aroramage |
Ya know what's great? I saw a keychain shaped like a
Klefki the other day on a YouTube vid! How cool is that?
Anyways, welcome back to today's card of the day, Klefki!
He's got an interesting set of moves, but will they be
enough to win the day against the forces of the EX?
Let's find out what makes Klefki worth playing!
Spoiler alert: it's not his attack. Fairy Lock is a
2-for-30 strike that keeps the opponent from retreating,
but I don't think that you're going to be willingly
putting him out there against anyone and not expect him
to get KO'd. 60 HP really isn't that much, and the last
thing you want to do with Klefki is keep the opponent
from retreating. Not to say he couldn't do well,
but...well, he's just not going to do well.
So naturally we come to look at Klefki's Ability! Secret
Key unlocks the true potential of the Fairy-type by
making their Resistance -40! This is tremendous! That's
an extra energy for Yveltal-EX to KO! That renders
Drapion's Venoshock negligible without Poison! That's a
reduction on Darkrai-EX's main strike with Dark Spear!
This Ability may single-handedly turn the entire
metagame on its head and usher in the true Age of the
Fairies!
...is something I might've said back in Base Set days.
The truth is, Resistance is barely a factor anymore; in
fact most Pokemon don't usually have a Resistance, but
those that do don't even have it as good as back in the
day. For those newer to the TCG (aka from Diamond &
Pearl onwards), Resistance used to be set at -30 on the
type, a pretty high number in those days. It's the sort
of strike that kept you from taking Hitmonchan's Jab to
the face with your Pidgey standing in its way. From D&P
onwards, they tended to reduce that Resistance to only
-20, still a bit reasonable at the time especially when
Pokemon-ex (the lower case one) started showing up with
two Resistances.
But nowadays, Resistance barely does anything. Sure it's
remained at -20, and that's been useful for certain
scenarios, but these days Pokemon are doing upwards of
120-200 damage, often with boosts like Muscle Band,
Hypnotoxic Laser, and Strong Energy to name a few. If
anything, most of the time "-20" is just an obstacle to
overcome that doesn't do what it's supposed to do.
Weakness has always been x2, but Resistance has only got
weaker and less relevant as the game has grown.
Which leads me back to Klefki's Ability. It does make
the Resistance more noticeable against Dark-types, the
ones that Fairies tend to Resist most of the time, but
even -40 is just a Muscle Band and a Hypnotoxic Laser
away from becoming irrelevant again. If perhaps future
Fairy-types resist something other than Dark - like,
say, Fighting perhaps? - then Klefki may be used in a
deck to counter the rising rampage of the
Fighting-types. But for now, Klefki is a utility card
against a deck that, at least as far as I'm aware, has
become largely irrelevant in Standard.
Eh, maybe he'll do better in Expanded?
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (he supports an often irrelevant part of
Fairy-types, and even when his relevant it's not by
much)
Expanded: 2/5 (only because Dark decks are more active
with access to Dark Patch)
Limited: 1/5 (not even once)
Arora Notealus: They threaten attackers by jingling
their keys, unless their attackers are canines that are
easily distracted by jangling keys.
Next Time: A two-day two-parter of two dragons tomorrow!
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Otaku |
Klefki
(XY: Furious Fists 73/111) is a Basic (yay!)
Fairy-Type (Okay) Pokémon with 60 HP (fourth worst
possible!) with Metal Weakness (okay), Darkness
Resistance (nice) and a single Energy Retreat Cost (very
good, but expected). It’s Ability is Secret Key, which
causes Resistance on all your Fairy-Type Pokémon to act
as -40 instead of -20… meaning multiple copies won’t
push it past -40. This is nice as it can improve the
Darkness-Type match-up for Fairy-Types, though I don’t
know if they need that much help with it… and being a 60
HP Basic your opponent can fairly easily take a Prize by
taking it out (even with the Ability, a single 100
damage shot is a OHKO), so you’ve got to make sure your
opponent must focus on something else or that Klefki
is a distraction. The card has an attack called Fairy
Lock - besides being a fun pun, doing 30 for [YC] and
preventing the Defending Pokémon from manually
retreating is a nice option but rarely will it be worth
using.
The main issue facing Klefki is that Fairy-Types
are new and the formerly mainstream practice of printing
dual-Type Pokémon with a mishmash of Type features (so
that two Pokémon of the same TCG Type end up with a
different Resistance) has become rare; I can’t think of
a single Fairy-Type that isn’t Darkness-Resistance. At
least they all seem to have Resistance, so it is still a
step in the right direction. If you can make use of it,
its nice but space is limited. Speaking of Limited, as
long as you’ve got room for some Fairy Energy go
ahead and take it, just to annoy your opponent, either
with the Ability or the attack, but don’t forget its
still smallish and weak even here. For Standard and
Expanded, on the unlikely chance you’ve got room in a
mostly Fairy-Type deck, go for it, but don’t really
worry about if if you’re running a Fairy Transfer deck
that is mostly attacking with non-Fairy-Types.
Ratings
Standard:
2/5
Expanded:
2/5
Limited:
2.75/5
Summary:
Klefki does a simple but potentially useful niche
job, though not well enough to make it a must run for
mono/mostly Fairy-Type decks… unless of course we get
more diverse Fairy-Types soon (so with different Types
for Resistance) or a way to change the Resistance on
existing cards or some future Fairy-Type.
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