aroramage |
Seems somebody better use that
taxi, cause it looks like somebody CALLED IT!!
YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Thanks, Ludicolo, for giving
support on that joke! And thanks of course to you guys
for your hanging around for Water Week! As you can see,
we've got Ludicolo once again to show off his moves and
reintroduce himself as a Water-type - in the same set as
his Grass version, no less! Crazy!
Typing aside, what makes this
Ludicolo different from his partner is that Alpha
Recovery, which doubles the amount of healing he
receives. Notably, he can recover 60 damage off of Rough
Seas each turn he's around, since he's a Water-type
after all. This can make for a pretty decent stall
option - I know in the past I've berated healing for
being a "band-aid" rather than a "knee pad," if you
catch my drift, but when that band-aid can keep a deep
wound from getting worse, that's pretty good in my book.
Minimally, 70 damage will still take a few turns to KO
Ludicolo (though 130 WILL KO him regardless).
That being said, let's see why
you'd want this Ludicolo around. First is the simple
Astonish that does 1-for-30 and shuffles a card in the
opponent's hand into their deck. Slightly disruptive and
a temporary fix to an upcoming problem but not the best
thing for a Stage 2 to hang around with. Splash Dance on
the other hand has a little potential. It does 3-for-60
damage on the first turn, and then if you use it again
on your next turn, it does 120 damage instead. Notice
those numbers? Yep, Ludicolo can 2HKO most Pokemon-EX if
he sticks around.
And with a Trait like Alpha
Recovery, he might actually stick around for a good
while! I wouldn't say he's a competitive counter to
these guys, but he does put forth a good effort to be
sure. If you're weird, you could even use him with the
other Ludicolo to try and switch around Pokemon such
that Splash Dance's 120 hits something that could fall
easily in one go! Keeping in mind I haven't even
mentioned Muscle Band or HTLBank.
If nothing more than a dark horse
of sorts, Ludicolo will at least live on in our hearts
with song and dance. Celebrate good times, you crazy
platypus pineapple thing. Good times.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (I'd say a fairly
decent option - not gonna blow things out of the water,
but could survive long enough to be threatening if he's
not taken care of immediately)
Expanded: 3/5 (about the same here)
Limited: 4/5 (you get that Rough
Seas a blowing and that Splash Dance a flowing, then
your opponents will be a-rolling)
Arora Notealus: Just look at that
face! That's totally a Fonzie "Eyyyyyyyy" face! Just
imagine him going, "Eyyyyyyyyyy~" Go on. I'll wait for
the guffaws and chuckles to ensue.
Next Time: BEHOLD THE BIGGEST
ANYTHING EVER
|
Otaku |
If you paid attention to last week, you already knew
what to expect for this week; its XY: Primal Clash
Water Week here on Pojo. First up is the counterpart to
a Grass-Type we reviewed during the Grass Week; today we
look at Ludicolo (XY: Primal Clash
37/160)! Unfortunately I’m running behind so I’m going
to have to extensively reference our review of its
set-mate, Ludicolo (XY: Primal Clash
12/160); here’s a
link.
Then again since I’d be largely repeating myself
anyone, some might prefer the “abridged” version of my
usual review approach.
Right now its pretty good to be blue. Water-Types don’t
have the kind of support the Fighting-Type enjoys, but
they have some nifty tricks like Dive Ball and
Rough Seas (FYI I didn’t realize how many typos were
in my review for that card until now) and some
impressive Pokémon though most are like Keldeo-EX
and Seismitoad-EX; even if they can do more with
an actual Water deck behind them, they work quite well
off-Type or in mixed company. In terms of exploiting
Weakness (since that remains an important part of the
game), Water Weakness is mostly valuable for hitting
Landorus-EX at the moment, though there are plenty
of cards that don’t see as much play with the same
Weakness (nearly all Fire-Types and a good chunk of
Fighting). Again it isn’t as advantageous as the
exploiting Weakness if for Fighting-Types, but overall
its good. Water Resistance is almost gone from the
game; it remains due to older Grass-Types from the
BW-era. There are some cards that are “anti-Water”,
such as Hariyama (XY: Furious Fists
52/111); its Thick Fat Ability reduces the damage taken
from Water-Types (and Fire-Types, though that doesn’t
matter for this review) by 30, the same as “old-school”
Resistance used to block. Yeah, damage output and HP
scores go up as this game gets older, but Resistance
amounts decrease: I don’t really get it either.
Fortunately for Water-Types, “anti-Water” cards just
aren’t that good.
Being a Stage 2 hasn’t changed since last week and
spoiler alert, when we cover this card’s lower Stages
they won’t be good enough to help offset the increased
card and time requirement of being an Evolution. 130 HP
could have been adequate but peeking ahead you know this
card isn’t meant as a Bench-sitter. Hitting for 130 in
one turn still isn’t easy, but it is not longer as
tricky as it was even a few sets ago; remember that it
doesn’t have to come from a single attack against a lot
of popular decks. The Grass-Type Weakness isn’t the
worst to have. In fact the main reason it worries me is
because of other, established Pokémon like Seismitoad-EX
are also Grass Weak and thus provide an incentive to try
and find more, good Grass-Type attackers. So far though
the only really strong Grass-Type deck is VirGen and
there aren’t a lot of good, Grass-Type attackers that
are easy, general fits for decks at large. Against
VirGen decks Weakness will matter; a Virizion-EX
with a Muscle Band can Emerald Slash for a OHKO,
while Genesect-EX will need no aid to perform the
same feat. No Resistance is still common so no penalty
for that. A Retreat Cost of two is both common, about
the functional norm and easily dealt with when it is an
issue so it is neither going to help nor really hurt
this card.
We finally get to what this Ludicolo can do;
first it has an Ancient Trait. α Recovery doubles the
amount of healing this cards receives; a small benefit
but not as good as most other Ancient Traits. Healing
has often been a weak tactic - the one recent,
successful healing card is Max Potion and as that
heals all damage, no point in doubling it. Still this
does make other forms of healing a lot more effective as
Potion becomes Super Potion without any
drawbacks, Super Potion functionally becomes
Max Potion without as large of a drawback (without
HP boosting tricks, you are only ever going to need to
heal 120 damage from Ludicolo) and what might
actually matter, Rough Seas heals an impressive
60 instead of its already handy 30. Still this Ancient
Trait would be much better on something with more HP; as
stated earlier 130 doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room so
most decks will either still get the OHKO or 2HKO. Ludicolo
then as two attacks; the first is Astonish for [C],
which does 30 damage and allows you to randomly shuffle
a card from your opponent’s hand into his or her deck
(you also get to see that card before it is shuffled
away). Again not great but for the Energy involved its
decent. In fact if this were a Basic Pokémon it might
even be somewhat good. The second attack is Splash
Dance for [WCC]; it does 60 damage and places an effect
on Ludicolo so that if it uses Splash Dance again
next turn, the attack does another 60 (so 120). If
Ludicolo is Benched (let alone KOed) this effect is
reset, so its pretty hard to get that bonus damage.
Even if that wasn’t the case, three for 60 is bad while
three for 120 is good but not great; you’d have to get
two 120 hits from Splash Dance for every 60 to be a more
or less “average” deck.
So… now for where I can just reference the older review.
The short version is that no version of the lower
Stages are particular good. Neither are any of the
other Ludicolo currently available especially
good. Ludicolo (XY: Primal Clash 12/160)
has a nifty Ability but it isn’t so strong as to justify
the Stage 2 line on its own. If we had some other as
good-or-better Ludicolo, they might manage a deck
together. This version currently is only useful for
being the slightly-easier-to-attack-with-Water-Type-Ludicolo
if you were running the two in a deck. If you love
Ludicolo go ahead and do what you can; I guess with
Auroros (XY: Furious Fists 26/111) and
Rough Seas (perhaps some regular Potion as
well) backing it, you could make a weird,
non-competitive-but-fun tank deck. Getting multiples of
a Stage 1 that Evolves from a Restored Pokémon plus a
Stage 2 into play is a lot of work, though and if
Abilities go down, well basically the whole deck goes
down. You also can enjoy this in Limited, aided by
there being an additional Ludicolo in the set
(slightly easier to get a more robust Evolution line
that way) and there actually being two healing cards
that aren’t super rare in the set either: Rough Seas
and Fresh Water Set. This is even the set with
Dive Ball.
Ratings
Standard:
1.5/5
Expanded:
1.5/5
Limited:
3.5/5
Summary:
While not completely bland, Ludicolo combines a
lot of things that don’t work very well for a final
product that doesn’t really work at all. I actually
ended up being impressed by it because I couldn’t even
think of a crazy-fun-deck for it but then I realized
something in the end… so the above scores might be a bit
high.
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