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Likely
coming as no surprise, our first place card of for 2015
is Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108;
106/108)! How does a 110 HP Pokémon-EX become the
top card of this year, especially as we know the
runner-up was so great? It does everything so
right that it is actually pretty wrong… yes that sounds
more than a little stupid but I promise, I’m going to
explain so that it makes at least a little sense.
Being a
Basic is the best, being a Colorless-Type is solid (we
did get Winona in the same set as Shaymin-EX),
Fighting Resistance is handy (though not a huge deal)
and a Retreat Cost of [C] is good (not as good a “free”,
but still good). Being a Pokémon-EX is not good
because of giving up an extra Prize when KOed and to a
lesser extent having to deal with certain
anti-Pokémon-EX effects and to a much lesser extent
being unable to access certain beneficial effects. 110
HP is not good when you’re worth two Prizes, though 90
actually might have been better as it would have left
Shaymin-EX a legal search target for Level Ball;
otherwise more would of course be preferred! The
Lightning Weakness can be dangerous; it isn’t the worst
to have but there are are some good Lightning-Type
attackers plus several high profile cards like
Yveltal-EX which also have Lightning Weakness.
The
Ability (Setup) is why Shaymin-EX sees play; drop
Shaymin-EX from hand to Bench and you can draw
until you have six cards in hand. It would be hard
for that effect to prove bad on a Basic and it was
released into a format full of cards to help improve
your hand or field without bulking up your hand unless
you wanted to bulk up your hand. As if that
wasn’t good enough, then we got more cards to work with
it like Hoopa-EX and work indirectly with it like
Trainers’ Mail. Now the attack, “Sky
Return” looks like filler at a glance but instead it is
a half decent attack that ends up comboing well with the
rest of the card as you bounce a Shaymin-EX (and
often a Double Colorless Energy and Muscle
Band) to hand to re-use. The package deal is
astoundingly good for this card pool and… that’s bad.
Obviously not in the “score for a CotD” department, but
in terms of game balance. As bad as Lysandre’s
Trump Card was for all but eliminating the risk of
deck out (and thus the what few mill decks were
available) it didn’t rise to dominance until it had
Shaymin-EX as a combo partner… with Shaymin-EX
replacing the then established Slurpuff (XY:
Phantom Forces 69/119) in decks like Seismitoad-EX.
Quite a few decks are now capable of incredible plays,
often first or second turn of the game, through use of
Shaymin-EX to augment or replace a draw
Supporter. That sounds really cool… until you
realize that most of this is going for same old same
old: decks designed either to rapidly lock down your
opponent’s options (sometimes before he or she even gets
a turn) or to create an offense so overwhelming that
your own set-up is made more difficult (few things
remain on the board to your next turn) and ultimately
futile (the OHKOs keep coming). Both turn the game
from two players competing with each other to a parody
of solitaire… though I have players that assure me this
is because I am simply not skilled enough.
Ratings
Standard:
4.75/5
Expanded:
4.75/5
Limited:
4.9/5
Summary:
I’ll chance being the guy to overrate the card this
time, but Shaymin-EX nearly justifies a perfect
score. If nearly every deck ran a full four it
would have it… but almost every competent deck I am
familiar with at present runs at least one with several
running two or more, with deck size being the reason
they aren’t running a full four.
Shaymin-EX
was also our
top pick
for the Top 10 Cards of XY: Roaring Skies.
For my personal list back then I lowballed it a
bit as my third place pick because I overestimated two
other cards, but this time I also had it as my
top pick as did everyone else, as it scored 30 voting
points, as good as was possible.
Have a
happy New Year!
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