aroramage |
And now for today's Togekiss, one
that starts off looking rather tame with its 3-for-60
vanilla Fairy Wind attack. Seems a bit of a waste
honestly, especially given that he's got a lot of
promise with the Delta Evolution Trait - you know, the
one that makes M Rayquaza-EX (Colorless) a bit OP?
Still, that shouldn't keep you from looking at Togekiss
with some promise, because he's still got a fair bit!
I'm referring of course to the
Ability on him, Serene Grace. Now Serene Grace is
interesting, as it acts as an Energy accelerator of a
different kind. When you play Togekiss to evolve a
Pokemon, you get to look at the top 8 cards of your deck
and attach any Energy among them to any of your Pokemon
in any way you'd like! The best part is that the rest
will go back into your deck, which saves you from having
to worry about Lysandre's Banned Card being...well,
banned.
You are a bit limited in your
selection of Energy though, seeing as it's gotta be
basic Energy. The other thing to worry about is what you
draw before Togekiss gets played. Too early in the game,
and your chances of getting Energy may be dwarfed by
your Trainer cards. Too late, and you may have already
drawn all the Energy you need. There's a certain timing
that increases the probability of you having an optimal
amount of Energy in your top 8 cards, but to be honest,
you probably won't need that sort of thing when you've
got Supporters to draw the Energy anyway.
Still, Togekiss' way of attaching
Energy that you draw by his Ability makes him a more
optimal choice than just drawing the cards and then
gradually attaching them. If your deck needs an
accelerator for Energy, consider Togekiss as an option,
but if you've already got Bronzong, Reshiram, or anyone
like that, it's better to pass on Togekiss.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (a decent
acceleration option with the right timing)
Expanded: 2/5 (same here)
Limited: 4/5 (powering up all of
your guys quickly and easily is fantastic here!)
Arora Notealus: I'd like to take a
moment here in my normally goofy "Notealus" to say some
words about a man that passed away yesterday. Satoru
Iwata was probably one of the most iconic figures in
Nintendo's history, alongside Shigeru Miyamoto, Eiji
Aonuma, and Masahiro Sakurai. He developed games early
on and eventually became the president and CEO of
Nintendo. He saw some of its greatest triumphs and most
devastating losses, and now we sit here finding
ourselves with a devastating loss of our own. It's going
to be difficult for anyone to follow in those footsteps
that Iwata put down before him, but I sincerely hope
that there will be someone worthy of the task who will
rise up and help Nintendo and the rest of the gaming
community in moving forward after the loss of our dear
Iwata. Someone who can make us smile like he did, who
will innovate gaming the way he did - someone who will
make us proud of Nintendo, like he did.
Rest in peace, Satoru.
Next Time: Mining deep into the
earth, we find something very curious...
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Otaku |
Our second selection for the week is again Togekiss,
but this time it is XY: Roaring Skies 46/108.
instead of yesterday’s XY: Roaring Skies 45/108.
Prepare for a lot of deja vu. Though it hits all
XY-era Dragon-Types for Weakness, faces no Resistance
and enjoys some solid support, the Fairy-Type isn’t one
of the better ones. It isn’t one of the worse ones
either; it is probably another “middle” example. It
doesn’t help that cards like Fairy Garden,
Aromatisse, Slurpuff (XY: Phantom Forces
69/113) and Xerneas (XY 96/146, XY:
Black Star Promos XY05) can all work off-Type so
long as the Pokémon in question can make use of a source
of [Y] Energy (which would include [C] costs as well as
others paid with Prism Energy or Rainbow
Energy)... except Slurpuff which doesn’t care
at all what it works with, having earned notoriety
backing up Seismitoad-EX. With all of this, the
fact that you mostly see the Fairy-Type in the form of
Fairy Transfer decks tells you it has potential, but so
far isn’t really living up to it. Well, that or the top
Types are just too good… in fact just assume it is
both. Stage 2 Pokémon do see competitive play, but
usually with tricks to get them into play faster and/or
for fewer resources, in supporting roles or both in
supporting roles faster and/or with a shortcut. So it
is less that Stage 2 cards are in good shape and more
some examples are so awesome that they compensate for
the current imbalance between how the game is paced and
how the Evolution rules work (for the record, I favor
fixing the pacing instead of trying yet again to tweak
or ignore the Evolution rules).
The 130 HP is pretty borderline in terms of durability -
I’m not trying to be inconsistent when in some reviews I
state it is more likely to survive a hit than not: if
you’ve been active anytime during the last few years,
you are already familiar with how decks that don’t focus
on damage output still might have a back-up plan to
still score the OHKO while those that do focus on OHKOs
still sometimes whiff on their set-up, and there are a
few decks in between where you might be a Muscle Band
away from being OHKOed. As such, it isn’t borderline in
terms of quality - it is at least a little too low
though it isn’t especially bad. No Weakness is good,
but the Metal-Type Weakness seen on all Fairy-Types is
currently problematic, though not the absolute worst one
to have. The short version is that both on their own
and supporting some of the bigger names in the format,
Metal has made a comeback so unless it proves short
lived, that means you’ll have more match-ups where
Togekiss is an easy OHKO. A bit bittersweet is that
with its HP, the Weakness might not matter as often
because it would be OHKOed regardless. The Darkness
Resistance looks handy, but remember that Resistance is
far less beneficial than Weakness is detrimental. The
single Energy to retreat is very good; even without a
Fairy Garden in play Togekiss is easy to
retreat.
Togekiss
sports both an Ancient Trait and an
Ability! “Δ Evolution“ helps it to speed its way onto
the field; you can play this Togekiss to Evolve
one of your in play Pokémon on the first turn said
Pokémon is in play, even if it is your very first turn
of the game. This only works from hand (so no
helping Evosoda) and can’t be combined with
another effect like Rare Candy. You can use on a
Togetic you played via Evosoda or Wally;
the latter means a T1 Togekiss is possible, just
difficult, resource intensive and still not reliable.
Why would you want to even try though? “Serene Grace”
is this card’s Ability; when you play it from hand to
Evolve one of your Pokémon you can look at the top seven
cards of your deck and attach any basic Energy you find
there to your Pokémon (however you’d like). It won’t
work on Special Energy cards, but seven is a nice
spread; unless your deck is really low on Energy
(through play or design) you’ll probably hit at least
one, perhaps two. If you build a deck around this, you
might reliably hit two or three and of course, if we
aren’t worried about being reliable then upwards of
seven is a possibility. It isn’t restricted to a
particular Type of Energy, either. “Fairy Wind” is the
one attack, and it requires [YCC] to hit for 60 - this
is bad, though better than nothing. At least if you had
to, you might be able to finish something off or set-up
something up to be finished off with it.
You have your choice from three Togepi whether
you’re dealing with Expanded or Standard play: BW:
Boundaries Crossed 110/149, BW: Plasma Storm
102/135 and XY: Roaring Skies 43/108. BW:
Boundaries Crossed 110/149 and BW: Plasma Storm
102/135 are both Colorless Pokémon (and Fighting Weak
with no Resistance) since the Fairy-Type didn’t exist
until the latest generation and thus Togepi was a
Normal-Type. XY: Roaring Skies 43/108 is a
Fairy-Type (and Metal Weak with Darkness Resistance).
All three are Basic Pokémon with 40 HP, Retreat Cost
[C], no Ability, no Ancient Trait and one lone attack
(which costs [C]). I’m just going to copy and paste
what I said yesterday: BW: Boundaries Crossed
110/149 has “Attract Smack”; it is a creative name for
your typical “10 damage, plus a coin flip to Paralyze
the opponent’s Active” attack. BW: Plasma Storm
102/135 can Yawn to put the Defending Pokémon to Sleep
(that is all the attack does). XY: Roaring Skies
43/108 has Sweet Kiss to do 10 damage and your opponent
draws a card. Your opponent draws a card, not
you. Unless the rest of your deck requires you run a
Fairy-Type Togepi, stick with one of the older
versions: as Sleep can go away between turns with a
“heads” on the Sleep check, its no more likely to detain
the opponent’s Active than Paralysis: that makes BW:
Boundaries Crossed 110/149 the clear “winner”.
Togetic
is the Stage 1 form and unfortunately as uninspired as
you would expect. We explained earlier why you aren’t
going to want to skip it completely with Rare Candy
and once again, I’m just going to copy and paste what I
said about the our two options (BW: Plasma Storm
103/135 and XY: Roaring Skies 44/108) yesterday.
Both are Stage 1 Pokémon with 80 HP, a Retreat Cost of
[C]. no Ability and no Ancient Trait. BW: Plasma
Storm 103/135 is a Colorless-Type (couldn’t have
been anything else when it was printed), and since in
the video games this is the point where the line where
it gains a Flying as a secondary Type the Weakness is
actually to Lightning and it gains Resistance to
Fighting. For [C] it can use its lone attack (Sweet
Kiss) to hit for 30 while again, your opponent
draws a card, not you. XY: Roaring Skies 44/108
can use “Go Fetch” for [Y] to shuffle three basic Energy
cards from your discard pile back into your deck while
for [YCC] its second attack (Fairy Wind) does a vanilla
40 damage. This will be a metagame dependent call; you
might actually have reason to run both (and Rare
Candy) if you want to also run today’s Togekiss,
though if you absolutely need a tiebreaker, then Go
Fetch.
The other two Togetic you can pick from are BW:
Plasma Storm 104/135 (reviewed
a little over a year ago)
and XY: Roaring Skies 46/108 (yesterday's CotD).
Expect some more copied and pasted text, though I have
to change a few things since two roles have been
reversed. Both are Stage 2 Pokémon with 140 HP. BW:
Plasma Storm 104/135 is a Colorless-Type with 140
HP, the Ability “Bright Veil” that blocks the effects of
an opponent’s Items done to your Pokémon but only
while this Togekiss is Active and the attack
“Return” that requires [C] and does 30 damage plus you
draw until you have six cards in hand. Bright Veil is
amazing, but it seems like Return just does too little
damage to make it work; before the Lysandre’s Trump
Card ban I kept meaning to trade for these and see
if they could follow the spamalot formula popularized by
the many other decks (like Seismitoad-EX),
offsetting the low damage by neutralizing or diminishing
an opponent’s Items as well as disruption to mess up
what they already have in play. I still could, but I
really doubt it will be worth the effort. This seems
like something to build a deck around with it up front…
but you might indeed consider dedicating a slot to it if
you want to get off multiple uses of Serene Grace. It
won’t offer perfect protection, but some and a single
Energy to add some more draw might even help spare your
Supporter for a Wally to speed the Evolving up
even more.
Togekiss
(XY: Roaring Skies 45/108) has a Retreat Cost of
[CC] in addition to the above mentioned +10 HP over
today’s card: the rest of the attributes are the same.
There is no no Ability or Ancient Trait: instead it has
two attacks. The first (Powerful Slap) requires just
[C] and has you flip a coin for each Energy attached to
Togekiss itself: for each “heads” 50 damage is
done while the second attack (Aura Sphere) requires
[YYC] and hits for 70, plus 20 to one of your opponent’s
Benched Pokémon. These attacks aren’t horrible wastes,
but the first is either light on damage or reliability
(maybe both) and the latter is also a bit weak. You
might consider one but I’d rather just run a big, Basic
as the attacker instead and save your slots for a
different Togekiss. So… what else should we
include or exclude from a Togekiss (XY:
Roaring Skies 46/108) deck?
It isn’t too easy to pin down specifics but the
generalities really whittle down the field; if your deck
runs a decent amount of basic Energy cards and
can fit in a Stage 2 line in a supporting role, there
you go. You can use any kind of Basic Energy so Type
isn’t really an issue, and that means for those cards
that need more than one kind of Energy (especially when
it has to be basic Energy), this seems like a
natural partner. That being said, I am uncertain as to
what actually fits those criteria. You could run it
with Mewtwo-EX or Yveltal-EX (as examples)
but unless you’re going for a first turn Serene Grace,
you’ve got multiple other options that can stack Energy
on quickly onto those two, often with no more (or less)
set-up and in a reusable form. So that would make
“speed” the third requirement; you need to have a deck
trying to be so fast that it can’t wait for other Energy
accelerators to do their thing and that leaves… nothing.
No, I’m not calling this a bad card, I’m just pointing
out that besides a gimmicky (and not recommended)
Togekiss deck (featuring one or both other
Togekiss) there will always just be another option
to consider. Serene Grace is a good effect for
Standard, Expanded and Limited, it is just only in
Limited will there be little-to-no competition for its
role. In fact, even if you only get a 1-1-1 line, you
have to also have a big, Basic Pokémon worth building a
+39 deck around to justify skipping Togekiss. In
anything that isn’t restricted to a single Basic
Pokémon, you’ll run this “just in case” you can pull it
off. As an added bonus the second Togekiss in
this set isn’t too bad and is an option here.
Ratings
Standard:
2.6/5
Expanded:
2.5/5
Limited:
4/5
Summary:
Togekiss honestly is a lot closer than the scores
indicate… again! Perhaps someone else will make
me look like a fool by pointing out the obvious dance
partner(s) for Serene Grace; I will be perfectly happy
if that is the case. As is, it does something really
useful and well enough I keep looking for a partner that
needs it (and not something already proven successful)
and I’m just not finding it. This is something to pick
up and perhaps with some speed; unless I am totally off
then eventually something will combo with it and
drive up the price… but not to the point you should pay
top dollar (or trade favorably) for it.
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