aroramage |
Once again the Arctic Terror
descends on the TCG, and once again he's brought
something interesting to the table. Our last card of the
week is Walrein, who might see play for a couple of odd
reasons. Naturally, these reasons are due mostly to his
two attacks.
His first attack, Knock Over, is a
2-for-50 strike which is already pretty good - a lot
better than some of the other 2-cost attacks we've been
seeing as of late. On top of that, it also can discard a
Stadium card in play. That's pretty nice, depending on
what Stadium it is; it can get rid of your opponent's
Silent Lab so that your Abilities turn back on, Fighting
Stadium to eliminate more damage, Virbank to get rid of
the extra Poison damage, and many more examples I'm
sure. It's also nice that this is optional so you don't
have to get rid of your own Stadium, though if your
opponent replaces it with another it's honestly easier
to just play your own rather than go through the trouble
of attacking again.
Then there's his second attack,
which is...situational. At 4 Energy, you can use Frozen
Splash for either a not-so-great 70 damage, or you can
use it against a Fighting Pokemon to deal 140 damage
instead! The problem with attacks like these is that
they rely on a very specific Type of Pokemon to be your
target - anything else, it's just okay. So against
Fighting decks, which are no doubt extremely popular
with all their support in recent memory, Walrein's
pretty brutal! Against everything else...not so much.
So Walrein isn't exceptionally
phenomenal unless you hang around the Fighting Dojo
(shout outs to PTCG for GBC!), but hey, he's something!
If maybe Frozen Splash had something to do with some
other aspect of a card other than the Type, like if they
have a Tool attached or have Special Energy or even
Retreat Cost, just...not Type. Anything but Type. THEN
maybe Walrein would be more playable.
Oh right. Stage 2. Never mind.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (decent first attack
marred by a second situational attack)
Expanded: 2/5 (really, what do you
expect?)
Limited: 3/5 (probably more likely
to get some mileage out of that second attack, given the
support in the set, but I wouldn't be relying on this
too much)
Arora Notealus: Walrein's a pretty
nice Pokemon in all honesty. I mean come on, how many
other Pokemon do you know based on walruses-oh right,
there's only WALREIN!! TOO COOL FOR YOUR SCHOOL, KIDS,
GOTTA GO TO THE ARCTIC!!
Weekend Thought: Not bad for Water
Week? Part 1? Did you figure we'd have a Part 2? Maybe
we'll have a Part 3? Nahhh, maybe not, there's only so
many Water Pokemon after all.
BIG NOTE: We're taking this next
week off as a Spring Break of sorts, so take it easy for
now folks! We'll see you all when we come back the 30th!
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Otaku |
At last we come to our Friday pick for XY: Primal
Clash Water Week: Walrein (XY: Primal
Clash 48/160). If you skipped right to this review,
I’ll repeat what I’ve been saying about the Water-Type
all week; Fighting is probably the best Type right now,
and this isn’t as good as Fighting, but it is probably
no worse than the “middle of the pack” overall. The
main reason for this is because while there aren’t a lot
of great, top competitive Pokémon to OHKO even with
Fire-Types almost all being Water Weak and a good chunk
of Fighting-Types and exploiting Weakness is still an
amazing bonus. Otherwise the Water-Type enjoys great
direct support like Archie’s Ace in the Hole and
Dive Ball which work specifically for Water-Type
Pokémon and indirect support like Blastoise (BW:
Boundaries Crossed
31/149; BW: Plasma Storm137/135; BW: Plasmas
Blast 16/101) which can fuel anything capable of
using Water-Type Energy plus a few great key Pokémon
like Keldeo-EX, Seismitoad-EX and
Suicune, though Fighting-Types get at least as much
or more of each. Water-Types do have to worry about
Water Resistance though its limited to some older
Grass-Types and there are some “anti” Water-Type cards
but if it was easier to properly format footnotes for
CotDs, that’s where I’d mention them because they don’t
see even a little competitive play.
Being a Stage 2 is pretty rough. It isn’t the worst
Stage to be if you fear having to do things the “manual”
way, but the competition are the “special” Stages that
are still currently legal: some might consider it a bit
of a toss up whether ending your turn by manually Mega
Evolving is worse than needing two turns and two more
cards to manually Evolve into a Stage 2 and Restored
Pokémon don’t have a way to enter play without using the
effect of another card (and no, Evolution doesn’t count
as the effect of another card). For those Mega
Evolutions with Spirit Link cards and possibly
Restored Pokémon and Fossil Researcher, sometimes
I wonder if that is currently more effective than
Rare Candy. For Water-Types, all three can also use
Archie’s Ace in the Hole to skip everything that
comes before them, so that helps. Still it is a format
that rewards Basic Pokémon the most and punishes regular
Stage 1 Pokémon far less than the rest. Which means
this is already something Walrein has to overcome
unless it is one of the few, fortunate Evolutions with
lower Stages that chip in to justify running the entire
Stage.
Walrein
sports 150 HP, only 10 below the maximum printed on any
Stage 2 Pokémon; though there are many Pokémon with
greater HP scores only a handful aren’t Pokémon-EX or
Stage 1 Pokémon that Evolve from Restored Pokémon. This
gives Walrein good (though not great) odds of
surviving a hit outside of the usual suspects; attackers
that hit ridiculously hard anyway, scalable attacks,
auto-KO attacks, decks that run a lot of attack buffs
and of course, Weakness. As Walrein is an
Ice/Water hybrid in the video games, it ends up with
Metal Weakness in the TCG, which I believe is a little
desirable than the Grass or Lightning Weakness seen on
many other Water-Types, though I’m not completely
certain due to some (relatively) recent shifts in the
metagame. It isn’t safe because there are indeed some
Metal-Type attackers and decks floating around. The
lack of Resistance is the worst but few cards have
Resistance so I see no point in penalizing a card for
lacking it. The four Energy Retreat Cost is going to
cost Walrein, but only a little; the metagame is
such that most decks want at least one or two outs to
manually retreating a full price plus while not a huge
advantage, in Expanded it makes the card a legal
Heavy Ball target.
So what does the “Ice Break Pokémon” do? It has two
attacks. For [WC] it has Knockover, a handy attack that
does a respectable 50 points of damage and gives you the
option of discarding the current Stadium in play.
Jockeying for position with your Stadium (or rather
denying your opponent their own) is usually at least a
small advantage and sometimes rather significant, with
some of the cards next set poised to make this attack
even more useful (though that won’t affect the current
score). Frozen Splash requires a hefty [WWCC] to use
and hits for… 70 points of damage, unless used against a
Fighting-Type in which case it does an extra 70 damage.
It sounds pretty good but isn’t: most of the time it is
a horribly overpriced 70 damage and even when hitting
Fighting-Types, those with 70 or less HP (140 or less HP
if they are Water Weak) would be OHKOed without the
effect. Those with over 140 HP still aren’t OHKOed, so
only those that see either 80 to 140 HP or 150 to 280 HP
and are Water Weak are majorly affected.
Especially restricting things further to what sees
competitive play this is far too specialized. There is
only some basic synergy in that without Energy
acceleration the first attack can be readied in two
turns while the second needs four (three with the simple
acceleration that is Double Colorless Energy).
Let us see if Walrein gets any significant
support from its related cards. The Basic in the
Evolution line is Spheal: the options are BW:
Dragons Exalted 29/124 (Expanded Only), XY:
Flashfire 24/106, XY: Primal Clash 45/160 and
XY: Primal Clash 46/160 (an alternate art reprint
of XY: Flashfire 24/106). Normally I would go
into a bit more detail but XY: Flashfire 24/106
(or XY: Primal Clash 46/160 as it is the same)
are the choice to go with because they have 10 more HP
and none of the attacks are really worth it on any
version. Since it is 70 HP, it even will even remain
useful when getting hit (some) Metal-Types. Sealeo
has three cards and three options (as there are no
reprints): BW: Dragons Exalted 30/124 (Expanded
Only), XY: Flashfire 25/106 and XY: Primal
Clash 47/160. Things are slightly more complicated
here; while all three are Stage 1 Water-Types with Metal
Weakness, no Resistance, Retreat Cost [CCC], no Ability,
no Ancient Trait and two attacks, the attacks have some
merit. BW: Dragons Exalted 30/124 can do 30 for
[WC] with Ice Ball and 40 for [WCC] with Aurora Beam,
but has only 80 HP so its out. XY: Flashfire
25/106 has Rest for [CC] which heals 60 from itself and
puts itself to Sleep or for [WWC] has Ice Ball again but
this time for 60 damage. XY: Primal Clash 47/160
has Freezing Headbutt for [WC] which does 30 with a coin
flip to inflict Paralysis or has Aurora Beam as well,
but this time for [WWC] and hitting for 50. In the end,
go with XY: Primal Clash 47/160 as Paralysis is
the most likely to buy you an extra turn.
That leaves the two other Walrein to compare and
contrast: BW: Dragons Exalted 31/124 and XY:
Flashfire 26/106. XY: Flashfire 26/106 was
reviewed
here
but that was about 8 months ago so its already a bit
dated. They have the same attributes as today’s version
except that BW: Dragons Exalted 31/124 has 10
less HP. Its has two attacks, Aurora Beam for [WCC] and
hitting for 80 as well as Ice Entomb which requires a
massive [WWCC] and hits for 60 plus automatic Paralysis,
though the attack contains a clause stating it can’t use
Ice Entomb on the next turn. XY: Flashfire
26/106 has Powder Snow to hit for 60 and Sleep at a
price of [WCC] while for [WWCC] it can use Big Tusk for
120 points of damage, less 10 per damage counter on it.
I’d say all four are overpriced to the point that
today’s version looks good by comparison; so no help
from the previous Stages or alternate final forms,
though also no competition.
So should you run Walrein (XY: Primal Clash
48/160)? Most of the time no, but if you have an
Archie’s Ace in the Hole and some VS Seeker
(or multiple of the former) then there is a very slight
chance. Knock Over really can be handy, such as if
Ninetales (XY: Primal Clash 21/160) has a
particular Stadium locked into play or if something like
Primal Groudon-EX wants to attack while
discarding Stadiums for more damage (your opponent will
get a chance to play more Stadiums, but you can slightly
decrease their opportunities). Unfortunately Knock Over
can be a bit hard to power up unless the rest of the
deck has additional acceleration. While not enough to
justify it alongside the rest, there will also be a few,
select times when Frozen Splash comes in handy as well,
however those will definitely require Energy
acceleration or luck to ready it. Oh and as always,
there is Limited where as long as you can run it and
don’t get something substantially better that clashes,
its a good pull.
Ratings
Standard:
1.5/5
Expanded:
1.65/5
Limited:
3.5/5
Summary:
Walrein is a bit of a downer to end the week but
it isn’t as hopeless as the score indicates; I wasn’t
kidding when I said to think about the future. It is
still a bit of a long shot but there may be something
coming to make it worth that Stadium discarding niche.
Still with some of the Water-Types we didn’t cover that
should at least be better than this (if not some of our
other picks this week), its inclusion seems a bit odd.
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