aroramage |
Personally, I welcome our new
reptilian overlords.
Rating
Standard-nahhhhhhhhh, okay.
So M Sceptile-EX here has gotten a
bit of hype thanks to the powerful entity that is the
Forest of Giant Plants. Of course, if Forest of Giant
Plants was so ridiculous, how come it isn't higher up on
our overall list?
...shush, it's M Sceptile-EX time.
In all seriousness, Forest of Giant
Plants is widely considered one of the most broken cards
in recent history not for its effect alone but for the
Pokemon it paves the way for because of its effects. Why
else would Shiftry, a card from YEARS ago that wasn't
even that good, suddenly out of nowhere get banned?
That's the power of the Forest of Giant Plants, and M
Sceptile-EX here is another prime example of how
powerful the Stadium - and subsequently Grass decks -
have become!
Of course, a good Mega EX deserves
a good EX, and Sceptile-EX is worked up to be probably
one of the more powerful and dangerous EX to come out.
Sceptile-EX can take care of opponent's in a simple
2-turn maneuver with Sleep Poison causing Sleep AND
Poison for 1 (with a coin toss and an extra 10 damage
for trying), and Unseen Claw, which will deal an extra
70 damage on top of its 60 damage if the opposing
Pokemon's affected by a Status Condition - all for 2
Energy. Not too shabby, really, and it combos insanely
well with Ariados from earlier.
M Sceptile-EX capitalizes on the
cheap insanity by also only have an attack with 2 Energy
- Jagged Saber, which deals only 100 damage
(which...well, for 2 Energy, that's actually pretty
good), but here's the kicker! With Jagged Saber, you get
to also put down 2 Grass Energy onto any of your Benched
Pokemon, and if you do end up doing that, you get to
instantly HEAL ALL THE DAMAGE FROM THEM!!
Combined with a little bit of
swapping action, M Sceptile-EX suddenly has MUCH more
staying power than many other Pokemon - suddenly that
2-turn KO becomes a 3-turn KO, and that in turn is eaten
by another turn to deal with the new M Sceptile-EX
out-front! All the while you can't hit it with Abilities
thanks to Theta Stop, that Ancient Trait of M Sceptile-EX's,
and Ariados could totally be on their Bench Poisoning
your dudes easily!
Have I even mentioned that M
Sceptile-EX could come out on Turn 1 with Forest of
Giant Plants?
Rating
Standard: 4/5 (a normally clunky
and not-so-powerful EX made powerful by the furious
speed of a Stadium and the lasting power of Jagged
Saber)
Expanded: 4/5 (like, how crazy can
this guy be?)
Limited: 5/5 (WHY WOULDN'T YOU?!...prolly
cause you didn't get all the pieces, but other than
that, WHY WOULDN'T YOU?!)
Arora Notealus: M SCEPTILE-EX GONNA
KNOCK YOU OUT!!...EVENTUALLY!!
Next Time: And now for something to
help you against this kind of threat.
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Otaku |
Our second CotD
this week and four place pick is M Sceptile-EX (XY:
Ancient Origins 08/98, 85/98), having accumulated 23
points from the voting, which is pretty impressive when
you consider that this go round the best a card could
score was 30 out of 30. So why did it rank so high? So
far I’ve been the guy skeptical, cautiously optimistic
and even raving over this card, so today I’ll try to
actually find the proper balance as we go through the
card.
M Sceptile-EX is a Grass-Type so it can hit some key
cards for Weakness (more in Expanded than in Standard),
doesn’t have to worry about Resistance and enjoys some
solid support, probably most noteworthy being Forest
of Giant Plants. Being a Mega Evolution carries all
of the baggage of being a Pokémon-EX, plus a little
extra. Like all Pokémon-EX M Sceptile-EX is
worth an extra Prize when KOed, can’t benefit from a few
support cards that specifically exclude Pokémon-EX and
is vulnerable to a fe counter-cards that specifically
target Pokémon-EX; being a Mega Evolution adds in the
need to Mega Evolve (which is like Evolving into a Stage
1 but it ends your turn immediately after you do it),
access to Mega Turbo and being vulnerable to
Faded Town. Already something worth noting: the
Sceptile-EX => M Sceptile-EX line has access
to Sceptile Spirit Link; coupled with Forest
of Giant Plants this means you can give up your
Pokémon Tool (or run cards to change it out after the
fact) so that you can nullify the entire time element of
Mega Evolving (though you are increasing the cards
invested).
Being a Mega
Evolution so far has always carried at least better HP
than a card would normally attain and M Sceptile-EX
does not break with tradition: 220 isn’t a huge boost
but it is only 30 shy of the record set by Wailord-EX
and at least 30 (usually 40 or 50) HP above Basic
Pokémon-EX. No HP score is safe from being OHKOed, but
it will take a pretty massive (and thus unlikely) hit to
take down M Sceptile-EX in one shot. The Fire
Weakness would be one of the exceptions; it turns a
fairly attainable 110 damage in one shot into a 220
damage OHKO. The combination of rotation plus a few of
the new cards this set may finally have given the
Fire-Type some teeth again, something it hasn’t enjoyed
since XY: Flashfire was new. M Sceptile-EX
has no Resistance so let us move onto its Retreat Cost
of [CC]; this is pretty typical and is neither low
enough to be cost effective nor high enough to be cost
prohibitive. You probably should have an out to paying
full price (or at all) in your deck, but it doesn’t
necessarily have to be something you need to be able to
reuse over and over again.
M Sceptile-EX possesses an Ancient Trait and a
single attack. The former is “Θ Stop”, which protects
M Sceptile-EX from the effects the Abilities of
your opponent’s Pokémon that are done to M Sceptile-EX.
To give you an idea, this does nothing to an
Ability like Safeguard, which doesn’t actually do
anything to M Sceptile-EX itself but it would
protect against something like “Surprise Bite, found on
Crobat (XY: Phantom Forces 33/119), which
places damage counters on the target. If it is
something that affects multiple Pokémon, like “Thorn
Tempest” - found on Forretress (XY: Flashfire
60/108) - which places a damage counter on all of the
opponent’s Pokémon when a player Evolves one of his or
her in play Pokémon into said Forretress,
anything with Θ Stop will be protected but anything
without it will still take damage. The attack is
“Jagged Saber” for [GC], and it does 100 damage plus
gives you the option of attaching up to two [G] Energy
from your hand to your Benched Pokémon how you like; so
0, 1 or 2 (your choice) Grass Energy (not your
choice as nothing else counts as [G] in hand so far) and
if you choose two Energy you may attach them both to the
same Pokémon or one apiece to two different Pokémon.
While the Ancient Trait almost seems minimal the attack
has quite a lot of variability to it. Does that make it
good? In a word, “yes” but you know I’m going to use
more than a single word.
I also however
am going to touch upon our options for Sceptile-EX
because that is a contributing factor to the potency of
the whole package. We actually have two options for
this one: XY: Black Star Promo XY53 and XY:
Ancient Origins 7/98 (and 84/98 for the Full Art).
Both are Grass-Type Basic Pokémon-EX with 170 HP, Fire
Weakness, no Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], no Ability,
no Ancient Trait and two attacks. XY: Black Star
Promo XY53 can use “Agility” for [G] to hit for 20
and if you get “heads” on a mandatory coin flip
Sceptile-EX is protected from damage and effects by
attacks from the opponent’s Pokémon during your
opponent’s next turn and for [GGG] it can hit for 130
damage, though it cannot use “Strong Slash” again on the
next turn (at least not without using a trick to “reset”
the effect). This isn’t a bad prelude (or fallback) and
you can find a more detailed review of it
here. XY: Ancient Origins 7/98 and
84/98 can use “Sleep Poison” for [G] to hit for 10
damage and again flip a coin for a bonus; this time
“heads” both Poisons and puts the opponent’s Active
Pokémon to Sleep. For [GC] it can use “Unseen Claw” to
hit for 60 points of damage but if the opponent’s
Active is afflicted by a Special Condition the attack
does an additional 70 points of damage, good for 130
total. Either makes for a decent opening or fallback
option, with XY: Ancient Origins 7/98 (and 84/98)
flat out being a good attacker in its own right…
…which almost
seems odd as between Forest of Giant Plants,
Sceptile Spirit Link and at least one Mega Turbo
you can ready M Sceptile-EX in a single turn, and
also brings us to half of what makes this card work in a
deck. M Sceptile-EX isn’t the hardest hitting
Pokémon, but not unlike M Manectric-EX before it,
it combines a solid attack that will 2HKO most Pokémon
that aren’t Mega Evolutions or Weak to it while also
prepping a “replacement” for itself. M Manectric-EX
is not M Sceptile-EX of course, but the basic
premise is similar enough except for one thing: healing.
“Healing” effects are more often too weak to matter in
the Pokémon TCG, especially as coming off the last
format most decks were shooting for either a OHKO, a
2HKO or (sometimes “and”) a
lock-that-blocks-most-worthwhile-healing-effects, but
here as long as you can attack, attach at least one [G]
Energy from hand via Jagged Saber and healing
itself isn’t being blocked - Bronzong (BW:
Next Destinies 76/99) could do that in Expanded - it
is happening and it gets rid of all damage.
You’ll likely need help keeping sufficient Energy in
hand but if you do, your opponent has to focus on OHKOs
that don’t requires an Ability directly working on M
Sceptile-EX to have a chance. Wait, I said it could
only attach Energy to (and thus heal) Pokémon on your
Bench so how does that work? Attack, retreat, repeat as
needed, with the occasional added step of using
something to get Energy cards back from the discard
pile.
Of course there
is more to it than that. Our
ninth
place pick and set-mate Ariados can help
edge up the damage done by Poisoning non-Grass-Type
opposing Actives from the Bench, hurried into play again
by Forest of Giant Plants (now you see why that
ended up our
12th
place pick), while also helping Sceptile-EX
(XY: Ancient Origins 7/98, 84/98) be an awesome,
inexpensive back-up attacker. If it didn’t seem like
Item cards would prove too important I would even
suggest using Vileplume (XY: Ancient Origins
3/98). Specifically Sceptile Spirit Link,
Mega Turbo and a means of getting Energy from the
deck or discard pile back into hand (so you can keep
accelerating and healing) plus the usual power
plays (like VS Seeker) add up to something too
important to lose… but we’ve already seen Japan is
getting Fisherman back in the Noivern and Raichu
BREAK decks, so we are likely to get it in our next set.
That matters because it is a Supporter that allows you
to add four basic Energy from your discard pile to your
hand… at which point we might actually get a deck that
at a glance seems too complex to work.
So what does
this mean in terms of the formats? Standard will see
M Sceptile-EX decks, though they will struggle
against the OHKO decks of the format. The decks that
can’t score a OHKO easily (or at all) will in turn
struggle against M Sceptile-EX, as will decks
with Grass Weakness though the latter more for falling
back on Sceptile-EX (either version but
preferably XY: Ancient Origins 7/98, 84/98) as
that can deliver actual OHKOs against the likes of
Wailord-EX, Primal Groudon-EX (either
version), Primal Kyogre-EX (either version) and
Seismitoad-EX (unless Weakness chases it away, I
expect it to at least stick around as an opener). In
Expanded Virizion-EX can squeeze into M
Sceptile-EX decks to protect against Special
Conditions but also can cause problems as the deck
itself will almost always want to be able to inflict
Special Conditions itself (both as a general attack buff
and for Unseen Claw specifically). Your reward is that
now you gain some more important cards to OHKO:
Keldeo-EX and Blastoise (BW: Boundaries
Crossed 31/149; BW: Plasma Storm 137/135;
BW: Plasma Blast 16/101). Likely there are a few
others I’m missing and some of these may not remain
popular but odds are good at least a few will remain
prominent.
For Limited
play, Sceptile-EX (XY: Ancient Origins
7/98, 84/98) is a great pull, worth building a +39 deck
(a deck where it is the only Basic, ensuring you start
with it but also ensuring you lose if it is KOed). If
you also manage M Sceptile-EX you can consider
it; Mega Evolving can ditch a problematic Special
Condition and you can then do a reliable 100 each turn,
but the bonus effects won’t matter at all. The fact
that this set also contains Sceptile Spirit Link
and Forest of Giant Plants also helps as if you
manage the unlikely feat of pulling both
Sceptile-EX and M Sceptile-EX, getting those
two doesn’t require tremendous additional luck). As
this set does so much for Grass-Types you have two
incentives for going with a fully fleshed out Limited
deck instead; you may pull enough additional, good
Grass-Types that your odds are actually better
this way, plus you won’t have to worry about the handful
of Fire-Types in this set. There aren’t a lot of them
but because (as I stated) XY: Ancient Origins
has such a strong Grass-Type presence, working Fire into
your own deck is a pretty good idea. Not only do you
have some strong (albeit higher rarity) pulls, but
any deck using Stage 1 Pokémon also have a
Flareon (XY: Ancient Origins 13/98) - our
15th
place pick - because while it is a Stage 1, it is
also just an Uncommon.
Ratings
Standard: 4/5
Expanded: 4.15/5
Limited: 4/5
Summary: M Sceptile-EX is an impressive
card and frankly more than a little too potent for the
health of the game but because that is true of so
much of the competitive card pool I don’t know if most
folks would notice. Last format my primary deck was
Landorus-EX/Crobat (XY: Phantom Forces
33/119) so I certain felt it as I started running into
the deck on the PTCGO (both in Expanded and during the
period when XY: Ancient Origins was added but the
rotation hadn’t actually been implemented). It pretty
soundly thrashed me which is probably why I had this as
my number one pick for for XY: Ancient Origins.
Now? Now I think I overrated it (though the collective
list gets it about right), but mostly because of my
usual deference to general usage cards over the deck
specific. M Sceptile-EX earns it marks in its
own deck, but some of the last few cards (and at
least one of the next cards) earns similar or better
marks in most or all decks!
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