aroramage |
Yeah, you knew this was coming. The
first and (so far) only Stadium to have 2 completely
different effects based on how it's played? That is
exceptional! Parallel City is a completely unique card
that can be played differently in different decks
depending on the situation!
So how does it work exactly? Well,
Parallel City can be played to have either side facing
you, which for simplicity's sake we'll call the Forest
Side and the City Side. The thing to keep in mind is
that both Sides have an effect that is harmful to the
player, depending on which side comes up. I do wonder
what a similar card with beneficial effects would play
like, but that's speculation for later.
If you've played the card with the
City Side facing you, then your boon is that your Grass,
Fire, and Water Pokemon have their attacks weakened by
20 damage BEFORE Weakness and Resistance. Now that's a
fairly specific set of Types to choose from, but this
sort of thing doesn't work on Decks of other types -
Fighting, Colorless, Psychic, etc. - so it's not so bad
for those decks. This means that chances are, you're
only going to have the City Side face your opponent if
they're playing Grass, Fire, or Water.
But then the Forest Side is facing
you, and that one is much more dangerous. With the
Forest Side facing you, your Bench gets shrunken down,
keeping you from having more than 3 Benched Pokemon at a
time. You'll have to get rid of any other Benched
Pokemon you've got in play if you have more than 3,
which given the presence of Sky Field could be as many
as 5 other Pokemon - all to the discard pile! That
actually could be potentially nice if you're playing
something like Night March or Vespiquen, but it could
also really harm you if you're playing M Rayquaza-EX,
whose main attack (if he's not a Dragon) depends on
having a LOT of Bench-sitters, though most decks will
continue to maintain their most important Bench-sitters
from getting discarded.
So what's the verdict on this card?
Well, it's a dramatic piece of tech in the midst of the
Stadium Wars that can alter the very playing field. Some
decks will make use of it for sure, while others may not
bother with it as much. There's no doubt though that any
deck that can profit off of the Forest Side while
enduring or remaining unaffected by the City Side will
make the most out of this card, or even decks that can
deal with the Forest Side while restraining their
opponents with the City Side! The versatility in this
card is pretty extreme, but really this is a card for
skilled players to look at and think, "Alright...pick
your poison."
Rating
Standard: 4.5/5 (it's going to be a
prominent player in the metagame, I can feel it!)
Expanded: 4.5/5
Limited: 5/5 (best case, your
opponent loses a good chunk of their army for almost
nothing! worst case...well, it is the only Stadium in
the set)
Arora Notealus: Interesting to
point out, the design of the "Parallel City" on this
card resembles that of White Forest and Black City, a
pair of version-exclusive towns in the Gen V games.
You'd end up with Black City if you bought Black or
Black 2 and White Forest if you had White or White 2.
The interesting part about them though is where they
appear - they're technically on the same part of the
map! So in one version, you've ended up with a City, but
there's a parallel to it that is actually a Forest -
crazy, right?
Weekend Thought: Do you agree with
our Top 10 list? What cards would you like to have seen
on the list? Are the BREAK cards everything you wanted
in a non-EX Evolution BREAKThrough, or...maybe not.
Don't worry, these are just the early ones, and even the
early Megas weren't that great! Seriously, who even
plays M Blastoise-EX, am I right?
...shhhh, no tears, only dreams...
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Otaku |
Our number one pick from the latest set is Parallel
City (XY: BREAKthrough 145/162). This
is a Stadium card so it faces steep competition for
getting into what is usually (but not always) a
necessary place in decks (typically two to four slots).
You can only play a single Stadium card per turn and
only one Stadium card may be in play at a time, which
applies to both players. Towards the latter
half of the BW-era we received some amazing Stadiums
like Tropical Beach and Virbank City Gym
that are still used competitively even today, and the XY
sets have brought us some Stadiums that are just as good
like Silent Lab and Sky Field. Some
Stadiums are purely generic and can work for any deck,
like Battle City but most work at least a little
bit better in decks prepared for them. Some help a
deck by strengthening its own strategy while others are
about disrupting the opponent’s, with a few that do both
at the same time.
Parallel City
is unusual in that it has two very distinct effects and
while they both apply at the same time, each only
affects a single player: the direction you play the card
indicates who has to deal with what effect. The
text is even oriented so that it is rightside up for the
player who is being affected. So if the top half
of the card is facing you (which means the name and all
text but what applies to you is upside down) you
will find your Bench constrained to just three spaces;
if you have more Pokémon in play than that when
Parallel City hits the field and you’re selected for
this effect, you discard Pokémon from your Bench until
it is small enough, much like what happens if you have
built your Bench over the normal five Pokémon limited
while Sky Field is in play and then have to
shrink it back down when Sky Field has been
removed. This effect can be crippling for decks
that need a massive Bench, such as those build around
M Rayquaza-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 76/108,
105/108) and its “Emerald Break” attack; they are
usually hurting when they can’t keep Sky Field in
play, but this further cuts the damage output. For
some decks this will hardly matter at all; typical
Primal Groudon-EX/Wobbuffet (XY: Phantom
Forces 36/119) decks shouldn’t often mind.
Most decks in general will be inconvenienced, but it
isn’t likely to be fatal in and of itself; they will
just have to make do with a less fleshed out set-up. Shaymin-EX
(XY: Roaring Skies 77/108, 106/108) makes things
a bit odd though; if you can get and keep Parallel
City in play before Shaymin-EX hits
the field, you can really slow down an opponent’s set-up
by preventing setup, or at least forcing them to keep
more cards in hand. If you drop Parallel City
facing this direction after your opponent has a
full Bench and some cards are Shaymin-EX, you
risk helping them out by discarding a set-up Pokémon
which has already served its purpose. There is a
sweet spot in between, usually because of an opponent
having an incomplete set-up where they might have a
Shaymin-EX or two down but not much else on the
Bench; Parallel City can be quite painful if at
that point when they may be down to zero or just one
space on the Bench.
So what about the other direction? Attacks done by
“this player’s” [G], [R] and [W] Pokémon do 20 less
damage. That isn’t a huge reduction but it can
lead to some simple but costly mistakes. If you
are trying to calculate damage for Vespiquen (XY:
Ancient Origins 10/98) or Flareon (BW:
Plasma Freeze 12/116) it can help larger Pokémon-EX
(especially Mega Evolutions) edge out of OHKO range.
This effect isn’t really as likely to matter though as
the other side, making this usually the “safe” option
for a player that runs few (if any) of the afflicted
Pokémon-Type.
Both sides have an issue in that they are largely
passive; unless your opponent has more than three
Benched Pokémon or you get kind of obscure or general
(you have a self-damaging Pokémon of the correct Type,
you just needed to discard an opponent’s Stadium, etc.)
there isn’t an immediate payoff from using the Stadium.
It is possible to play this card for zero benefit.
This card has some real use (another counter for M
Rayquaza-EX if used well) and being just a Stadium
you might run a single copy of (for Bench-heavy
match-ups or I suppose against the appropriate Pokémon
Types) it is easy to include in a deck, but at the same
time it is merely “really good” and not great. Go
ahead and enjoy it in any and all formats, especially
the novelty of the two-sides, different effects design.
Ratings
Standard:
3.5/5
Expanded:
3.35/5
Summary:
Another worthwhile addition to the card pool, but one
that is mostly useful for annoying specific strategies
and not something you’ll be likely to max out or build a
deck around, Parallel City ranks so high because
there wasn’t as much fierce competition as some of the
other more recent sets. Plus it was a pretty
obvious card to pick so ranking in fourth place on my
own list plus what aroramage scored it allowed it to
take the top spot. It did managed to beat the
previous two picks by four points, which isn’t a huge
margin but isn’t tiny, either.
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