Otaku |
Let’s do the
timewarp again friends. Reprints are ineligible
for our top 10 lists, excepting stuff like “Cards Lost
To Rotation”, because if we didn’t several staples that
are reprinted year to year would clutter up our lists.
Fourth place goes to card that is not a reprint,
but which comes quite close to being one: Garbodor
(XY: BREAKpoint 57/122). What, were you
expecting something from XY: Evolutions?
Garbodor
is a Psychic Type Pokémon, but doesn’t mean much because
of how it is used. Psychic Pokémon exclusive
support, other than perhaps Mystery Energy,
shouldn’t matter. Neither will exploiting Weakness
or having to deal with Resistance, because Garbodor
isn’t used for its attack: it is a Bench-sitter through
and through. This all also means there isn’t any
real benefit to using it on Type, as (again) you’re not
making use of the Type specific support or [P] Energy,
so there is no real added synergy even when other
Psychic Types are indeed using such things. Being
a Stage 1 is decent; being a Basic would… well, frankly
it would have ensured this thing topped our list, but as
a Stage 1 it still only requires you run an additional
card (Trubbish) from which to Evolve and wait a
turn to do so normally. You can speed it up with
Wally if you are in a hurry and can spare your
Supporter for the turn. Its 100 HP is not great,
but is good enough; it can be OHKO’d by most decks
once their setup is complete and provided they can
force Garbodor into the Active slot. Unless
you’re new to the game, you already know why those two
things are quite unlikely for many decks, and the ones
where it isn’t too hard probably won’t be worried about
KOing Garbodor. The Psychic Weakness does
give some decks a better chance of dealing with
Garbodor in such a manner, as even a partial setup
will suffice so long as they can force it into the
Active slot. The lack of Resistance is typical
even if it’s the worst, so moving on we come to the
Retreat Cost of [CCC]. Try to avoid paying this;
most of the time though you’ll be handling it with
Float Stone.
The reason you’ll
zero out the Retreat Cost with Float Stone is
because you’re already going to want to be running extra
Tools for use with Garbodor because of its “Garbotoxin”
Ability, which debuted on Garbodor (BW:
Dragons Exalted 54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze
119/116; BW: Legendary Treasures 68/113).
Sometimes this Ability is easily ignored, sometimes it
affects the game, and sometimes it shapes the metagame.
Why? Because so long as there is a Tool attached
to Garbodor, Garbotoxin shuts off all other
Abilities. It is worded to exclude other copies of
Garbotoxin, and it hits Pokémon whether they are in the
hand, on the field, or in the discard pile. The
power creep seen throughout so much of the game has been
present in Abilities, and so almost every deck includes
at least one, with several decks being built around
them. When Abilities prove strong, Garbotoxin is
likely to be worth the deck space, but when they are on
the decline, it can become unnecessary clutter.
The pattern may be cyclical in the long run, but in the
short run you are likely to hit stable stretches.
As mentioned earlier, you really shouldn’t ever be
attacking with Garbodor, but for the record its
attack is “Offensive Bomb” which costs [PCCC]. For
all that investment, you only do 60 damage, though at
least the attack also Poisons and Confuses the
opponent’s Active… and probably your actual opponent
because again, this is not an attack that gets used.
There are several
Trubbish to consider using with Garbodor.
There are also multiple other Garbodor you could
use with or instead of today’s. In both cases, we
are only going to just focus on what has been proven as
this is a year end re-review. All Trubbish
I am about to mention are Basic Psychic Type Pokémon
with Psychic Weakness, no Resistance, no Ability, and no
Ancient Trait. BW: Noble Victories 48/101 has 60
HP, Retreat Cost [C], and two attacks. The first
is “Pile Up” for [C], which allows you to place a card
from your discard pile on top of your deck. For
[PC] it has “Sludge Bomb” which does 20 damage (nothing
else). BW: Dragons Exalted 53/124 (reprinted
with new art as BW: Legendary Treasures 67/113)
has 70 HP, Retreat Cost [CC] and also two attacks.
The first is “Pound” for [CC], doing 20 damage, while
the second is “Poison Gas” for [PCC] doing 30 plus
Poisoning the opponent’s Active. BW: Plasma Storm
65/135 also has 70 HP with Retreat Cost [CC], but only a
single attack. That attack is “Tool Drop” for
[PC], and it does 20 damage times the number of Pokémon
Tools both players have in play. XY: BREAKpoint
56/122 also has 70 HP, Retreat Cost [CC], and a single
attack. For [P] its “Acid Spray” does 10 damage
plus gives you a coin flip to discard an Energy from the
opponent’s Active. Now ideally none of
these should be attacking, but these three have the best
combination of attacks, HP, and Retreat Cost. You
don’t get a choice in Standard as only XY: BREAKpoint
56/122.
The only other
Garbodor worth mentioning is Garbodor (BW:
Dragons Exalted 54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze
119/116; BW: Legendary Treasures 68/113).
In terms of game relevant stats it is identical to
today’s Garbodor (XY: BREAKpoint 57/122).
Since they also share the Ability Garbotoxin, the only
difference is in the attack; “Sludge Toss” requires
[PPC] to do 60 damage. Just 60 damage, nothing
else. I am uncertain whether [PPC] or [PCCC] is
harder to fill, in part because most decks using
Garbodor don’t run a lot of [P] Energy but it is
three Energy versus four. Regardless, this is also
badly overpriced and so you shouldn’t be using this
Garbodor to attack either. It is only legal
for Expanded play; it shouldn’t hurt or help you to run
one, the other, or both. So where would you use
Garbotoxin? Basically any deck that can spare the
room and won’t struggle without its own Abilities.
Yes, that widespread. It is easier in some decks
than other; Hoopa-EX (XY: Ancient Origins
36/98, 89/98; XY: Black Star Promos XY71) and
Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108,
106/108) sometimes come in handy later, but decks that
use Garbodor just focus on burning through them
first turn, before Garbotoxin is going to be in effect.
Other examples are Keldeo-EX and Yveltal (XY:
BREAKthrough 94/162); in this case I believe the
idea is use the Ability Pokémon or Garbodor,
depending upon what your opponent is running, though
Yveltal can still be useful as an attacker. In
the case of Yveltal you may even want to
shut its Ability off; “Fright Night” negates the effects
of Abilities while Yveltal is Active, so unless
Garbotoxin is in effect it cannot make use of stuff like
Fighting Fury Belt.
Big, Basic Pokémon
backed by Garbodor (BW: Dragons Exalted
54/124; BW: Plasma Freeze 119/116; BW:
Legendary Treasures 68/113) was once a dominant deck
(or series of decks, depending on how you want to
classify them). The same approach is proving true
with Garbodor (XY: BREAKpoint 57/122),
with the usual dance partner being Yveltal-EX. Darkrai-EX
(XY: BREAKpoint 74/122; 118/122) decks also will
sometimes include it; Giratina-EX (XY: Ancient
Origins 57/98, 93/98) is often a partner for
Darkrai-EX (if the Ability on Giratina-EX is
needed, then Garbotoxin will not be triggered).
Even some Mega Evolutions are getting in on the act: M
Mewtwo-EX (XY: BREAKthrough 64/162, 160/162)
and M Scizor-EX have their own separate
decks each backed by Garbodor. Right now
though, it is the Yveltal-EX variant that seems
to be dominating the Standard Format metagame. So
what about in Expanded play? Well technically you
can use the other Garbodor with Garbotoxin, but
yes Garbodor is still showing up there; most
recently a Sableye deck backed by it has brought
back control/mill. There is an important
difference, though; in Expanded an opponent can deal
with Garbotoxin by using Startling Megaphone,
Tool Scrapper, and/or Xerosic to discard the
Tool attached to it. The Standard Format is far
different; there are only attack and Ability based
options for discarding Pokémon Tools, and it is clearly
not enough to keep Garbodor in check.
At the recent European International Cup, first through
fifth place went to Yveltal-EX/Garbodor
decks.
So definitely use
it in Standard. Probably use it in Expanded.
If you’re able to pull it and Trubbish in a
Limited Format event, try to work them in; yes it takes
proportionately more space and will be more difficult to
get into play in a timely manner, but even lesser
Abilities can prove amazing when you’re deck is this
constrained… which means that same holds true for your
opponent so shut’em down. If you’ve got room for
some copies of Psychic Energy then you might even
bother attacking with Garbodor; in Limited play
the attack isn’t too bad.
Ratings
Standard:
4.5/5
Expanded:
4/5
Limited:
4.25/5
Summary:
We first looked at this Garbodor
here
as the third best card of its set, where it might have
topped the list except it wasn’t going to make a
difference for Expanded play. Its defining the
Standard Format right now and you can use either
Garbotoxin sporting Garbodor in Expanded for a
competitive deck. If you don’t have it, get it.
You’ll love to hate and hate to love it depending upon
if you want to make use of certain Abilities.
Garbodor
managed 16 voting points, missing a tie for third place
by just one voting point. I had it as my fifth
place pick, and placing a bit higher isn’t a problem.
In fact if it wasn’t for the fact it technically doesn’t
matter (due to the older Garbodor with the same
Ability) in Expanded, this might have placed higher even
on my own list.
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