aroramage |
Looks like it's a Fire Week to
follow up from our Grass Week! And today's card...is
Magcargo. I'd love to be excited about Magcargo and say
how he's the greatest thing since Slugma, but...he's not
good. And we get to look at the two versions of him in
Primal Clash!
This first one is notable for not
having an Ancient Trait on him (whereas the other one
does). His attacks are...okay. You've got Flame Burst,
which is cheap and does cheap damage at 20 plus another
20 on a Bench-sitter for 1. That's alright for spreading
things around, but otherwise...not that great. Let's
face it, Darkrai-EX has perfected the art of sniping,
and Primal Kyogre-EX turned monstrous on the idea. You
think Flame Burst is gonna impress anyone?
And then there's good ol'
Flamethrower, at 3-for-90 and a discard. I remember
seeing this effect way back in Base Set on things like
Charmeleon, only back then it only did around 50 damage
- another example of how power creep has affected the
game. At the very least, Magcargo shows potential to
2HKO anything that won't kill it in one turn. Just be
prepared to have some Energy handy or a Blacksmith at
the ready.
Other than that, his only benefit
is that he's a Stage 1 with 120 HP (which honestly is on
the higher end). He's gonna be slow, not very powerful
till late, and chances are if he's going up against
something super-powerful, he ain't gonna be around for
very long. Welcome to the Pokemon TCG, where every
Pokemon gets a chance to shine!
As a foil.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (nothing really
stands out about him, but at least he can 2HKO a bunch
of stuff...yeah)
Expanded: 2/5 (of course you've got
better options)
Limited: 3/5 (that 2HKO can OHKO a
decent chunk of the set, so really it depends what
you're going up against - and of course what you get)
Arora Notealus: Magcargo's a really
interesting Pokemon. He's a snail made of magma! How
unique is that! Granted, his body is supposed to be
18,000' F (10,000' C), which to give you an idea is
hotter than the surface of the sun - so no cuddling with
this guy!
Next Time: How bout we take a look
at the Ancient Trait version?
|
Otaku |
I’m all fired up! Time to binge watch some Fairy Tail…
wait, that isn’t right!* Instead its time to begin our
Fire Week for XY: Primal Clash. Unlike with the
Grass-Types, there are a lot fewer Fire-Types and we
already covered one of them, Camerupt-EX. I’ll
be dissecting these cards to the best of my ability
while also looking at what I can (easily) find for their
current competitive state and if we can refine things in
the heat of the hypothetical instead of having to wait
for someone to prove it tournament play.
We begin this week with Magcargo (XY: Primal Clash
23/160). In terms of Weakness/Resistance Fire-Types are
in a good place; the vast majority of Grass-Type and
Metal-Type Pokémon are Fire Weak and nothing is Fire
Resistant (since we aren’t discussing Unlimited,
anyway). VirGen decks aren’t making as strong a showing
lately so unless something else picks up the slack, it
won’t be as nice as it might have been even just a set
ago, but it will still be good. The Fire-Type has some
direct and indirect support, such as the Supporter
Blacksmith (direct as it only works with Fire-Type
Pokémon) and indirect (cards like Fiery Torch
which works with Fire Energy or Scorched Earth
which works with Fighting Energy or Fire
Energy, and doesn’t care about Pokémon Types).
Certainly not in the same league as the Fighting-Type,
but it isn’t being neglected. The mixed blessing is
that even with such support, the Fire-Type presence in
the game has been pretty low; even with XY: Flashfire
we only had one or two particularly good Fire-Type decks
emerge and they haven’t had much of a presence since.
That means there isn’t likely anything obvious waiting
for Magcargo, but also means it has less
competition for the “Fire deck” niche.
Being a Stage 1 slows it down a bit; feel free to “insert game
pacing rant here” but know that this is a real drawback
for the card but in and of itself doesn’t have to be
fatal; there are Stage 1 cards currently or have
recently proven competitive. 120 HP is adequate,
possibly only just: still trying to get a feel for “the
new normal” as we adjust to strategies popularized by
the recent Regionals, both before and after XY:
Primal Clash became legal for Organized Play. With
more Mega Evolutions becoming competitive and
threatening to eventually become dominant, the numbers
for damage and HP are both climbing again. So while 120
HP used to be something it took luck or lots of
resources or Weakness to easily hit, now you’ve got
Night March decks that do it easily and without
requiring Pokémon-EX (though some builds run Mew-EX)
let alone juggernauts like M Aggron-EX, M
Gardevoir-EX and Primal Groudon-EX that may
take time to set-up, but once they get rolling it
reminds us of the slight variance in the metagame
when Black Kyurem-EX (BW: Plasma Storm
95/135) was staying well hydrated and lubricated by
Blastoise (BW: Boundaries Crossed 31/149;
BW: Plasma Storm 137/135; BW: Plasma Blast
16/101) and pretty much everything was a reliable
OHKO once that combo was running. Stepping back from
the “biggest” hitters, Magcargo is just big
enough to be a tricky OHKO without a lot of boost for
most decks.
Magcargo is Water Weak and that isn’t so good but also isn’t as bad as it
could be. Not unlike the Fire Weakness for the
Grass-Types we looked at last week, the popular
Water-Type attackers have decent odds of already scoring
a OHKO or just saving themselves a little effort. There
are a few really problematic Water-Type attackers
though; Seismitoad-EX and its Quaking Punch can
score a OHKO via the combo it usually uses to try for a
2HKO against most other things (Muscle Band,
Hypnotoxic Laser and Virbank City Gym) and
even without boosting Quaking Punch is a 2HKO. Kyurem
[Plasma] (BW: Plasma Freeze 31/116) loves to
boost its Frost Spear attack and as it starts at 30,
just +30 puts it into OHKO range while also hitting your
Bench for 30 at the small cost of [WC] and some buffs
(usually a combination of Muscle Band and
Deoxys-EX). Again, even without any help its a
2HKO. No Resistance is normal so we’ll move onto the
Retreat Cost: [CCCC] is something you never want
to pay unless you have no real choice (so
retreat-to-win/retreat-or-lose scenarios) so either be
prepared for this to go down as your Active or pack
plenty of retreat bypassing/Retreat Cost lowering
options). There is a slight benefit is that in Expanded
you can tap Heavy Ball as support.
Magcargo has two attacks. For [R] it can use Flame Burst for 20 damage to
your opponent’s Active Pokémon and 20 to two of your
opponent’s Benched Pokémon of your choice (assuming they
have that many). As you would expect, Weakness and
Resistance don’t apply for Bench hits, which unlike in
most cases is a definite drawback here since nothing
Resists Fire-Types so you’re just missing out on
exploiting Weakness. Still business as usual for such
attacks though as applying Weakness/Resistance for Bench
hits is rare. In isolation, this looks like a pretty
good attack, so let us compare and contrast it with
Hammerhead found on Landorus-EX: for the same
invest (one Energy of that card’s Type) both attacks do
60 total damage (before applying Weakness/Resistance,
anyway), it is just Magcargo divides it up a bit
more. Unfortunately this comparison draws attention to
the fact that the Fire-Type doesn’t have Strong
Energy or Fighting Stadium equivalents to up
its own damage, and since this is a single Energy attack
Blacksmith is rarely going to be helpful. I can
see being a Stage 1 with 120 HP versus a Basic
Pokémon-EX with 180 somewhat balancing out but
experience is that it usually is in the favor of the
Pokémon-EX.
So what about the second attack? For [RCC] Magcargo can use
Flamethrower for 90 points of damage, though it requires
you discard an Energy from it. This is enough to 2HKO
most Pokémon-EX, and if you add in a Silver Bangle
it becomes enough to 2HKO anything that isn’t protected
or healing in between attack, other than Wailord-EX.
There are even a few useful OHKOs sprinkled against the
likes of Genesect-EX, Virizion-EX and M
Aggron-EX (the latter requires Silver Bangle).
This was fairly good (though not even remotely great) a
few years ago. More recently, it would have been
adequate: after all the card is Double Colorless
Energy compliant so even without Blacksmith
you could power it up quickly, and with Blacksmith
you can actually get a bit ahead of Energy needs with a
spare [R] attached should it survive to attack twice.
Still even then it would technically have been below
the going rate, only offset by it either being OHKOed
(so who cares about discarded Energy) or surviving just
barely (which usually was reward enough with a
non-Pokémon-EX): three for 90, preferably with a
beneficial effect unless something else about the card
justified its use with a slightly lower damage output.
Now… I’m not sure if three for 90 is still the going
rate as we’ve got a lot of non-Pokémon-EX attackers so
it isn’t as simple as (90+30)*2=240 damage and 2HKOed
almost everything. The attacks have some synergy with
each other, but its mostly in their Energy costs as you
can go from [R] to [RCC] so easily anymore, but the
numbers a single use of each hit aren’t so great so
you’ll need several uses of Flameburst (and/or more
added onto the “combo”) to get the needed KOs.
Before we move onto combos, let’s check out the rest of the
(closely) related card pool. There are currently three
Slugma legal for either Expanded or Standard:
XY: Kalos Starter Set 6/39, XY 20/146 and
XY: Primal Clash 22/146. All three are Basic,
Fire-Type Pokémon with Water Weakness, no Resistance, no
Abilities and no Ancient Trait. XY: Kalos Starter
Set 6/39 sports 80 HP, a Retreat Cost of [CC] and
just one attack - Combustion - requiring [RC] doing 20
damage. XY 20/146 has 70 HP and also a Retreat
Cost of [CC] plus lone attack; this time its
Flamethrower for [RCC], requiring a single Energy
discard and hitting for 50. Lastly is the set-mate to
today’s card, XY: Primal Clash 22/146, which has
70 HP, a Retreat Cost of [CCC] and two attacks: the
first is Grass Fire which requires [R] and does no
damage but does discard a [G] Energy attached to your
opponent’s Active. Its second attack is Ram for [RCC],
which does a vanilla 30 damage. These lava slugs are
both good and bad examples of card design; the version
with the most HP has a weak, overpriced vanilla effect
while the version that can hit the hardest and the
version with a technical trick are a little smaller.
That is good. What is bad is that none of what they do
are good enough to warrant attacking with them; all the
attacks are overpriced, especially the only one that
slightly aids in survival (other than via scoring an
unlikely KO): Grass Fire. Attaching [R] just to discard
an opponent’s [G] Energy if one is present on their
Active might be a decent Ability, but its lame as an
attack. Even if we still had zero-Energy attacks. Take
the HP of XY: Kalos Starter Set 6/39 for what is
it worth.
There are two other Magcargo; let’s see if XY 21/146
and XY: Primal Clash 24/160 are competition or
combo buddies in deck building (or the depressing
prospect of being neither). Both are Stage 1 Fire-Types
with 110 HP, Water Weakness, no Resistance, Retreat Cost
[CCC], no Abilities and two attacks. XY 21/146
has Magma Mantle for [RC], which hits for 30 and gives
you the option of discarding the top card of your deck;
if it is a [R] Energy its worth an additional 50 damage.
For [RRC] its Heat Blast hits for 80. These are poor,
which is probably why I didn’t even remember this card
exists until I saw it while writing this review. If you
insisted, you could build a deck around this guy, mostly
focusing on Magma Mantle which has a decent damage
return when you can ensure you hit a top-decked Fire
Energy but the same set-up could be used to better
effect elsewhere (and still not be competitive).
Not sure if the attacks need to hit harder, the Energy
costs need to be lower: probably both. XY: Primal
Clash 24/160 is tomorrow’s card; we’ll cover it in
detail. I think it slightly compliments today’s version
but is also lacking.
So… can you build a deck around Magcargo (XY: Primal
Clash 23/160), yes but at best it will be a
“functional fun deck” where you take a strategy that
works better with something else like Landorus-EX
or Pyroar (XY: Flashfire 20/106) and try
to “make do”. I actually did build a quick deck around
it and got the disappointing results one might expect,
but with one added problem; most Water-Type decks
I encounter, be they good or bad, are rocking at least a
few copies of Rough Seas: erasing up to 30 points
worth of spread per Water- or Lightning-Type Pokémon you
were damaging, as well as whatever was accumulating on
the Active. This is a bonus option these decks have for
dealing with spread and 2HKOs, leaving
Magcargo soaking wet. I didn’t get a chance to try
Crobat (XY: Phantom Forces 33/119) but I
did start to build it and it has the space issues you
would expect.
Ratings
Standard: 2.25/5 - Probably
a bit high but this card does have a lot it does
competently, but it needs “something else” to compete
with the overpowered metagame of today.
Expanded: 2/5 - A bit more
support but a lot more competition.
Limited: 4.25/5 - Finally a place to shine. The main drawback is there is
a lot of Water-Types in this set plus Rough Seas,
Dive Ball and Fresh Water Set. Without
that its HP, spread, reliable damage and there being a
second, alternate Magcargo to run plus neither
version requiring more than a single Fire Energy
to work (so running just a few should suffice instead of
having to make your deck half Fire) actually makes for a
great card. Excluding if you were running a +39 deck,
of course.
Summary: I wanted to like Magcargo but that isn’t likely a surprise;
I really want to like all cards. Magcargo teases
us by having a few things comparable to Landorus-EX
and while being a Stage 1 versus a Basic Pokémon-EX
might even out (but probably not), the difference in
Type support ensures that Landorus-EX has once
again found itself as the main attacker of yet another
deck variant while Magcargo is going to have to
be content being a good Limited pull or “better than
pure filler” focus for a budget-beginner-deck.
* I watch (and read) Fairy Tail via Crunchyroll.com. I’m
all caught up though so I won’t probably be binge
watching or reading it again anytime soon. Plus the “fanservice”
(which is one of the series major characteristics)
actually… isn’t my kind of thing. Why reference
Fairy Tail at all then? Because its fun to do so.
|
