Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Darkrai (XY Promo 22)
The Black and White series Darkrai promo was a pretty cool card in my
opinion: it was Full Art for one thing, and probably
deserved a little more attention than it actually got
(which was practically none). This XY Promo version, I
don’t like as much.
It’s pretty much just a variation on the old ‘Dream Eater’ theme which
dates back to Base Set Haunter. You get one attack (Hypnoblast)
which puts the Defending Pokémon to Sleep, followed by
another (Deep Wind) which does substantial damage . . .
but only if the Sleep condition sticks.
Of course, with Hypnotoxic Laser around, you actually don’t have to wait
a whole turn to use Deep Wind, while praying that the
Defending Pokémon stays Asleep. So that’s something at
least. In fact, if you hit heads with the Laser, you are
doing 120 damage
and Poison. Throw in a Muscle Band and a Virbank
Gym, and in theory, you can get some nice OHKOs.
It’s a lot of effort (and a coin flip), though, just to make this card
work. Sleep is the most unreliable of all the Status
Conditions, and never something you want to have to
depend on. Darkrai’s Weakness to Fighting, and the
relatively high Energy cost of Deep Wind are other
factors that should caution you against using this card.
Rating
Modified: 2
Expanded: 1.75
Limited: 3.25
|
aroramage |
In the great legacy of
"mini-legends," - that is, legendary Pokemon being
Basics but not EXs - today's card Darkrai works to make
a mini-version of Darkrai-EX, something that can compete
against EXs in its own right without giving up two
prizes. Think of it as an attempt at getting a good
attacker in without the bulk or risk of an EX. This
guy's not too bad, but is he enough to run alongside his
big brother and be successful? Let's see!
Darkrai's first attack is
Hypnoblast, a 2-for-30 strike that puts the opponent to
Sleep. We've seen Hypnoblast before plenty of times, and
barring the ability to flip a successful heads for two
turns, it can be useful. For instance, Darkrai's Deep
Wind attack looks to be a dull 3-for-60 attack, but on a
Sleeping opponent, it does 120 damage AND heals Darkrai
for 30 damage - all in a single attack! That's pretty
good!
Except for the dependency on the
status. Once upon a time, I mentioned that Paralysis and
Poison are probably the two best Status Conditions in
the game - the former because, well, it simply is, and
the latter given the support it has and the constant
damage it deals per turn. Beyond that, it's mostly coin
flip effects - Sleep, Burn, and Confusion are all lumped
together into this. Burn flips to deal damage, Confusion
is the worst in that it doesn't even prevent manual
switches anymore, and Sleep flips to keep the opponent
"paralyzed."
This 50/50 dealing is what makes
Sleep an unreliable Status Condition; you'll recall that
Honchkrow from Phantom Forces had a similar problem with
his own Sleep infliction and damage strategy. If
anything, this Darkrai is ultimately a better Honchkrow
because it's only a Basic, and its Sleep-dependent Deep
Wind at least heals damage.
Does that make him good? Not quite,
but it does make him better. Between Honchkrow and
Darkrai, I'd run Darkrai, but as far as Darkrai and
Darkrai-EX go, he's just not cool enough to hang with
the EX crowd.
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (same strategy as
Honchkrow, just better cause he's a Basic)
Expanded: 2.5/5 (it's the same
thing here with the same issues)
Limited: N/A (Honchkrow at least is
in a set...that's a thing)
Arora Notealus: You gotta laugh
when you've got this big name Pokemon in the TCG like "Darkrai,"
and then someone comes up talking about this guy and
you're like, "Oh...no, that's not so bad as Darkrai."
Probably some of the more notable "mini-legends" are the
Unova Dragons with their Outrage attack and Rayquaza
from LTR.
Next Time: A furry Pinocchio wood
tanooki!...how else would you describe him?
|
Otaku |
This week we are going to look at some of the recent Black Star
promos. Our second candidate is Darkrai (XY
Black Star Promos XY22). As mentioned in
yesterday’s review the Darkness-Type ain’t what she used
to be: direct support is almost non-existent in Standard
now though thanks to cards like Yveltal-EX the
indirect support is pretty solid (though that also comes
at a price I’ll address later). Hitting for Weakness
isn’t unheard of but its not especially common while
Resistance is growing more common as it shows up on
Fairy-Types… a Type which includes Klefki (XY:
Furious Fists 73/111), a Basic Pokémon with an
Ability that makes Resistance on Fairy-Type Pokémon jump
to -40: -20 isn’t too bad to work around but -40 is
significant enough to matter quite often, at least if
you can’t switch to a solid, non-Darkness-Type attacker.
There is even a few direct Darkness-Type counters
though thankfully they are so ineffective we aren’t
going to look at them in detail. In Expanded, its a bit
better because one amazing (and frankly overpowered)
piece of Darkness-Type support is both legal and still
well worth it: Dark Patch.
Being a Basic Pokémon is currently the best and pretty much has
been for years due to the pace of the game; it has been
consistently fast enough even longer than that and
without the artificial support propping up the top
Evolutions, the way they and their lower Stages have
been designed can’t compete. Granted even with
artificial support or being made ridiculously powerful,
it doesn’t help that most big, Basic Pokémon are “too
fast”, often having a solid if not their primary,
quality attacks available in just a turn or two while
Evolutions still need a minimum of two turns to set-up
right now. Bad for game balance, good for Darkrai…
to a degree, and I’ll again get to that later. Yes, I’m
going somewhere with this.
Darkrai sports 120 HP; just 10 below the max printed on legal-to-play
Basic Pokémon (excluding those featuring special
mechanics, like Pokémon-EX). This is that range (about
110 to 130) that makes a card just a little more likely
to survive an attack than be OHKOed, and even that
fluctuates based on how important it is to take that
particular Prize as quite a few decks can hit 140 or 150
without needing a particularly lucky and/or skill
intensive set-up though only a few can do so turn after
turn without being in a good place. The Fighting-Type
Weakness is quite dangerous; no surprise as its a Type
that tends to hit hard, reliably, for low Energy
(anymore, for just one Energy) and not only enjoys the
general buffs but a few specific just to them. Any
Resistance is appreciated and Psychic Resistance is a
solid option because Mewtwo-EX is still a solid
option. The single energy Retreat Cost is easy to pay
in both the sense you’ll often have the Energy attached
and be able to cope with the Energy loss. Later
on this could become more useful: Darkrai-EX is
still a regular Bench-sitter and spare attacker in
Darkness-Type decks, due to its Retreat Cost canceling
Dark Cloak, but its also likely to rotate out sooner
rather than later.
Darkrai sports two attacks; the first is Hypnoblast which costs [DC] and
does 30 damage while afflicting the Defending Pokémon
with Sleep. Sleep is both one of the best and one of
the worst Special Conditions; the bad news is that it
can go away on its own but the good news is that while
it lasts, your opponent can’t retreat or attack. Still
the Sleep Check between turns to see if the Sleeping
Pokémon wakes up makes it quite unreliable. Thanks to
the standard set by Pokémon-EX, this attack is a little
slow and a little weak. The second attack is Deep Wind
for [DDC]; it does 60 damage but if the
opponent’s Active Pokémon is Asleep when you hit it, you
do an additional 60 damage (so 120 total) and heal 30
damage from Darkrai. Darkrai isn’t so big
that healing 30 is likely to save it; most of the time
it will either have taken no damage or will remain just
inside of or outside of OHKO range, but for those
borderline cases and getting rid of damage taken while
on the Bench it is appreciated. 60 for three is
terrible but 120 for three is good. While the two
attacks are intended to combo together, they aren’t
meant to be a strong combo that carries itself, so I
won’t demand that they be; your opponent will get two
chances to wake up after you afflict their Pokémon with
Sleep. The Energy costs are not especially friendly to
generic Energy acceleration; good for long term game
balance, but bad for Darkrai itself.
If you want to run a Darkrai, there are only two other options in
Expanded or Standard right now and neither are “plain”;
you’ve got Darkrai-EX which we already
established you’re probably going to be running in any
deck using Darkness Energy but which only eats up
a slot for today’s card in the generic sense; their
names are treated as different so you could run up to
four of each if you wished. There is also Darkrai
(BW Black Star Promos BW73), an example of some
of the promos that have slipped through the cracks and
missed being reviewed. It is a Team Plasma affiliated
Pokémon so I’ll refer to it as Darkrai [Plasma],
but as the brackets and fact I’m not italicizing the
“Plasma” part should indicate, it does have the same
name as today’s card so they will occupy the same (up
to) four slots in a deck. Darkrai [Plasma] is
still a Basic Darkness-Type Pokémon with Fighting
Weakness, Psychic Resistance, no Ability and two
attacks. Its HP is marginally worse at 110 and if you
don’t have an effect like Dark Cloak or a card like
Switch handy, its Retreat Cost of two can get
annoying (though its still something you’ll likely have
the capacity to pay). For [DC] it can use Hide In
Shadows to Bench itself while hitting for 30 or Dark
Hole to destroy all Monsters in play. Wait, wrong
game:
this Dark Hole does 90 damage and with a
successful coin flip afflicts the Defending Pokémon with
Sleep. This wouldn’t be too bad except it costs [DDCC];
even with Team Plasma and Darkness-Type support, that’s
just too much.
So is there a use for today’s Darkrai? Yes and no. If you
want a competitive Darkness-Type attacker you’ve got
Yveltal-EX, one of the best attackers in the game
right now. If you need a Darkness-Type attacker that
isn’t a Pokémon-EX, you’ve still got
Yveltal
(XY 78/146; XY Black Star Promos XY06) and
Absol (BW: Plasma Freeze 67/116), which
are far better attackers in a generic Darkness-Type
deck. There is something you can do with today’s card,
though. Take Malamar-EX, Honchkrow (XY:
Phantom Forces 52/119), Muscle Band (or
Silver Bangle), Hypnotoxic Laser and
Virbank City Gym. You also will probably want some
copies of Energy Switch as well. That is a lot
but we aren’t talking about trick combo but the focus
for the deck. Honchkrow has the wonderfully
named Nightmare Mambo attack for [DCC] that also hits
for 60 or 120 if the opponent’s Active Pokémon is
Asleep; it won’t heal itself but Nightmare Mambo only
requires [DCC] allowing Double Colorless Energy
to speed things up. It is a Stage 1 plus has a
Different Weakness and Resistance so both are useful at
different times. Muscle Band bumps the damage up
to 140 against anything while Silver Bangle makes
it 150 against Pokémon-EX. Hypnotoxic Laser both
provides a chance to inflict Sleep and will inflict
Poison, and with Virbank City Gym on top of all
of that, you’re looking at an effective 170 to 180
damage, enough for a OHKO. Malamar-EX is
included because if you can spare an Energy attachment
for it, its Ability will guarantee the Defending Pokémon
is Asleep (a pretty important thing), plus its a
Darkness-Type with a decent (but flippy) attack. You
should get a deck that is more reliable (yeah, even
though it depends on Sleep) and competitive than your
typical “fun” deck but definitely not something you
should expect to Top Cut with.
Ratings
Standard:
2/5 - It almost depresses me to rate this card so low;
its definitely not as good as it could be, but despite
the score its actually pretty solid. There is only so
much space in decks and this is just outclassed by the
current, dominant Darkness-Type attackers.
Expanded:
2.75/5 - As above, but with Dark Patch back its a
little better, especially for the above suggested deck.
It doesn’t get that much better though, and is still
not the best option for attackers.
Limited:
N/A - It would be a top pick if it were to be reprinted
in Limited legal fashion, adjusted for what the set was
like. Even though the second attack would be
unreliable, its a big, Basic Pokémon. Unlikely to be
adequate for a +39 deck, though.
Summary:
Darkrai isn’t bad in the “no redeeming features”
department; I think the second attack divides the damage
in the wrong way as it would be a better card without
becoming overpowered (at least relative to the rest of
the format) if the first attack only required [D] or
[CC] and if the second attack required [DCC] and had the
damage doing 90+30. In fact, even just changing that
damage split would have really improved the card. It is
bad when you compare it to what dominates the metagame,
being an inferior choice because there are overpowered
options. Yes, that is what I was building to; its hard
to have a good-but-balanced Darkness-Type attacker
compete with something as good as Yveltal-EX (let
alone the rest of the competitive metagame). Most of
what can help it also ends up hurting it, leaving it as
something to play when you want something mostly but not
totally different.
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