aroramage |
Hey guys, and welcome back to
another week of card reviews! We took last week off, but
now we're back to a new week with a bit more Halloween-y
cards! And what better type to represent Halloween than
the Dark-type? Oooooooh~
...well, aside from Ghosts, but
hey, TCG.
We start off with a promo card in
the form of Absol-EX! This guy actually came out back in
May with the Mega Absol-EX Collection, but we're only
just now getting around to him - to be fair, a lot's
happened in the last few months! What with M Rayquaza-EX,
the whole Ancient Origins thing, the Team sets - you
know, lots of stuff! In any case, Absol-EX is ready for
action.
Starting off simply with a 1-for-20
strike, Dark Fang also offers a 50/50 shot at discarding
a random card from your opponent's hand. That can be
nice if you hit a key card in their hand, but naturally
the chances of that happening are a bit slim. Usually
your opponent will have played the cards they need to
play before you attack with Absol-EX, but hey, you might
be able to get away with something!
Dark Edge doesn't let you get away
with much else though. For 3 Energy, it deals a pretty
decent 100 damage while also reducing the damage Absol-EX
takes from the Defending Pokemon by 20 damage. Again,
not a bad effect, but it's a bit stunted by things like
retreating and gratuitous damage outputs. Just saying,
it ain't gonna do much that a Muscle Band won't fix.
Still, the occasional Fighting deck
may rain on Absol-EX's parade outside of the main
competitive arena, but there may be a fair bit that can
help him out inside with Dangerous Energy, making him a
little more dangerous to attack given the trade-off.
Still, he's not gonna put the pressure on some of the
other Megas...well, not without his own, at least.
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (decent as an EX,
though not the best option overall)
Expanded: 3/5 (the extra Dark
support always helps)
Limited: N/A (he is a promo after
all)
Arora Notealus: Absol is usually
known as the disaster Pokemon, with his appearance tied
to natural disasters occurring shortly afterwards. Not
that he causes any of these, but hey, maybe that's why
you can first find him in Route 120 after Fortree City
in the RSE/ORAS games - he's signaling the oncoming
conflict of the plot of the game! Crazy thought, or just
good planning? ;)
Next Time: And what a Mega it is!
|
Otaku |
As it
tends to be a “spooky” time of year as October comes to
a close, for its final week we’ll take a trip to the
dark side with some Darkness-Types. First up is
Absol-EX (XY: Black Star Promos XY62)!
…
I
wanted a Halloween theme that involved the cards of this
set (and recent promos); I worked with what we had.
So how
is the Darkness-Types? During the mid BW-era it
was a ferocious beast because of the rules and card pool
of the time: Pokémon Catcher did not require a
coin flip to work, you could attack first turn and
Dark Claw and Dark Patch were the best (and I
think only) examples of Trainer based Type support. Darkrai-EX
and Sableye (BW: Dark Explorers 62/108)
were huge both when and for a good length of time after
they debuted; with all of them working together first
turn “Night Spear” for 110 (and 30 to something on the
Bench) was a legitimate strategy! Darkness-Types
have received more support since then, such as
Dangerous Energy, Shadow Circle and
Yveltal-EX (though the latter just needs a source of
[D] Energy). Yveltal-EX is magnificent,
Shadow Circle is adequate but Dangerous Energy
is lackluster at best, while not only have the rules
changed but out of the old support only Dark Patch
remains strong, with Dark Claw almost totally
useless due to Muscle Band. There are three
anti-Darkness-Type cards: Cobalion (BW: Black
Star Promos BW72), Terrakion (BW: Black
Star Promos BW71) and Virizion (BW: Black
Star Promos BW70) which have an Ability (Justified)
that increases the damage done to Darkness-Types.
They never proved worth the effort. A subsection
of the Psychic-Type (those representing the video game
Ghost-Type) are usually Darkness Weak, but that is it;
better than nothing at all but not much. Yveltal-EX
and the lingering strength of the older support keeps
the Darkness-Type somewhat strong.
Being a
Basic Pokémon is the best; least amount of deck space
required, just needs an open Bench spot to be put into
play, required as your opening Active Pokémon and in
most cases having better natural synergy with card
effects (a single card search can get you part of
an Evolution or all of a Basic) and while there are
definitely some anti-Basic Pokémon cards like Pyroar
(XY: Flashfire 20/106) and Silent Lab,
only that last one is going to often matter and hey,
Expanded actually contains Basic Stage support in the
form of cards like Eviolite, Prism Energy
and Skyarrow Bridge! It is a Pokémon-EX (as
you can easily tell by the name) which means it is worth
an extra Prize when KOed, doesn’t get all (or sometimes
any) of the benefits of certain cards while other cards
will “punish” a player for having a Pokémon-EX;
Silver Bangle can be our example for both of those
last two as it provides +30 damage while attached but
only when a non-Pokémon-EX attacks a Pokémon-EX.
Usually this is balanced out (at least some) by
Pokémon-EX having better attributes and effects than
their non-Pokémon-EX counterparts, such as Absol-EX
having 170 HP while contemporary Absol like
BW: Plasma Freeze 67/116 or XY: Roaring Skies
40/108) only have 100.
The 170
HP of Absol-EX is the lower of the two commonly
seen scores on Basic Pokémon-EX, but it is enough to not
easily be KOed rapidly, reliably and repeatedly except
by decks that expressly win through OHKO. The big
exception will be hits from Fighting-Types because
Absol-EX is Fighting Weak; another change from “back
in the day” when Darkness-Types ruled the Earth… er…
metagame, the Fighting-Type has probably the best Type
support and includes attackers that hit well for a
single Energy and multiple damage bonuses plus
other stuff. Absol-EX does benefit from Psychic
Resistant; it isn’t a major bonus but Absol-EX
will be a little harder for Psychic-Type attackers to
OHKO, at least the ones that rely on doing damage.
It has a pretty typical Retreat Cost of [CC], which I
find to be low enough you often will be able to pay (and
recover from having paid) but high enough you really
would prefer an alternative: running something to lower
the cost of or entirely bypass manually retreating is
recommended (and thanks to Darkrai-EX, a bit
easier for Darkness-Types).
Absol-EX
lacks either an Ability or Ancient Trait but does have
two attacks. The first (Dark Fang) costs [D] and
hits for 20 damage, with a coin flip discarding a random
card from your opponent’s hand on “heads” (tails still
does the 20 damage); not likely to matter most of the
time but you do have to flip and when it is “heads” you
have to discard from the opponent’s hand and discarding
from the opponent’s hand can be meaningless or even
backfire against certain decks. Both the damage
and the effect are a little weak, but not bad. The
second attack (Dark Edge) requires [DDC], does 100
damage to the Defending Pokémon while also reducing the
damage done from its attacks by 20 during your
opponent’s next turn, before Weakness and Resistance are
applied. Again we have decent but not great damage
and effect; the main issue with the effect is that your
opponent just has to change out attackers (including
Benching or bouncing the current Defending Pokémon but
getting it back up and attacking that turn) to ditch the
effect. Still when it sticks it can be handy as
though it isn’t a lot, it can throw off OHKO and 2HKO
calculations. The Energy cost means you’ll
probably have to rely on Dark Patch or some other
form of Energy acceleration compatible with [D] Energy;
too slow otherwise.
Absol-EX
doesn’t have any other versions available but it does
have a Mega Evolution. M Absol-EX (XY: Black
Star Promo XY63) changes as you would expect: access
to the mechanical bonuses (usually better attributes and
effects) and drawbacks (has to Mega Evolve, which ends
your turn) of being a Mega Evolution, plus the cards
that similarly benefit (Mega Turbo) or cause
problems (Faded Town) for Mega Evolutions. M
Absol-EX gets another 40 HP (so printed HP of 210),
making it one of the smaller (but not the smallest) Mega
Evolutions. The only other change is that it now
has one attack (Disaster Wing) instead of the two that
Basic Absol-EX possessed. Disaster Wing
only requires [DD] and hits for a solid base damage of
80; not brilliant but with a Muscle Band, it
would 2HKO most non-Mega Evolutions. The attack’s
effect has you reveal the top card of you discard the
top card of your opponent’s deck (could be a bonus,
could backfire) and if it was a Trainer card, the attack
does another 80 on top of the original, or 160
total. With a Muscle Band that can score
some useful OHKOs… except you’ll notice I said nothing
of a Spirit Link for this card, and there is no
Darkness-Type equivalent of Archie’s Ace in the Hole
or Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick.
We’ll
discuss more in depth strategy for M Absol-EX
tomorrow
but the short version is that you’re probably only using
Absol-EX alongside M Absol-EX. It isn’t
one of the horrible lower Stages; both attacks
have some use but just not enough to compete with the
many other Basic Pokémon-EX you could be running:
Darkrai-EX, Malamar-EX, Sharpedo-EX
and Yveltal-EX gives you much better options, for
Standard or Expanded. This isn’t Limited legal so
no score there, though if it had been in a set it would
be a great pull: not the top Pokémon-EX in a set (unless
it was a kind of lackluster set) but the effects are
just a little better in Limited and the lower average HP
scores/damage yields would have made it a viable as a
+39 candidate.
Ratings
Standard:
2/5
Expanded:
2/5
Limited:
N/A
Summary:
Absol-EX joins the long list of Pokémon-EX that
“do stuff” but not so well that they are worth playing
on their own, or will be a selling point for their Mega
Evolution (if one exists) but aren’t really “bad” per
se. It doesn’t have crippling HP or attack costs
any other defect like that (though Fighting Weakness can
feel like it sometimes) and the attacks have “okay”
damage and effects for the Energy invested. It is
simply underwhelming, but not lacking enough that if
everything else about M Absol-EX is good, it
would prevent M Absol-EX from seeing play.
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