aroramage |
You know what's even more dangerous than a Pokemon
like Joltik who can deal up to 220 damage with just
enough Pokemon in the discard pile all for the price of
2 Energy? A Pokemon that can tag along with Joltik and
change the Weakness of an opposing Pokemon to be weak to
that attack and have it deal up to 440 damage! And
that's why we're here looking at Pachirisu!
Pachirisu's most notable attack is his Trick Sticker,
which sticks an Electric symbol onto your opponent's
Pokemon's Weakness for 10 damage. Making your opponent's
Pokemon weak to Electricity will definitely up the ante
in an Electric Deck or a Night March deck focusing on
Joltik (who will be able to KO many things much more
easily as a result), and this change lasts until the end
of your next turn just to make it matter. The big
problems that come up are that it's a 2-turn process for
a OHKO, and chances are that unless you're hitting hard
and fast or KOing EXs, this isn't going to be ultimately
profitable in the long run, seeing as you're almost
guaranteed to lose 2 Prizes (Pachirisu and Joltik) in a
Night March deck for only 1-2 Prizes - there are
probably better sturdier partners to work with on that
end at least.
Pachi isn't much better. All it does is tack onto a
2-for-20 attack the 50/50 chance to get 30 more damage.
You might think this is pretty good for Pachirisu, since
a previous Tick Sticker would make Pachi deal either 40
or 100 damage, but that's relying on Pachirisu being as
bulky as the one that helped win the World Championships
last year - which by the way wasn't that bulky, just
really surprisingly resilient.
The TCG is far less forgiving than the video games in
that sense - there's no reducing damage other than
Resistance, and last I checked there were very few
"Defender" effects at present that aren't Pokemon
attacks. So while Pachirisu here will be a lot of fun
for Electric decks to mess with their opponents on,
don't expect too much from him - he's only so much
electric squirrel!
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (purely a supportive Pokemon, and even
then there are probably better options)
Expanded: 2/5 (not really better or worse here, though
Eels are far higher for Electric-support)
Limited: 3/5 (be a fun trick for anyone who can pull it
off)
Arora Notealus: Of the Pika-clones, I always did like
Pachirisu. Just so cute and fluffy with that tail and
his expression and dawwwwww, LOOK AT HIM!!
Next Time: Less cute, more spook
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Otaku |
Welcome to our review on… Tuesday the 13th! Dun dun
duuuuuuuuuuun! Oh, you say that Tuesday the 13th isn’t
unlucky, Friday the 13th is? Well, some of the sequels
are pretty bad, but depending on how you like your
cards, today’s card may make you feel most unlucky.
Actually, regardless of whether the card is awesome,
awful or somewhere in between this cheesy bit probably
makes you feel really unfortunate.
Pachirisu
(XY: Phantom Forces 25/119) is a non-Evolving
Basic Pokémon with an interesting trick. Before that,
the fundamentals: it is a Lightning-Type (kind of nice
if it can bring the damage but otherwise nothing
special) with 70 HP (slightly low to adequate) with
Fighting Weakness (one of the worst) and Metal
Resistance (any is useful and Metal-Types did get a
boost from this set) with a single Energy Retreat Cost
(easy to pay, though “free” would have been greatly
appreciated). Its second attack is not likely to see
much use so I’ll also cover it right now: for [LC] you
score 20 points of damage with a coin flip that grants
another 30 (so total of 50) on a “heads”. Underpowered
by the current standard and the fact that its a 20+30
instead of 30+20 (so same final damage, but less riding
on the flip) just makes it feel a little worse to me.
On “heads”, the damage return is decent.
So what about that first attack? For [C] you can use
Trick Sticker to score 10 points of damage and
make the Defending Pokémon’s Weakness [L] until the end
of the turn. While Pachirisu on its own isn’t
doing much with that it can allow a better
Lightning-Type attacker to swoop in and take down
whatever you altered in a single blow… that is still a
2HKO since you had to attack it with Pachirisu
first. Plus I lack rulings about what can remove this
effect (for example, Benching the Defending Pokémon?)
some of the official (but not direct from Japan) rulings
went against how I read the card. For example when I
read the wording about the “amount of Weakness” not
changing, I think of older cards that could have
+10/20/30/40 for Weakness, or that had multiple Types
listed under Weakness, but the word from Ask The Rules
Team over on Pokegym.net (almost as good as it gets for
rulings) tells me I’m wrong and that it means if a card
has no Weakness, it won’t “gain” Lightning-Type
Weakness. Not a lot of Pokémon lack Weakness, but that
makes this card even weaker. I guess I just think too
much like math; I see the Type kind of like a variable,
so it could almost be α*2 and where α is whatever the
Weakness is and so for a card without Weakness, α=0. If
you’re wondering, I used α for the variable and an
asterisk (*) for the multiplication sign because “X” as
well as “x” are common variables but also common
multiplication signs. Yay learning.
So if you were wondering… no, I don’t have some awesome
new killer deck that uses this card. You could (and I
think should) have some fun with it, at least if you
already enjoy using a strong Lightning-Type attacker
that would benefit from the combo; something that goes
from 2HKOing through brute force to 2HKOing through the
combo. While it looks fun, it also doesn’t look
effective as the only way Pachirisu survives is
if something else is more important to KO.
Ratings
Standard:
1.5/5
Expanded:
1.75/5
Limited:
2.5/5
Summary:
A novel trick but not effective enough to be worth it in
competitive play, even if all the rulings were to be in
its favor, Pachirisu seems like something to
enjoy in decks that are focused on fun, or perhaps if
you get some nice supporting pulls at a Limited event.
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