aroramage |
Get it? See it's funny because
Natu's pecking, and he's a bird, but he's a Psychic-type
here! Huh? Huh?
Anywho, Natu here is definitely the
better between the two Natus of the set - the other one
being a rather vanilla card that uses a 1-for-10 Peck
attack (HO HO). While his attack isn't very strong, it's
still better than Peck; Psywave comes in a similar vein
as Mewtwo-EX's X Ball, Yveltal-EX's Evil Ball, and soon
another Pokemon-EX's attack (hints for Ancient Origins,
for all you lovelies out there). But it's definitely not
that powerful, even if it costs the same.
The main differences between
Psywave and those attacks is effectively the lower
damage output and the accounting for only the opponent's
Energy. But there is something on Natu that makes him
stand out just a little bit more than usual, and that's
the inclusion of the Delta Plus trait. Now while Natu is
typically far too weak to really deal significant
amounts of damage, he can actually pose a threat with
this trait.
Think about it - your opponent just
KO'd a big guy, but his is pretty weak. He's probably
got 2-3 Energy, maybe even 4 Energy depending, and he's
a small attack away from getting KO'd. Then you put out
Natu and get him for the KO - that's 2 Prizes on a
normal Pokemon, 3 Prizes on a Pokemon-EX! That could
effectively turn the entire match around for you and
maybe even win you the game!
Obviously that's an extremely niche
situation to apply Natu for, but it's just the sort of
thing he could be useful for. Okay, so there's stuff
like snipe damage that could KO him before you get the
chance to power him up, and your opponent will be far
more conscious about how he takes damage to make sure
you don't sneak in your bird, but it's certainly better
than just Pecking at them for 10.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (not the most
powerful Pokemon, but could be an effective surprise
reversal)
Expanded: 2/5 (pretty much the same
here)
Limited: 3/5 (again, not the most
powerful, but lower HP overall means it's more likely
he'll net you 2 Prizes here - which can actually win you
the game here)
Arora Notealus: Can I just level
with you guys about Natu for a second here? This bird is
only 8 inches - INCHES - tall!! And his whole body is
practically his head!! He must not eat a whole lot,
cause he ain't even finishing a 6" flatbread sandwich
from Subway with that anatomy man! Heck, you could
probably EAT Natu at that point!
......okay, don't think about it.
Next Time: What?! Natu's evolv-actually,
I already saw this one coming.
|
Otaku |
Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, Natu! Na, na,
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,
na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, Natu! Natu, Natu, Natu!
Adding yet another lame parody of the old ‘60s Batman
theme, today we look at Natu (XY: Roaring
Skies 28/108). This is an Evolving Basic Pokémon
which technically is an advantage even such cards
usually get the short end of the stick on just about
everything. There is a reason for that though; even
though I often champion ideals of game design that can
seem quite lofty, even I am at a loss for how to make
everything somehow equal and yet unequal at the same
time: it makes sense for all fully Evolved Pokémon to be
“on the same level”, adjusted only for where mechanical
differences (like the earliest turn a card could see
play) justify such things. As such, Evolving Basics
simply can’t be on even footing, but they also don’t
have to be pure filler, mere stepping stones for getting
to their fully Evolved forms. Indeed they can be quite
useful, appropriate to their station, even potentially
being the reason to run a particular Evolution, where
the Evolved form supplements the usage of the lower
Stage. The capacity to have another card played upon
you is always a benefit, though you may lack an Evolved
form worth running.
So… what specifically applies to Natu? It is a
Psychic-Type which is honestly more potent than I tend
to give it credit for in passing. As I wrote this I had
to remember all the little areas where it makes its
presence known: mostly backing up something of another
Type but still having a noteworthy deck or two that are
mostly Psychic-Type (allowing for the odd off-Type
supporting Pokémon). It hits a decent chunk of
(released) Fighting-Types and (other released)
Psychic-Types for Weakness but in both cases those TCG
Types are composed of three video game Types; combined
with dual-Type cards there are plenty of non-Weak
examples in each and what actually sees competitive play
skews things farther. Resistance is found on most
Darkness-Type and Metal-Type Pokémon as well, while the
final component is Psychic-Type support; not as
impressive as that of the Standard standard setting (try
saying that five times fast) Fighting-Type but with some
very noteworthy examples like Dimension Valley
and Wobbuffet (XY: Phantom Forces 36/119).
Its HP is tiny; 40 is just 10 above the minimum printed
on a card that is an actual Pokémon and not just with an
effect that causes it to be treated as such. Barring
luck this isn’t surviving a turn in the Active slot and
frankly decks focused on hitting the Bench (as opposed
to more general spread) can probably take it out in a
single turn there as well. So this is not good but it
is kind of expected given its station; of course I’d
rather HP scores across the board be raised (without
raising damage output - the idea is to slow the pacing
down and give designers more “wiggle room) as well as
see Evolving Pokémon “front loaded” with their HP scores
(when TCG mechanics simply can’t replicate the video
game, we need to adjust accordingly) so that they have a
better chance of surviving to Evolve. Enough of that
tangent though; Natu is Psychic Weak which is
likely to be irrelevant most of the time since it’s so
small. If an attack does 40 or more damage, it already
had the OHKO. No Resistance is typical but
disappointing - it wasn’t likely to help but rarely are
you worse off for having it. The single Energy Retreat
Cost is technically good - second best possible, easy to
pay and to recover from the loss - but with the low odds
of Natu surviving a hit, you won’t get to use it
all that often.
Now we come to why we are looking at Natu -
generally I prefer Evolving Pokémon just be covered
alongside their Evolved forms in that particular card’s
review, but when there is something noteworthy about the
lower Stage I do like to give it its own CotD. As the
card’s art would lead us to believe Natu has an
Ancient Trait, Δ Plus. We’ve seen this on some other
Pokémon this set, including some
previous
reviews.
Taking an additional Prize off of KOing an opponent’s
Pokémon via attacking is a substantial bonus; does
Natu make it easy (or at least cost effective) to do
so? It has a single attack - Psywave - that requires
[PC] to use and hits for 10 points of damage times the
number of Energy attached to the opponent’s Active
Pokémon. That is not so great of an attack but with
some support might be worth a place in some decks.
Before we delve into combos let us explore the rest of
this card’s “family”.
If Xatu are already deck worthy that creates an
additional niche for Natu - you can always just
not Evolve one to take advantage of it even if
the deck is meant for Xatu. That also means
seeing if it is even the best Natu to run so
we’ll start with the other Expanded/Standard legal
iterations: BW: Legendary Treasures 55/113 and
XY: Roaring Skies 27/108. They aren’t too different
from today’s version: similar across the board except
for 10 more HP and no Ancient Trait, each even just
having a single attack. In fact they are even more
similar to each other having the same attack,
just with a different Energy cost and damage: Peck. On
BW: Legendary Treasures 55/113 the attack does 20
for [PC] while on XY: Roaring Skies 27/108 it
hits for 10 while only needing [C]. So the only thing
they really have going for them is the 50 HP; being just
slightly more durable versus the potential to “steal” an
extra Prize? Odds are against the 10 additional HP
being a game changer so I’d go with today’s version.
There are two options for Xatu; we looked at
BW: Legendary Treasures 56/113
18 months ago
and will be covering XY: Roaring Skies 29/108
tomorrow.
Note: Unless this review is going up late then
the link for the June 24, 2015 review won’t be working
at first. Both are 90 HP Stage 1 Psychic-Type Pokémon
with two attacks. BW: Legendary Treasures 56/113
can use “Fortunate Draw” for [P]: you and your opponent
play Rock-Paper-Scissors with the winner drawing and the
loser discarding the top three cards of his/her
respective deck. The second attack is “Miracle Wing”
for [PCC] which does 60 damage and (on a successful coin
flip) inflicts Confusion. This card is slightly better
because of the game’s pacing (Lysandre’s Trump Card
didn’t exist when it came out) and metagame: having an
attack to draw or discard at least has a chance of
mattering in the face of players ripping through their
own decks so fast or hoping denying access to a
particular card type/effect (usually Items) will slow
you down is a little less “bad” now than it was back
then, but still far from good. The Psychic-Type support
we’ve received since then doesn’t help a lot either. XY:
Roaring Skies 29/108 will get a proper review
tomorrow; for now I’ll just say that I don’t see it
comboing particularly well with today’s Natu.
So where does that leave our subject of review for
today? Natu can use Dimension Valley or
the “Psychic Mirage” Ability found on Gardevoir (BW:
Next Destinies 57/99; BW: Dark Explorers
109/108) to halve its attack cost. This is a lot more
appealing and outside of perhaps Energy transfer decks
that could add the needed Energy off of something else,
you really shouldn’t bother with Natu otherwise.
At this point we come to the issue that all Δ Plus
attackers face: efficiency. Taking an extra Prize is
great but only if it is staying ahead of the opponent
and therein lies the rub. Natu can’t take down a
lot of small Pokémon because usually players don’t
commit Energy to them right away and even when they do
Natu is still likely to need help: a Joltik
(XY: Phantom Forces 26/119) has only 30 HP and
needs [CC] to attack, but even powered up it only takes
20 damage from Psywave. A random Evolving Basic is
normally going to have more HP and less Energy attached
and a typical attacker can score the OHKO for an easy
Prize without giving up an almost as easy Prize in
return.
All hope is not lost, though; there will be times when
something will have just enough HP to survive an attack
but be within range that a Psywave could finish it off
the next turn. Combined with one of the above two
acceleration effects, we finally find a small niche for
Natu - clutch finisher. More importantly, you
want to time it so that it is taking your last two or
three Prizes; being a glass cannon doesn’t matter when
the game is already over. It is a small role, but one
it can fill in Standard, Expanded and especially in
Limited play. Night March decks have an additional
reason to consider it as well - while their focus is on
using similar diminutive, easy to OHKO attackers to take
OHKOs, when a trade fails and leaves something badly
wounded Natu has the chance to swoop in and take
the KO with an additional Prize… so when it is OHKOed
(as you would expect most other Night March attackers to
be) you’re keeping pace. Expanded normally takes a hit
because of more competition, but not this time; besides
Level Ball still being legal here, so is
PlusPower. Limited lacks all the fun little combos,
but also has you facing a lot of lower HP and less
Energy efficient attackers, on top of there only being
four Prizes to claim. As such Natu might be
worth splashing into any deck (even though it means
adding basic Psychic Energy as well) that isn’t a
+39 deck.
Ratings
Standard:
2/5
Expanded:
2.5/5
Limited:
3.5/5
Summary:
Not as impressive as I had hoped, Natu still has
a small place in competitive play. A very small place.
This means the above scores can be misleading: Limited
is a “general” score but Standard and Expanded are
composites - Natu is a bit more useful in the
decks that cater to its needs but deadweight anywhere
else. If you’ve got one of the decks that can work it
in easily, test a single copy and see if you’ve got one
of my theoretical exceptions.
|
Emma Starr |
Today, we have the mightiest of
Pokémon, who can stand up to any challenge, and could
even take on a whole Pokémon League by itself if trained
properly! Hold on to your hats, because today’s review
is about…Natu??
Yes, good ol’ Natu, the unevolved
version of Xatu. As you could probably guess, it’s
brutally weak when it comes to HP; having only 40 to
speak of. With a standard Physchic Weakness and Retreat
Cost of one, you may think Natu could just be another
run-of-the-mill basic Pokémon. But, you could be wrong!
In fact, if played right, Natu can be a great anti-meta
card. First off, let’s look at his Ancient Trait. Alpha
Plus let’s you take an extra prize from your opponent if
the opposing Pokémon is knocked out by Natu, which would
mean taking 2 prizes for knocking out a normal Pokémon,
and 3 for taking down an EX. A great trait as usual, but
it all comes down to Natu’s attack, so let’s examine
that now.
For a Psychic and Colorless energy,
Psywave does 10 times the amount of energy attached to
the opposing Pokémon. Under normal circumstances, most
Pokémon would have, say, 4 energy on them at best, which
would equal 40 damage. Obviously he wouldn’t do great as
a main attacker, but if one of your Pokémon just got
knocked out, and the opposing Pokémon only has 40 or
less HP left, Natu could make a great revenge-killer.
Obviously you’ll want to be wary of your opponent
switching out in their turn after you pick your next
Pokémon, when they could easily switch to something that
could easily kill Natu. A better strategy could be to
switch to a bulkier Pokémon to absorb whatever blow your
opponent may dish out, then switch to Natu during your
next turn, and using Lysandre to bring out the Pokémon
that had 40 HP or less back into the active slot, then
take it out. Then, even if Natu gets killed in the next
turn, you’ll still come out ahead. Thus, he can be a
great anti-meta card. Do I even need to tell you what
could happen if you used him against something like
Yveltal EX or Mewtwo EX?
Standard: 2.5/5 (Situational, but
if played right, you’ll still end up ahead most times.
He’s still reliant on the opposing Pokémon being close
to dead though, and Lysandres also will be of great
importance to him)
Expanded: 2.5/5
Limited: 3/5 (Alpha Plus = god tier
in four prize battles, but he’s still very frail…)
|
