aroramage |
Man, Hydreigon has always been a beast. He went
straight to the OU tier back in Gen V as one of the
coolest and strongest Dragons ever! And then just like
that, he dropped to UU here in Gen VI. The answer to why
is plain to see: Fairies came in, to which Hydreigon has
the unfortunate dubious 4x weakness to their attacks,
being Dragon/Dark. Still, he's one of the coolest
Pokemon I know of and definitely one of my favorites.
Fortunately for him, Fairies haven't been terribly
prominent as of late in the TCG, but he's usually been
reduced to a supporter because of his Abilities. Sure,
there have been a couple Hydreigon without Abilities,
but you haven't seen them over in competitive play, have
you? This one's Ability is reminiscent of his Ability
from Dragons Exalted and Legendary Treasures, only
instead of moving Dark Energy already on the field
around with Dark Trance, you now get the option to put
Dark Energy from your discard pile straight onto your
Active Pokemon with Dark Impulse!
When you see Hydreigon's Crazy Headbutt, you can see
what they were going for; you'd power up Hydreigon like
mad to 4 Energy (1 Psychic and 1 Dark then whatever else
you want) and then keep smashing with Crazy Headbutt for
an unboosted 130 and then discard an Energy from him -
usually a Dark Energy so you can just reattach it to him
again. The scary thing is is that this could work, since
all you need after that is some Muscle Band and HTLBank
to allow him to OHKO most Pokemon-EX!
The biggest problem Hydreigon has though: he's remained
a Stage 2 for all this time. If this were an EX, he'd be
pretty powerful, but you have to set-up to get to him,
and while his attack means he's crazy powerful, I get
the feeling an Ability like his would be better suited
to Bench-sitting - you know, where most Pokemon that end
up as "Energy Retrievers" end up. That's the other thing
though, Hydreigon is a Stage 2 Dark Patch that works
only on the Active Pokemon - he's a lot of effort if all
you're using him for is his Ability, whereas most other
"Energy Retrievers" are Stage 1s.
Hydreigon has promise though - they just really need to
get around to making an EX version of him! I wonder when
that'll be...
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (good Ability and good attack, but just a
lot of effort to put into getting him there)
Expanded: 2/5 (if you're running him for the Ability,
then you're not using Dark Patch for some reason)
Limited: 4/5 (pretty powerful here, and with a constant
130 damage output and a Fairy weakness, he's pretty good
- not too many Fairies here!)
Arora Notealus: I know it's kind of an unspoken policy
to design cards of the same Type the same exact way in
terms of Weakness/Resistance (looking at you, Fire,
Electric, old Dragons, new Dragons...), but when you've
got someone like Hydreigon here, you could at least
consider throwing on a Resistance based on his other
Type! Weak to Fairy sure, but why not Resistant to
Psychic? It's flavorful AND accounts for dual-Typing.
That's why Poison-types early on used to be in Grass -
most Grass types were also Poison, so they were weak to
Psychic!!
Next Time: If you chill it, it's like a fridge, but if
you heat it up, it's more like an oven!
And a Happy MLK Day to you all!
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