aroramage |
And we're back with another
electrifying week of Pokemon! Today's card is another
one of those promo cards, and this one actually doesn't
appear in a set already unlike Kyogre from last week.
It's Heliolisk, and man it's been a while!
So far only two other Heliolisk
cards have come out: the one from Flashfire with
Parabolic Charge (to add 2 Energy to your hand) and the
other one from Phantom Forces with Parabolic Spark
(where you discard X Electric Energy from Pokemon you
control to deal 30X damage). This one just adds a new
dynamic to the cards - in the form of an Ability!
Huzzah!
And it's not entirely irrelevant,
buuuuuut it is strictly limited to use against
Water-types. Dry Skin only helps reduce the damage from
Water attacks by 30, but any other Pokemon will just
tear into Heliolisk. Still, that's good against
Seismitoad-EX to create a stand-still to his damage
dealing! Though you're still gonna suffer from Item
Lock...oh...
Well that's okay, because Heliolisk
also has Hyper Beam, which while it's only a 3-for-60
strike, you get a coin flip to discard an Energy
attached to the opponent's Active Pokemon. In a strange
way, it's kinda like Heliolisk here was made to be the
anti-Seismitoad-EX card! There's just a couple of things
that take away from its impact though.
Like its low HP of 90, its Electric
typing being unable to take advantage of Seismitoad-EX's
weakness, and the fact that it's a Stage 1 that's trying
to fight an EX.
All that aside though, Heliolisk
isn't necessarily a bad card. Most of the time, his
Ability's going to be ignored, but Hyper Beam has a
50/50 chance of helping him hang in there or at least
forcing your opponent to use up their resources. And
hey, with Lysandre's Trump Card banned, you don't get to
have much excuse to say, "Oh I'll just get it back
later."
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (a largely irrelevant
Ability with a decent attack)
Expanded: 2/5 (about the same here)
Limited: N/A (I HAVE TO POINT OUT
THIS CARD IS A PRRRRROMOTION-al card)
Arora Notealus: You know, I
actually tried Heliolisk on a Doubles Rain team that
revolved around Pokemon with Dry Skin that could heal
off from the weather and attacks like Surf - which btw
Heliolisk can learn that! The idea would be to Surf
against the opponents and occasionally use Parabolic
Charge to deal damage to everything on the field and
gain back ALL that HP - it was pretty cool!
Next Time: I'MMA EXPLODE
|
Otaku |
Welcome to a post Lysandre’s Trump Card format,
ladies and gentlemen! Well, unless you’re in Japan, in
which case you’ve got to wait just a bit longer. Oh
yeah, and we have another week of CotDs for you to read:
can’t forget that eh?
First up is Heliolisk (XY: Black Star Promo
XY47) because shockingly it isn’t just a reprint of
something we already have (unlike last Monday’s
subject). It is a Lightning-Type, which means it will
enjoy double damage against a few prominent cards in the
current metagame thanks to Weakness, most notably
Yveltal-EX (unless it takes countermeasures, of
course). Resistance is out there as well, though it
seems to be absent on cards from Pokémon printed in the
XY sets, so you’ll only see it on some older, BW-era
stuff like Landorus-EX. Lightning-Type support
exists but is scant, though XY: Ancient Origins
(the next set) should change that. I am unaware of any
“anti-Lightning-Type” cards but my main resource for
quickly researching such data is sadly several sets out
of date: I hope
pokepedia.net
makes a comeback as it was so handy for this sort of
thing.
Being a Stage 1 isn’t good, but it isn’t significantly
bad either; Heliolisk will require more space and
effort to run than a Basic but just a tad less than a
Mega Evolution, though the Stage lacks the the other
perks that go with either. The 90 HP means Heliolisk
has only a small chance of surviving a hit (at least
before other factors) but it isn’t completely
hopeless and this weekend we learned that Level Ball
is getting a re-release with new art in their XY:
Bandit Ring expansion, counterpart to our upcoming
XY: Ancient Origins set. It doesn’t confirm we
are getting Level Ball back for Standard play,
but it seems likely. Until then though, this is a nice
trait for Expanded where Level Ball will be able
to snag Heliolisk (and its Basic form). The
Fighting Weakness is dangerous, even factoring in HP
making getting hit an issue in general. Few that see
competitive play hit for less than 20 for [F] and they
are known for not only using general damage buffs like
Muscle Band but stacking them on top of less
general options like Strong Energy. Without
Weakness it was going to be close, but this all but
guarantees that Fighting-Type attackers will score a
OHKO. The Metal Resistance isn’t likely to all that
often come in handy but it is very much appreciated
nonetheless. The single Energy Retreat Cost is
technically really good; second best there is, easy both
to pay and recovery from the expense… but at this
size, seems like it should have been free.
Heliolisk
sports an Ability and a single attack. The Ability (Dry
Skin) reduces the damage attacks from the opponent’s
Water-Types inflict by 30 points of damage, after
Weakness and Resistance have already been applied. An
effective 120 HP is still within OHKO range of most
fully supported attackers, but this can be frustrating
to things like Seismitoad-EX, as Quaking Punch is
only good for 30 points base damage and it relies on
Muscle Band, Hypnotoxic Laser and Virbank
City Gym (usually) to speed things up. If you can
also protect Heliolisk from Special Conditions,
it could actually tank against the toad. The attack
(Hyper Beam) is familiar and unfortunately usually isn’t
all that great: a flip to discard an Energy card from
the opponent’s Active is actually pretty useful, but the
Energy requirement to use the attack is [LCC] and the
damage output is only 60. Said discard can help buy you
time for the KO but in the end instead of wishing it hit
harder, I wish the discard was reliable and that the
attack was easier to power up, even if the damage was
also lowered.
Heliolisk
Evolves from Helioptile and there are three
options, all both Standard and Expanded legal. All are
Basic, Lightning-Type Pokémon with Fighting Weakness,
Metal Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], no Abilities and no
Ancient Traits. XY: Flashfire 36/106 has 60 HP
and two attacks: the first (Pound) simply does a vanilla
10 for [L] while the second (Destructive Beam) costs
[LC] and does no damage but discards an Energy from your
opponent’s Active, provided you get “heads” on a coin
toss. XY; Phantom Forces 28/113 also has 60 HP
but just one attack (Tail Rap) for [LC], which does 10
damage plus 20 per “heads” from the mandatory two coin
flips. XY; Phantom Forces 29/113 has only 50 HP
but again has two attacks, the first (Quick Attack)
requiring [C] to do 10 with “heads” on a coin flip
yielding another 10 damage, while the second (Static
Shock) which does 30 for [LCC]. Sharing the name of a
fondly remember (and not particularly old) animated
series based on a comic book just makes being overpriced
and vanilla hurt a little more. Not that any of these
are good, but you might as well stick with the first (XY:
Flashfire 36/106) as it still has 60 HP and if
you’re investing two Energy but still attacking with
this… discarding the Energy of the opponent’s Active is
probably more likely to help Helioptile survive
than doing damage.
There are two other Heliolisk that could either
compliment or compete with today’s… or prove completely
irrelevant if they aren’t good enough to do either.
Both are Stage 1 Lightning-Type Pokémon with… the same
everything (at least relevant to the game) as today’s
card except they have two attacks and no Ability. XY:
Flashfire 37/106 can use its first attack (Parabolic
Charge) to search your deck for up to two Energy cards
to add to your hand, with an attack cost of [C]. For
[LCC] its second option (Quick Attack) does 60, possibly
with another 30 (requires “heads” on the coin flip).
The first attack somewhat nice as it can snag Special
Energy cards but between hand disruption (commonly
experienced as a side effect of N being a popular
draw card) you might not be able to cash in on that
search and it certainly doesn’t seem worth running,
attaching an Energy to and attacking with a fragile
Stage 1 Pokémon. Hitting for 30 points of damage below
the “going rate” of successful attackers unless
you succeed at the coin flip was no help… and that was
back when this card first came out: now instead of
needing about 90 per turn you need 100 to 130, leaving
this Heliolisk high and dry.
The other option is XY: Phantom Forces 30/113,
with its first attack (Pound) being a vanilla 30 for [L]
while its second attack (Parabolic Spark) requires [LC]
to do 30 damage per [L] Energy you choose to discard for
this attack from all of your Pokémon. The damage
return on the first attack is “okay”; again not
something you can use to justify running a Stage 1
attacker but nice to have while the second attack is
actually close to being something worthwhile. While not
much for Standard play, in Expanded where that second
attack can be partnered with Eelektrik (BW:
Noble Victories 40/101) and you might have a decent
glass cannon, but there are a lot of attackers that do a
better job with Dynamotor backing them. A perfect four
Eelektrik Bench plus Energy attachment from hand
and Energy from the previous turn are required to hit
180, though making it just slightly more plausible is
Silver Bangle to replace one of the Energy. Said
Silver Bangle is probably needed as not only are we
assuming a previous turn’s manual Energy attachment but
then you get Mega Evolutions that are still out
of range and I think you can see why I won’t be spending
more time theorizing about this card.
So the other Heliolisk aren’t much help in
getting today’s version into a competitive deck. Does
it have a purpose? No, not really though I wonder if it
is a failed Seismitoad-EX counter as I somewhat
implied above. If the attack cost a little less and/or
didn’t require a coin flip… but I shouldn’t dwell on
what isn’t anymore than I already have. Just maybe in
the right deck a 1-1 line of it could still work as
such. As a promo it can’t be used in Limited but if it
could, it’d be “alright” unless the set was seriously
lacking in Water-Types.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
1.7/5
Limited:
N/A
Summary:
I may be being a bit generous with Heliolisk
since I’ve got it in my head it was a failed attempt at
a Seismitoad-EX counter, as it has an attack cost
that isn’t too hard to work into a lot of decks and an
Ability that exploits the main weakness (not to be
confused with “Weakness”) of Seismitoad-EX, its
low damage output and the similar vulnerability of how
it is commonly played (relying on Double Colorless
Energy). In the end though, it doesn’t even work
that well to counter Seismitoad-EX and I can’t
think of any other legitimate use for it, though at
least it isn’t pure vanilla in design.
|
Emma Starr |
Ah, Heliolisk, the ugly evolution of the adorable
Helioptile. However, unlike Cubchoo, Teddiursa, or
Pancham, its evolution doesn’t look too fierce. It’s
just…a lizard that walks on two legs. :/
Let’s start off with the basics: with 90 HP, this a
really low amount for any self-respecting non-Shedinja
Stage 1 to have. It’s Fighting weakness definitely isn’t
doing any favors whatsoever either, meaning he can be
KOed with just one 50+ damage attack from a Fighting
type. It has a Resistance to Steel, and an ability which
also may as well be a Resistance as well, so, let’s
tackle that here as well. It’s Dry Skin ability reduces
damage from Water Pokémon by 30. So, in essence, this
Pokémon has two resistances, which I guess could be the
saving grace for this card, and the only factor why
anyone would consider playing it… (not that I would
really ever recommend actually playing this…)
It’s only attack, the infamous Hyper Beam attack itself
this time costs 1 Lightning and 2 Colorless, to do a
whopping…60 damage. Wait, 60?! You mean the move that
was one of the most powerful attacks (mostly in
Generation 1) only does 60 now? I mean, with so many
more options for attacks nowadays in the actual video
games, like Return, Hyper Beam is nowhere near as great
of a move as it was back in the day, but…only 60? That
wouldn’t even be enough to entirely take down the most
commonly-used basics from back in the Base Set/Jungle
era, like Hitmonchan and Scyther. Times haven’t been too
good for Hyper Beam, and in-game animations for that
move will just never look quite as awesome as they did
in R/B/Y somehow. Heliolisk, however, is just as awkward
of a card as how awkward Heliolisk looks himself. (He
didn’t even get a good picture taken for this card
either. His head looks a lot closer to the camera, and
yet you can’t even see one his eyes. This guy is just a
derp. :P )
Standard: 1/5
Expanded: 1/5
Limited: lolnope
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