Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
#4 Scorched Earth
The only Pokémon card ever to be named after a military
strategy that is banned under the Geneva Convention (I
assume), Scorched Earth is also the second Stadium card
to make it into our countdown. I wish they had kept the
Japanese name of the card (Incandescent Earth), to be
honest.
Scorched Earth offers something very attractive to any
deck that runs Fire and/or Fighting Energy. If you
discard one of them from your hand, you get to draw two
cards. As we all know, more draw equals more
consistency, and more consistency means that your deck
does what it is supposed to do more reliably. Who
wouldn’t want that?
Well, it’s not a case of not wanting it, so much as it
being quite difficult to use. Decks these days run on
historically low amounts of Energy, with 12 being fairly
standard. This means you will rarely have the luxury of
a spare Energy to discard alongside the one you want to
attach for the turn. Existing Fighting decks like
Donphan and Landorus/Crobat run very little Basic
Fighting, while Pyroar has around 8 Basic Fire. With
numbers like those, just how often are you going to be
able to take advantage of the draw that Scorched Earth
offers?
That said, I certainly don’t rule out Scorched Earth
becoming very good at some point in the future. If we
ever have a deck that runs a lot of the relevant Energy,
or which likes having it in the discard pile (Landorus
FFI + Primal Groudon EX; Fire decks with Blacksmith?),
then Scorched Earth could be huge. For now though, it is
difficult to see it being used very much.
Rating
Modified: 3.25 (a card with potential, rather than
current use)
Expanded: 3 (same deal here)
Limited: 4.5 (most people fill their deck with Energy
here. If it happens to be the right kind, this card is
brilliant)
|
aroramage |
Okay, I'll admit, Scorched Earth wasn't on my-PFFFTT,
okay, yeah, no, Scorched Earth was absolutely on my
list! Welcome back guys, today we look at the #4 card on
our Top 10!
And when you take a look at this card, you immediately
understand why it's so high! This Stadium is yet another
reason to run some form of Stadium removal in your deck
- even as tech! Scorched Earth gives both players the
option to discard either a Fire or Fighting Energy card
from their hand, and if they do, they get to draw 2
cards! That's fantastic!
You may have seen some Fire decks with
hyper-acceleration with cards like Sycaper and Bicycle
and all that, running through their decks at turbo
speeds, and Fighting decks have been popular with all
the support they've been getting. Seismitoad-EX has had
an impact even on these decks, limiting their Item draws
so they can't go fast, but now with Scorched Earth, both
of these decks have a means to get the cards they need
at a fairly regular pace!
And the discard isn't even that big of a deal. Both
decks have a way of retrieving Energies from the discard
pile (Blacksmith for Fire, and Landorus for Fighting),
so if anything you're only improving upon your situation
by racking up the draw power for these decks! You get a
chance at what you need while setting up for the future
- it's perfect!
So if you're not running a Stadium or have a way to get
rid of Stadiums, it's time to start adding in those
cards, cause Scorched Earth's about to rain down with
great balls of fire! That give you cards! Or
something...I wonder what mirror matches would be
like...
Rating
Standard: 4.5/5 (an easy discard for a great effect; the
only real downside is it gives your opponent the option
to)
Expanded: 4.5/5 (naturally)
Limited: 5/5 (you could even put Fire and Fighting
Energies into your deck just on the off-chance your
opponent's running this card, cause you'll get the
benefit!)
Arora Notealus: In a way, I do find the card to be
somewhat ironic. I mean, it's a volcanic eruption! By
causing volcanoes to explode, you get draw power. That's
what's happening. It's silly, but if you think of it in
grander terms - what with how volcanic soil is rich in
nutrients and allows life to grow after a volcanic
eruption takes place - it makes sense. But for a regular
battle? It does seem silly to go so fast.
Next Time: Speaking of fast, those speedy underwater
critters are mine!
|
Otaku |
Welcome to the second week of our Top 10 list for
XY: Primal
Clash.
If you’re jumping around in the list, note that besides
the usual rule against picking reprints I once again
chose 10 of the cards that caught my eye and seemed
either good enough we should see them, or popular enough
that we’ll see them a lot until the metagame sorts
itself out. Speaking of the metagame, this is being
written when I’ve seen next to nothing from the St.
Louis regionals. Of course my list wasn’t the only one;
thankfully it gets averaged out with the other
reviewers’ own picks. For better or worse, or lists
were more varied than they have been the last few sets.
Just missing out on the Top 3 is Scorched Earth (XY:
Primal Clash 138/160). That’s right, we had at
least one more Stadium make the Top 10, which means at
least half the Stadiums in this set. The mixed blessing
of Stadium cards is that they all serve as counters for
every other Stadium, essentially competing for the same
deck slots (if you really want to run “extra” Stadiums
though, you can). I mentioned yesterday that all four
Stadiums had at least some potential, with three I was
confident in referring to as “good”. Scorched Earth
is indeed one of the “good” ones… so what does it do?
Once per turn before you attack, you can discard a [F]
Energy card or [R] Energy card from hand to draw two
cards. Unless the-powers-that-be surprise us, the only
Energy that currently meets those requirements are basic
Fighting Energy and basic Fire Energy; all
Special Energy cards that could supply either (or both)
count as Colorless while in hand. This is important to
remember because it means the Stadium is less “general”
than the effect might suggest; you can’t just toss it
into anything for a little extra draw power, but with
the upside that even when facing Fighting-Type decks,
your opponent may not have a lot of basic Fighting
Energy cards to discard.
This card reminds me of an Item that I thought was going
to become an important supporting card for Fire decks,
Fiery Torch. Fiery Torch is an Item that
draws two cards but requires you discard a [R] Energy
from hand to play it. On paper that looked brilliant;
after all Fire-Types got Blacksmith in the same
set; this provided non-Supporter draw power that helped
prep for Blacksmith! The catch was that
competitive decks have really always been about
overwhelming your opponent with card advantage, and in
order to reliably have a manual Energy attachment while
also reliably having discard fodder for Fiery Torch
meant running too many Fire Energy cards (or
Items to get them back into hand) to have room for all
the other important bits your deck needed to be a top
contender. It was (and still is) easier to approach
Fire decks in a manner similar to everything else; play
down your hand and Bicycle if you needed to save
your Supporter for Blacksmith or Lysandre
(the latter of which also applied to decks in general).
Scorched Earth
basically trades all the strengths and weaknesses of
being an Item (like Fiery Torch) for those of
being a Stadium and especially with Seismitoad-EX
being popular and potent, that is a good exchange.
Being able to work with two Energy-Types is obviously
much better than Fiery Torch though does come
with the not-so-hidden drawback of also being easier for
your opponent to capitalize upon (versus a hypothetical
Scorched Earth that would have only worked with
[R] Energy). If your opponent doesn’t take it out right
away and you’ve got the basic Energy to spare, it can
even generate a decent amount of advantage in just a few
turns, and even one turn is enough to compensate for
itself with a small bonus. Both the Fighting-Type and
Fire-Types have use for Energy in the discard pile; I
already mentioned Blacksmith, but there is also
Landorus (XY: Furious Fists 5//11). With
such a simple combo as Scorched Earth itself,
Landorus active, a target to which you wish to
attach Energy on your Bench, a basic Fighting Energy
card you can discard, and another source of [F] Energy
to attach to Landorus, you can chip away at your
opponent’s HP (with the option of doing some nice damage
if you add on some more cards) while building something
else up on your Bench… with increasing returns if your
opponent doesn’t force you to abandon this approach
immediately.
The main reason not to run Scorched Earth is that
your deck already has the Stadium(s) it needs. There is
a lot of competition here, but as I advocate running two
different Stadium cards anyway as too many decks can
make good use of the best Stadiums, causing your own
Stadium to too easily backfire, that still leaves a
definite place for this card. It isn’t trying to work
into every deck; basically just Fighting and/or Fire
decks. Fighting Stadium is awesome when you’re
facing the stereotypical decks of this format; those
where you’re going to have to attack a lot of
Pokémon-EX. Of course this can backfire in mirror
matches and we are seeing more Mega Evolutions (which
may or may not care about that +20 damage) and
non-Pokémon-EX (to which Fighting Stadium does
nothing). Fire-Types don’t have a specialized Stadium
other than Scorched Earth. The other piece of
major competition is what we discussed yesterday;
Silent Lab is a great general use Stadium.
Ratings
Standard:
3.25/5 - Scorched Earth didn’t impress me quite
as much as Silent Lab did; both effects are good,
its just Silent Lab can more easily fit into
decks. Having really thought the card over, though,
additional draw power is more useful in general than
shutting down the Abilities on Basic Pokémon, so why
didn’t I score them the same? The metagame; most decks
aren’t running high counts of Basic Energy, part of why
Fiery Torch fizzled where as a surprising number
of decks have at least somewhat useful Abilities on
Basic Pokémon.
Expanded:
3.35/5 - Same score, slightly different reasons; the
increased card pool, as per usual, means more combo
opportunities but more competition. It might be silly,
but I still remember cards like Groudon-EX (BW:
Dark Explorers 54/108, 106/108) and think that it
would love the Landorus combo suggested earlier.
Limited:
5/5 - Not only will you likely have the leeway to simply
run a decent amount of Fighting Energy or Fire
Energy even if nothing in your deck really needs it,
not only is draw power so important that the preceding
isn’t stupid, but if a set has Stadiums that are Limited
relevant because of how much they help the player
running them or hurt said player’s opponent, then all
Stadiums become relevant in order to discard the
previous. So yeah… every Stadium in this set is
potentially awesome in a Limited deck (Silent Lab
is actually the least impressive here) so unless
you’ve got at least 2-3 other Stadiums, even if you
aren’t going to run Fighting Energy or Fire
Energy you’d still run Scorched Earth. Such
is Limited play.
Summary:
Scorched Earth is a good card; it isn’t
overwhelming but its easy to at least quickly break even
with it and you really should pull ahead at least ever
so slightly: drop it to discard an opponent’s Stadium (a
1-for-1 trade), then discard an Energy to draw for two
cards (a 1-for-2 trade). If you have to play it with no
other Stadium in play, that’s still two cards from hand
for one card in play and two from the deck added to your
hand. At the same time, there are some fantastic
Stadium cards available, some fairly general, some more
specialized, and it creates a tremendous amount of
competition for this card.
On my own Top 10 list, I had Scorched Earth as my
number eight pick, so placing this high means it
impressed my fellow reviewers more than it impressed me;
I think this is a little high for Scorched Earth
to clock in: Teammates and Silent Lab seem
like they are better than Scorched Earth. Is it
a huge travesty? Nope; like most of the cards this set,
the difference between them isn’t huge.
|
