Today we look at Hypno (XY:
Furious Fists 36/111). Being a
Psychic-Type is mostly of value right
now for exploiting the Psychic Weakness
found on popular Pokémon like Deoxys-EX,
Mewtwo-EX and Lucario-EX
as the available Type support is
extremely limited and wanting, though it
will be greatly expanded upon by EX:
Phantom Forces (we’ll have to wait
and see if it proves to be any good,
though). You also have to worry about
Resistance creeping up somewhat often;
most Darkness-Types and Metal-Types
possess Psychic Resistance and while -20
isn’t huge, it can really add up.
Overall, I’d consider it better than
“average”, but its hard to flat out
label it “good” when Types that are well
supported and hit a popular
Weakness exist (re: Fighting).
Being a Stage 1 is not good, but there
are some potent ones that still see play
even though they are a turn slower than
Basic Pokémon and require an additional
card to get into play - their Basic
Stage - though the latter could
theoretically be remedied by making sure
said Basic Pokémon was well worth
playing. We’ll discuss Drowzee -
what Hypno Evolves from - after
we finish with the ‘mon itself. It is a
smaller Stage 1, with just 90 HP: most
decks should score a OHKO so long as
their set-up isn’t “bad”... and being a
Stage 1 means that you don’t even have
as many “awkward, early game” turns to
buy time; your opponent will be on his
or her second or third turn by the time
Hypno is on the field. Normally
being small helps to mitigate Weakness,
but the Psychic-Type to worry
about right now is Mewtwo-EX and
it has a scalable attack, X-Ball:
instead of being just under half-KOed
with a minimum damage X-Ball (no Energy
on Hypno, two on Mewtwo-EX),
Hypno will barely hang in there
with 10 HP. This is better than a flat
out OHKO that 80 HP would yield, but
besides the usual damage boosting
tricks, an additional Energy on Hypno
or Mewtwo-EX will suffice.
Hypno
has no Resistance and a Retreat Cost of
two. Neither of these are “bad” per se;
Resistance is lacking on many if not
most Pokémon and most decks already are
packing ways to lower or bypass entirely
the cost of retreating and even if you
do have to pay up, two Energy is only
going to be an issue in a deck that is
amazingly tight on both Energy count and
attachments. At the same time, neither
is “good” either, and while Resistance
might be a bit iffy due to how the video
game Types have been translated to the
TCG, as Hypno is stuck being
relatively small I could have seen just
giving it a single Energy Retreat Cost,
even if it isn’t known for having an
amazing speed or being especially mobile
or any other trait I can think of that
might justify having a lower Retreat
Cost.
Hypno
has two attacks; the second attack is
not what caught my eye about this card,
so I will cover it first simply to “get
it out of the way”. For the hefty cost
of [PPP] Hypno does 60 points of damage
plus afflicts the Defending Pokémon with
Sleep. That is it; this is a very
expensive cost and even if we had the
Energy acceleration to power it up in a
single turn (we don’t), it would be
horribly overpriced or underpowered.
The going rate tends to be at least 90
for three, in part because two 90 points
hits is enough to 2HKO most Pokémon-EX
(apart from healing, protective effects,
etc.). Though Sleep can be useful, a
Special Condition with a 50% chance of
curing itself between turns and
that you might be getting off of
Hypnotoxic Laser isn’t worth the
cost of admission when tacked onto just
60 points of damage.
So is the first attack any good? For
[P] you can use Hand Control, which
forces your opponent to reveal his or
her hand to you. From there “...you may
choose a Supporter card you find there.”
so it is optional to do more than just
look at the opponent’s hand. If you do
select a Supporter, the attack forces
your opponent to play the card, however
you (the player who used Hand
Control) make all the decisions. This
is a potent effect, even for an attack
and especially as players are finally
diversifying Supporters a little.
Forcing Professor Juniper or
Professor Sycamore is an amazing
mill/hand disruption effect, even if
with the risk of giving your opponent an
awesome set-up. N can provide
more disruption, possibly shrinking your
opponent’s hand and/or increasing the
size of your own. Colress can
force the opponent to draw a massive
amount of cards, which again can equate
to massive mill at the cost of giving
your opponent access to a wide amount of
resources. Lysandre can allow
you to protect Hypno with your
preferred “wall” of a Pokémon. Korrina
allows you to see your opponent’s deck
and might allow you to even fail
both searches (using this effect doesn’t
render your opponent’s deck public
knowledge, so I would think you could
elect to fail the searches even though
both players at that point would know if
there were legal targets). In all
cases, your opponent is down one
precious Supporter.
As mentioned earlier, you’ve got to go
through Drowzee to get to
Hypno, and much as we only have a
single option for Hypno we only
have the one Drowzee: XY:
Furious Fists 35/111. It is a Basic
Psychic-Type with a solid (for an
Evolving Basic) 70 HP. I don’t know if
it occurred to the design team or just
worked out that way after the fact, but
I do approve “front loading” HP for
Evolving Pokémon; while that would be
bad for the video games (where you
slowly level up as you face opponent’s,
both human and CPU trainers as well as
“wild” Pokémon also controlled by the
computer, in the TCG where its always
player versus player and you may be
facing the equivalent of a high level
Pokémon as soon as both players flip
over their opening Pokémon, its very
much needed. The Psychic Weakness and
lack of Resistance is no worse here than
for Hypno, though the Retreat
Cost of two I find hurts a little more
on Evolving Basics than for Evolutions
(the former being something you might be
forced to open with and thus desire to
retreat).
Again similar to Hypno is has two
attacks and the “big” second attack (Psyshot)
is overpriced ([PP] for 20) while the
first is intriguing: for [P] Sinister
Suggestion has you to treat the results
of all coin flips your opponent makes on
his or her next turn as “tails”. It
doesn’t specify attacks or Abilities or
even Pokémon, but applies to any, so for
any card Type or game mechanic (though
the only non-card-effect related game
mechanic that uses a coin flip is
determining who goes first and that of
course happens before you could ever use
this attack). While useful and having
some potential at keeping Drowzee
alive long enough to Evolve, it only
marginally combos with your attack in
that it might keep Drowzee
alive long enough to Evolve or sabotage
other efforts to undermine your own
set-up, like Crushing Hammer or
Pokémon Catcher flips.
If Hand Control (or Sinister Suggestion)
were Abilities able to stack (with each
other or in the case of Hand Control,
other copies of itself) this might have
lead to a new top deck. Instead, you
are going to need to get Hypno
into play, burn an Energy attachment and
attack to do the deed, and you don’t
have a way of ensuring your opponent has
a detrimental to them/beneficial to you
Supporter in hand. If we ever get an
effect that isn’t prohibitively expense
to add the Supporter of our choice to
the opponent’s hand (whether from the
deck, the discard pile, or our choice of
either), we might have gotten a top deck
out of it… except from translations of
the next set we are getting a Supporter
likely to kill mill decks (and badly
damage several others) if said Supporter
proves worthwhile.
For now, if you want to have fun with
it, my suggestion is… experiment. Ive
got nothing concrete, just two
approaches based purely on Theorymon.
The first is straightforward: Quad
Hypno, or something akin to it. Focus
on loading the deck up with various
disruptive Trainers and hope that
between messing with the opponent’s
Supporters (via Hand Control) and
everything else via your own Trainers,
before your opponent can take six Prizes
you’ve either decked them out or left
them unable to attack.
The second is to attack your opponent’s
resources in a slightly different
manner. Trying to open with
Seismitoad-EX (for example), you
force your opponent into a “big hand” so
that your first Hand Control does major
damage… “damage” in the sense that a
bunch of Items plus a Professor
Juniper or Sycamore are now
wasted. It might even be something of a
“bookend” strategy; open with
Seismitoad-EX, use as many Hypno
as seems appropriate, then back to
Seismitoad-EX when your opponent’s
deck is (hopefully) running on fumes
and low on Supporters. You could
even consider working in Garbodor
(BW:
Dragons Exalted
54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze
119/116; BW: Legendary Treasures
68/113) as neither Pokémon suggested
uses Abilities, and if the whole thing
works your opponent will have to rely on
brute force with few or none of the
usual buffs aggressive decks normally
rely upon.
I don’t expect either strategy to carry
you to a tournament win in Standard, or
even to the top cut. Expanded looks no
better, with the usual trade off; slight
benefits from the greater card pool as
you gain access to things like Level
Ball, but with the trade off of
facing older powerhouses that would
still be part of the competitive
metagame in Standard if they were legal.
For Limited, Hypno is only worth
taking because Drowzee is worth
it if you can include enough Psychic
Energy. Messing with coin flips via
Sinister Suggestion will not win
you the game, but it should throw your
opponent off and buy time to set up a
“real” attacker, and again if you meet
those first two provisions, Evolving
into Hypno and following through
with Hypnoblast is adequate due to the
lower than average HP scores/damage
yields coupled with Special Conditions
generally being more effective. Hand
Control can be useful, but usually only
to sneak a peek at your opponent’s hand;
the Supporters in this aren’t the kind
to make for easy deck outs or directly
help your opponent (which in this case
would be you, the player using Hand
Control), and your opponent also isn’t
likely to keep a Supporter in hand; even
without Hand Control, most Supporters
are more advantageous to use right away.
If you do get lucky and catch a
Korrina or Fossil Researcher
in hand, or a Battle Reporter
when it could lead to deck out, enjoy it
but don’t rely on it happening again.
Ratings
Standard:
2/5 - If this seems a tad high for a
card I rated as a “fun” deck, it is
because this format rewards rushing
through your deck; there is a reason I
fixate on Hand Control hitting a
Professor Juniper or Professor
Sycamore.
Expanded:
2/5 - As explained above, while there
are indeed differences I suspect they
even out in the end.
Limited:
2.75/5 - This is mostly because of the
typical “bump” cards receive when
players must work with what they pull as
well as my fondness for Drowzee,
though perhaps the latter is misplaced.
Summary:
Hand Control could be amazing, but being
stuck on a 90 HP Stage 1 as an attack
that requires [P] is an issue. You will
likely have to stream Stage 1s as each
Hypno is probably going down in a
single hit… and you’re still stuck
hoping your opponent has a Supporter
worth forcing. You can elect not to
force a Supporter that will actually
hurt you, forcing your opponent to still
burn his or her Supporter usage for the
turn on it, but I have mostly been
considering this from a “mill” angle and
you can’t spare many turns where you
aren’t effectively lowering your
opponent’s deck size. As is, this is a
card for “fun” decks, though if there is
a combo I missed (Mew-EX using
Hand Control doesn’t seem like an
improvement) then much like the many
Item locking attacks, real success
depends on a bigger Pokémon later
sporting a similar attack (not that such
a thing will help Hypno).
