|
Welcome to our
second “Honorable Mention” for our Top 10 list of 2014.
This is a card that either made at least one reviewer’s
personal Top 10 list, but not the collective effort and
also hadn’t been reviewed too recently (if the second
part sounds unfair, remember the first part). I’ve
never been one to write all or even most of my CotDs
back-to-back (unless I’m already past deadline and
trying to play catch-up); yesterday we were coming off
the weekend meaning I had a bit more time to write, so
it just seems to make sense to schedule to
easier-to-review cards for Tuesday and Thursday,
creating a buffer zone around Wednesday and before
Friday. That is why today we look at Korrina, a
card that finished in fourth place for our Top 10 of
XY: Furious Fists and was last reviewed
September 2, 2014.
In a format
that (unfortunately) is far too dependent on Supporters
for a deck’s primary motive power, with Items still
managing to clock in before Pokémon effects, Korrina
was eagerly anticipated because we also are used to
ridiculously powerful Supporters. I will resist
my usual lecture (I hope by now it seems well reasoned
enough not to be merely a rant), but in short we are
used to some of the most powerful Supporters ever
released in terms of raw draw power, for better or worse
we don’t have enough for your deck to reliably run on
nothing else. Thankfully we haven’t eclipsed some of
the highlights of Supporter based search but we’ve come
close, and today’s card is an example of that; one
Supporter that searches out two cards. The first card
must be a Fighting-Type Pokémon and the second an Item,
but in terms of plays that is about two-thirds of what
most decks need: a beatstick and a trick to put it over
the opponent’s beatstick.
Breadth: Korrina can function in any
deck technically, though burning your Supporter just to
see your deck’s current contents and then shuffle is
pretty desperate. Fighting-Types tend to have low
Energy costs and while (again, thankfully) we don’t have
something nasty that can easily use any Energy-Type for
attacking, many just need a Rainbow Energy or
even a clutch basic Fighting Energy to work.
Still a ways from universal, but few decks lack Items;
Korrina can function as a substandard Skyla
if it fails to snag a Pokémon and already players are
speculating that could be the case if no significantly
impressive Supporters show up in the next few sets
before rotation. Yes, already speculating about the
2015 rotation! Korrina is universal in
competitive Fighting-Type decks because when you get
both searches, often in high counts. Besides obviously
being a poor choice for non-Fighting decks, looking at
it from other decks needing to react to Fighting decks
running it, it just streamlined the process of quickly
getting a specific Fighting-Type Pokémon and Item into
hand; raw draw power plus Item based search coupled
Skyla usage on turns when one’s hand was still flush
meant we were already used to dealing with a slightly
less efficient version of this in general.
Depth: Again, Korrina refined what was
already present for the most part. Skyla can get
Supporters or Stadiums but well… options. If you can
spare a slot or two for VS Seeker (and before
that, Random Receiver) you can fake getting a
Supporter pretty well. Getting a Stadium is a nice
trick, but not one most decks will use frequently, so
Skyla really softened the impact Korrina when
it comes to depth. Korrina still made a big
difference, greatly improving reliability for some
standard combos Fighting-Type decks favor, but for the
most part it was already present. The mostly or
mono-Fighting-Type deck can thank Korrina for
being a serious presence… well that and the many awesome
Fighting-Types plus Fighting Weakness being present on
most Colorless-, Darkness- and Lightning-Type Pokémon.
Time: XY: Furious Fists didn’t become
tournament legal until September 3rd of 2014, so
Korrina missed out on over half of the year. With
all the Fighting-Type support that set contained and
Fighting-Types already a serious presence on the
competitive scene, so Korrina almost instantly
saw a lot of play. By the end of the year (and with
XY: Phantom Forces) Korrina was still seeing
a good deal of competitive play, but the metagame had
some new toys to work with (some of which resulted in
decks that so far haven’t gone away), diluting the
playing field some more. So Korrina basically
got three months of being awesome and two of being
“...another deck specific good Supporter.”
Ratings
Standard: 3.65/5 - This is quarter a point lower
than the first time I scored Korrina; she isn’t
less useful in Fighting-Type decks and they haven’t
vanished from the face of the metagame, but its still a
specialization in a format where even if I feel like
most decks play the same, there are more viable decks
being played. In a mostly or mono-Fighting-Type deck,
this is still a staple and VS Seeker is a nice
fallback for when you realize next turn you’ve only got
a Supporter if you get it on your draw for the turn.
Expanded: 3.75/5 - As above but there are more
options for Items and for decks to run; a smaller bonus
than I gave last time because once again, the effects
are being diluted.
Limited: 4.95/5 - This card wasn’t reprinted in
another set so it is just as last time: there
is a just plausible enough chance you won’t have a
Fighting-Type or Item worth running in your deck, but if
I wasn’t one for such details I could have simply said
it was a “must run”.
Summary: Korrina really is a great card
but I remember now why I left it off of my own list.
She missed out on almost three full quarters of the
year for Organized Play and is essentially the
Fighting-Type’s (slightly) improved Skyla. Throw
in that with only 10 slots I wanted to represent the
year and game as fully as I could, and it felt like the
list didn’t need both Korrina and
Strong Energy, so I went with the latter. Should I
have done that? I’ll let you decide as I am uncertain
myself.
|
