aroramage |
Milotic has had an interesting set
of cards in recent history. These days, she's gathering
up cards from your deck or your discard pile in a
variety of ways - from attacking to grab it to straight
up KOing herself for it. Now we come to another Milotic
with another way of grabbing more cards.
At least you don't need to attack
or KO it to make it work - you just gotta evolve a
Feebas on your Bench for it. Sparkling Ripples then
kicks in and snags any card you want from your discard
pile to add to your hand - simple yet effective! If
Battle Compressor has taught us anything, it's that the
discard pile can be a good place to dump stuff to grab
it, and combined with Milotic, it's practically a
"search your deck for a card and add it to your hand"
effect. Then again, Swampert (36) can do the same thing
turn after turn, although you do have to wait to draw
the card you put on top with him.
Aside from that, Milotic's not
crazy impressive. Aqua Swirl does 3-for-60 and can swap
the opponent's Active Pokemon with a Benched Pokemon.
Could be nice but requires a lot of boosting to be
worthwhile, and that's the kind of stuff I want on my
attacker anyway - which Milotic is not going to be. So
all in all, pretty meh other than that Sparkling Ripples
Ability, and even then that's just a one trick seahorse.
I would like to say Milotic's
good...but she's not crazy good. Combined with Battle
Compressor, she can essentially snag any card in your
deck, but aside from that she's gonna be coming into the
game late to grab a Supporter you dropped earlier -
hopefully no Lysandre's Trump Card will impede her
progress on that. As support, she can help out a deck or
two, but just be aware of her pre-evo Feebas, who has
never graced itself by having more than 30 HP.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (a decent Ability on
an okay card)
Expanded: 2/5 (probably the best of
Milotic's incarnations, but that's not saying much)
Limited: 4/5 (I'd say retrieving a
card you've already used is wildly beneficial here)
Arora Notealus: As beautiful and
radiant as she may be, Milotic does really need a new
thing for her cards. Maybe visit her roots a little with
Healing Showers, or maybe she should work with that hand
gimmick done in Supreme Victors - that was different!
Next Time: From the seas to the
arctic, and the mighty blue comes tumbling home!
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Otaku |
For our XY: Primal Clash Water Week, today we’ll look at
Milotic (XY: Primal Clash 44/160). So of
course being a Water-Type is pretty good right now; not
as good as being Fighting (probably the top Type right
now) but you’ve got direct support like Dive Ball
(specifically works for only Water-Types) and indirect
support like Blastoise (BW: Boundaries Crossed
31/149; BW: Plasma Storm 137/135; BW: Plasmas
Blast 16/101) and even shared support like Rough
Seas (heals both Lightning- and Water-Types).
Nearly all Fire-Types and a good chunk of
Fighting-Types (namely those based on the video game
Ground- and Rock-Types) take double damage, though the
only major, metagame relevant examples I can think of
are Landorus-EX and Donphan (BW: Plasma
Storm 72/135)... and it can be argued that
Donphan no longer count as “major” for the metagame.
Some Grass-Types from before the XY-era sport Water
Resistance, though the only major example there is
Virizion-EX (and Resistance is a minor concern to
begin with). Even less of a concern but mentioned just
to be thorough is that there are a few cards that are
“anti” Water, like Hariyama (XY: Furious Fists
52/111) with its damage reducing Thick Skin Ability that
only works against Fire-Types and Water-Types… and as
you can tell by my example none of these have seen
successful competitive play (well… maybe in Limited
venues for Hariyama).
Being a Stage 1 is a drawback since it still means an extra turn to
Evolve and an extra card to get the Pokémon into play,
though if both Stage 1 and Basic were sufficiently
useful this could mitigate much of this. No, I don’t
expect Feebas to be an example of such a
wonderful thing. Milotic has 110 HP; perhaps
because Feebas have so little that seems pretty
good. The max printed for Stage 1 Pokémon is Wailord
(BW: Dragons Exalted 26/124) at 200, but the
designers like to make it an outlier (Wailord has close
to but not the highest HP in the video games). Steelix
(BW: Plasma 79/116) and Tyrantrum (XY:
Furious Fists 62/111) both sport 150, the latter of
which Evolves from a Restored Pokémon. The two examples
of 140 HP Stage 1 Pokémon are two different versions of
Carracosta - BW: Noble Victories 26/101
and BW: Plasma Blast 28/101) are also both
Evolved from Restored Pokémon; it isn’t until we hit 130
HP that we get multiple examples of non-special mechanic
Stage 1 Pokémon. Of course how common it is won’t
change that 110 HP is at the point there it is a little
more likely to survive a hit than be OHKOed (but only a
little), however I was careless in a few past articles,
sometimes forgetting those that Evolve from Restored
Pokémon and almost always forgetting Steelix.
Sorry folks.
Grass Weakness is not good; only having no Weakness at all is good.
How bad Grass Weakness is mostly rests on how good (or
at least “popular”) VirGen decks are; there aren’t a lot
of other Grass-Types that seem significant competitive
play. VirGen decks seem to finally be on the decline,
but that doesn’t mean you won’t run into them;
Virizion-EX can score a OHKO so long as you have any
sort of boost for it (Muscle Bandi, Hypnotoxic Laser,
etc.) while Genesect-EX easily scores a OHKO. Virizion-EX
might actually be the bigger concern; decks running
Rainbow Energy sometimes include it to take
advantage of its Verdant Wind Ability, but that same
Rainbow Energy can help it to attack if a OHKO would
prove worthwhile. There are also popular and potent
Grass-Weak Pokémon like Seismitoad-EX that
provide a major incentive for players to try and make
other Grass-Types work, especially splashed into
existing decks. The lack of Resistance is common, so
Milotic isn’t really hurt by it. The Retreat Cost
of [CC] is similarly average in terms of function; its
high enough it hurts to pay (most of the time) but low
enough you will often still be able to both afford to
pay it and then recover. Most decks will be packing
alternatives to manually retreating at full cost, making
it even less of a concern.
So from its attributes, Milotic isn’t looking good but its
not looking bad; what about its effects? It has one
Ability and one attack. The Ability is Sparkling
Ripples, a “coming into play” effect that triggers only
when you Evolve one of your Pokémon into this Milotic.
Nice to know if we ever get something other than
Feebas that could Evolve into Milotic,
Sparkling Ripples would still trigger but this means
there’s no point in using Archie’s Ace in the Hole
or Evosoda if you want to access the Ability.
Sparkling Ripples has a simple but useful effect
otherwise; select a card from your discard pile and add
it to your hand. Lysandre’s Trump Card can throw
everything but copies of itself back into your deck, but
those cards have to be drawn or searched out afterwards.
There isn’t a good way to add Special Energy cards from
the discard pile directly to your hand. Dowsing
Machine can get back any Trainer but in addition to
discarding to cards from your hand to play it, it eats
up your Ace Spec. VS Seeker can get back any
Supporter while Energy Retrieval can get back any
basic Energy, but while being an Item makes those far
easier to play, it also makes them easy to block. Revive
Benches a Basic Pokémon from your discard pile while
Max Revive places it on top of your deck (still from
the discard pile) and neither sees much (if any)
successful competitive play. So even though Abilities
are also often blocked, this is still a good effect
because it can get anything: were it on a Basic Pokémon
it might easily turn such a card into a staple, though
here it just gives Milotic promise.
Its lone attack is Aqua Swirl, which requires [WCC] and hits for 60
points of damage with an optional effect to force your
opponent to change out his or her Active Pokémon. The
Energy required isn’t too bad in that it makes it
plausible you could attack in an off Type deck and you
could use Double Colorless Energy (or other
non-specific Energy acceleration) to meet the cost and
it is nice that the change out is optional so you don’t
accidentally help your opponent but the damage is very
lacking. Still it isn’t worthless; with a Silver
Bangle the attack can at least score a OHKO against
Landorus-EX and if you run into someone still
trying to make Pyroar (XY: Flashfire
20/106) work, this gives you a Stage 1 that can OHKO it.
It is clear though that this card was intended by the
designers to be used primarily for its Ability, which is
a bit of a problem because while the Ability is good, it
isn’t great.
While I already indicated it wasn’t likely, let us see if some of
the related cards can help. There is one Expanded only
option for Feebas - BW: Dragons Exalted
27/124 - and two Standard only offerings - XY:
Flashfire 22/106 and XY: Primal Clash 43/160.
All three are Basic Water-Type Pokémon with 30 HP, no
Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], no Ancient Trait, no
Ability and a single attack. BW: Dragons Exalted
27/124 is Lightning Weak and Add-a-Dash for [W], which
gives you two coin flips that let you draw a card per
“heads”. XY: Flashfire 22/106 is Grass Weak and
for [C] can use Surprise Attack, a “tails fails” attack
only good for 10 damage. XY: Primal Clash 43/160
is also Grass Weak and for [W] its Float On attack does
10 damage to the opponent’s Active, but if you get
“tails” on a coin flip 10 to itself. All three are
pretty poor; if you can’t count on having [W] Energy
handy go with XY: Flashfire 22/106 just in case
10 damage would matter. If you will have access to a
source of [W] Energy you can risk on a Feebas and
are playing in Expanded, go with BW: Dragons Exalted
27/124 as even flippy draw power is better for your
desperation attack than weak damage.
There are two other options for Milotic: BW: Dragons
Exalted 28/124 (which is Expanded only) and XY:
Flashfire 23/106. Naturally, they are Stage 1
Water-Types with no Resistance and no Ancient Traits. BW:
Dragons Exalted 28/124 has 110 HP, Lightning
Weakness and a single Energy Retreat Cost. It has two
attacks (and no Ability); the first is Clear Search for
[W], which lets you search your deck for three cards to
add to your hand and Water Pulse for [WCC] which does 60
damage plus puts the Defending Pokémon to Sleep. XY:
Flashfire 23/106 has just 100 HP but has the same
Grass Weakness and Retreat Cost of two as today’s card
and likewise has one Ability and one attack. Its Energy
Grace Ability KOs itself to attach three basic Energy
cards to one of your Pokémon excluding
Pokémon-EX. Yet again the attack - Waterfall - requires
[WCC] and hits for 60 damage, though this time with no
effect whatsoever. The older option isn’t going to be
worth it as you’re probably trading an attack and being
KOed for the three card search (the [WCC] is filler even
when there isn’t an Ability, apparently)... and adding
three cards to your hand at the end of your turn is
easily sabotaged by N. Energy Grace looked great
when we first saw it but no deck seems to have every
managed to make good use of it; working with neither
Special Energy cards nor Pokémon-EX leaves a lot of the
best combinations out. Still its not bad; its good but
not great. You can see the old reviews for these two
here
and
here.
So the two Standard legal Milotic actually do compliment
each other; both work with your discard pile but aren’t
so great that you’d be likely to run a 4-4 line of
either. Blending the two does give you some nice
options but its hard to make a Stage 1 line work as
support unless is something amazing like Aromatisse
or perhaps Trevenant. Most of the metagame seems
to be working against these two cards; Lysandre’s
Trump Card makes it risky to rely on effects that
pull from the discard pile and I already explained how
Energy Grace seems like a failed attempt at rejuvenating
the non-Pokémon-EX, non-Special Energy focused side of
the metagame. Probably the clincher is Feebas;
one gets that the designers wanted to make it an
intentional drawback (more so than normal Evolving
Pokémon) but 30 HP is so small that many Bench hits OHKO
it. All together that makes both of these Milotic
hard to use. Like XY: Flashfire 23/106 before
it, XY: Primal Clash 44/160 will have to settle
for being fairly good in Limited; even the combo with
Battle Compressor doesn’t seem quite good enough to
make the Stage 1 worth the hassle.
Ratings
Standard: 2/5
Expanded: 2/5
Limited: 3.75/5
Summary: Milotic seems like a card you should be able to do
something with, much like its predecessor XY:
Flashfire 23/106.
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