aroramage |
Hello and welcome to the
Fisherman's Corner! Today we take a look at the
magnificent haul that is this Whiscash! Gotta say, I'm
glad we brought up the Ancient Trait version, cause the
other one just isn't that impressive. But does that mean
this one's the Catch of the Day, or is it something we
should just toss back?
Fishing metaphors aside, this
Whiscash is an interesting one. Its Ancient Trait is the
Alpha Growth one, which if you recall from Primal Kyogre-EX
is the one that lets you attach 2 Energies from your
hand to the Pokemon during your turn. It's appropriate,
then, that Whiscash's attacks are a little more on the
heavy side, since Alpha Growth can compensate to some
degree; what would normally take 3-4 turns to charge now
only takes at least 2 turns, so this can work in
Whiscash's favor.
Thing is, it isn't that much. At 3
Energy, you get Water Gun, which does a vanilla 40
damage. SNORE!! At 4 Energy, you get Earthquake, which
deals 120 damage and hits your Bench for 20 damage a
piece. Now if you've got something like Mountain Ring or
Mr. Mime, you can nullify that damage entirely so you're
just hitting the opponent for 120 - which is enough to
2HKO most things in the format. But given that low score
of 110 HP, it's probably not gonna stick around for too
long.
Whiscash isn't bad, but it's not
great either. He's a good example of how the Alpha
Growth trait is used though, and early on he was the
first to be shown in previews as to how it works. He's
not the best user of it, though (that belongs to Primal
Kyogre-EX), but he can be a decent Stage 1 attacker for
your casual playing experience.
At least the artwork is pretty
cool.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (a good Trait, but
only okay attacks)
Expanded: 2/5 (it's decent here,
I'm sure)
Limited: 3.5/5 (a pretty good
option here at least, just be wary of those Grass-types)
Arora Notealus: "It will eat
anything - it is alive, Whiscash will eat it." ...oh
dear.
Next Time: Going from devourer of
everything living to beautiful and gorgeous confusing
evolution!
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Otaku |
Our third XY: Primal Clash Water Week subject is…
Whiscash (XY: Primal Clash 41/160). As
has already been hammered home, being a Water-Type is
fairly good; it isn’t amazing for exploiting Weakness
but it hits at least one major player (Landorus-EX).
Resistance exists but it hasn’t shown up on any XY-era
cards and Resistance is mostly an irritant anyway.
There are some anti-Water cards but they are pretty
obscure and not very good (the latter being the reason
for the former). The Water-Type has pretty good support
- enough it can be easy to forget all it has going for
it. They have their own Supporter in the form of
Archie’s Ace in the Hole, they have their own search
Item (Dive Ball) and they have their own (shared
with Lightning-Types) Stadium (Rough Seas). The
direct support is a bit weak Pokémon-wise but indirectly
its great with Seismitoad-EX, Keldeo-EX,
Suicune as solid technical Pokémon with
Blastoise (BW: Boundaries Crossed 31/149;
BW: Plasma Storm 137/135; BW: Plasma Blast
16/101) providing massive Energy acceleration. Still it
is a bit bittersweet; Whiscash in the video games are
Water/Ground hybrids, so this Pokémon could have been a
Fighting-Type which likely would have been a bit better.
Whiscash is a Stage 1; obviously worse than
being a Basic but not as hamstringing as being a Stage
2. In fact if the Stage 1 form is good and its Basic
form is good, the whole thing can compete directly with
many Basics (just not the really obscene ones).
Whiscash
sports 110 HP; ignoring the infamous outliers that are
Wailord (BW: Dragons Exalted 26/124) and
some that Evolve from Restored Pokémon, that is only 20
below the max printed for Stage 1 cards. Functionally
though this is enough to make it a little more likely to
survive a hit than not, but the margin is uncomfortably
close. Grass Weakness isn’t good (no Weakness is the
best Weakness), but it might be becoming one of the
safer ones to possess. Working a Grass-Type attacker
into a deck is hard; the best options are Leafeon
(BW: Plasma Freeze 11/116) and Tropius (BW:
Plasma Blast 5/101) that I have seen and both have
some issues with general play. Even the once amazing
VirGen deck seems to be struggling as of late, though
even if it is on the way out that won’t eliminate it
from the metagame so it is quite relevant that
Genesect-EX easily dispatches Whiscash while
Virizion-EX just needs a Muscle Band. No
Resistance is the norm so technically it isn’t a
drawback, but again this is a Water/Ground hybrid in the
video games, granting it Immunity to Electric Attacks
and Resistance (at the damage halving level) to Poison,
Rock, Steel and Fire Types. So TCG Lightning, Metal and
Fire Resistance wouldn’t cause any erroneous Type
matching and while Fire Resistance currently isn’t a
thing and the designers seem to like Metal being a
potential Water Weakness and not Resistance, that
Lightning Resistance would have been handy (and the
designers aren’t using Lightning Weakness for
Water-Types anymore). Finishing off the bottom of the
card, the Retreat Cost is [CCCC]; painful but
fortunately S.O.P. for decks is to include something to
zero out Retreat Costs or bypass manually retreating
entirely, sometimes in a reusable fashion and of course
I love being Heavy Ball compliant, even when it
only matters for Expanded.
This Whiscash sports an Ancient Trait and it is…
α Growth! In case there are still some misconceptions,
α Growth is meant to only affect your manual Energy
attachment for the turn (hence the list of things in the
text that won’t trigger it) and is meant to replace
attaching a single Energy card with attaching two and
you can’t split the attachment between Pokémon as it
only works for that Pokémon with α Growth that would
have had just one Energy attached. Whiscash also
has two attacks; Water Gun for [WCC] which hits for 40
and Earthquake for [WWCC] which hits for 120 but also
does 20 to each of your own Benched Pokémon. Water Gun
is bad but Earthquake seems adequate; I am not sure if
it is the best strategy but you could indeed boost that
damage to the 180 mark with Silver Bangle,
Hypnotoxic Laser and Virbank City Gym. Water
Gun is kind of a dud, save it gets you attacking a turn
sooner than without it.
There is only one option for Barboach (even in
Expanded): XY: Primal Clash 39/160). Sadly it is
pretty much filler; a Basic Water-Type with 50 HP, Grass
Weakness, no Resistance and a Retreat Cost of [CC].
There is another Whiscash though: XY: Primal
Clash 40/160 and no, we are not looking at it
tomorrow. It is also a Stage 1 Water-Type with Grass
Weakness and no Resistance, though with 10 less HP, one
less in the Retreat Cost, no Ability, no Ancient Trait
and two attacks. For [C] it has Amnesia to do 20 damage
and allow you to select one of attacks on your
opponent’s Active to prevent said Pokémon from using
that attack on your opponent’s next turn. That actually
is a decent attack. Its second attack is Rising Lunge
which requires [WCC] to hit for 60 with a coin flip for
an extra 30, which is still underpowered for the cost
but no where near as bad as Water Gun… but if that
sounds like a lot of praise notice how it lacks an
Ancient Trait or a good “big” attack; it has one good
small attack and a big attack that is “less bad” than
the “small” attack on today’s version, hence why it
isn’t getting its own review during Water Week.
So, is Whiscash (XY: Primal Clash 41/160)
worth running? Probably not, but it isn’t as far out as
it might seem. You can use Double Colorless Energy
with α Growth, so if you are able to attach a Water
Energy to Barboach the turn before, after
Evolving you can then drop a second Water Energy
alongside Double Colorless Energy and score a
good hit. Mr. Mime (XY: Plasma Freeze
47/116) or Mountain Ring can cancel out the Bench
damage drawback of Earthquake, or you might run stuff
with built in damage protection or with Outrage style
attacks to make the damage work (a little bit) for you.
As mentioned earlier you might include some buffs to
get the damage output to OHKO level for most Basic
Pokémon-EX, but its probably just better finding a way
to help Whiscash improve its odds of surviving so
you can get off two hits with one (and build up your
next one). Enjoy it in Limited, where is is a nice
pull.
Ratings
Standard:
2.25/5
Expanded:
2.35/5
Limited:
4.5/5
Summary:
In many ways, Whiscash is a scaled down version
of Primal Kyogre-EX, an idea I find somewhat
appealing just because it is a bit different, but
unfortunately not because I think it is especially
competitive. Still for a “dud”, at least its relatively
decent.
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