aroramage |
Ahhh, Goodra. Such a fun Pokemon in general. After
evolving from blob to slug-blob to fully evolved
dragon-blob, Goodra has just been a bundle of fun! So
it's the saddest thing that the Goodra cards that have
been released - that would be this one and the one from
Flashfire - haven't seen widespread usage. Welcome to
the curse of the Stage 2.
Both are similar in that they've each got a useful
Ability and a decent attack. With this Goodra, that
attack is Dragon Pulse, resembling the earliest of
Dragon-types here in the TCG (that is to say, the ones
from Dragons Exalted) by milling off the top card of
your deck. Considering it's a 4-for-130 strike, that's
not too bad, and the weakness to Fairy has yet to be
capitalized on. Granted, Dragon-types haven't been
wildly supported since Dragons Exalted, and even then
that was more introductory and adding in Blend Energies.
Still, it's not a bad attack, so it's nice to know if
Goodra needed to be placed upfront he could take down a
smaller EX after a Muscle Band and some HTLBank.
...except there's one small thing about that. I say
Muscle Band, but Muscle Band is a Tool, and this Goodra
has the distinctly notorious "Garbodor"-esque Ability,
Slip Trip. Instead of negating other Abilities though,
this one prevents Tools from being played by either
player. This may seem like a good defense against those
Team Flare Tools and opposing Muscle Bands, as well as
keeping an eye on things like Float Stone, but the fact
remains: this affects your Tools too. In other words,
you'll have to play down all your Tools first - or else
not run Tools to begin with - if you wanna take
advantage of this Ability.
Sadly though, that's not going to be enough. Because
Goodra is a Stage 2, it's going to take time to 1) get
Goomy on the Bench, 2) get Rare Candy in your hand, and
3) also get Goodra in your hand before you can evolve
him when 4) it's not your first turn or 5) you didn't
just play Goomy. This is a 2-turn 3-card play minimum,
and by the time you're able to get all of that together,
your opponent will have probably played all the Tools he
needs down on whoever needs them - not to mention the
KOs that have happened in the meantime!
Stick with the Flashfire Goodra. At least he can
recover!
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (too slow at what he does, but at least
he's got a decent attack)
Expanded: 2/5 (more Tools will not change how slow it
takes to get Goodra out)
Limited: 4/5 (there's a great variety of Tools here, so
feel free to force your opponent to end their turn with
no Spirit Links to save them! At least that attack is
going to dominate otherwise)
Arora Notealus: Compared to the Flashfire version, this
artwork is SO COOL!! Just a shame about the rest of him
though. He coulda been a contendah!
Weekend Thought: What was the biggest surprise card of
this week? Or was there a card that took you by surprise
this week? If there wasn't, what's a card that you've
seen seemingly come out of nowhere?
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Otaku |
We close out the week with Goodra (XY: Phantom Forces
77/119). This is a Dragon-Type which isn’t honestly
looking so hot right now. While nothing is Dragon
Resistant, nothing Dragon Weak has been printed in the
XY-sets and as I’ve said before, exploiting damage
doubling Weakness for massive damage is usually far more
significant (and easier) than making use of the -20
damage one gets from Resistance… which means not having
to worry about Resistance is nice but nothing major.
Dragon-Type support also hasn’t happened since the
first full set to contain Dragons, BW: Dragons
Exalted: Altaria (BW: Dragons Exalted
84/124; BW Blackstar Promos BW48; BW:
Legendary Treasures 92/113) and Gabite (BW:
Dragons Exalted 89/124). The latter isn’t even
Standard legal.
Goodra is a Stage 2 Pokémon, which means it will need all the help it can
get; the short version is that the Pokémon that Stage 2
Pokémon Evolve from tend to be useless filler (the
previously mentioned Gabite is an exception, but
as we aren’t reviewing a Garchomp, that doesn’t
help Goodra in this capacity). As such the
weight of justifying needing three cards to get a single
Pokémon into play and going through two turns of
Evolving (or one if Rare Candy is used all rests
on that final form. We’ll cover Goomy and
Sliggoo options later, but they are still just
stepping stones to Goodra so it will have to be
nearly (or flat out) overpowered to warrant dealing with
these issues which are exacerbated by the pace of the
format and general metagame. From the obvious like how
Seismitoad-EX and its Quaking Punch threatens to
block Rare Candy to the less obvious like how
that also means any non-Supporter search is gone to the
somewhat subtle like how the pace of the game means you
have to take Prizes ASAP to stay on pace and how the
best draw supporters don’t lend themselves to building
up a hand but reward running cards you can play down
quickly in a single turn.
Getting down off that soapbox, I feel I should mention that while I
originally chose this week’s cards, this one is an
exception, a replacement: no I didn’t choose a Stage 2
so that I could rant about Stage 2 Pokémon. Moving onto
to Hit Points, Goodra sports 140 which often
survives a hit but it is not guaranteed (no HP score
is); the meaningful difference is that all but “raw
power” attackers will need a mostly complete set-up or
to exploit Weakness, which actually isn’t bad right now.
Speaking of Weakness, Fairy Weakness which can be a
problem against Fairy Transfer decks but not much else;
at least in my (admittedly limited) experience Fairy
Types tend to just show up (and prove successful) in
that lone deck. Lack of Resistance is common and so is
nothing to penalize the card for; hence my usual refrain
of it being a “missed opportunity”. The Retreat Cost of
[CCC] is chunky and you’ll need something to get around
it or else to resign yourself to Goodra staying
Active. Slight bonus in Expanded is that it is a legal
Heavy Ball target.
Goodra does sport an Ability “Slip Trip” which sounds kind of fun and is
a good sign. The Ability is an always on effect
blocking both players from attaching Pokémon Tools.
Pokémon Tools are valuable and this Ability, once in
effect, will prevent the infamous Garbodor (BW:
Dragons Exalted
54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze 119/116; BW:
Legendary Treasures 68/113) from shutting off
Abilities. Why? Unless you use another method of
shutting down Slip Trip, as long as it Activates when
Garbodor doesn’t have a Pokémon Tool attached, your
opponent needs to somehow shut down Slip Trip in order
to attach to trigger Garbotoxin. An option would be
Wobbuffet (XY: Phantom Forces 36/119), though
I can’t see such decks running Wobbuffet only for
that reason. The established Seismitoad-EX/Garbodor
deck can’t do anything if you get Slip Trip going first,
but if an Item gets attached when Slip Trip isn’t in
effect, Quaking Punch makes it hard to get rid of a Tool
so that Garbotoxin shuts off and Slip Trip can kick in.
The attack requires [WYCC] and hits for 130 points of
damage and since its Dragon Pulse, it has its usual
effect of discarding the top card from your own deck.
Better than discarding even more cards and even under
specific circumstances (need Supporter, next card is not
Supporter, card after that is Supporter) useful, but
sometimes you discard what you really need (same
situation I just described except top card is that
Supporter and the next card is something you absolutely
don’t need) and plenty of less (but still) bad results.
For four Energy I want at least 100 points of damage,
so at a glance it isn’t two bad but we’ve got not only
two specific Energy requirements in the attack, but they
are two different and somewhat oddly paired types… so
then adding in the self mill, Goodra “earned”
more than 130 damage by my accounting.
Goomy
has two options: XY: Flashfire 72/106 and XY:
Phantom Forces 75/119… except I finally looked and
them and realized the latter is just a reprint with
different art of the former. So your one option for
Goomy is a Basic Dragon-Type with 50 HP, Fairy
Weakness, no Resistance and two attacks: for [C] you can
use Gooey to heal 10 damage and for [WY] you can use
Tackle for 20. As stated earlier, bland filler except
for the irritating Energy cost on Tackle. Sliggoo
also only has two printings of the same card available:
XY: Flashfire 73/106 and XY: Phantom Forces
75/119. This Stage 1 Dragon-Type has 80 HP with the
same Fairy Weakness, lack of Resistance and Retreat Cost
of [CCC] of Goodra. It has two attacks like
Goomy though; Gooey again though this time for [C]
it heals 30 while for [WYC] it can use Gentle Slap for a
plain 40 damage. There is one other Goodra even
though its lower Stages faked us out: XY: Flashfire
sports 10 more HP than today’s card with a different
attack and Ability. Its Gooey Regeneration Ability
almost gives you a built in Super Potion, though
not quite; the good news is you heal 60 damage and can
use it more than once per turn but the Energy
discard is up front so if you’ve not no Energy attached,
you can’t heal for free. The Heavy Whip attack requires
[WYC] and does a solid 80 with a coin flip for an
additional 40. You can see our previous review of it
here,
though as its from last July much has changed. The
short version is that I’d score it lower than the
optimistic 2.5/5 I gave it then for Standard play.
So what kind of prospects does Goodra have?
Well… better than I assumed when I began the review, to
be honest. I am almost certain it doesn’t do enough to
warrant the struggle of running it, but I think you
might be able to make a functional deck out of it. As
mentioned in the review of its predecessor, Milotic
XY: Flashfire 23/106) can provide needed Energy
acceleration (though you might also want Double
Colorless Energy as it can also be of use). You’ll
then need to try to reliably get Goodra out and
powered up and then through use of either an Altaria
(the Ability version referenced earlier) and/or
Hypnotoxic Laser (probably with Virbank City Gym)
to hit OHKO status for most targets. Two Stage 1
Pokémon and a Stage 2 is incredibly resource intense so
while you can try to run all the damage boosting tricks,
odds are you’ll have to choose between Fight Song or
Hypnotoxic Laser/Virbank. The reward though
is Goodra not having to worry about its back-up
having its Abilities shut off except by Wobbuffet
or possibly something more obscure that I’ve missed.
This complex set-up means the deck should be prone to
misfiring (failing to remotely set-up with enough speed,
if at all) and also means that you’re not actually
pulling ahead in Prizes any time you use Energy Grace
(the Ability on Milotic): that still costs a
Prize after all. If you then OHKO a Pokémon-EX, you’re
good. If you don’t, expect to fall behind. This
intense set-up also could be used with other cards,
either accepting Abilities could be cut off and to be
fair, if you max out Startling Megaphone you have
good odds of restoring your Abilities and then going for
a big hit often enough to still win, and you might find
a suitable attacker that is not a Stage 2. You
probably could find something that doesn’t need
Milotic either… possibly both. That is only if you
restrict yourself to making use of something less
played; obviously plenty of less complicated decks,
including proven ones that are likely far stronger you
could stick with. Still, it is nice to have the option.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5 - Even if we had a functional build for this, I
expect it would be just that: functional, something that
can work barring abnormally bad luck or competitively
built opposing decks. Against an established deck, it
will mostly be luck if you don’t get outpaced and
destroyed.
Expanded:
1.8/5 - Slight bonus for additional search options,
though unfortunately the deck idea I had for it would
require something other than Heavy Ball and
Level Ball as the Milotic with Energy Grace
has 100 HP and a Retreat Cost of two.
Limited:
4/5 - The Energy requirements are still a bit cumbersome
here and the Ability often useless, but everything else
becomes a lot better. It is still a Stage 2 line, so
getting it into play before someone has already won can
be quite a challenge.
Summary:
Goodra honestly turned out better than I
expected, even taking into account that when I initially
wrote this review I had forgotten that Slip Trip applied
to both players, not just your opponent. At least I
could come up with a half-baked deck idea for it. If it
hit harder without buffs, it might have made for a
little more legit deck, but odds are the filler Evolving
Stages in the current, fast paced format would still
have been too much for it.
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