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This week we are going to look at some of the recent
Black Star promos. Today we look at Shiftry (XY
Black Star Promos XY23). It is a Grass-Type which
right now (and likely going into the next set) is
actually a good thing; Grass-Type Weakness will likely
remain important to exploit due to some big name cards
being Grass Weak, let alone current things like
Seismitoad-EX. Otherwise the Type support (direct
and indirect) is okay and Grass Resistance is no longer
a “thing”. The other obvious thing is that Shiftry
is a Stage 2, and that doesn’t look to be getting
significantly better next set; I’ll be happy if I’m
wrong but of the few cards I’ve heard people hyping as
boosting Stage 2 Pokémon from the next set, I think they
are general boosts that even if they favor Evolutions,
are unlikely to narrow the gap.
140 HP isn’t great but its solid, towards the upper end
of what we’ve seen printed on legal-to-play Stage 2
Pokémon. You’ll probably going to survive a hit. Fire
Weakness nullifies that statement; Fire-Types tend to
hit hard and (somewhat fast) but with a lot of
additional costs (like discarding Energy) as such
Weakness is likely to merely save you some resources
though sometimes it is the difference between a OHKO and
a 2HKO. No Resistance is the worst Resistance but it
also is so common it isn’t a mark against the card. A
Retreat Cost of [CC] is low enough you will probably
have the Energy to discard attached, with recovering
from the decline in resources being unpleasant but
manageable. Something to lower the cost or bypass
manually retreating is handy but not essential… at least
if you absolutely must fail to run even a single card
like Switch (I prefer having at least one such
card in my decks).
Shiftry
has two attacks; the first is Whisk Away with a cost of
[G] and base damage of 30. The effect is interesting;
see your opponent’s hand and if there are any Pokémon
there you can shuffle it back into your opponent’s deck
while doing an extra 30 points of damage. 60 for one is
great. Sending a Pokémon from your opponent’s hand back
to the deck is usually good. Making the former
dependent on the latter is pretty limiting as decks
often don’t run a lot of Pokémon. The slight upside is
that a player only can only have six Pokémon in play at
a time and Evolving will also take your opponent a turn
(or two) as well and not just yourself, improving your
odds of catching something even when your opponent would
like to avoid taking the extra damage. For [GCC]
Shiftry can use Spirit Dance for 60 damage and two
coin flips; each flip is good for another 30 damage.
This means out of four possible results, one is a flat
60 damage, two are 90 and the last is 120, with 90 being
the mean, the median and the mode. If the rest of the
card were awesome, this would be serviceable as it is 90
points of damage on average but presumably this is the
“main course” so you’ll need to hope you’re fortunate
with your flips, run Victini (latest printing
BW: Legendary Treasures 23/113) which adds an
Ability to a deck that doesn’t already need them or
Trick Coin, which precludes you running another
Tool. So overall its disappointing.
Only two Seedot legal for Expanded and just one
for Standard alone: BW: Next Destinies 2/99 and
XY: Flashfire 5/106 (the latter obviously being
the one still Standard legal). Both are Basic
Grass-Type Pokémon with Fire Weakness, a single Energy
Retreat Cost and no Ability. BW: Next Destinies
2/99 has 40 HP, Water Resistance and for [C] can use
Trip Over to hit for 10 damage (plus 10 more with a
successful coin toss). XY: Flashfire 5/106 lacks
any Resistance but has 10 more HP and for [C] can use
Call For Family to Bench a Pokémon from your deck. Use
XY: Flashfire 5/106. For Nuzleaf there
are again two options Expanded options - BW: Next
Destinies 2/99 and XY: Flashfire 5/106 - with
the latter being the only choice for Standard. Both are
Stage 1 Pokémon with 80 HP, single Energy Retreat Costs
and no Abilities. BW: Next Destinies 2/99 is a
Darkness-Type with Fighting Weakness, Psychic Resistance
and the Surprise Punch attack, which requires [DC] and
does 30 damage while moving an Energy from the Defending
Pokémon to one of the opponent’s Benched Pokémon. XY:
Flashfire 5/106 is a Grass-Type with Fire Weakness,
no Resistance and two attacks: for [C] you can use Razor
Leaf for 20 and for [GCC] can use Cut for 40 points of
damage. Use whichever one you prefer and of course,
Rare Candy when Items aren’t being locked down, as
this Shiftry can attack for just one Energy.
There are actually two other Shiftry as well:
BW: Next Destinies 3/99 and XY: Flashfire
6/106. Both are Stage 2 Pokémon with one Ability and
one attack. BW: Next Destinies 2/99 is a
Darkness-Type with 130 HP, Fighting Weakness, Psychic
Resistance, a single Energy Retreat Cost, the Ability
“Giant Fan” and the attack “Whirlwind” for [DDC]. The
Ability only triggers when Shiftry is played from
hand to Evolve one of your Pokémon and it also requires
a successful coin flip; if “tails” it fails and does
nothing while if “heads” you get to select one of your
opponent’s Pokémon and you can shuffle said selection
and all cards attached to it back into your opponent’s
deck. This can be anywhere from game winning to
beneficial to your opponent, though in case of the
latter just remember that its an optional effect so long
as you don’t start the process before realizing it. The
attack simply does 60 points of damage while forcing
your opponent to promote a new Pokémon to the Active
position (your opponent chooses which one); pretty
overpriced/underpowered.
XY: Flashfire
5/106 is a Grass-Type with 140 HP, Fire Weakness, no
Resistance, a Retreat Cost of [CC], the Ability Leaf
Draw and the attack Deranged Dance for [GCC]. The
Ability allows you to discard a [G] Energy from hand,
once per turn (though if you have a second, third or
fourth copy of this Shiftry in play you can use
their copies of the Ability once each turn as well).
Deranged Dance does 20 damage times the number of
Benched Pokémon in play (for both players), so a range
of zero to 200. Had high hopes when I first saw it and
can read the original CotD for it
here.
For the curious, the injured pet I mention (and was
trying to raise funds for) surprised us (and the vet) by
bouncing back (almost literally) from his severe
injuries; we raised enough funds to cover its vet bills
that did accrue but it didn’t have to undergo surgery of
any kind. He does sit a bit odd but is large and in
charge of many of the other cats… and likes to avoid us
because it didn’t enjoy the vet visits or medication it
had to take. Oh the card? Yeah it didn’t really go
anywhere; it did come out in a set beefing up Fire-Types
and the next set gave us Seismitoad-EX and thus
easy Item lock that makes it even harder to run a Stage
2 deck. As for specifics, you can’t rely on the Ability
too much without running a lot of Grass Energy or
Items to get said Energy into hand, not saving you a lot
of space or majorly speeding up your set-up.
So what does all this mean for today’s Shiftry?
The good news is it turns out the other options aren’t
much competition, but neither are they much support. No
“fun” decks really pop into my head for the card and
odds are if you could find a build that made this
version competitive, it would do even better with the
version from XY: Flashfire.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5 - Not terrible, but not high functioning even if
you get it working.
Expanded:
1.75/5 - I might be oversimplifying but I’m not seeing a
lot to convince me that Expanded is adding anything
major to it.
Limited:
N/A - If it were legal it’d be a great pull, though
you’d need to get at least a 1-1-1 line as well as have
room for at least a few Grass Energy.
Summary:
Not as much wasted potential as the other Stage 2 we
looked at this week, this one has an interesting idea
with its first attack but is let down by lacking a
worthwhile Ability (or any positive Ability) or better
“big” attack. If you insist on doing it, just do it
because you think it looks fun.
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