Baby Mario
2010 UK
National
Seniors
Champion |
Exeggutor
(Roaring Skies)
Yep, this is the Pokémon that (some) people are
referring to as ‘Taylor Swift’ because one of its
attacks is called ‘Shake it Off’.
Given the singer’s penchant for copyrighting the use of
commonplace phrases in her lyrics, we could maybe expect
another Uri Gellar/Kadabra
style legal battle. Except that
would be very, very dumb.
Shake it Off would really be the only reason for being
interested in this Exeggutor,
and that would be as it is clearly intended to be some
kind of blatant Shaymin EX/Rayquaza
EX counter. For a single Grass Energy, you do 20 times
the number of Colourless Pokémon your opponent has on
the Field, which can be enough to OHKO
Shaymin depending on their
Bench size/Muscle Band/Silver Bangle.
I suppose Exeggutor is
playable in decks that are already running
Exeggcute for its
Propagation Ability, but I’m not really convinced of its
merits. Shaymin isn’t
exactly hard to OHKO anyway for most decks, and
Rayquaza decks will usually
be happy to give up a spent support Pokémon if it means
you leave their attacker alone. It would be different if
Seed Bomb could exploit Weakness and provide a threat to
Seismitoad EX, but the three
Energy cost and need for a damage-boosting Tool makes
that a bit impractical. You could test it out, I
suppose, but Exeggcutor
strikes me as a bit gimmicky and not at all versatile.
Rating
Modified: 2.25
Expanded: 2
Limited: 2
|
Otaku |
Because no one demanded it: welcome to our Grass Week
for XY: Roaring Skies!
…
This time we might actually be able to adhere to formula
and spread out the the cards that are “Nearly Top 10
material” with “Reviewed it because it was just barely
worthy of consideration, if only to warn people away”
and the varying levels in between. Our first subject is
Exeggutor (XY: Roaring Skies 2/108). It
is a Grass-Type which means there is some Type support
but so far, it hasn’t accomplished much, though we
already know from early reveals of the next set in
Japan, some interesting stuff is on the way (won’t
affect its ratings today though). It is an in demand
Weakness right now with cards like Keldeo-EX,
Primal Groudon-EX and Seismitoad-EX all
taking double damage from it. Nothing Resists
Grass-Types (unless you’re using cards so old they
aren’t even close to Expanded legal). All in all it is
a Type looking for its next big hit with a lot of cards
failing to live up to the hype. Speaking of hype, there
is none for being a Stage 1; it isn’t as easy to use or
as space efficient as being a Basic but compared to all
the other contemporary Stages, it isn’t bad.
Exeggutor
has 120 HP, which is reasonably good; being OHKOed is
still a real chance with higher HP and this is around
the amount where a Pokémon is a little more likely than
not to survive a hit… though if you only consider decks
with a “complete” set-up, those odds plummet. Fire
Weakness is typical of Grass-Types but the Fire-Type is
fairly lacking, at least right now, so its not the worst
Weakness to have, perhaps even one of the “better” ones.
No Resistance on the other hand is the worst by
default, but it is also the most common so it isn’t
going to cost this card any points. The chunky Retreat
Cost of [CCC] does hurt its play value, but only a
little; most decks right now either know they need to
pack at least some alternatives to manually retreating
at full price in order to shake Special Conditions and
attack effects and even if not, with the amount of OHKOs
in the format, again not likely to matter a whole lot.
Exeggutor
has two attacks, the first being Shake It Off for [G],
which does 20 damage times the number of Colorless-Type
Pokémon your opponent has in play. Thanks to Sky
Field, this attack can vary from zero to 180 damage
(up to 120 without Sky Field). This is nice, but
not as impressive at it seems at first glance. Most
decks aren’t pure Colorless and even with a field full
of Colorless-Types while Sky Field is in play,
that 180 isn’t enough to OHKO the likes of M Rayquaza-EX
(XY: Roaring Skies
76/108, 105/108) even with a Silver Bangle…
though if you can tack on a Hypnotoxic Laser then
you finally hit the needed threshold. Perhaps more
important is that even in mixed company, you might get
decent damage thanks to the heavy amount of Shaymin-EX
(XY: Roaring Skies 77/108; 106/108) being played.
The second attack is Seed Bomb which does a flat 80 for
[GCC]; this used to be a solid amount back when a
Silver Bangle (and later a Muscle Band) would
allow you to at worst reliably 2HKO anything seeing
competitive play (with maybe M Kangaskhan-EX as
an exception). It isn’t as good now, but it's adequate;
when Shake It Off isn’t a good option, the card can
still do something worthwhile.
You have two choices for Exeggcute: BW: Plasma
Freeze 4/116 (reprinted as the Secret Rare BW:
Plasma Blast 102/101) and XY: Roaring Skies
1/108. Both are Basic Grass-Types with Fire Weakness,
Retreat Costs of [C] and no Ancient Traits. BW:
Plasma Freeze 4/116 has the minimal 30 HP we see
printed on actual Pokémon (some Trainers that behave
like Pokémon have as low as 10) meaning not only is it
an easy OHKO while up front, but on the Bench as well.
Though not likely to matter with HP this low, this
Exeggcute enjoys Water Resistance. Propagation
allows you to add it to your hand from the discard pile;
it states once per turn and before you attack, but only
the latter really matters as the effect apparently
resets every time it leaves the discard pile. It has a
much weaker, overpriced version of Seed Bomb, hitting
for 20 while requiring [GC]. XY: Roaring Skies
1/108 has 40 HP, no Resistance and two attacks: Loathe
for [C] and Ram for [G]; the former is “tails fails” but
when it works it switches itself with a Pokémon on your
Bench while the latter just hits for 10 damage. 40 HP
survives a bit longer than 30, but only a bit. Both are
fragile: 30 is low enough to be KOed by Hypnotoxic
Laser and Virbank City Gym one your
opponent’s first turn, but thanks to Latios-EX (XY:
Roaring Skies 58/108, 105/108) and its Fast Raid
attack 40 is vulnerable. The Bench isn’t even very safe
for either of these. Between the two, go with BW:
Plasma Freeze 4/116 for the fantastic Ability even
if it is so fragile. You can see an almost two year old
review for it
here.
The other currently legal Exeggutor is BW:
Plasma Freeze 5/116, which surprisingly we never
reviewed. While it doesn’t look all that different from
today’s iteration, with 20 less HP, Water Resistance but
a Retreat Cost of [CC] it too has one “special” attack
and one “functional” attack. The latter is Stomp for
[GCC] hitting for 60, with a coin flip for an additional
30, weaker than the Seed Bomb on today’s version… but
its first attack is Blockade for [C]; while it only does
10 damage it prevents your opponent from playing
Supporters from hand, potentially grinding their deck to
a halt. This has been the basis for a deck that has
seen success on the competitive scene, though I don’t
have the results from this weekend’s Regionals to know
the deck’s current status. This card seems most likely
to be competition to keep XY: Roaring Skies 2/108
from seeing a lot of play, but perhaps there is room for
a single TecH copy in Blockade decks or in decks already
running Exeggcute (BW: Plasma Freeze
4/116; BW: Plasma Blast 102/101) and a source of
[G] Energy. Otherwise today’s Exeggutor just
seems a little too overspecialized to warrant serious
play.
Ratings
Standard:
2/5
Expanded:
2/5
Limited:
4.8/5
Summary:
Exeggutor is an interesting Colorless counter
that doesn’t quite hit hard enough to justify including
it in a deck that needs to improve its Colorless
match-ups. It isn’t horrible it just is so specialized
and comes a bit short of taking out the largest
Colorless-Type Pokémon without additional help, namely
the opponent filling the field with Colorless-Types
while Sky Field is in play. Of course if this
had been a Basic Pokémon it might have been worth it.
|
Emma Starr |
Ah, Exeggutor. The ultimate counter
to Winnona. Which is actually ironic, since she’s a
Flying-type Gym Leader, and Exeggutor is a part
Grass-type in the games. But how does he actually hold
up here? Let’s take a look.
120 HP is good for a Stage 1, but
that Fire Weakness isn’t too nice. And that Retreat
Cost…is just detestable. If you don’t plan on it being
out very long, be sure to give it a Float Stone, or have
Switch nearby. But what were you expecting? It is a
living, breathing tree after all. Anyway, it’s first
attack is Shake it Off, which does 20 damage for each
Colorless Pokémon your opponent has in play, because it
wants to damage as many Pokémon with its Taylor Swift
references as possible. For one Grass Energy, that’s
pretty generous; you have to give him that. But since
you’re waiting for more of your opponent’s (hopefully
Colorless) to get in play, you’re probably going to want
to play him in the mid to late game. Which is
usually…when your opponent’s biggest threats are out.
But the typing is what really is the problem here.
Except for the spare Rayquazas, Miltanks, or Kanghaskhan
you may see, Colorless Pokémon still aren’t going to
have enough of a presence to make this attack work, even
with Sky Field or Winnona. If you’re lucky, your
opponent could have two Colorless Pokémon out, but you’d
still only be doing 40 damage. Believe it or not, this
actually usually will make the 3-for 80 Seed Bomb the
superior attack most times, but attacks like that are
par for the course, nowadays.
Standard: 1.5/5
Expanded: 1.5/5
Limited: 3/5 (well, Colorless
actually got a lot of attention given to them for once,
so this could actually work here, since Winnona can be a
real threat there, more than anywhere else, along with
Sky Field.)
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