aroramage |
FINALLY, FINALLY we have made our
stand and gotten around to reviewing the BREAKThrough
set! Though it's not nearly as exciting as what Ancient
Origins was (imo), it's still got its fair share of good
cards. Here we start off today with M Glalie-EX!
M Glalie-EX is...well, he's quite
the card. He evolves from Glalie-EX, who starts off with
only 170 HP and a Metal Weakness for a Water-type, which
is always nice if only cause it's different from the
Grass/Electric Weakness most Water-types have. That does
make me realize that Water-types have the most diverse
set of Weaknesses in the TCG...moving right along!
Glalie-EX is nothing spectacular,
brandishing a coin flip for Paralysis on a 1-for-nothing
attack in Ice Breath and a chancy 3-for-50 Instant
Freeze that does another 100 damage if you have the same
number of cards in your hand as your opponent. Not
saying that that couldn't happen, but it's not always
gonna be possible to overextend yourself to match your
opponent - whether that's playing more cards down or by
holding back plays just to even it out. Needless to say,
Glalie-EX isn't that great.
Which leads us to M Glalie-EX. For
3 Energy, M Glalie-EX can already do better than Glalie-EX's
Instant Freeze with Cryo-Mouth, dealing a decent 100
damage. In fact, Cryo-Mouth almost runs on the same
mechanic as Instant Freeze, as in they both add more
damage by fulfilling a certain condition. While Instant
Freeze only does an extra 100 damage by matching your
opponent's hand though, Cryo-Mouth does something a bit
more easily obtained - TAKE at least 100 damage, or as
the effect text puts it "10 or more damage counters,"
and Cryo-Mouth will add an extra 150 DAMAGE!!!
Quick math: 100 + 150 = 250 =
Wailord-EX's HP.
In short, M Glalie-EX can KO
ANYTHING in the game, so long as he's taken 100 damage.
And that's why he's only at #10. M
Glalie-EX does a big bold OHKO maneuver that reminds me
of M Tyranitar-EX from the last set. The only
differences I see though are that 1) Cryo-Mouth is
cheaper, and 2) it's MUCH riskier than M Tyranitar-EX's
Destroyer King's condition to meet the OHKO. M Glalie-EX
requires the hefty total of 100 damage to do anything
that M Tyranitar-EX can do by NOT risking his health and
already having dealt a mere 20 damage to any target he
wants to KO - NEVER MIND THAT HE GETS THETA DOUBLE TO DO
MORE WITH, BUT STILL!!
So on the one hand, M Glalie-EX is
a riskier version of M Tyranitar-EX, but on the other
hand, he's also nearly guaranteed to at least KO
something before he gets taken down. Sure, M Tyranitar-EX
has a little extra bulk compared to M Glalie-EX, but
last I checked, there were still few Pokemon that could
OHKO Basic Pokemon-EX regularly, let alone the Megas. So
he gets a slight pass since he's guaranteed to at least
break even with the opponent - and if he takes out the
main threat on an opponent who's not fully aware of
what's happening, well then that's practically an
auto-win for the M Glalie-EX player!
High risk, high reward, and no
doubt a fun deck people will try and make competitive by
some means.
Rating
Standard: 3/5 (he's a bold endeavor
to say the least, but I can imagine there will be a few
successful people with his power)
Expanded: 3/5 (something about this
seems like I'd rather rate this lower, but I'm not quite
sure why aside from the presence of Rayquaza-EX...which,
ya know, that really doesn't matter to M Glalie-EX,
cause he'd just get one-shot by that sort of thing. BUT
NOT GENESECT-EX, AHAHAHAHAHA)
Limited: 5/5 (though it's doubtful
that you'll get all the pieces to make a M Glalie-EX,
but if you do and your opponent tries to KO fast, you
could easily end up winning pretty handily)
Arora Notealus: Can I just say
Glalie was probably one of the last Pokemon I'd expect
to get a Mega Evolution? I mean seriously, all they
really did was give him a bigger mouth - and now he's
just freaking scary!! Granted, he's still not too
terrifying even with the stat boosts and Refrigerate,
thanks to his Ice-typed body, but hey, he's nothing if
not memorable!
Next Time: And now for a beautiful
blooming BREAK!!
|
Otaku |
Welcome
as we count down our Top 10 picks for the latest
expansion, XY: BREAKthrough! This was a
tough set to review in my opinion; a lot of
“interesting” cards but I’m not sure how many will
really be standouts… except for the reprints but they
weren’t eligible for the Top 10 (as per usual).
The CotD crew were given the chance to submit their own
personal lists I averaged them out to get the official
site list as well as our review schedule for the next
two weeks. Then after sending it out remembered
that we needed to skip Monday this week and would be
taking Thanksgiving and Black Friday off next week.
Things are going to be rather crowded so we can get
through this top 10 before it is time to do the
countdown for the entire year!
Clocking in at tenth place is M Glalie-EX (XY:
BREAKthrough 35/162, 153/162), a new Water-Type Mega
Evolution for us to enjoy. Being a Water-Type
means hitting Weakness on some Fighting-Types and nearly
all Fire-Types, though BW-era Grass-Types may be
Resistant. There are a few card effects that
specifically counter Water-Types, but they seem to just
be damage absorbing Abilities and haven’t proven
worthwhile. Water-Type support includes some real
winners like Archie’s Ace in the Hole and Dive
Ball in the “Type exclusive” category, the handy
Rough Seas in the odd “specific to two Types”
category and some more excellent cards like Keldeo-EX,
Suicune (BW: Plasma Blast 20/101) and
Blastoise (BW: Boundaries Crossed 31/149;
BW: Plasma Storm 137/135; BW: Plasma Blast
16/101) in the “works better with but not actually
Limited to Water-Types” category. Overall, the
Water-Type is potent and my typical refrain of “good but
not great” may have been selling the Type short.
In my defense what I think of as the overall best Type
is Fighting, which hits even more Types for Weakness and
has similar (sometimes even the same) tricks as
Water-Types plus Type exclusive damage buffs.
Being a
Mega Evolution includes the drawbacks of being a
Pokémon-EX: giving up an extra Prize when KOed, being
excluded from certain beneficial effects and being
countered by certain other card effects. In
addition is the infamous drawback of not only Evolving
from a Basic Pokémon-EX, but having your turn end when
you Mega Evolve unless you have the correct
Spirit Link attached. While not guaranteed,
being a Mega Evolution usually promising better
attributes and effects, surpassing even some of the best
Basic Pokémon-EX. 220 HP is middle-of-the-road for Mega
Evolutions, but it isn’t an easy OHKO for a lot of decks
and makes good on that promise. Metal Weakness
most recently been a legitimate concern due to secondary
attackers in Bronzong (XY: Phantom Forces
61/119) decks. Sometimes the main attacker(s) are
also hard hitting Metal-Types, but the basic set-up has
been used successfully with non-Metal-Type primary
attackers… so things can be going quite well until
suddenly a Pokémon like Heatran (XY: Phantom
Forces 63/119) hits the fields, gets powered up that
same turn and swings for a OHKO… and that assumes I’m
not simply forgetting something major. No
Resistance is typical and lacking it is more of a missed
opportunity than some kind of flaw, so let us just move
onto the Retreat Cost of [CCC]; definitely include
something to get around that or tank.
M
Glalie-EX
lacks an Ancient Trait, having the typical single attack
of Mega Evolutions; this one is “Cryo Mouth” for [WCC],
an easy to meet cost for a Mega Evolution with Mega
Turbo and a Double Colorless Energy.
Initially it buys 100 damage, which is not bad for three
Energy but would be unimpressive if that was all the
attack did, but instead it has a clause that boosts the
damage by 150 when M Glalie-EX has 10 or more
damage counters on it. Smacking something for 250
damage is generally a OHKO; exceptions require the
target boost its HP, reduce/prevent damage done or
utilize some less common effects that simply prevent a
KO (like Focus Sash). That is amazing for
just three Energy, but as it only does that once M
Glalie-EX falls under 55% of its printed maximum HP
it is likely to be KO’d afterwards: 120 point hits
aren’t super easy, but once a deck gets going they are
pretty typical. You can of course attack something
while you are less damaged, just be careful not to set
up for massive overkill. The clause does have one
very minor benefit; it can be difficult (even
impossible) for certain Pokémon used specifically to
copy attacks to get the secondary effect because with 10
damage counters on them, they would already have been
Knocked Out!
You
could use Archie’s Ace in the Hole to put M
Glalie-EX into play directly, but let us take a look
at Glalie-EX and see what it offers. Same
Type, Weakness and Retreat Cost as M Glalie-EX
but on a basic Pokémon-EX with a solid but less
impressive 170 HP, still lacking any Ancient Trait or
Ability but with its own two attacks. The first is
“Ice Breath” for [W], which just let’s you flip a coin;
“heads” means the opponent’s Active is Paralyzed,
“tails” means the attack did nothing. I’d write it
off as pure filler, but that does buy time to Mega
Evolve or even just set-up for the card’s second attack,
“Instant Freeze”, which has an attack cost identical to
that of Cryo Mouth on M Glalie-EX. This
time the [WCC] can’t access Mega Turbo and only
hits for 50 damage before the effect. Said text
indicates that if you and your opponent have the same
hand size as your opponent, Instant Freeze does an
additional 100 damage, so 150 for three and some effort
or luck. If you are not focused on Mega
Evolving or don’t mind including something like Tool
Retriever you can slap a Muscle Band onto
Glalie-EX and take advantage of the current pacing
of decks to build up and then whittle down your hand
until it matches your opponent, scoring a OHKO against
anything with 170 HP (usual exceptions apply).
This set gave us back Judge, a Support that
forces both players to shuffle and draw four cards, so
this might be even easier to perform. Glalie-EX
seems to be a pretty solid card in its own right, maybe
even strong enough to operate without its Mega
Evolution.
The
focus of this review is M Glalie-EX though and it
seems pretty straight forward; use some common tricks to
quickly set it up and try to take out something small
with your first use of an unboosted Cryo Mouth, try and
survive while losing enough HP so that Cryo Mouth can
slam something new for 250 damage the next turn.
At that point, the question is whether or not there is a
good way to get the 10 damage counters onto M Glalie-EX
yourself and the answer is… no, at least not that I have
found. Concerns beyond Metal-Type attackers for
the card would be the usual problem plaguing Mega
Evolutions; trading well with certain attackers.
While 220 HP is going to make it pretty hard for a Night
March or a similar deck to score the OHKO, it can be
done. Attacks that score a OHKO or an effective
OHKO against 220 HP are also out there and that can be a
real problem for profiting off of Cryo Mouth.
Still this looks like a solid addition for Expanded play
and a good one for Standard, where a lot of the go-to
Water decks/attackers of the last few years just aren’t
available anymore.
In
Limited play, should you pull Glalie-EX and M
Glalie-EX, go ahead and run them, especially if you
also snag Glalie Spirit Link. I would be
hesitant to try a +39 build (where Glalie-EX is
your only Basic, guaranteeing you open with it); even if
you have Glalie Spirit Link the lack of
draw/search power (plus your opponent likely drawing a
lot off of your mulligans) will make it hard to
synchronize hand sizes for Instant Freeze. If your
opponent has any decent pulls or set-up, it will be
challenging to win with just Glalie-EX doing 50
per turn. once it actually hit M Glalie-EX would
be impressive, so just use it in a more fleshed out
build where Glalie-EX only has to take hits
because you want it to.
Ratings
Standard:
3.5/5
Expanded:
3.25/5
Limited:
4.7/5
Summary:
M Glalie-EX can deliver devastating OHKOs against
even the largest Pokémon in the game (Wailord-EX)...
provided your opponent can’t play around it. Your
opponent may be able to play around the effect of Cryo
Mouth, preventing it from scoring the card’s selling
point, a massive 250 HP whack for [WCC], including of
course those attackers that just score a OHKO in the
first place. This card is both better and worse
than I anticipated…
…but
mostly better as on my personal list, I only ranked it
in 14th place. Yeah, the slot that usually is just
there in case we need some tiebreakers. M Glalie-EX
and its fans may have even more of a reason to be cross
with me; it actually tied with the 9th place pick
and I am the one that selected which officially became
the 9th and 10th place picks.
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