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Weakness. It's a strong word for a
strong feeling. That haunting dread when the game is
forced into a Mewtwo-EX face-off. That moment when your
opponent plays down the Fighting-type to wreck your
Darkrai-EX. The sadness of knowing your Rayquaza-EX deck
just got donked by Landorus-EX because you started with
nothing but a mere Tynamo.
Let's be honest: Weakness has
crippled many a deck in our time. With Resistance, you
only lost 20-30 damage from your attacks, but with
Weakness you were guaranteed to hit for DOUBLE your
damage. When you could strike down a Pokemon with an
attack that would otherwise be pitiable against other
monstrosities, you feel amazing. Mind-crushing those
Mewtwo-EX, electrifying those Yveltal-EX, or sapping
away the strength of those Seismitoad-EX - whatever it
is you do with Weakness, you know it goes twice as far
as anything else.
That's where Weakness Policy comes
in. It's a Trainer card that provides protection, safety
from that deathly affliction that preys on many Pokemon.
These days, all Pokemon have a Weakness of some form or
another - I believe there have only been a rare few that
have had no Weakness (and I think that's early Ghost
Pokemon and mostly Baby Pokemon from the HGSS era) - so
having something Weakness Policy around isn't a half-bad
idea.
Now if you've got something like
Shadow Circle or run Leavanny for...whatever reason,
then Weakness Policy isn't much help. And if you're
currently getting Item-Locked by a Seismitoad-EX, then
Weakness Policy isn't much help there either. And if
your opponent's deck doesn't have anything that happens
to prey on the Weakness of your deck - say, for
instance, Fire with Steel-types - then there's not much
use for Weakness Policy there either.
What I'm saying is that Weakness
Policy is a fine piece of tech - and that's it.
Preventing your opponent from scoring double-damage on
your Primal Kyogre-EX cause they've got a Grass-type is
absolutely fantastic and improves its survivability for
that much longer - but it's a remarkably niche card in
regards to the broad spectrum. It's not gonna stop
Primal Kyogre-EX from getting stomped on in two turns by
Genesect-EX - if anything, it's buying a turn to stomp
out that Genesect-EX.
I'd say if you do run Weakness
Policy, run one copy of it and be very wary of it. It
might end up as a dead card most of the time, and even
considering the one thing it can do, it might not always
be enough.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (a niche card for a
crippling part of any Pokemon, but it may not always
help out)
Expanded: 2/5 (about the same here)
Limited: 2.5/5 (I suppose you could
run Weakness Policy here, but you are dealing with an
even wider spectrum of cards than you would think; while
you don't have to worry about, say, the Dark-types,
you've got a fair chunk of every other Type in the game
in this set, which makes Weakness Policy a bit of a
risky card to include, but then again it could save ya
some trouble!)
Arora Notealus: I can understand
the angle they were going for when reinterpreting
Weakness Policy's effect for the TCG, and considering
the general lack of "Sturdy"-like effects there's not
much use for doubling damage with a card. Still though,
I think it could say something more like, "If the
opposing Active Pokemon has a Type that the Pokemon this
card is attached to has a Weakness to, increase the
damage..." or something like that. Then again, I guess
we don't really need MORE damage-increasing cards, but
it'd probably be niche enough in-and-of itself to be
less playable than, say, Muscle Band.
Next Time: The most beautiful of
all Energies~ Maybe...I dunno, Rainbow's pretty cool.
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