aroramage |
Kingdra was one of the first
Pokemon to be revealed as an evolution to an earlier
Pokemon. I mean, that's not surprising, given that this
was Gen II, but still! He evolves from Seadra, probably
one of the more forgettable of Gen I Pokemon if you're
not paying attention to his AWESOME design. Upon
evolving, Seadra gets a whole lot bigger but also more
elegant, graceful, sleek, dorky if you're like me
looking at his Gen II sprite - and usable!
Continuing that trend here in the
TCG, Kingdra shows yet another reason while Alpha Growth
is so good - and like Excadrill from earlier, he
capitalizes on that! Now Kingdra's first move, Gather
Strength, may be Colorless, but from the looks of his
other attack, you're gonna want to aim for your Energies
to be Water and Electric. We'll cover that part in a
minute, but for now all you need to know is Gather
Strength adds up to 4 Basic Energy from your deck to
your hand. You see the set-up - use Gather Strength on
one turn, then power him up with Alpha Growth, and
unleash the monstrous Dragon Blast!
Now a 3-for-150 attack is EXACTLY
the sort of thing we need to see on our evos more often
- given that Pokemon like Landorus-EX, Mewtwo-EX,
Yveltal-EX, Keldeo-EX, Black Kyurem-EX and now Primal
Kyogre-EX can pull that off with ease - but there is the
minor issue of its cost: you have to discard a Water and
Electric Energy to use it. So you really need to be
aiming to use Gather Strength to add 2 of each to your
hand in order to pull off Dragon Blast on consecutive
turns - throw in HTLBank and maybe Muscle Band for good
measure, and you're KO-ing a majority of Pokemon that
aren't Megas or named Wailord-EX (and even then, that's
200 damage already - if that HTLBank stays in play,
they're KO'd by the start of your next turn...again, if
they're not Wailord-EX).
Perhaps one of the main drawbacks
to Kingdra really being playable - and let's face it,
with Alpha Growth and a Retreat Cost of one, he's
looking MUCH more playable than some of the other cards
we've seen - is the time to set him up. We all know the
troubles of setting up a Stage 2, but on top of that,
you really need to have a constant stream of Energy
flowing to make things work out for you. Gather Strength
is a decent start, lending you two turns of Energy, but
then you've got Professor's Letter, Energy Retrieval,
ridiculous draw power like Sycaper - that sort of thing
can help out!
Moral of the story: Alpha Growth
too good, but at least Kingdra's not Primal Kyogre-EX
levels of crazy.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (he needs a good bit
of set-up and support - really his own deck - to work,
but once the ball's rolling, it's gonna be tough to stop
him)
Expanded: 3.5/5 (probably better
since you can stack up Energies on him with Eelektrik,
though that requires running more Evos - thank goodness
for all this Evo support!)
Limited: 4/5 (as usual, takes more
set-up, but MAN that damage output is crazy!)
Arora Notealus: Seriously though,
have you seen the Gen II sprite? Kingdra looks more like
he's got this Grinch smile or like Mr. Snuffleupagus to
some degree. It's silly! Glad they cleaned him up in Gen
III so he's be a bit more draconic, but can you imagine
going up to Clair in Blackthorn City and being all like,
"Yo Clair, I'm ready to challenge your awesome dragons,"
and then she brings out this derpy looking fella? And
let's not even get started on Lance having 3 Dragonites.
Weekend Thought: Maybe there's some
sort of lost potential hidden on these cards. What kinds
of decks or combos could you pull off with some of these
cards? Any chance they've got something better up their
sleeve? Which ones do you like just as Pokemon?
Personally, Spinda's been a Gen III fave of mine, that
adorkable little panda bear :3
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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 is even
almost legal. 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 since I already
started it, I feel compelled to finish.
So at last I
come to Kingdra (XY: Primal Clash 108/160;
XY Black Star Promos XY39), the final of my late
reviews. Well, of this entire week of reviews I
submitted late. Once again, the Typing matters quite a
bit due to my tardiness; XY: Roaring Skies
released not long ago though at this point it isn’t yet
tournament legal, however it contains new Dragon-Type
support that should prove relevant, most notably
Double Dragon Energy. This helps the type immensely
because it is far less impressive elsewhere:
Dragon-Types can only hit other, older (BW-era)
Dragon-Types for Weakness which is a pretty significant
drawback right now because it is basically assumed
you’ll have at least one favorable match-up due to
exploiting Weakness. Not having to worry about
Resistance on the other hand is only a slight bonus.
Thanks to the new support it is again good to be a
Dragon-Type.
Kingdra is a Stage 2 and unfortunately is is
bad to be a Stage 2; the designers don’t seem to want to
keep Basic Pokémon in check. Part of this I understand;
all I have are theories about how to do so largely based
on everything that has been tried and failed in the
past. My somewhat complicated theories are correct and
the goal should be to have end Stages more or less be on
par with each other except big, Basic Pokémon that don’t
Evolve would be designed to be slow starting enough (if
main attackers) that you couldn’t mount a strong,
sustained offense relying on them but instead would want
“opening” Pokémon geared towards set-up to make use of
your first few attacks. Combined with a few other
things like making Evolving lower Stages better and I
think this could work. Unfortunately even if this were
true there’d be an awkward transition phase because the
new stuff would almost certainly struggle compared with
what we have now and would require more effort to
design. Relevant to the present, we have hard hitting
attackers that leave scarcely any time to Evolve and a
strong Item lock presence that is disproportionately
hard on Evolutions as even if they don’t use support
like Rare Candy or Evosoda, most Pokémon
search is Item based and it is much harder to set-up
Evolutions than Basics based on raw draw power.
Kingdra has 130 HP; this means it is more
likely to survive an attack than be OHKOed, but this
comfort zone for this is almost non-existent anymore.
Between actual attacks hitting harder and increase and
maturation of attack buffs (whether directly adding to
the damage done or diminishing the opponent’s HP through
other means) only decks that are sacrificing damage for
something a little more technical - Seismitoad-EX
and its Quaking Punch initiating an Item lock - or that
have a marginal set-up are going to be the source of
survival. Lest that seem too bleak, remember that if
you can keep up a good offense, you can make it hard for
your opponent to attain a substantial set-up. No
Weakness is good but Fairy Weakness might be one of the
“less bad”. Why? The Fairy-Type is mostly confined to
Fairy Transfer decks, at least on the competitive scene.
Their performance in competitive play is also hard to
predict; as soon as I am tempted to write the deck off
(because OHKOs have become too common) they seem to
score some higher finishes (remember this was written
late so Spring Regionals are already under way). It
ensures Fairy-Type attackers will wreck you without any
help, but were only about 30 damage away from doing so
anyway. No Resistance is the norm and Weakness is far
more devastating than Resistance is helpful so it
doesn’t look like I skipped it. The single Energy
Retreat Cost is nice and low; rarely will you be unable
to afford it.
Kingdra has an Ancient Trait called α Growth;
we’ve already discussed it on other cards and it speeds
things up nicely… when combined with other things. On
its own it actually seems like a tease; your first
attack is Gather Strength and only requires [C] while
your second attack is Dragon Blast for [WWL] so on it’s
own it can’t take you from “zero” to “big hit” in a
single turn (needed for the unfortunate pacing of the
game right now). Gather Strength lets you search your
deck for up to four basic Energy cards and add them to
your hand, supposedly preparing for your next turn; N
tends to ruin that (as can an untimely KO). Dragon
Blast is actually pretty impressive; it has a hefty
discard cost of both one [W] Energy and one [L] Energy
on top of its initial three Energy cost, but it swings
for 150 points of damage. A little boost and you’re
able to take down most Basic Pokémon-EX (and almost all
non-Pokémon-EX), but Wailord-EX and almost all
Mega Evolutions remain out of your reach. This is a
solid start. We need to consider the rest of the
Evolution line as well as alternative Kingdra
before we look at what else we can combo with this
Kingdra.
Horsea only has two options available for
either Standard or Expanded: BW: Plasma Freeze
18/116 and BW: Primal Clash 30/160. Both are
Basic Water-Types with 60 HP, no Resistance, Retreat
Costs of [C], no Abilities or Ancient Traits and just
one attack with a cost of [W]. BW: Plasma Freeze
18/116 has Lightning Weakness and its attack is Fin
Smack, good for two coin flips worth 10 damage per
“heads”. BW: Primal Clash 30/160 has [G]
Weakness and Bubble for a coin flip to inflict
Paralysis. As usual, both are pretty poor and instead
of being a good foundation for the line are treated as
mere stepping stones. I’d favor BW: Primal Clash
30/160 since Paralysis might actually buy you a turn to
Evolve but it isn’t going to make a lot of difference,
and depending upon the metagame the Weakness might
(barely) make it worthwhile to run a blend or favor
BW: Plasma Freeze 18/116. Seadra follows
suit: BW: Plasma Freeze 19/116 and BW: Primal
Clash 31/160 are both Stage 1 Water-Type Pokémon
with 80 HP, no Resistance, Retreat Costs of [C], no
Abilities and no Ancient Traits. BW: Plasma Freeze
19/116 has Lightning Weakness and one attack -
Smokescreen - for [W] that does 20 damage while forcing
the Defending Pokémon to flip a coin if it attacks the
next turn; if that toss is “tails” the attack does
nothing. BW: Primal Clash 31/160 is Grass Weak
but sports two attacks. Knockout Needle requires [W]
and does 10+ damage with two coin flips: if both are
“heads” the attack does another 40 damage (50 total).
For [WC] you get Water Gun for a flat 30 damage. Go
with the older one as again, Smokescreen might buy you a
turn.
There are two
other Kingdra available: BW: Plasma Freeze
84/116 and BW: Primal Clash 107/160. The former
has already gotten its own CotD (click
here to go to it). Between my obsessive
compulsions and the fact said review is almost two years
old, we’ll still run through both of these alternative
Kingdra. Just like today’s version, both are
Stage 2 Dragon-Types with no Resistance, a Retreat Cost
of [C] and no Ability. BW: Plasma Freeze 84/116
has 140 HP, making it just a hair sturdier; since most
Dragon-Types hit hard the Dragon Weakness is
probably on par with Fairy Weakness. Its two attacks
are Dragon Vortex for [C] and Tri Bullet for [W], making
them fast at least for the initial cost. Dragon Vortex
does 20 damage times the number of [W] and [L] Energy
cards in your discard pile, and then shuffles said
Energy back into your deck. BW: Primal Clash
107/160 has the same 130 HP and Fairy Weakness as
today’s Kingdra but with Shred for [W] and
Twister for [WL]. Shred hits for 30 while ignoring
effects on the opponent’s Active Pokémon while Twister
requires two coin flips; if both are “tails” the attack
does nothing (not even the printed damage); at least one
“heads” means 70 damage and if both are “heads” then you
discard an Energy attached to the opponent’s Active.
For both
versions, the attacks are not new with several appearing
with the same name and effects (though different Energy
costs and damage output) on other Pokémon, sometimes
even past Kingdra! Some of those past iterations
were even strong for their time, but what about now?
We’ll start with Vortex: no Special Energy cards
currently would count as either of those Types when not
in play, so it is a bit of a building challenge to get
the 12-ish Energy in the discard pile you’d need to all
but guarantee a OHKO: not the effort of getting it there
but of building a deck that has that much while also
being able to rapidly dump it (though it is far easier
than it was at the time this card came out). Tri Bullet
isn’t brilliant but it has its uses, more so now that
you might face an M Rayquaza-EX (XY: Roaring
Skies 76/108, 105/108) or Exeggutor (BW:
Plasma Freeze 5/116) deck that may intentionally
Bench three Exeggcute (BW: Plasma Freeze
4/116; BW: Plasma Blast 102/101). Shred seems
almost a total waste; most don’t rely on attacks like
Agility or Dig that place a protective effect on the
Pokémon, leaving it more for getting around Abilities…
and most currently useful protective Abilities aren’t
going to apply against a Stage 2 and the few that still
matter aren’t going to care about 30 damage in a format
of OHKOs and 2HKOs. Twister is underpriced or
underpowered: you can’t rely on it for a 2HKO without
major buffs and while hoping you avoid double “tails”.
There are options to help with the variance but the
reward isn’t worth the additional effort. Neither of
these thrill me but it is possible that BW: Plasma
Freeze 84/116 might be of some use.
So how should
you run today’s Kingdra? Carefully,
especially if you want to try and make it competitive.
If it has had any competitive success, it hasn’t been
enough for me to turn it up with a quick search
(admittedly the results of the Spring Regionals that
happened after this review was supposed to go up
are still mostly unknown to me). The card’s main hope I
believe lies in the element of surprise and of course,
Double Dragon Energy, which isn’t quite
tournament legal yet (May 27th is when that happens).
Said Special Energy is the Dragon-Type specific Special
Energy following the trend established by Herbal
Energy, Strong Energy, Mystery Energy,
Shield Energy and Wonder Energy in that it
can only be attached to Dragon-Types (and discards
itself if it somehow ends up on a non-Dragon-Type) but
carries a nice effect. In this case it not only
provides two units of Energy but said Energy counts as
all types similar to that of Rainbow Energy; if
you are familiar with somewhat old cards, this is
basically Double Rainbow Energy with different
drawbacks. What makes it extra relevant here is that it
is three times as useful here than on some other
Dragon-Types. Not only does it make it easier to meet
the blended Energy costs, not only can a single
Double Dragon Energy cover both discard costs but it
can either be the trigger for or attached by α Growth,
finally allowing Kingdra to attack without prior
attachments.
Do I think that
is enough? Not really as Mega Evolutions have gone from
jokes to fringe to uncommon to the norm now, and are
threatening to become the dominant force of the format,
and with this shift it is as I have already said: the
130 HP of Kingdra is nearly a OHKO and it will
take a significant amount more than the 150 damage of
Dragon Blast to OHKO said Mega Evolutions. There seems
to be an answer in older Dragon-Type support as
Altaria (BW: Dragons Exalted 84/124; BW:
Black Star Promos BW48; BW: Boundaries Crossed
152/149) and its “Fight Song” Ability, which adds +20
damage to attacks by Dragon-Types; with four of those
and a Muscle Band or Silver Bangle you can
take out anything that doesn’t have sufficient defensive
buffs. Through in Hypnotoxic Laser and
Virbank City Gym and you’ve got a lot of ways to
reliably bring the hurt against just about anything… but
therein lies the rub: a deck dependant upon a Stage 1
line and a separate Stage 2 line, multiple Items and a
Special Condition has gotten pretty cluttered. It would
only be fair to consider other extreme combos or unusual
counters, like a Primal Groudon-EX with a source
of [G], a Virizion-EX on the Bench and a
Focus Sash attached. If all that wasn’t
discouraging enough… at this point I have to ask “Why
not just run Garchomp (BW:
Dragons Exalted
90/124; BW: Plasma Freeze 120/116; BW:
Legendary Treasures 96/113)?”
While Garchomp is still a Stage 2 and doesn’t hit
as hard on its own, its first attack is useful and it
doesn’t need as much Energy (offsetting its lack of
Ancient Trait). In Expanded it also gains access to
Gabite (BW: Dragons Exalted 89/124), its
Stage 1 that has the “Dragon Call” Ability which allows
you to (once per turn per Dragon Call) search your deck
for a Dragon-Type Pokémon and add it to your hand.
Suddenly that set-up isn’t so bad. WIth Garchomp,
if it survives the turn and the attack you wanted to use
was already powered up, you won’t need to add anymore
Energy. Sounds harsh, I know, but Stage 2 have been
struggling for a long while so it should come as no
surprise. Still I may be painting an overly bleak
picture; there is enough here that if you’ve already got
the needed cards on hand you can at least enjoy some
experimentation. I think the card only gains more
competition in Expanded, hurting it ever so lightly. In
Limited its a wonderful pull so long as you get a
sufficient Evolution line to go with it. This is the
thing that people running a +39 deck fears; you just
need some earlier attackers to soften up the opponent’s
lone Pokémon-EX so that Dragon Blast finishes it off!
Ratings
Standard:
2.1/5
Expanded:
2/5
Limited:
4
Summary: A long overdue and long, rambling CotD
for a card that looks good enough I want to give it a
try but that I can’t see doing especially well even with
the additional boost of Dragon Energy (that the
other reviewers wouldn’t have considered since again,
this is ridiculously late). Sorry Kingdra fans,
but at least it looks like it is a step closer than the
last version!
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