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Today we look at Golbat (XY: Phantom Forces
32/119). We haven’t looked at a Golbat…
technically ever: we did review Dark Golbat (EX:
Team Rocket Returns 34/109) which you can look at
here
if you feel like it, but it isn’t relevant to this
review.
So what makes this Golbat special? Its a
Psychic-Type, a mild bonus for tapping Psychic-Type
support (as we’ll see, Weakness/Resistance won’t matter
much). Being an Evolving Stage 1 is possibly the least
useful Stage in the game; Rare Candy makes it
almost superfluous. 70 HP isn’t the worst we’ve seen on
an Evolving Stage 1, but is probably just within easy
OHKO range though this makes the Lightning-Type less of
a concern (somewhat important because Yveltal-EX
makes exploiting it somewhat common). This and the
Resistance are nice bonuses due to this actually being a
Poison/Flying hybrid. Golbat enjoys Fighting
Resistance; not a major edge but handy and joined by a
perfect free Retreat Cost… but none of this makes it
worth running (and some of encourages avoiding it). Golbat
has an Ability and an attack. Sneaky Bite is an Ability
that triggers when you Evolve one of your Pokémon into
Golbat: it allows you to place two damage
counters on the Defending Pokémon of your choice.
Handy, but still not worth running the card. The
attack is Swoop Across for [C], good for 10 damage to
each of your opponent’s Pokémon: as there are cards that
block damage to Benched Pokémon, placing damage counters
may have been better. Not by much though, and in the
end its a solid attack but still doesn’t tip the balance
in favor of running Golbat.
Zubat
doesn’t help; all three Standard and Expanded legal
options have the same Type, Weakness and Resistance as
Golbat but on a Basic. BW: Plasma Storm
52/135 has 50 HP and Spiral Drain, an attack for [C]
that does 10 damage while healing 10 damage from
Zubat… that’s pretty poor as healing means little on
something this small, though at least its a reliable 10
damage for one of any Energy. BW: Plasma Storm
53/135 is has just 40 HP but with the Ability “Free
Flight” so that its Retreat Cost is zeroed out when it
has no Energy attached, and in terms of attacks it has
just Wing Attack for [PC], which only does 20 damage.
The final option is XY: Phantom Forces 31/119
which also has 50 HP and a single attack that costs [C];
this time it is Skill Dive which is good for 10 damage
to the opponent’s Pokémon of your choice, which is the
most useful of the three attacks, though the free
retreat is tempting and 50 isn’t much safer than 40.
Today’s Golbat has just one counterpart: BW:
Plasma Storm 54/135: it has 10 more HP but no
Ability and just one attack - Spiral Drain again - but
this time requiring [PC] and hitting for 20 damage while
healing 20. In short, no competition. So are any
Crobat worth using? Now we get into why you would
run this card. Crobat (BW: Plasma Storm
55/135; Black Star Promo BW51), a.k.a. Crobat
[Plasma] is the first candidate. It has the same Type,
Weakness, Resistance and Retreat as today’s Golbat,
though it sports almost twice as much HP (130). Its
Night Sight Ability allows you to draw a card when you
use it, once per turn (though you can use more than one
copy of Night Sight per turn). Its attack requires
[PCC]; Ultra-Toxic Fang does 40 points of damage and
afflicts the Defending Pokémon with quadruple Poison.
The extra draw is nice and placing four damage counters
(six with Virbank City Gym!) sounds scary but it
hasn’t ever proven strong enough. Even before we got
Team Plasma counters, the Team Plasma support wasn’t
enough to save it. The other Crobat is XY:
Phantom Forces 33/119 and we’ll be reviewing it
tomorrow, so I’ll be brief. The differences between it
and Crobat [Plasma] are status as a Team Plasma
Pokémon, a different Ability and different attack. Its
Ability is Surprise Bite, the same as Sneaky Bite but
for three damage counters instead of two. It also has
Skill Dice for [C], but this version hits for 30 points
of damage. This is the one that actually has a
functional deck (possibly more than one) that managed to
win two different City Championships… which isn’t that
many given how many total there are, but is still worth
something.
The Sneaky Bite/Surprise Bite combo is pretty obvious,
and the rest of the deck I’ll get into tomorrow, save
I’ll add that if you are attacking with Crobat,
it is tempting to suffer Celebi-EX (or hope that
the deck won’t be killed off before or when Shrine of
Memories becomes legal) so that you can use Swoop
Across because often you’re better off with the spread
than the single hit for 30. If you are attacking with
Golbat itself or going the Celebi-EX
route, you can use Dimension Valley so that the
entire line has “free” attacks.
Ratings
Note:
Deck specific ratings would be misleading since its
pretty clutch for Sneaky Bite/Surprise Bite decks.
Standard:
3/5 - You technically can try to run the deck without it
but its the obvious version to use. It does a decent
job, but it doesn’t seem like quite enough.
Expanded:
3.25/5 - As above, but gaining back tricks and treats
like Devolution Spray and Level Ball.
Limited:
4.9/5 - As long as you can’t run something like a +39
deck, it should be easy to add into decks and hitting
the Bench is amazing here and you can use the card with
any Energy.
Summary:
I really like Swoop Across, but I often harp about how
lower Stages need to be made better. Well, Golbat
isn’t there but it is a lot closer than most. It could
be a bit more durable and have a bit more potent of an
Ability and Attack, and if it did Crobat decks
might be one of the best… maybe a little too good. The
reality is that while it doesn’t seem like much, what
Golbat can do can add up in the right deck.
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