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Just missing out on being one of the top three picks of
XY: Furious Fists is Korrina (XY:
Furious Fists 95/111, 111/111). As a reminder, each
reviewer compiled his own separate Top 10 list,
submitted it, and Pojo compiled the “master list” or
review by averaging out those individual lists. Since
my review is late, we are now officially past the
rotation point, with Standard being BCR-On (plus various
promos), Expanded officially existing and Limited… well
rotation doesn’t affect Limited.
Korrina
is a Type themed Supporter; it lets you search your deck
for a Fighting-Type Pokémon and then an Item. This gets
it compared to Skyla and as you might expect. I
fall on the side of Korrina being just as good as
Skyla, possible better, albeit sensitive to what
Pokémon are being run in the deck. Skyla
definitely is used to grab Supporters and Stadiums, but
most of the time the target is an Item, at least in my
own experience. Getting both a Fighting-Type Pokémon
(Basic, Evolution, whatever) and an Item one more card
of advantage, and often with no real drawback. Even if
you don’t have a Fighting-Type Pokémon to grab, you’re
just getting the Item you would have grabbed with
Skyla anyway.
That in no way makes Skyla obsolete, and in fact
if your deck doesn’t have either a few significant
Fighting-Types or several Fighting-Types of varying
degrees of importance, you should of course stick to
Skyla; better to get the Trainer you need than just
an Item and Pokémon you’ll rarely use. Decks that do
have a few clutch Fighting-Types to play might select
one or the other, blend the two or run neither according
to what one’s play-testing indicates. Decks where
Fighting-TYpes are a significant presence need a good
reason not to run Korrina over Skyla.
The capacity to get a useful Pokémon while still
snagging a Professor’s Letter or the best Pokémon
Tool for the situation or a Switch or a
Bicycle or an Ace Spec etc. is hard to turn down,
and while I don’t know how successful it will prove, all
Stage 2 Fighting-Types basically can use a Korrina
to auto-Evolve by searching out their Stage 2 form plus
a Rare Candy.
Something to keep an eye out for is Fighting-Types that
lessen the need to have used your Supporter for draw
power (since you’re using it for search). This can be
added draw power like Lucario-EX (via its
Corkscrew Punch) or Landorus (XY: Furious
Fists 58/111) if its able to sufficiently accelerate
Energy; Korrina provides an Item and a
Pokémon, so an Energy is sort of the final component.
There isn’t any Fighting-Type equivalent to a
Jirachi-EX or a Mewtwo-EX (at least not yet),
but given the game’s penchant for releasing amazingly
powerful combos, I won’t be surprised if we get one down
the road.
I sadly must once again confess to being uncertain of
how Expanded will work with respect to this card. For
now I think it will be slightly better, due to the wider
variety of Items you can search out. For example,
Pokémon Communication would allow you to trade the
Fighting-Type you just searched out for the Pokémon of a
different Type you actually could really use. For
Limited, only skip it if you absolutely cannot make use
of it; that means you are running no Fighting-Types or
Items. Even a single example of either qualifies, as
you should have the room in a Limited deck for an
often-dead Trainer that is periodically amazing.
Ratings
Standard:
4/5 - An aggregate score; in most Fighting-Type decks at
least a few (and possibly a maxed out four count) of
Korrina is a must (and thus a perfect or near
perfect score). In decks that run few to none, its a
worse Skyla, so a below average score… putting
them together with some guess work means its averages
out to roughly “great”.
Expanded:
4.25/5 - More tricks means more power, so the same as
above with a little bonus.
Limited:
4.95/5 - There is a chance you won’t have a
Fighting-Type or Item worth running in your deck. For
example, you get Heracross-EX and nothing else to
dissuade you from running Heracross-EX in +39
build and no Item that isn’t a Fossil or
restricted to Fighting-Types. Most of the time, its an
obvious must run.
Summary:
Korrina provides a badly needed third “main
Supporter”, but only for decks with an adequate
Fighting-Type presence. Get a playset and try her out;
as if Fighting-Types weren’t already enjoying the rest
of their support, now you get what (in such decks) is a
“better” Skyla… barring the few times when you
would prefer to search for a Stadium or Supporter.
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