Our next-to-last card for this week,
Noivern (XY: Furious Fists
77/111) is one of only four Dragon-Type
Pokémon in this set (five if you want to
count the Full Art version of
Dragonite-EX separate from the
regular). I already made
Transformers references earlier this
week, and why its purely coincidence I
still have to point out that in the
Beast Wars era, there was a
Soundwave that was a “mutant”
Transformer without their usual humanoid
primary mode that instead had two
“beast” modes. One was a bat, the other
was an alligator… and those of you who
are not raving fanboys are like
“alligators aren’t dragons, and ‘sound’
motifs are common for bats.”
Being a Dragon-Type isn’t as nice as it
used to be; they still have Altaria
(BW: Dragons Exalted
84/124; BW Promos
BW48; BW: Boundaries Crossed
152/149) to boost damage but are less
likely to hit any Weakness as XY-era
Dragons are Fairy (instead of Dragon)
Weak… and at least for now said older
Dragon-Types have seen a drop in play.
The small upside is that there are no
naturally Dragon Resistant cards. Being
a Dragon-Type beats the other option; in
the video games this is a
Flying/Dragon-Type and thus might have
been a Colorless Type in the TCG!
Unless being a Colorless-Type would
have given the same card but with all
Colorless Energy requirements… but I’m
getting ahead of myself.
Being a Stage 1 Pokémon is not good, but
it isn’t quite as bad as it used to be;
Basics are still the dominant force, but
at least the card pool has a little less
Basic support and a little more
Evolution support… or at least cards
that are specifically meant for those
roles; Evolutions that are slow to
set-up greatly miss cards like
Tropical Beach and Level Ball.
100 HP is about 10 points above what is
usually the minimal mean damage per turn
a competitive deck can afford, or at
least can afford once it starts swinging
for damage, in the case of a few
slow-to-set-up decks that are still seen
as competitive. More would have been
nice, but it isn’t there so let us move
onto the Fairy-Type Weakness. For now I
haven’t seen a good, splashable
Fairy-Type attacker or enough Fairy Weak
Pokémon to entice players to try and
work one in for an off-type deck, making
this one of the “less bad” Weaknesses to
have. The lack of Resistance is a
disappointment; based on its video game
Type combinations, it could have had
Grass Resistance or Fire Resistance
without creating contradictory Type
relationships, but at least for now the
powers-that-be don’t want those forms of
Resistance to exist anymore, and as I
often point out Resistance is just a
small bonus anyway (unlike how
exploiting Weakness is a huge). Noivern
has a single Energy Retreat Cost which
is good; it is easy to pay in most
circumstances, but also the highest I
would give the card as I find it “weird”
to make Flying-Types (and in this case,
relatively high Speed Stat) Pokémon pay
anything to Retreat.
Noivern
has one Ability and one Attack. The
Ability is flippy but potent; anytime
Noivern would be damaged by an
attack, “Echolocation” triggers and you
flip a coin; if “heads” Echolocation
prevents all damage done to Noivern
by the attack. This is a potent
ability, but it is entirely luck based,
and I know of no way to improve the
odds, at least legally. On the other
hand there are multiple ways around the
effect. Garbodor (BW: Dragons
Exalted 54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze
119/116; BW: Legendary Treasures
68/113) drops your odds to “zero” if
Garbotoxin is in effect. Attacks that
don’t do damage don’t care about
Echolocation either. If you have any
non-Echolocation Pokémon in play, your
opponent might be able to win by KOing
those instead, or optionally setting up
for something like Dusknoir (BW:
Boundaries Crossed 63/149; BW:
Plasma Blast 63/149) to then move
the damage counters to Noivern.
There are also a few lesser known (and
seldom played competitively) cards that
will also nullify or bypass the effect.
All of these ultimately mean that if
you otherwise had perfectly even
results, you would still be protected
less than half the time.
Boomburst is a great attack name, and
the end result is fairly nice: 30 points
of damage to all of your opponent’s
Pokémon. The Energy cost is not so
nice: [PDC]. If your opponent doesn’t
have a mostly full Bench, taken in
isolation this attack just isn’t going
to be worth it. You generally need to
average at least 90 points of damage per
turn, enough to effectively 2HKO
Pokémon-EX. Even if your opponent has
three Pokémon in play so that you are
hitting that number, as it is all spread
out you’ll need a further combo piece to
actually move the damage counters
around. If the Energy cost wasn’t so
clunky, it might still have been worth
it; there is natural synergy between
this and Echolocation, as the longer
Noivern lasts, the more shots with
Boomburst you can get and the more the
damage counters can amass on your
opponent’s side of the field, resulting
in eventual KOs. For the record, I hope
that the designers get off the “Dragons
must have bizarre Energy costs since
they don’t have Dragon-Type Energy”
kick; this is the second time its been
tried (it actually predates the
Dragon-Type and was attempted with
several sets worth of Colorless-Type
“Dragons”) and it still isn’t working
out correctly, with a few really good
attackers but most ending up sabotaged.
Perhaps the biggest problem for this
attack is that it does damage (instead
of placing damage counters) on the
Benched Pokémon, so Mr. Mime (BW:
Plasma Freeze 47/116) and
Mountain Ring leave it just hitting
for 30 damage to the Defending Pokémon!
Doing damage (instead of placing
counters) on the Defending Pokémon is
probably good, since that means you can
boost that damage through the usual
means.
Noivern
has to come from somewhere, and there
are two Noibat to consider. Both
are Colorless, Basic Pokémon with 60 HP,
Lightning Weakness, Fighting Resistance,
Retreat Costs of [C] and two attacks.
The older option (XY Trainer Kit:
Noivern Half Deck 12/30, 23/30) can
gets a coin flip to Confuse the
Defending Pokémon for [C] or does 30
damage for [CCC]. The set-mate to
today’s card (XY: Furious Fists
87/111) can do 10 for [C] or 20 for
[CC]. All are weak, vanilla attacks and
you don’t want to ever attack with
Noibat if you can avoid it. As it
should be a desperate situation when you
are attacking with Noibat, I
would favor the first version even
though its first attack is overpriced; a
50% chance of Confusion might actually
help it stay alive as when it works and
your opponent can’t shake it, any
attacks will have a 50% chance of
placing three damage counters on the
attacking Pokémon instead of Noibat
(or whatever Pokémon is being attacked).
It is a very small chance, but its more
likely to help you than a mere 10 damage
hit. Also, it is interesting that these
aren’t Dragon-Types; Noibat has
the same Flying/Dragon-Type combination
as Noivern in the video games.
Noivern
(XY Trainer Kit: Sylveon Half Deck
13/30, 30/30) should also be considered
in case it compliments or clashes with
today’s version. It has 110 HP, but
otherwise the stats are the same: more
HP is nice, but since this version lacks
a protective Ability, it may not last
any longer (and 110 is only a little
better than 100). It has two attacks;
the first is Second Bite, which needs
[CC] to use and does 10 damage plus 10
more for each damage counter on the
Defending Pokémon. This is actually a
solid attack, though in general it would
be less useful on a Stage 1 than where
we most recently saw it, on the Basic
Dunsparce (XY 101/146).
Simply put, if the target has damage
counters equal to or greater than half
its maximum HP less 10, Second Bite
ensures a 2HKO (before protective
effects like the Echolocation Ability on
today’s Noivern). For better or
worse the second attack, the wonderfully
named Sonic Bazooka, has the same [PDC]
requirement as Boomburst. Unfortunately
it is much worse; 60 points of damage,
plus another 30 and Confusion on a coin
flip. You’re easily paying for 90
points of damage and guaranteed
Confusion between the amount and varying
Types of Energy. Having similar Energy
requirements plus the nature of Second
Bite provide some synergy between the
two versions, but I’d rather not have to
deal with splitting the line when I
could just run Dunsparce; I’d
rather have a fragile Basic doing the
follow up than a slightly large Stage 1
that is still probably a OHKO.
So… how would one go about running
Noivern? I’ve bumped into a few
such decks on the PTCGO. You can’t run
Garbodor to deal with Mr. Mime
since it would shut down Echolocation
and be it ever so flippy, you need
that. Dusknoir (as mentioned
above) might be your best bet; just get
enough damage into play (even if only
hitting the Active) and then move it to
Mr. Mime for a KO so you can get
back to the spreading. Yveltal (XY
78/146, XY Promos XY06) can give
you an early game attacker, possibly
misleading your opponent (to an extent)
while helping to build Noivern on
the Bench. Virizion-EX is useful
to prevent Special Conditions that get
around Echolocation; you’re probably
running Rainbow Energy anyway,
and in Expanded Blend Energy GRPD
covers all three relevant Energy Types
as well. Make sure you’ve got plenty of
Stadiums and Starling Megaphone:
it is lame to lose due to Mountain
Ring or Garbotoxin. I wouldn’t
recommend running it alongside
Dusknoir, but if you really wanted
to you could try to spam Altaria
(mentioned earlier as Dragon-Type
support); it will not up your
Bench damage, but getting Boomburst
hitting hard enough to score 2HKOs
against the Defending Pokémon while also
doing massive spread can be
overwhelming.
In Standard, Noivern is going to
be a novelty deck; that doesn’t mean it
won’t show up in tournaments, but I
don’t expect it to be a major presence.
After all, on top of all the luck
inherent to general TCG mechanics, plus
seen in other more potent cards, having
yet another coin flip dependent card
makes for a very unreliable deck. That
also means when it does show up, unless
your deck naturally (you shouldn’t even
be TecHing against this deck) has a
serious Advantage, you have to worry
that your opponent will just get the
needed flips to win. In Expanded, I
actually like this card just a bit
better; you have to worry about
Enhanced Hammer, but you gain access
to Blend Energy GRPD and there is
a slight chance some older decks that
used smaller Basic Pokémon (usually to
Evolve) will have a better presence.
Sadly, that is the best I can offer: as
someone that is currently a PTCGO only
player I can’t effectively playtest this
format on my own, and I haven’t seen a
lot of well supported discussion for it
either. In Limited, Noivern is a
pretty good pull. The downside is that
you’ve got to run Darkness Energy
and Psychic Energy cards, and you
may not pull many (or any) worthwhile
Pokémon of those Types. Still, if you
can do it, then Noivern benefits
from mean damage being much lower (so
that a failed flip on Echolocation is
probably not a OHKO), lower average
damage totals (so that Boomburst scores
KOs more quickly) and how normally
retreating something injured to the
Bench is worth it here to deny an
opponent a Prize (Boomburst still hits
such Pokémon). Noibat is even a
little better as the demand for
low-quality vanilla filler is higher
here.
Ratings
Standard:
2/5 - I like this card, but that doesn’t
mean its actually competitive. We’ve
got similar Abilities and attacks
already in the format, and they rarely
if ever see competitive play; both are
too easily countered right now, and
again with the Ability, having another
important aspect of your deck come down
to a coin flip is daunting.
Expanded:
2.25/5 - A little more support and
potentially better targets, Noivern
might have a better chance here.
Limited:
4/5 - Not a must run, but besides
players that can build a deck around a
single big Basic, if you can accommodate
the Energy demands, you run this.
Summary:
An interesting concept, even if it
involves “recycling”, its tricks are
trumped by the competitive format and I
know I am once again very sick of “all
or nothing” coin flip effects. If there
had been some other cost factor instead
of the flip, it might have been worth
playing. Or it might have still been
bad or shot up to being broken, so I
won’t complain too loudly. If you want
to have a spread deck for fun, this
gives you another option.
