aroramage |
Ever since Furious Fists came out
with their special Energies, it's been the developers'
goal to continue throwing out various Energies for every
type. So far, we've gotten Fighting, Grass, and Psychic,
and now we add Metal and Fairy Energy to that list. In
this case, we've gotten Shield Energy.
Shield Energy brings back what the
oldest versions of Metal Energy in its Special form had:
a damage reduction cost while also bringing out Metal
Energy. Back in those days, Metal and Darkness decks
weren't really playable since you were required to run
their special Energies - yet at the same time BECAUSE
you had to use these Energies, you got much more
powerful Pokemon out of the mix. Where Metal was the
defensive option, Darkness became the offensive option,
and that kept those kinds of decks afloat for years
until they finally made Basic Metal/Darkness Energy back
at the the turn of the Diamond & Pearl era.
So is Shield Energy worth running?
Most of the time, this'll help against Fire-types that
want to melt your Metal-types into nothingness, reducing
the overall damage by 20 (since it's applied before
W/R). Other than that, it just reduces it by 10, which
while it adds in extra effort on your opponent's end to
get rid of the Metal Pokemon in general - especially
with 4 of those attached to the same one - we've been
conquering that barrier since the arrival of HTLBank,
and we've only gotten more tools to surpass it like
Muscle Band and Strong Energy.
Still, you should test out what
Shield Energy can do for you. On its own, it's not so
great, but together with more Shield Energy, it can be a
sturdy barrier of sorts. Keeping in mind this can help
save your Benched Pokemon from spread damage as well -
at least in part.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (I appreciate the
attempt to bring back old-fashioned Metal Energy into
the format, but we've become brutally offensive in the
meantime, and I don't think that'll change dramatically
anytime soon)
Expanded: 2/5 (about the same here)
Limited: 4/5 (with few ways of
removing it and lower damage outputs, this card can make
any Metal Pokemon last far longer than it should - like
that Excadrill!)
Arora Notealus: Gotta make those
Metal Pokemon tough, ya know? Make sure they live long
enough to take out the Fairies. I've always kinda wanted
to run a Metal deck of sorts, and given Bronzong from
PHF and some of the other Metal support, maybe it's not
a terrible time to try...granted, there's a lot to go up
against.
Next Time: Tired of getting donked
because you were Weak to something? Try our new-
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Otaku |
First a belated happy birthday to my nephew Joshua. His
day of birth was last night. ;)
We hit the middle of the week with one of the two new
Special Energy cards from this set: Shield Energy
(XY: Primal Clash 143/160). It has a familiar
effect; like the other recent, Type-themed Special
Energy cards it is restricted to being attached to a
specific Type, discards itself if it somehow ends up on
a Pokémon that isn’t that specific Type and provides
that specific Energy-Type in addition to its effect but
only while attached. In this case, the “specific
Type” is Metal and the effect is that attacks by your
opponent’s Active Pokémon do 10 less damage to the
Metal-Type Pokémon to which Shield Energy is
attached. That wording is pretty important and to
explain why, we have to go to the predecessor of this
card.
In this case, Shield Energy is an obvious update
to the Special Energy version of Metal Energy
that was originally released nearly 15 years ago in
Neo Genesis and was most recently released in
Call of Legends four years ago… which means it
hasn’t been legal for Standard play since 2011-2012
Modified Format. The important thing to understand is
that Shield Energy is a nerfed version of Special
Energy Metal Energy. It can be a bit confusing
as the effect(s) of said version of Metal Energy
have changed over time (and originally there was no
basic Energy version of Metal Energy, so it
wasn’t so awkward to discuss), but just referencing the
version from Call of Legends will suffice.
Unlike Shield Energy, it counted as a [M] Energy
even when not attached, though it contained reminder
text of what it provided while attached so I could be
mistaken; I was under the impression until relatively
recently that the symbol in the corner told you what an
Energy counted as unless overridden by game relevant
text (including the card’s own effect). There is
reminder text to point out it isn’t a Basic Energy, even
though that should be obvious as well. Even if I am
wrong, it definitely was able to be attached to any
Pokémon (not just Metal-Types) though its additional
effect was restricted to them. The additional effect in
its last iteration was to reduce damage done by attacks
to the Pokémon to which it was attached (again, provided
its attached to a Metal-Type) are reduced by 10… so it
protects against self-damage.
Being unable to attach to non-Metal-Types is pretty
significant, just as it has been for all the other
Energy-Types: often enough you’ll need to meet a [C]
Energy requirement in either an attack or a Retreat Cost
and Shield Energy can’t do that. Sure it seems
like a waste but when it is needed, it is needed. Cards
that have off-Type requirements for [M] Energy also
can’t tap it, which includes some that would be part
Metal-Type except the TCG no longer does dual-Types
(granted most TCG dual-Types were representing a gimmick
and not the video game hybrid nature). Remember, we
aren’t just talking the effect but attaching the Energy
to use it at all. The subtler difference is that it
won’t help with self-damage, something that used to be a
nifty trick for Metal-Types. Neither of these protect
against damage counter placement or damage via
non-attack effects. The real big problem is… even where
they are identical Metal Energy was (not “is”)
better because of power creep and other balance issues.
Offensive and defense are not equal in this game, at
least when the numbers are the same. Soaking 10 points
of damage may be handy, but doing 10 more is usually
easier and faster to take advantage of (just attack) and
most of the time what you KO can’t hurt you afterwards,
making offense often the best defense. Special Energy
Darkness Energy is the counterpart to Special
Energy Metal Energy but besides swapping all
symbols and references to Metal Energy with those of
Darkness Energy, the bonus was that Special Energy
Darkness Energy provided a +10 bonus to damage
instead of soaking 10 damage when appropriately
attached. While not from the same set, the counterpart
to Shield Energy seems to be Strong Energy…
but it provides a +20 bonus, the opposite of the
relationship they should have. It also shows that on
the side of offense, the designers chose to double the
bonus (that they shifted from Darkness to Fighting isn’t
a problem) but on the side of defense it remained the
same even though HP scores and damage output (as well as
damage-to-Energy ratios) have been increasing (the
former slower than the latter two). It just seems
baffling that when Defense is less effective, it ends up
being a numerically smaller bonus than offense. It is
also faster to take advantage of an offensive bonus;
just attach and attack instead of waiting to be attacked
and hoping your opponent can’t discard the Energy or
force you to change to a different Active Pokémon.
For Standard, Shield Energy is good but not
overly good; Strong Energy is powerful (probably
too powerful) and you can tell not only from how
Metal-Types are far less prominent than Fighting-Types
in the metagame, but by how I don’t see Shield Energy
used as often as Strong Energy. With a
Fighting-Type deck, Strong Energy maxed out is
pretty much a given, even if the deck already is running
other Special Energy. The other great piece of indirect
Metal-Type support is Bronzong (XY:
Phantom Forces
61/1149, XY Promos XY21) but that only works
with basic Metal Energy cards and is far
more important than (for example) Landorus (XY:
Furious Fists 58/111) which also attaches basic
Energy ([F] instead of [M]) from the discard pile,
though via attack instead of Ability. If I am running
something like M Aggron-EX, I personally at least
don’t feel like I can go without some Double
Colorless Energy and also don’t feel like I’ve got
the room for both Double Colorless Energy and
Shield Energy.
The one semi-legit Metal-Type deck I can think of that
probably should run Shield Energy is one built
around Excadrill (XY: Primal Clash 97/160)
which we reviewed
here.
I say “we” because eventually, you will find my review
of the card there (I’m playing catch-up). At least the
delay gave me a chance to try this strategy out and it
was… mixed. The short version is that its great
slapping an Energy onto something and then searching out
and attaching two more Shield Energy but
this is a format where even with Hard Charm, even
with the first Energy being a Shield Energy, even
with Steel Shelter or Training Center in
play… I was still getting OHKOed some of the time. In
fact the one time my deck worked as planned was against
a Seismitoad-EX variant that thankfully went with
Crushing Hammer over Enhanced Hammer.
This leads us to Expanded, where had I my experience
been more positive I had hoped to use Excadrill
to rapidly get Shield Energy into play
Klinklang (Black & White 76/114) into play
and be able to move it around… but I lacked the cards to
test it directly. Please note that I wasn’t able to
test the two together; I was just testing Excadrill
on its own but I’m not expecting things to turn out that
much better here. Maybe since you could also throw in
Klinklang (BW: Plasma Storm 90/135) - a
Standard legal option as well - then Shield Energy
only needs to protect against non-Pokémon-EX. Again I
did not test with either of those two Stage 2
Pokémon (I lack them on the PTCGO) so just maybe it
could work that way. Still, the other miscellaneous
factors (like additional decks to worry about and other
Special Energy you might want to run) even out, I think,
resulting in the score being the same. The only place
Shield Energy is really awesome is if you pull
sufficient worthwhile Metal-Types alongside it in
Limited play… and since you do need something compatible
with it, that still drops the score a bit.
Ratings
Standard:
3/5
Expanded:
3/5
Limited:
3.75/5
Summary:
Shield Energy is defense in a format that is more
about offense. The metagame sometimes flirts with even
a small defensive play proving vital so long as it buys
an extra turn of attacking, and on paper the effect is
solid (just underwhelming). I may be scoring it a bit
high, but in the end these Type specific Special Energy
cards seem worth obtaining enough to max out “just in
case” and other than Strong Energy have surprised
me by being useful when run in lower amounts, sometimes
even as TecH.
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