aroramage |
Welcome back to yet another week of
Roaring Skies! This week we finally get to take a look
at the Pokemon you've all been waiting for: the
Colorless Pokemon!! Starting out, we've got the mystical
Altaria, and there's certainly no better start to the
Colorless week than with the best Colorless support in
the set!
Sure, Altaria's Wing Attack is
pathetic at 2-for-30 vanilla, but she's got a whole lot
more to offer with that Ability of hers! Clear Humming
gives Colorless Pokemon no Weakness - that means no
Electric or Fighting types will hurt them! Now it's my
understanding that Fighting isn't as major, but it's
still fairly viable in decks like Primal Groudon, but
Electric decks have been on the rise thanks to M
Rayquaza-EX's popularity - no surprises there. So
getting Altaria out can be a big game changer - M
Manectric-EX's attack will OHKO M Rayquaza-EX after a
Muscle Band after all!
On top of that though, Altaria also
is blessed with the Ancient Trait Delta Evolution,
meaning you can get Altaria out and in-play as early as
Turn 1! There aren't too many support Evolutions that
can do that, so Altaria is a must-run for Colorless
decks at least! Though you will have to be wary of that
low 90 HP in case she gets Lysandre'd out onto the
field.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (a great supporter
for Colorless decks, and really gives M Rayquaza-EX a
fighting chance against a main threat)
Expanded: 3/5 (same here)
Limited: 3/5 (honestly depends on
your Colorless selection - if it's a good portion, I'd
run her for safety, otherwise pass)
Arora Notealus: Altaria's a rather
soothing Pokemon, the perfect companion for post-EVO
resting. I mean, WOW, did you guys SEE EVO?! How about
those last few USFIV matches, huh? That was insane!! But
anywho, yeah, Altaria makes a nice comfy pillow~
Next Time: Behold a bird and his
pride!
|
Otaku |
Welcome to a week that was pretty obviously coming (bar
any scheduling snafus): Colorless Week, XY: Roaring
Skies flavor! First up is Altaria (XY:
Roaring Skies 74/108, XY: Black Star Promos
XY46). So how does the Colorless-Type currently stack
up? Nothing is Weak or Resistant to it, restoring it to
its (assumed) original place as a “neutral” Type, not
that it’s videogame counterparts - the Normal- or
Flying-Type - or either perfectly Type neutral or
that the Colorless-Type hasn’t been Type neutral for the
last two TCG generations. Still if you go back even as
“recent” as the HS series of sets, you’ll see Colorless
Weakness and Resistance on a few cards in HS: Call of
Legends. Dropping this means you won’t enjoy the
(potential) huge benefit of doubling damage or the
sometimes annoying -20 damage that Weakness and
Resistance respectively cause, with the former a far
greater loss to the Type than the latter was a boon.
You will have access to Type support, however, as
Winona (also released this set) gives Colorless its
own Supporter (something that most Types still lack) and
until it rotates to Expanded only play, Aspertia City
Gym gives Colorless-Types its own Stadium as well.
There are some potent Colorless-Type Pokémon as well,
but most have nothing Type-specific about them and
instead can work in the majority of decks quite easily.
All in all, this seems like a good Type but I am
heavily relying upon the synergy between Winona
and Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108,
106/108).
The HP is a low 90, making Altaria an easy OHKO
for most decks, with the usual exceptions (set-up
issues, decks sacrificing damage for effects, etc.).
The Weakness… okay, peaking ahead this isn’t going to
be an issue a lot of the time. Normally with just 90 HP
it wouldn’t matter much even if that which I am dancing
around wasn’t here at all; with just 90 HP most serious
attackers of a given Type are going to already have the
OHKO. When Weakness is in effect, though, it means a
Raichu (XY 43/146) can do the deed with just
three Pokémon on the Bench while Manectric-EX
won’t need Altaria to have a Pokémon Tool
equipped. There is some Resistance here and while it
only reduces damage by -20, it can really throw off
damage calculations if Altaria is Active. The
single Energy Retreat Cost is inexpensive and easy to
both pay and to recover from paying.
Altaria
sports an Ancient Trait, an Ability and an attack. The
Ancient Trait is Δ Evolution, allowing you to skip the
usual waiting period to Evolve, but only when you play
this Altaria from your hand in order to Evolve
something that (apart from time restrictions) could
already Evolve into Altaria. You can’t use it to
Evolve any Pokémon (Ancient Trait text is intentionally
generic so it can be the same all all cards with a
particular trait), you can’t access it when using an
effect like Evosoda to play Altaria from
the deck and you can’t combine it with something like
Rare Candy… which doesn’t matter for Altaria
but since Δ Evolution shows up on some Stage 2 Pokémon I
thought I’d throw that in as well. This is a great
Ancient Trait and makes for some nice combo material
with Winona. So what is next? The card’s
Ability “Clear Humming” which eliminates Weakness for
your Colorless-Type Pokémon. Yes, that makes Altaria
an example of “true” Colorless-Type support (support
that won’t help another Pokémon-Type) and is why I
worded things so awkwardly when discussing Weakness.
This is pretty important as most Colorless-Types have
two (currently) devastating forms of Weakness (Fighting
or Lightning). The attack is “Wing Attack” which needs
[CC] and does 30; this is vanilla filler though better
than nothing.
To get to Altaria you’ll need to Evolve from a
Swablu. BW: Dragons Exalted 104/124, BW:
Dragons Exalted 105/124, BW: Legendary Treasures
103/113 and XY: Roaring Skies 79/108 are
surprisingly all different versions of the card, so
you’ve got four choices, though the first two are
Expanded only (with the third soon to join them as such
once the rotation to XY-On occurs). All four of these
are Basic, Colorless-Type Pokémon with 40 HP, Lightning
Weakness, Fighting Resistance, a Retreat Cost of [C] and
a lack of either Abilities or Ancient Traits. BW:
Dragons Exalted 104/124 is the only one with two
attacks: “Sing” for [C] (which puts the Defending
Pokémon to Sleep) and “Peck” for [CC] (which simply does
20 damage). BW: Dragons Exalted 105/124 just has
“Peck” costing [C] and doing 10, BW: Legendary
Treasures 103/113 has “Glare and Peck” (yes, a
single attack named that) which needs [CC] and does 10
plus (with a “heads” on a required coin toss) inflicting
Paralysis on the opponent’s Active and lastly XY:
Roaring Skies 79/108 has “Bind Wound” for [C]
allowing it to heal 20 from one of your Pokémon. None
of these are good but BW: Dragons Exalted 104/124
and BW: Legendary Treasures 103/113 and BW:
Legendary Treasures 103/113 can attempt to keep the
opponent’s Active from attacking, thus buying time to
Evolve; go with the former for Expanded and the latter
for Standard.
For Altaria we have five other releases during
the BW and XY blocks, but two are reprints. Your
choices are BW: Dragons Exalted 84/124, reprinted
as both BW: Black Star Promo BW48 and BW:
Boundaries Crossed 152/149 (the last one keeping it
Standard legal) plus BW: Legendary Treasures
92/113 and XY: Roaring Skies 53/108. All three
of these are Stage 1 Dragon-Type Pokémon with no
Resistance, Retreat Cost [C] and no Ancient Trait. BW:
Dragons Exalted 84/124 (and reprints) are 70 HP,
Dragon Weak Pokémon with the Ability “Fight Song” and
the attack “Glide”. The former provides +20 to the
damage done by attacks from your Dragon-Type Pokémon and
does stack so you can get a pretty big bonus with
multiples. Maybe that is why the latter does 40 damage
even though it costs [WMC] to use; the Ability is great
while the attack is quite poor. BW: Legendary
Treasures 92/113 has 80 HP and also is Dragon Weak,
but has two attacks: the first (Speed Dive) requires
[CC] to hit for 20 damage while the second (Cleave)
requires [WMC] and hits for 40 damage just like Glide
did, but includes an effect that has you flip two coins:
if both are “heads” you discard all Energy attached to
the Defending Pokémon. These attacks aren’t good, both
hitting to soft for what the damage they do, even with
the effect of (Cleave). Actually, discarding Energy
when it is unreliable and expensive isn’t really an good
effect.
Last up is XY: Roaring Skies 53/108 which also
has 80 HP and two attacks (no Ability) but switches to
Fairy-Type Weakness. “Song of Echoes” is a cool name
and has a familiar effect; for [C] it allows you to
shuffle your hand into your deck then draw a number of
cards equal to the total amount of Benched Pokémon in
play. So it is Colress as an attack. For [MC]
“Midnight Eyes” does 30 damage while putting the
opponent’s Active to Sleep. The game is too quickly
paced for me to want to use an attack on a Stage 1 that
doesn’t further Evolve to aid in draw power, especially
a Stage 1 that is so likely to be OHKOed; that was why I
left this out of the two Dragon Weeks. BW: Legendary
Treasures 92/113 also failed to impress and likewise
didn’t receive a review but BW: Dragons Exalted
84/124
made our Top 10
for BW: Dragons Exalted and we even used BW:
Boundaries Crossed 152/149 as an excuse to review it
again
later.
Of course these reviews are over two years old and
quite out of date, but take a look if you’d like. As
these are all Dragon-Types and the only one worth using
is support for the Dragon-Type, it is quite unlikely
that a deck suited to the one would also be suited to
the other: they won’t be complimenting each other but
they won’t be competing either.
So is there a place for Altaria (XY: Roaring
Skies 74/108, XY: Black Star Promos XY46)?
Oh yes! M Rayquaza-EX (XY: Roaring Skies
76/108, 105/108) sometimes run it to protect it from the
Lightning Weakness they both share, aided by both
sharing the same Ancient Trait. M Rayquaza-EX
needing a big Bench anyway to beef up its “Emerald
Break” attack and the aforementioned Shaymin-EX
all being searchable by Winona. As I believe
I’ve stated before, we had this deck spoonfed to us and
while there are other variants that were less obvious
seeing success, the “default” is still a contender as
well. Any other deck with heavy Colorless influence
should consider it as well since again, it works well
with Winona and Shaymin-EX; you can afford
to run those two in heavier counts as excess Winona
search power can snag Swablu and Altaria
plus immediately Bench Swablu and then Evolve
into Altaria so that Shaymin-EX and its
“Set Up” Ability don’t have their draw yield reduced.
In Expanded, you gain access to Level Ball as
well as a few older, useful Colorless-Type cards. The
best example I can think of is Bouffalant (BW:
Dragons Exalted 110/124). Neither of these are are
likely to make a huge difference in how effective
Altaria is, but I think they are worth a small bump.
For Limited play, its usefulness is all about what you
can run alongside it; if you don’t have at least a few
other Colorless-Types in your deck, obviously it won’t
be worth the space (even here its attack isn’t good).
Fortunately you should have some other Colorless-TYpes
and it won’t take many to justify the inclusion. Also
remember that in a +39 deck, by definition you only have
one Basic and that is not gonna be Swablu, so you
pull an appropriate Pokémon-EX you also won’t be using
Altaria.
Ratings
Standard:
3.2/5
Expanded:
3.4/5
Limited:
3.5/5
Summary:
The scores may seem a bit funny - remember that while
Altaria is providing a very useful benefit and
Colorless-Types can work into multiple decks, it is
still a Type restriction and not every game has you
facing an attacker that can exploit Weakness, let alone
entire decks that can hammer Weakness. Throw in effects
that shut off Abilities and attackers that score the
OHKO without Weakness and admittedly, when you expect
less out of a card it makes anything positive look good
while if you expect a lot, every little fault seems
significant. In the end, this is a card you should snag
as even if you aren’t running a compatible deck right
now, Colorless-Types are flexible enough you might find
your deck evolving that direction anyway.
|
Emma Starr |
Today we examine Altaria, the fluffy- I mean, the
Humming(?) Pokémon. With the Ancient Trait Alpha
Evolution, one will realize that this Pokémon has been
blessed with the ability to evolve on the first turn!
Then one will disappointedly look down to the attack it
has, and see it only does 30, with no effects. Well, you
won’t be winning many battles with him alone, but with
his help, might another Pokémon be able to turn the
tides?
If anything, Altaria’s typing is nice, as it
allows you to use Winona to search for it and evolve
Swablu much easier, and even be able to take advantage
of that Alpha Evolution Trait (though I still wouldn’t
bother attacking with it). He’s a prime bench-sitter,
however, as his ability, Clear Humming (hey, so that’s
how they became known as the Humming Pokémon!) gives
every one of your Colorless type Pokémon no Weaknesses!
So, Kanghaskhan EX/Mega Kanghaskhan EX is no longer weak
to fighting types, and Shaymin EX, Rayquaza EX (75) and
Mega Rayquaza EX (76), and even Altaria himself no
longer have that pesky Electric weakness either,
protecting them from being 1HKOed by baddies like Mega
Manectric EX. Along with Sky Field support, you can have
Altaria in a much more expanded bench, allowing him to
have his ability running while not clogging up the bench
for all of your other ability mons or attackers you may
have. So, how would I score this one? Well, being
Colorless, he’s splashable in any deck, really. Along
with cards like Shaymin EX and the Rayquaza EXs I talked
about earlier being splashable as well, along with all
of the other newly released Colorless support, he’s
definitely worth a look, at least.
Standard: 3/5
Expanded: 3.1/5 (Look, you can play that
trollingsome Boufalant (DRX 110) here, so just because
of that, I’ll bump him up a tiny bit.)
Limited: 2.9/5 (With all of the Colorless support
in this set, you may as well run him if you’re running
Shaymin EX or the Colorless Rayquazas, though you may
not have as much to worry about here, due to a much less
threatening presence of Electric or Fighting types
here.)
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