|
Hey guys, and welcome back to
Double Crisis week! Today we're taking a look at one of
the secret bases you can grab, Team Aqua's Secret Base!
Of the two, I think this one is the lesser (and I LIKE
Team Aqua, Alpha Sapphire all the way), given that it
wasn't on my personal Top 5, but I can understand the
reasoning for it being here.
Team Aqua's Secret Base is a pretty
simple card: if your Pokemon's name doesn't include Team
Aqua, it's gonna have to "pay a fee" of sorts. The fee
that I speak of is that ever familiar Retreat Cost, that
thing that if you've ever played with Switch, Keldeo-EX,
or just didn't remember you could manually switch
Pokemon around because you like your big bulky EX out
front, is the part of the card you ignore. It indicates
how much Energy you have to discard from the Pokemon in
order to put it back on your Bench, and given that most
decks tend to run around 12-15 Energy, that can be a bit
of a detriment if you don't have some means of
reattaching it or retrieving it from the discard pile.
So in essence, Team Aqua's Secret
Base makes this manual retreat more difficult, making
even Pokemon that normally have a free Retreat Cost to
forcibly cough up at least one Energy to come out. As I
just briefly mentioned though, there are and have always
been ways around this if need be, so having an increase
to this isn't that big of a deal...except that Team Aqua
has a secret weapon in tow.
If you've taken a look at Team
Aqua's Kyogre-EX, you'll notice that it's a little
different from other EX Pokemon; in fact, both he and
Team Magma's Groudon-EX have 190 HP rather than the
standard 170-180 HP. Granted, neither of them can make
their attack if you don't have a full Bench of their
respective Team's Pokemon on board, but while Groudon-EX
loves dealing more damage if your opponent already has
damage, Kyogre-EX will deal more damage based on the
Retreat Cost.
That's right, Aqua Impact does
4-for-80 with an additional 20 on top for every Energy
in a Pokemon's Retreat Cost, and combined with Team
Aqua's Secret Base, that extra 20 damage can be enough
to plow through the most fearsome of opponents! So this
card makes an already powerful Pokemon even more
powerful, all the while making it more difficult for
your opponent to switch out as needed.
...if they aren't running Switch/Keldeo-EX
or aren't inclined to bother with it.
Rating
Standard: 3.5/5 (not too bad,
though outside of Team Aqua decks is a bit shaky)
Expanded: 3.5/5 (better to be with
the Team than not)
Limited: 4/5 (that extra energy in
the Retreat Cost can make things very difficult,
especially when Team Aqua's Kyogre-EX hits the field!)
Arora Notealus: I like the new
designs for the bases at least! One of the benefits to
getting updated remakes for sure! Though now that I
think about it, if they were to remake Gen IV, how would
they change that up? Hmmm...
Next Time: Every team needs two
things: a secret base, and of course-!!
|
