expect players to be playing Lucario EX along side Landorus EX or Machamp FF, I know I will be with Landorus EX. A deck focused around this card and with all the fighting type support in this set could prove too much for your opponent to handle if they can't find answers to it asap.    Modified - 4.5/5 (Would give it a straight 5/5 but there are still some threats to this card that can take care of this card.) Limited - 5/5 (Nothing much else I could explain, it is completely broken here.) Expanded - 4.5/5 (Same reasoning as the Modified rating.)