Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Rough Seas (Primal Clash)
This is the Stadium that
didn’t make
our top 10 countdown, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Not by any means.
With Rough Seas on the Field, either player may heal
30 damage from their Water and
Lightning Type Pokémon during their turn. I’m not
usually a big fan of healing effects in this format (Max
Potion being an exception), but this card could turn out
to be genuinely useful. For one thing it works under
Item Lock, and for another it has the potential for
multiple use, as long as it
manages to stay in play. With Rough Seas, you could move
a badly damaged Pokémon to the Bench and either
restore its health over a few
turns or force an opponent to use a
Lysandre or similar effect.
Rough Seas is particularly good against Pokémon which
struggle to take one or two-hit KOs, such as
Seismitoad EX. As long as
you can cause enough damage to overcome the fact that
they can heal too, you are largely negating any damaged
caused with Quaking Punch on their turn. The relevant
Mega Pokémon, with their high HP, will also enjoy this
card: unless hitting for Weakness, M
Manectric and Primal
Kyogre become that bit more
difficult to take down, as does
Wailord EX PCL for that matter.
It may not be the most spectacularly useful Stadium in
existence, but Rough Seas at least deserves
consideration for any deck which is running the relevant
Type(s). True, some decks will still prefer other
options (Seismitoad EX and
Virbank City Gym), but in
the absence of anything better, Rough Seas can at least
function as a nice way of kicking your opponents’
Stadiums, and doing that is becoming more and more
important in the game.
Rating
Modified: 3.25 (a decent card in the right deck)
Expanded: 2.75 (better ‘default’ options exist, like
Tropical Beach)
Limited: 4 (if you are running Water/Lightning, it
should help a lot)
|
aroramage |
Man, with all these new Stadiums
around, it's getting to be crowded around here! Can you
imagine what the fields must look like with all of these
up and about like this? Welcome back to today's card,
Rough Seas!
So as the counterpart to Scorched
Earth, Rough Seas supports the opposite Types to it as
well; where Scorched Earth gives Fire and Fighting decks
a good boost, Rough Seas does so to Water
and...Electric? I guess for stormy weather. Needless to
say, it's nice to see these Types get a little more
support to keep them in the game! So what does Rough
Seas do? Discard Energy to draw cards?
Nope. It heals. Alright, to its
credit, there are a few Pokemon with the Ancient Trait
Alpha Recovery - which doubles the boost from recovery -
that can benefit from this like Ludicolo...um...Eelektrik...and
that's it. Huh. Could've sworn there were more-oh wait,
Tentacool has Alpha Recovery! Oh, it's Psychic-type this
time? Well...
So Rough Seas isn't wholly
beneficial, but recovering 30 damage from your Pokemon
on each of your turns (by the way, that effect is on
YOUR turn only; during your opponent's turn, THEY are
the ones who can recover) isn't bad. There are a few
Pokemon that have to go from 2HKO to 3HKO for this,
which can be exceptional if you need it. I won't blame
some Primal Kyogre-EX decks to run this to counteract
other Stadiums and shrug off some minor damage - heck,
this pretty much makes Seismitoad-EX mirror
matches...take...forever...oh dear.
In all seriousness though, it's not
a bad card. It's just...not that great either,
personally. 30 damage will shrug off a lot, but you know
what's better than a band-aid? Not scraping your knee on
the sidewalk. Same principle here, and I'd rather they
started getting back to cards like Defender because of
that damage reduction it can provide! But no, we gotta
heal ourselves after the fact. Maybe one day Defender
will come back...and it better be better than before!
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (decently good, but
not the best Stadium in the world)
Expanded: 3/5 (I mean really, you
could have so much more)
Limited: 4.5/5 (really good here,
if only because of overall lower damage outputs)
Arora Notealus: How exactly does a
rough sea cure anyone though? Like I've seen my bro get
seasick from a boat rocking around, so I don't know how
putting it in the midst of a hurricane makes him feel
better! So how does that work here? WHY does that work
here?! Cause it's Pokemon?! NO!! I don't believe you! I-
Next Time: Oh sweet Arceus, the
other one showed up.
|
Otaku |
Our next runner up is… Rough Seas (XY: Primal
Clash 137/160)! I’ll let you in on a little secret
(unless another reviewer already mentioned it): there
was actually a card before this one. When I tallied the
voting points (not to be confused with our review
ratings), Ninetales, Camerupt-EX and one
more card all three ended up with 10 points. For
perspective, the first place Primal Kyogre-EX
scored 41 points while Swampert (XY: Primal
Clash 36/160), the card that took 10th place, only
snagged 11 points, so any of these three nearly made the
final list. Our “mystery card” will be reviewed at a
more appropriate time, when it will make sense for the
delay (I hope). Rough Seas, for the record,
managed 9 points so it was quite close as well.
What makes Rough Seas so special? Both its
blessing and perhaps its bane is that it is a Stadium at
a time when we seem be entering a new era of Stadium
wars, where jockeying with your opponent to see who has
the dominant Stadium won’t just be important for select
decks, but pretty much all decks. Sometimes that will
be because less because of the benefit a Stadium grants
your deck but for denying your opponent the benefit of
his or her own Stadium(s), or because your inflicts a
penalty upon them. Rough Seas does something
that I was surprised seems to work; its a healing card!
Specifically, while it is in play, once per turn a
player can use it to heal up to 30 points of damage off
of each of his or her Water-Type and
Lightning-Type Pokémon. Why is that good when you’ve
already noticed some of us have given the impression we
are less than excited about the prospects of another
multi-Pokémon healing card, the just released Fresh
Water Set?
Fresh Water Set
is an Item, good for a one-shot healing of 20 for each
of your Pokémon. While being restricted to two Types
that may or may not appear in a deck together, Rough
Seas heals an additional per Pokémon that qualifies,
but more importantly is a Stadium; killing two birds
with one stone as you discard an opponent’s Stadium
while gaining access to reusable healing. I honestly
wasn’t too impressed with this card either until I saw
it in action; when you’ve got Pokémon like Wailord-EX
or Primal Kyogre-EX, they might survive long
enough to use Rough Seas multiple times just for
their own sake, even while Active and taking hits.
There are also a decent amount of smaller (relatively
speaking) Pokémon like Keldeo-EX or Kyurem
(BW: Plasma Freeze 31/116); as I saw this card do
its thing I saw 2HKOs that were forced into 3HKOs… and
that was if my opponent didn’t have an alternate
attacker ready to come up and keep me busy. Plus I’m
fond of certain spread style attackers, healing
potentially everything in play for 30 often undoes all
spread damage (at least so long as nothing was KOed by
it).
Still, healing only goes so far, and a lot of decks have
other Stadiums they would prefer to play. Also
while not universal, you’ll find quite a few decks with
a Water or Lightning Pokémon in some role. Seismitoad-EX
is (unfortunately) popular and potent, and as its often
slowing down your opponent’s offense, healing 30 each
turn can really extend its life… though this can
backfire when it also extends the life of something
else, like the not uncommon Dedenne (XY:
Furious Fists 31/111). The healing really can be a
mixed blessing.
Ratings
Standard:
3.5/5 - This is a deck specific rating, of course. The
fewer Pokémon your deck is apt to keep in play that can
benefit from healing (either because they are the wrong
Type or simply too fragile to begin with), the less
valuable this card is, though it will rarely be
completely useless as it can still help you by
discarding a less favorable Stadium.
Expanded:
3.5/5 - More Stadiums means more competition but
this is the format with Eelektrik (BW; Noble
Victories 40/101) and perhaps some other Water- or
Lightning-Type attackers that could benefit from the
healing. As such I’m going to treat the two as
cancelling out.
Limited:
5/5 - I suppose if you really do pull like three to four
other, more useful Stadiums you can skip it, but even
with there being three other Stadiums in this set, that
seems doubtful. Stadiums in the right deck are amazing
in this format, to the point where sometimes you’re
better off with a Stadium that you can’t even use and/or
that helps your opponent a little than with a Stadium
that helps your opponent a lot remaining in play.
Summary:
Rough Seas can actually help some decks enjoy
smoother sailing by restoring just enough HP to really
wreak a lot of damage spread strategies and/or by
pushing some Pokémon just out of 2HKO range, at least
the bigger ones, with the biggest possibly enjoying more
an extension than that. It is an effect you can
Activate on your turn, allowing an instant return.
Still it faces some tremendous competition, and even
outside of mirror matches can end up helping your
opponent a little too much.
I actually was so impressed by it when composing my list
that it was my eighth place pick, and I’m still not
convinced that was a mistake. Tying things back into
the earlier discussion, I was the only one that had this
card on his Top 10 list, so all the points it earned,
nearly getting it into the overall 10th place slot, came
from just one reviewer thinking it had promise. Of
course it it ultimately turns out to be a bad or even
just a mediocre card, then getting it wrong is on me as
well.
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