aroramage |
Already, I'm giving this Suicune
5/5 for the artwork. I'd get this card for just that
alone, it's so nice!
I MEAN LOOK AT THAT, AND IT'S GONNA
BE A HOLO RARE TOO!!
That being said though, Suicune is
more than just a beautiful card to look at. He's
actually got some interesting stuff on him too! His
attack isn't terribly fascinating, but Aurora Beam is an
unusual 3-for-110 vanilla strike. I say that's unusual
since most vanilla attacks I've seen tend not to hit so
hard. Course, that is with 3 pure Water Energies, so
he's not going into every deck, but then would you be
able to run him in Water decks?
Well there's gotta be more to sell
than just a vanilla attack, even if the damage output is
larger than normal, and that's where Suicune's Ability
comes in. Wind Charm is...interesting, to say the least.
As long as Suicune remains Active, your opponent's
attacks have no effect on any of your Pokemon aside from
damage. Now I'm not entirely sure what that prevents
entirely outside of that, but running down the list,
that should include any attack that inflicts Status
Conditions, forces a Switch, or tries to discard Energy
off of Pokemon. And those are all pretty nice things to
prevent, in all honesty.
Unfortunately, there are a few ways
around this. For one thing, Wind Charm doesn't block
damage, and with only 120 HP, Suicune isn't going to
last as long as you'd like him to. Not to mention any
effects that would inflict damage to Benched Pokemon, I
believe, will still go off, so you're not going to be
protecting stuff unless you've got a teched-in Mr. Mime.
The other thing is that Wind Charm doesn't do anything
against Abilities, Items, Supporters, or Stadiums, and
while there are only a few Stadiums that I know of that
can make things rough for Bench-sitters, there's still
plenty of the other three to go around. Lysandre can
work around the switch and shut Suicune down, the
Hammers will take care of Energy no matter where it is,
and Abilities like Hypno and Ariados can still put
Status Conditions on Suicune since it's not an attack.
Once again, never mind that
Garbodor or Silent Lab can shut Suicune's Ability down
for good or that in Expanded Hypnotoxic Laser is
probably still a preferred method of tacking on extra
damage.
In short, just as Suicune's Ability
has a plethora of uses, it's also got a plethora of ways
around those uses. And at the end of the day, even an
impressive 3-for-110 Aurora Beam and a good amount of
protection won't quite let Suicune see the highest
levels of competitive play...well, unless we get
something in the meta with major Status inflictions to
Benched Pokemon.
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (he's got potential
though, I'll give him that much)
Expanded: 2/5 (but between niche
appeal and the wide array of necessities, he's going to
have a hard time fitting in)
Limited: 3/5 (maybe one day,
Suicune, you'll get your time in the spotlight)
Arora Notealus: Once again, 5/5 on
the artwork though. Mitsuhiro Arita, you do good work!!
Next Time: And now for the starter
evolution everyone wants to talk about...sometimes...
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Otaku |
Suicune
(XY: BREAKpoint 30/122) is our Wednesday Card of
the Day. The Water Type hasn’t really changed
since last week. It is great for attacking almost
all Fire Types and some Fighting Types because of their
Water Weakness. It only bumps into Resistance when
facing the majority of BW-era Grass Types and there are
some anti-Water effects out there, but those usually
don’t matter. The Water Type support matters to
varying degrees depending in part upon the rest of the
card, but there is support available, both from cards
that specifically name Water Types as a beneficiary and
just from the basic synergy that comes from some of the
already established great Water Type cards.
Speaking of being already established, Basic Pokémon are
simply the best: they enjoy so many natural benefits by
virtue of being a single card and even though there are
anti-Basic card effects out there, there are also
Basic-benefitting cards and the net result is very much
on the side of the Basic Pokémon. Suicune has
120 HP; this is a solid amount and without having
another mechanic at work (like being a Pokémon-EX) this
is just 10 shy of the current maximum we’ve seen printed
(though Japan just got a Snorlax with 140 HP).
It will take a good solid attack to OHKO Suicune,
though that is what most decks are striving for in the
first place. Grass Weakness is iffy; something
like Vespiquen (XY: Ancient Origins 10/98)
won’t need it for long while Virizion-EX will
still need a Muscle Band to pull off the OHKO,
but especially when Vespiquen is popular what
should be mere edge cases will actually happen with
alarming frequency. No Resistance is the worst but
also the norm so moving on we see a Retreat Cost of [C],
which is low enough to be easily paid. Most of the
time, anyway.
Suicune
sports an Ability and a single attack. The Ability
is “Wind Charm” and as long as Suicune is Active
it prevents all effects of opponents attacks done to
your Pokémon except damage. If there is
already an effect residing on a Pokémon when Wind Charm
activates, it is not removed. At a glance this
didn’t seem too great; there are a decent amount of
things that Suicune will protect itself from
while it is Active, but what about your Bench?
Then I remembered that damage counters placed as an
attack effect are (of course) an attack effect: while
Suicune is Active and Wind Charm working, an attack
like “Silent Fear” (found on Trevenant BREAK)
would do nothing. That is actually good (not
great, but good). For [WWW] Suicune can use
“Aurora Beam” for 110 damage. That is a good
amount of damage as even before offensive buffs it will
2HKO most things in the format (disregarding protective
effects). Of course three specific Energy means
without appropriate Energy acceleration it is probably
too slow to use. Still to give you an idea a
Keldeo-EX with [WWW] attached also does 110 damage
with its “Secret Sword” attack.
So what about other
Suicune? Well there is BW: Plasma Blast
20/101 and it is a great card. It has a lot in
common with today’s version as it is still a Basic Water
Type Pokémon with Grass Weakness, no Resistance, a
protective Ability and even the same attack, but it has
a lot to make it distinct as well with only 100 HP, a
Retreat Cost of two and of course the card effects.
Its Ability is “Safeguard”, preventing all damage and
effects of attacks by Pokémon-EX (even your own) while
it also has Aurora Beam its version only costs [WCC] but
hits for just 70 damage. Thanks to Silver
Bangle and later Muscle Band that 70 damage
was enough because Safeguard is pretty amazing in a
heavily Pokémon-EX environment. If you can only
run a single Suicune this version is it, but
fortunately most decks won’t need four of each, so you
can just mix and match if you have a use for today’s
subject.
I wouldn’t toss
Suicune (XY: BREAKpoint 30/122) into just any
deck, but if you’ve got room and either have a good deal
of Water support and/or just need something to stall for
time against Trevenant BREAK, this is actually a
solid option. Yes Trevenant BREAK can
access the attacks on whichever Trevenant is
BREAK Evolved from but with 120 HP Suicune can
still take at least one hit. In Standard you don’t
even have the option of the old version and I do like
that 110-for-three attack. In Limited it is a
great pull; even if you aren’t running Water Type Energy
you may just need it to stall for time and if you are
running Water Type Energy it becomes an amazing
attacker. Not good enough to run completely
solely, but good enough to include in most decks.
Ratings
Standard:
3/5
Expanded:
2.8/5
Limited:
4/5
Summary:
Suicune is a niche Pokémon but when in that niche
it works well. That is why I am telling you to run
it but why it is only scoring a three out of five.
If you are running a Water type deck make room for at
least a single because the score should be a point
higher (maybe more). In a deck totally unsuited to
it the score should be about a point lower as it can
still be tossed up front as a wall on occasion.
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