aroramage |
Ever wanted to have a version of N
that didn't shuffle your hand back into your deck? Well
have we got a card for you today! And it'll only take up
room in your deck for a Stage 1!
...yayyyyyyyyyyyyy.
Mismagius has a fairly niche appeal
to her in the form of her Ability, Twisted Incantation.
When you evolve your Misdreavus into Mismagius, you can
force your opponent into returning their hand to their
deck and drawing cards equal to the number of Prize
cards they have remaining. So in short, it's a one-sided
N that can potentially turn things around. That's not
too bad!
Of course, Mismagius isn't going to
be your attacker, at least not with that Curse Deeply
attack. While she's frustrated over having a 3-for-60
strike, I'm frustrated over it only doing 60 damage and
tacking on a Status like Confusion which can be shrugged
off so easily. It's probably the least viable Status in
the game aside from maybe Burning, which when was the
last time you saw that on a card?
So Mismagius' main focus is Twisted
Incantation, which means running a Stage 1 Pokemon in a
deck that really doesn't have the space for much. At
best, you're putting her down as an option maybe a
one-of - but be careful! Evosoda and Wally may
accelerate her Evolution, but they won't trigger her
effect, so it's better to just have her in hand.
Or, you know, just not run her. You
might not have space for that kind of commitment.
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (disrupting your
opponent is still a useful strategy - why do you think N
was popular for so long?)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (of course, N's
very existence also drastically lowers Mismagius'
playability - if you can just do the same thing with 1
card that you could with 2, even if it is slightly
different, it's only worth playing the 1 card)
Limited: 3.5/5 (though in a Limited
format, that's very useful)
Arora Notealus: BURN THE WITCH!!
Next Time: AND BREAK THEIR BONES!!!
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Otaku |
Mismagius
(XY: BREAKthrough 66/162) kicks off our latest
week of reviews. This is a Psychic-Type, meaning
it hits the majority of other Psychic-Types and the
majority of Fighting-Types for double damage (via
Weakness), while slamming into Resistance on nearly all
Darkness-Types and Metal-Types. The Psychic-Type
has a decent assortment of tricks. The worthwhile
ones are Dimension Valley, which reduces the
attack costs of Psychic-Types by [C], Mystery Energy,
which reduces the Retreat Costs of a Psychic-Type by
[CC] when attached, and Wobbuffet (XY: Phantom
Forces 36/119), which shuts down Abilities of
non-Psychic-Types while it is Active. There are no
currently legal cards that explicitly target
Psychic-Types with detrimental effects. Mismagius
is also a Stage 1 card, so while it is slower than a
Basic and takes more space, it is still a fairly
reasonable play. The 90 HP means it will likely
not survive in the Active slot but keeps it Level
Ball legal. I thought the Darkness Weakness
wouldn’t matter much with 90 HP but then I remembered
Yveltal (XY 78/146; XY: Black Star Promos
XY06) is seeing more usage, and Muscle Band turns
its Oblivion Wing into a OHKO. The Fighting
Resistance may come in handy some of the time;
Fighting-Types are prone to having effects to boost
damage or ignore Resistance, but 90 plus Resistance may
fall into a niche where the lesser attacks can’t easily
be boosted to 110 damage (before Resistance). The
Retreat Cost of [C] is easy to pay and usually easy to
recover from having paid.
Mismagius
has an Ability plus an attack. The Ability is
“Twisted Incantation”, which triggers when you Evolve
one of your in play Pokémon into this Mismagius.
At that point Twisted Incantation allows you to force
your opponent to shuffle his or her hand into his or her
deck and draw a card for each Prize he or she has
remaining. Not something to rush out with Wally
first turn, but potentially useful if you either want
some disruption mid-to-late game (when your opponent
likely has taken a few Prizes) or if you just want to
force your opponent to draw (perhaps in a stall/mill
deck that avoids giving up Prizes easily). The
attack is “Curse Deeply” which requires [PCC] to hit for
60 damage as well as Confuse the opponent’s Active.
Have I mentioned lately that Confusion used to be
one of, if not the, best Special Condition?
Perhaps that was just my n00bish opinion at the time
because I am going all the way back to pre-2003. I
don’t actually remember exactly when clearly, but
Confusion originally caused the Pokémon to attack itself
for 20 damage on a failed Confusion Check and also
required a Confusion Check to successful retreat.
Doing 20 damage instead of three damage counters was
sometimes better, sometimes worse than the current rules
(depending on the Pokémon and your side of things), but
the important part was at this point, you still could
retreat as many times as you could afford per turn…
but you not only had to pay your Retreat Cost before
the Confusion Check, but a failed check meant you
couldn’t try again.
Why focus on how useful I think Confusion once was?
Well now it is mostly an annoyance unless you’ve got
something that can’t easily shake it (very hit or miss
already in the current format), so a 50% chance of
making no difference isn’t as scary. Plus there
isn’t actually much more to say about Curse Deeply;
three for 60 plus a Special Condition isn’t good.
It takes Dimension Valley combined with
Gardevoir (BW: Next Destinies 57/99; BW:
Dark Explorers 109/108) so that Psychic Mirage
allows a single basic Psychic Energy to cover the
entire cost for it to be a well priced attack… but on a
90 HP Stage 1 it still isn’t worth the effort. It
only combos with the Ability in the simplest of manners;
hopefully your opponent’s new hand lacks an out for
Confusion and/or Confusion does have a slight chance of
buying time to attack again in spite of your 90 HP.
Mismagius
Evolves from Misdreavus, so what are our options
there? We have two options, but only the latter is
Standard legal: BW: Legendary Treasures 57/113
and XY: BREAKthrough 65/162. Both are
Basic, Psychic-Types with 60 HP, Darkness Weakness,
Retreat Cost [C], no Ancient Trait, no Ability and a
single attack. BW: Legendary Treasures 57/113
has no Resistance and its attack is “Spooky Shot” for
[PC], hitting for 20 damage. XY: BREAKthrough
65/162 enjoys Fighting Resistance for what it is worth
and its attack is “Haunt” for [P], which places two
damage counters on the opponent’s Active. Neither
is more than a stepping stone but XY: BREAKthrough
65/162 needs less Energy to attack (unless you’re
running Dimension Valley or Gardevoir) and
has Resistance, so I favor it. Placing two damage
counters is on par with doing 20 damage; there are times
when you’d prefer the damage counters (such as against
Resistance) and times when you’d prefer doing actual
damage (namely attacking into Weakness), but you don’t
ever want to attack anyway so it isn’t much of a
tiebreaker. There is one other option for
Mismagius, at least in Expanded: BW: Legendary
Treasures 58/113. It has the same attributes
as today’s version, but with 10 more HP and no
Resistance. It has two attacks instead of an
Ability and attack combo: for [PC] it can use “Absorb
Life” to do 30 damage while healing 10 from itself while
for [PCC] it can use a beefier Spooky Shot to hit for 70
damage. This makes today’s Mismagius look
good by comparison, and isn’t going to help or hinder
it.
Even though I’ve mentioned Gardevoir a few times,
it is not a good partner for Mismagius; I
just like being thorough about such things and
technically you can get the cost of Curse Deeply down to
a single Energy. For now, Mismagius seems
to be a bit of hand disruption that seems like one
should be able to do something with it, but nothing I
can think of really warrants including a 90 HP Stage 1
line that is probably going to just sit on your Bench
afterwards. Its best protection is being rather
pointless after it hits the field, though you could
theoretically bounce it and Evolve again (either the
next turn or an already waiting Misdreavus in
play). The big issue is the level of hand
disruption/forced draw you get out of this card can be
found elsewhere; Judge hits both players and is a
Supporter but guarantees four, N is also a
Supporter and hits both players but otherwise forces the
same as Twisted Incantation, and Red Card is an
Item that forces just the opponent to shuffle and draw
four. Twisted Incantation can force your opponent
into a lower hand than two of those, but can’t force
your opponent into a smaller hand unless said opponent
has already drawn into a larger (6+ card) hand or taken
a Prize already: good for overall game balance, bad for
this card’s chances.
So for now, I don’t see much use in Standard or
Expanded. Peeking ahead at Delinquent, we
are getting a Supporter that requires you discard a
Stadium in play in order to use, and then forces your
opponent to discard three cards from hand. Once
your opponent is down to two or three Prizes, this means
Mismagius can set up for a hand clearing
Delinquent. That could be devastating or it
could be a speedbump, depending on everything else
involved, but if the translation for
Delinquent is correct (I couldn’t find a scan of the
English card, probably because it hasn’t officially
released yet) then this shows some small potential for
Mismagius. Otherwise you’ll have to just
enjoy it in Limited play, where the smaller starting
Prize count (four instead of six) makes Twisted
Incantation better while the lower average HP and damage
output helps with the rest of the card. As you
probably can make room for it and the attack is
optional, you’ll probably want to include even a 1-1
line unless you’re building a +39 deck (one Basic
Pokémon, 39 non-Basic Pokémon cards).
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
1.5/5
Limited:
3.5/5
Summary:
The good news? It doesn’t seem broken. The
bad news? It also doesn’t seem like it will be
worth playing unless we get a future card that
could “break” it. Still you might have some fun
with Mismagius now in casual play.
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