aroramage |
Another interesting take on the
Omega Barrage power, Bunnelby here has the same sort of
thing that Torchic from this set has - a powerful Trait
with attacks that could do some work but ultimately fall
short, given that he's an evolving Basic. That combined
with Manaphy's "Oh I don't attack Pokemon, I'm just here
to help you out in any way I can" attitude makes for
a...well, it makes something.
Bunnelby also has Manaphy and
Torchic's beneficial "1-Energy gets all of my attacks"
cheap access, so that's good, you're not having to
heavily invest in him to make him worth it. It's
just...I think they overestimated what Omega Barrage
could do for this guy again. Burrow only buries the top
card from your opponent's deck in the discard pile, and
Rototiller retrieves stuff from your own discard pile.
Still, Rototiller has its uses, and in a dedicated mill
deck, Burrow can do a lot for you, but I'd rather play
Bunnelby for Rototiller than Burrow myself.
Spacing issues aside though, is it
really worth snagging two cards from your discard pile
back into your deck? Well, that depends on your deck
more than anything. Not every deck needs to return cards
back from the discard pile - a lot of them prefer not
to, preferring to keep them stuffed away until they can
user something like VS Seeker or Landorus/Bronzong to
retrieve what's inside. You could try retrieving Pokemon
with it, but you're probably better off putting those
into your hand rather than shuffling them into your deck
and hoping to draw them out again.
Bunnelby pretty much has the same
problem Torchic has - a fantastic trait and
underwhelming attacks. At least Torchic has the benefit
of accelerating draw power though.
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (he's no
powerhouse, but maybe there's something for Rototiller)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (can't see him
doing much better here)
Limited: 2.5/5 (I guess the milling
would be a thought here. Get rid of some of your
opponent's cards so they can't use them - just be wary
of discarding something like a Water or Fighting type,
cause Archie/Maxie will wreck you otherwise)
Arora Notealus: I'm still not sure
what prompted the designers to come up with a Pokemon
that digs with its ears. That's like coming up with
something that sees with its tongue or drinks with its
tentacles, something just seems a little...strange about
it. I mean, it's doable, but just...weird.
Next Time: The regal dragon of the
seas rises to the challenge!
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Otaku |
Though not
obvious to someone reading these reviews for the first
time, mine is going up late. Extremely late;
XY: Roaring Skies has already released but isn’t
legal yet. Honestly my score likely would have been
biased in favor of upcoming support already (we had a
pretty good idea what would be in the set based in its
Japanese counterpart) but I’m not going to try and
separate myself from it now… but I hate leaving cards I
picked for review unreviewed and I just barely got to
this one quick enough before completely giving up.
Bunnelby (XY: Primal Clash 121/160) is
not our typical review fare as it is an Evolving Basic
Pokémon. Being even an Evolving Basic is good; while it
usually means lower HP and weaker attacks it doesn’t
always have to. Being Colorless just became pretty good
with the release of additional Colorless-Type support;
as already cards like Winona aren’t tournament
legal yet but will be soon enough and since one doesn’t
have to worry about Weakness or Resistance for
Colorless-Types (even if one did this card doesn’t do
damage anyway), that Supporter piece of support could be
quite significant. 60 HP is not good; an easy OHKO but
unfortunately the-powers-that-be have decided to stay
faithful to the video games by making lower Stages have
significantly less HP than their ultimate Evolutions,
even though HP scores don’t line up properly with the
video games (in multiple ways). Marking this as just a
tiny bit worse is that as we’ll see there is another
Bunnelby with 70 HP, so even for this particular
Pokémon it isn’t as good as it gets.
Normally being
small makes Weakness irrelevant but Fighting-Types
specially in dealing damage quickly for small amounts of
Energy, as well as in buffing their damage. The end
result is that even without tricks like Strong Energy
their top attackers score a OHKO for one Energy and with
a single buff any Fighting-Type that does damage does as
well; I don’t recall a currently legal effect that
increases damage applying after Weakness and Resistance
or boosting damage by less than 20, though if there is
then there are some exceptions to what I just said.
There is no Resistance; typical and it probably
wouldn’t have done much good anyway. Before we delve
into card effects, last is the Retreat Cost of [CC];
you’ll often be able to afford to pay (and recover from)
it and decks tend to be build in a manner so that you
often won’t have to but for a 60 HP Basic I would
have expected only [C].
Bunnelby bears and Ancient Trait and two
attacks. The Ancient Trait is Ω Barrage, allowing it to
attack twice in a row at the end of the turn instead of
once and experience shows that this Trait as such is
almost totally dependent upon the rest of the card.
Good attacks won’t matter as much if the rest of the
card isn’t while mediocre attacks can manage if the rest
of the card is an adequate foundation. The attacks are
Burrow and Rototiller, both priced at just [C], which
even if it turns out everything else falls flat is
itself quite a nice feature in general. You don’t
expect overly strong attacks for a single Energy (well
you shouldn’t and we shouldn’t get them but power creep
has been stupidly fast the last several years): Burrow
discards the top card from your opponent’s deck while
Rototiller allows you to shuffle a card a card from your
discard pile into your deck. These effects are weak,
though slightly better thanks to Ω Barrage. Essentially
it is like the card has a single attack that can either
shuffle two cards from your own discard, discard two
cards from your opponent’s deck or do one of each,
making the Ancient Trait unnecessary unless you’re
really worried about effects like Amnesia that care how
many attacks a card has. The big irony is that the one
place I really think we need to see more potent attacks
are non-damaging attacks like this on Evolving Pokémon,
like this, so that Evolutions are more than stepping
stones.
Your other
options for Bunnelby are XY Kalos Starter Set
30/39, XY Trainer Kit: Noivern Half Deck 4/30,
McDonald’s Collection 2014 10/12, XY 111/146,
XY: Phantom Forces 87/119 and XY: Primal Clash
120/160; the first three however are alternate versions
of the same card (and from promotional releases that can
be a bit odd to label). All other Bunnelby are
Colorless, Basic Pokémon with at least 60 HP, Fighting
Weakness, no Resistance, at least a Retreat Cost of [C],
no Abilities, no Ancient Traits and at least one attack.
XY Kalos Starter Set 30/39 and its other
releases have one attack - Tackle - for [CC] that hits
for 20. XY 111/146 also has one attack for [CC]
but this time it is Dig for 10 damage, and with the
effect that you flip a coin and if it is “heads”, all
damage and effects of attacks done to itself during your
opponent’s next turn are prevented. XY: Phantom
Forces 87/119 finally gets two attacks; [C] buys
Tackle for 10 while [CCC] yields Mud Shot for [30]. XY:
Primal Clash 120/160 has 70 HP but also a Retreat
Cost of [CC]; its attack Trip Over costs [CC] and does
10, plus 30 if you get “heads” on the coin flip. The
job of an Evolving Pokémon is usually to Evolve, but
this time might be an exception; if that is the case
then today’s version has a serious edge. Otherwise I am
torn between XY 111/146 as if you have to attack
you might protect it long enough to Evolve and XY:
Primal Clash 120/160 because 10 more HP and if you
were going for damage, it it is better than the others,
with the slightly higher Retreat Cost weighing it down.
There are three
versions of Diggersby to pick from: XY
112/146, XY: Phantom Forces 88/119 and XY:
Primal Clash 90/160. All three are Stage 1 Pokémon
with at least 100 HP, no Resistance, at least a Retreat
Cost of [CC], no Abilities, no Ancient Traits and two
attacks. XY 112/146 is Fighting Weak
Colorless-Type, and can use Pick Up for [CC] to add two
Items to its hand or for [CCC] can use a version of Dig
that does 50 damage with the same protective effect from
earlier. XY: Phantom Forces 88/119 is also
Fighting Weak Colorless-Type and for [CC] it gains
access to Smithereen Smash for 30 damage with a coin
flip to discard an Energy attached to the opponent’s
Active while [CCC] enables it to attack with Earthquake
for 80 damage to the opponent’s Active and 10 to each of
your own Benched Pokémon. XY: Primal Clash
90/160 changes things up a bit by being a Fighting-Type
with 110 HP, Grass Weakness and Retreat cost of [CCC].
Its first attack requires [F] and is called Ear Dig;
this allows it to flip a coin until it gets “tails”,
discarding a card from the opponent’s deck for each
“heads” flipped. For [CCC] it can use Hammer In for 70.
None of these strike me as being worth the effort; it
is nice they aren’t totally vanilla but what they do,
they don’t do well enough for competitive play.
Back to today’s
card, Bunnelby (XY: Primal Clash 121/160);
it might have some use as part of a discard deck that
you couldn’t really build until we got XY: Roaring
Skies and that we won’t know the true strength of
for several weeks, but even at the start it looks like
more of a “fun” deck than a “rogue” deck. The cause is
the same reason I find the attacks disappointing;
Lysandre’s Trump Card. To be fair I might still
find the attacks disappointing without this particular
Supporter in the format; Pokémon has rarely lacked
effects to replenish one’s own deck from the discard
pile so one card here or there only works well as part
of a massive combo or as a “bonus” on top of something
else (like an attack). Even then there are some decks
that have cards they want in the discard pile and in
general while you might always discard something “good”,
you can help the opponent out by discarding something
“bad”. So for a discard deck to work it must operate in
one of two ways:
- Discard Lysandre’s
Trump Card and all means of
reclaiming it from the discard pile
- Discard enough or at a
time so your opponent is caught off
guard and can’t use such effects to save
his or herself
The latter
however doesn’t require an entire “deck out” deck; a
single Bunnelby could do the job so long as the
timing we right. This is however highly, highly
unlikely. As such mostly just enjoy this card in
Limited, where both milling and shuffling your own cards
back into your deck via its effect are amazingly
valuable; only leave it out of +39 builds!
Ratings
Standard: 1.75/5
Expanded: 1.8/5
Limited: 4.9/5
Summary: Outside of Limited play, I don’t think
this card does enough to really warrant running it,
though at least it isn’t boring. I suppose if you can
get your hands on what you need easily, you might as
well see if you can use Bunnelby with some other
cards to build a deck focused on milling your opponent
into a loss.
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