aroramage |
Alright, time for a card I'm hype
about! But then again, I like Water generally as a Type
- there you go, my personal favorite Type. Glad we could
all be here to listen to that. Anywho, ONTO PALKIA-EX!!
So of the two Palkia-EX in
existence, this follows in the steps of his brother
Dialga by reverting to his other type of Water, like how
Dialga-EX became Steel-type in Phantom Forces. That
being said, there are some big differences; whereas
Dialga-EX aimed to be a main attacker in your deck,
Palkia-EX lends himself to a bulky supportive role.
Let's get right to what I mean.
Aqua Turbo is Palkia-EX's first
attack, and it's a great attack to have. At 2 Energy, it
only deals 40 damage but accelerates 2 Water Energy
straight out of your deck onto a Bench-sitter. This can
easily power up another Palkia-EX on your Bench to keep
attacks pumping out and Energy flowing, or you can use
it with Gyarados-EX/M Gyarados-EX to power them up
faster than ever before! That's pretty nice to me!
And Pearl Hurricane's not a bad
attack either - a bit excessive in cost, since all the
Energies need to be Water, but for 4 Energy, you get to
deal 120 damage plus another 30 on a Benched Pokemon.
That's a nice leg-up on the competition, if you ask me,
so Palkia-EX has decent moves as a back-up attacker if
need be!
So what all does this mean for the
Space Dragon? Well I'd say he's got a spot in several
Water decks now, but Aqua Turbo is only really good in
the early game to get a head start on your opponent
while Pearl Hurricane, while a bit expensive, can be a
solid finisher if need be. You may be able to build
around the first attack, but the trick would be to
balance out the amount of Energy in your deck to have a
good amount with the rest of your deck such that you
don't overburden yourself with Energy and end up with
more dead draws - that's what Palkia-EX is here for!
Rating
Standard: 4/5 (while deck builds
will need to accommodate to utilize Aqua Turbo more
often than not, the Energy acceleration and deck
thinning prowess will lend a major helping hand to any
Water deck!)
Expanded: 4/5 (I'd say he's
arguably better than Blastoise, though while he's got
the advantage of being a big Basic, Blastoise does
provide that explosive force with Deluge, so it's really
more dependent on what deck you're running)
Limited: 5/5 (yeah, you can
definitely benefit from powering up your Bench or
essentially weakening your opponent's, even with his
pure-Water cost)
Arora Notealus: Space dragons, man.
They're pretty hardcore...granted Palkia always did have
a bit of a funky design, but I ENDURED PEARL FOR YOU!!
Weekend Thought: Agree with our
list so far? Think some cards should be higher up? Think
some should be lower? Think there's an overrated card we
haven't hit yet, or maybe you're in the camp of waiting
for that one card to show up! Who knows? Maybe it's on
its way...
Next Time: It's a riddle tied up in
a mystery wrapped in an enigma...
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Otaku |
Now for
the top of the bottom half, our sixth place pick is
Palkia-EX (XY: BREAKpoint 31/122)! This
is our third Water-Type Pokémon-EX this week, and our
second that is also a Basic Pokémon. Being a
Water-Type is still handy for striking the Weakness of
nearly all Fire-Types and a solid chunk of
Fighting-Types while having to deal with Water
Resistance only on some BW-era Grass-Types. There
are some cards that mess with Water-Types specifically
because they are Water-Types; but it seems like they
just reduce the damage done by attacks from Water-Types.
I’ll give an example since it is the end of the week:
Heliolisk (XY: Black Star Promos XY47) has
the Ability “Dry Skin” which reduces the damage done by
attacks from your opponent’s Water-Types by 30 (after
applying Weakness and Resistance). You’ve rarely
if ever seen this card being played competitively
because the rest of it is poor, even though reducing
damage by 30 - even against a single Type - is actually
pretty good. Water-Type Pokémon enjoy direct
support that is restricted to Water-Types; it isn’t a
huge amount but it sports fantastic cards like
Archie’s Ace in the Hole and Dive Ball.
There are also cards like Manaphy-EX that are
more likely to help Water-Types than others, but aren’t
expressly restricted to the Water-Type (or the
Water-Type plus another Type) by the card’s text.
Being a
Pokémon-EX is purely a disadvantage in terms of inherent
qualities; a Pokémon-EX is guaranteed to give up an
extra Prize when KOed, be the specified target of
certain detrimental effects already in the card pool and
unable to use certain beneficial effects that exclude
Pokémon-EX from their user base. Unless a
Pokémon-EX or another card effect provides a workaround,
those are happening. Usually though being a
Pokémon-EX enables a card to have better attributes and
effects than they otherwise would enjoy. Palkia-EX
is a Basic and that is the best Stage a Pokémon
currently can be: Stage specific support, even if there
are also a few Stage specific counters, but a natural
synergy with various card effects because Basic Pokémon
can be put into play immediately and (barring card
specifics) don’t require any additional cards to be put
into play. The first example of how being a
Pokémon-EX benefits this card is its HP: 180 is the
higher of the two common HP scores seen on Basic
Pokémon-EX with a good chance of surviving a hit.
Nothing is immune to being OHKOed (even cards with built
in protection against it can find that protection
bypassed), so this is reasonably good. The Grass
Weakness is not good: my big concern comes from
something like Vespiquen (XY: Ancient Origins
10/98) even if it is mostly an issue of being OHKOed
more quickly as said Vespiquen can build up its
“Bee Revenge” attack to reach 180 damage before Weakness
anyway. No Resistance is typical and I already
ranted on it earlier this week, so we’ll address the
Retreat Cost. [CC] is also a fairly typical cost, but
we can say a bit more: it is high enough you’ll often be
able to pay but low enough you’d prefer not to do so.
Palkia-EX
has two attacks. The first is “Aqua Turbo”, which
requires [WW] and does 40 damage; its effect requires
you search your deck for two [W] Energy cards and then
to attach them to one of your Benched Pokémon,
however as it involves searching the deck it is
possible to fail the search if you wish. You can’t
elect not to search at all though (and you must shuffle
your deck afterwards). The damage is decent and
the acceleration is good but not great. The second
attack is “Pearl Hurricane” and costs [WWWW]. It
does damage plus 30 to one of your own Benched Pokémon
(as usual, don’t apply Weakness or Resistance for the
Benched damage). The damage is a bit low
considering it costs not just four Energy but specific
Energy; even though they are all the same and on Type,
it is still steep… and that is before adding in Bench
damage. The only reason I’m going to call this
(just barely) acceptable because the first attack
accelerates Energy and Water-Types may use Rough Seas
to heal 30 damage from all Water- and Lightning-Types in
play.
There
is already a previous Palkia-EX in the form of
BW: Plasma Blast 66/101, 100/101); fortunately it is
a Team Plasma Pokémon so I will just refer to it as
Palkia-EX [Plasma]. It is still a Basic
Pokémon-EX with 180 HP, no Resistance, Retreat Cost
[CC], no Ancient Trait (predates them), no Ability and
two attacks. It is a Dragon-Type with Dragon
Weakness. Its first attack is “Strafe” which
requires [CCC] and does 50 damage while giving you the
option of Benching itself. This allows it to use
Double Colorless Energy as well as Colress
Machine and Plasma Energy to power up in a
single turn. It also was good enough to get
Palkia-EX [Plasma] some competitive play, but not
any recent success. Its second attack is
“Dimension Heal” for [GWCC], which does 80 damage to the
opponent’s Active while healing 20 damage from itself
for each Plasma Energy attached to itself.
Even though nowadays you can use a Double Dragon
Energy with two Colress Machine (and two
Plasma Energy) to hit for 80 while healing 40 in a
single turn… that isn’t actually good. You have to
stack four Deoxys-EX (and their “Power Connect”
Ability) on the Bench for +40 damage as well as a
Muscle Band for another plus 20 damage and
finally a Hypnotixic Laser with Virbank City
Gym to at last hit an effective 190 damage and the
OHKO needed to be competitive. If you can’t tell,
that is rather difficult, and you’d be better off using
some of those resources with Strafe in a hit-and-run
deck.
So
Palkia-EX [Plasma] shouldn’t affect the new
Palkia-EX as they don’t serve even remotely the same
purpose and thus shouldn’t be showing up in the same
deck. The new Palkia-EX seems like a
potential new opening Pokémon for Water-Types but I’m
not sold on it. You need to attach two Energy
before you can attack with Aqua Turbo, so unless you go
first and have both of your manual Energy attachments go
well or use Energy acceleration you’re losing an attack.
You aren’t ahead on Energy until you get off two
attacks, though you may have the advantage of doing 40
damage and having a different meatshield take the hit
instead of whatever you really want to be using
to attack. With the right deck, this will work,
but I don’t think it is the new staple for Water-Type
decks. I’ve heard many try to compare Palkia-EX
to Virizion-EX, because that card has the attack
“Emerald Slash” for [GC] can hit for 50 damage while
searching the deck for two [G] Energy and attaching them
to a Benched Pokémon. Sounds quite similar, but
besides having a slightly more open attack cost and a
slightly better damage output on slightly different
attributes… but it also has the Ability “Verdant Wind”
which protects any Pokémon with a [G] Energy attached
from being affected by Special Conditions. Two
sets after Hypnotoxic Laser was introduced. Virizion-EX
used to be seen everywhere but not so much now even
though it is still legal in Expanded. The former
powerhouse deck known as VirGen (which paired
Virizion-EX and Genesect-EX) is still showing
up in Expanded, but it isn’t what it once was and is now
kind of obscure.
So go
ahead and test Palkia-EX in Standard and
Expanded, but be aware that it is not something that
automatically goes in Water-Type decks (or decks that
can make use of Water Energy cards). It may
end up going into most, but it isn’t a given. Many
decks will have alternate options, like Mega Turbo
for Mega Evolutions or Blastoise (BW:
Boundaries Crossed 31/149; BW: Plasma Storm
137/135; BW: Plasma Blast 16/101) for almost
anything in Expanded. In Limited play you almost
certainly will be using Palkia-EX, either on its
own or to setup something else that you pulled.
Thankfully many cards will have Colorless Energy
requirements you can fuel with Aqua Turbo even if you
need to manually attach other Energy cards of different
Types. You can use this card completely on its own
with 39 non-Basic Pokémon cards, to ensure you open with
it and just power it up and try to take your four Prizes
(Limited play usually involved 40 card decks and only
four Prizes, instead of 60 and six) before your opponent
can overwhelm it, but you’ll not be able to attack first
turn even if you go second because you need two Energy
to use Aqua Turbo, and another two turns before you can
get to Pearl Hurricane. Once you do get to Pearl
Hurricane, your opponent should fall swiftly; it will
just be a race to do so before you take too many hits.
Ratings
Standard:
3.1/5
Expanded:
2/5
Limited:
4.9/5
Summary:
Palkia-EX provides yet another way to accelerate
Energy, but it is through an attack in a format where a
180 HP Pokémon-EX is less durable than it used to be.
Certain cards will still be able to make the trade off
work but I am thinking most decks have no use for it and
even most Water decks should see if anything else fills
the role better. This is why the rating might seem
a bit off; I expect it to be great in a few decks but
only so-so in others and awful in most.
Palkia-EX
didn’t make my Top 10, my Top 15 or even my Top 20.
It looks like a solid addition to Standard, less so for
Expanded, but I don’t expect great things from it.
Given that it tied with the fifth place card, I was
quite alone in thinking this way!
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