Slaking is one of my favorite Pokémon of
its generation and it ranks fairly high
up on my list… though now that there are
so many I don’t remember exactly how
high! Let us see if the latest version
is worth using.
Slaking
(XY: Furious Fists 83/111) is a
Colorless-Type as you would expect for a
Normal-Type; unless you’re playing in
Unlimited, you won’t be able to enjoy
Weakness or have to worry about
Resistance, but that’s not too good of a
deal as the exploiting the former is far
more important than avoiding the latter.
There is at least one piece of well
known, somewhat useful Colorless-Type
support: Aspertia City Gym gives
Colorless-Types +20 HP while it is in
play. Slaking is a Stage 2,
Evolving from Vigoroth which in
turn Evolves from Slakoth (more
on those two later). This has again
become a significant hurdle; not only
did the rotation cost them Tropical
Beach, a card useful to slower decks
(like Stage 2 decks) but Seismitoad-EX
usage (and its Quaking Punch attack)
have made it even harder to Evolve as
blocking Items stops Evosoda,
Rare Candy and even Ultra Ball.
To get a Stage 2 out under Quaking
Punch locking down Items requires
manually drawing into an Evolving the
Basic to Stage 1 to Stage 2.
Slaking
sports a 150 HP; when not being hit for
Weakness, this is enough you’ll often
survive a turn. It isn’t a guarantee
however, as many decks can (and do)
score OHKOs on 170 and 180 HP
Pokémon-EX. Learning to read your
opponent’s resources will often prove
valuable, as it can at least give you an
idea of how likely he or she is to have
the cards on hand to push for at least
an effective 150 points worth of damage.
When dealing with Weakness, 80 or more
damage scores a OHKO; that is a pretty
likely amount but at least its more than
you’d see from - as an example of a
common play - Landorus-EX with a
Muscle Band and Strong Energy
attached. The lack of Resistance
doesn’t help the card, but as lacking
Resistance is so common, it doesn’t hurt
it much either (plus Normal-Types don’t
Resist anything that can be represented
without clashing in the TCG). The
massive four Energy Retreat Cost is a
huge problem; besides giving Beartic
(XY: Furious Fists 22/111) +80 to
the base 20 damage of Igloo Hold, its
way too much to pay without devastating
your set-up, and you should only pay it
if not doing so will cost you the game
(and even then you just might not have
the Energy available). The good news is
that you probably wanted to run a
Retreat Cost lowering card or
alternative to manually retreating
anyway, and in Expanded it makes the
card a legal Heavy Ball target.
Slaking
has two attacks; for [CCC] it has
Amnesia, dealing 50 points of damage and
requiring you select one of the
Defending Pokémon’s attacks. The
Defending Pokémon can’t use the selected
attack next turn making it a fairly
decent stall trick; the main concern is
that as I just stated when talking about
Retreat Costs, most decks have a means
of easily changing out their Active;
against many decks it will only make a
small difference, though at least the
damage is nearly to the point where it
only needs to make a small difference.
For three you really need to be able to
score 90 points of damage without too
much hassle; the effect really is useful
and Silver Bangle can help you
nearly score that damage against
Pokémon-EX while Muscle Band can
nearly help you score that damage
against anything else; base damage of 60
or 70 might have made this honestly
work… that or if it had been released
about a year ago.
Knuckle Sandwich, a fun but not overly
zany name delivers 120 points of damage
for [CCCC] and the discarding of one
attached Energy. This is actually a
solid return in abstract, but in
practice you really need a OHKO as
getting four Energy on this card
requires a lot of time, a lot of effort
or both, and Slaking would be
fortunate to survive using said attack.
150 was probably necessary. Looking at
the attacks together, both are quite
pricey; the card really could have used
an attack for [CC] so that a single
Double Colorless Energy could have
got it going on its own… or simply a
useful Ability.
In Standard there is only one Slakoth
to select from: XY: Furious Fists
81/111. It sports a most underwhelming
60 HP Colorless Basic Pokémon with
Fighting Weakness, no Resistance and a
Retreat Cost of two. It even has just
one attack, which puts itself and the
opponent’s Active Pokémon to Sleep, but
at an overpriced [CC]. In Expanded you
could also use BW: Dragons Exalted
101/124; however as the only difference
between the two is in the attack and it
just does 10 for [C] while putting
itself (and only itself) to Sleep, you
shouldn’t use it; at least the newer one
might buy you some time with a lot of
luck. Vigoroth (XY: Furious
Fists 82/111) almost makes for a
useful opening attacker. Well, not
really but at least it can do 20 for [C]
or 70 for [CCC], though it must flip a
coin for that second attack and on
tails, it also does 20 to itself. BW:
Dragons Exalted 102/124 rivals it in
terms of attack; it only has one for
[CC], but it does a flat 20 with a
chance for +40 (“heads” on a coin toss),
which isn’t good but at least is mildly
threatening without lowering its own
odds of surviving an attack. However in
the end XY: Furious Fists 82/111
wins out; both are Stage 1,
Colorless-Type Pokémon with Fighting
Weakness, no Resistance and a Retreat
Cost of two but the newer version has 90
HP while the older version from BW:
Dragons Exalted has just 80. I’d
prefer more HP in general, but at least
(for Expanded) all four of these cards
are legal Level Ball targets.
There is one other Slaking
available, but only in Expanded: BW:
Dragons Exalted 103/124. Its
Attributes are identical to today’s
version but it has one Ability and one
attack. The attack requires [CCCC].
making it even slower on the offensive
than today’s version, and it only hits
for 100 points of damage but it
makes the Defending Pokémon discard an
Energy instead of itself, ever so
slightly increases the odds of it
scoring a 2HKO against something like a
Pokémon-EX. So why did I skip the
Ability? Because its Unobservant, which
states that Slaking cannot attack
Basic Pokémon, the dominant Stage of
this format. With this kind of
drawback, the attack needs to do pretty
much be OHKO worthy, as you’re only
using this with Garbodor (BW:
Dragons Exalted
54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze
119/116; BW: Legendary Treasures
68/113), which clashes to one degree or
another with worthwhile Energy
acceleration apart from Double
Colorless Energy.
Neither Slaking is especially
good, and unfortunately there isn’t
really any good Energy acceleration for
either except - wait for it - Double
Colorless Energy. It is times like
this when I really miss Boost Energy,
a Special Energy card that provided
[CCC] but couldn’t be attached to
anything that wasn’t an Evolved Pokémon,
discarded itself if you did managed to
get it onto a non-Evolution, couldn’t be
used to retreat and discarded itself at
the end of the turn. Notice how for our
purposes right now, only the “no paying
to retreat” clause really matters (you
kind of expect Slaking not to
last too long anyway). Still, living in
the present and not the past… this card
isn’t completely hopeless.
It is nearly hopeless; it is slow and
probably going to struggle to win but
here is what it has going for it. Since
the new one doesn’t have an Ability and
the old one has an Ability you want to
shut down, both can work with
Garbodor. The new one can try to
set-up for a 2HKO by using Amnesia and
targeting what is hopefully the
opponent’s only worthwhile attack and if
Garbotoxin is in effect, the various
Abilities that can mess this up are
knocked out. If this works and you
survive, Knuckle Sandwich delivers the
120 that yields a OHKO against even a
180 HP Pokémon-EX, assuming it hasn’t
somehow mitigated any of the damage.
The older Slaking isn’t entirely
different, save its counting on Energy
discards and no Abilities (plus just one
massive attack) to try the same thing.
This is too slow, but early game you can
use the usual generic, Energy efficient
attacks and/or Miltank (XY:
Flashfire 83/106) and its infamous
Powerful Friends attack for a solid 80
points of damage for just one Energy.
Now for the potentially clever bits;
while the deck could try and go the OHKO
route, it probably shouldn’t. Though
this carries some risk, if it isn’t then
you can use your Items for things like
Sparkling Robe (to protect
against Special Conditions), Hard
Charm (to try and stay alive longer)
or anything else that seems worthwhile.
The last ingredients are a split of
Aspertia City Gym and Training
Center (good for +30 damage for
Evolutions). You can’t boost all of
your Pokémon all of the time, but you
can alternate as needed; Aspertia
City when Miltank is
attacking, Training Center when
it isn’t… adjusted according to what
you’re attacking. Do I think this is
competitive? No, but it might barely be
functional, though you’ll have to
“cheat” and likely also add in a big ol’
Pokémon-EX that counters your
Fighting-Type Weakness. Speaking of
functional, while the Fighting Weakness
is risky, Vigoroth and Slaking
from XY: Furious fists are good
pulls for Limited: they can work with
any Energy Type (though not the Special
Energy cards in this set) and their HP
and damage yield go from “meh” to
“amazing” in Limited (thanks to lower
average damage output and HP scores).
Unless you’re building a deck around a
single Pokémon, try to work it in even
if you only get a 1-1-1 line.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5 - I really wanted this to be good
but being Energy intensive without good
enough Energy acceleration is strike
one, being a Stage 2 when Seismitoad-EX
is making that situation worse than it
has been in a little while is strike
two, and strike three is being Fighting
Weak in a set that amped up the
Fighting-Type!
Expanded:
1.9/5 - As above, but getting a few
useful pieces of older support is more
likely to help, though probably not
much.
Limited:
3.5/5 - Unless you’re running a +39
deck, it should be included. The score
actually reflects the low odds of
getting Slaking out in a timely
manner and the unfortunately high odds
of running into opposing Fighting-Types.
Summary:
Sadly another Slaking that
doesn’t quite bring it. It actually
seems a bit better than I thought it
would be, at least on paper, but this is
not the format to be a Fighting Weak,
Energy intensive Stage 2, especially one
that isn’t scoring OHKOs.
