aroramage |
Did you enjoy the weekend? Did you
think much about it? Neither did I, but that's okay!
We're back with the rest of the countdown with our #2
pick, Fighting Fury Belt!
Ever looked at Muscle Band and
Giant Cape and think to yourself, "You know what would
be great? A card that could do both of these things."
Well never fear, cause Fighting Fury BELT is here!! And
it does what Muscle Band and Giant Cape do too!...sort
of! The Belt adds on an extra 40 HP and gives your
attacks a small 10 damage boost, so it's like a better
Giant Cape and a weaker Muscle Band put together - not
too shabby!
There is one thing about Fighting
Fury Belt to note, and that would be the restriction to
only Basic Pokemon. Normally, this might seem like a bad
thing - you mean I can't attach this to my giant Mega-EX
and have him do even more obscene amounts of damage?
Well frankly, you probably don't need it, cause Fighting
Fury Belt gives your Basic-EX enough HP to be on level
with some of the lower end Mega-EX while also boosting
their damage up a little bit to make them a bit more
comparable! In a way, this card is a boon to all
Basic-EX cards, regardless of their Mega status!
So what does this mean? Well, decks
focusing around just a Basic-EX have a neat little tool
to avoid those silly 2HKOs from anything hitting 90
consistently, though the Belt won't stop anything that
can hit 120 consistently from 2HKO-ing regardless (180 +
40 is still only 220, which means if an attack can deal
110+ damage consistently, they'll still 2HKO), but then
there's the extra 10 damage that can help push things
forward and put the Basics into 2HKO-ing range of other
EXs, even Megas! So while it lacks the punch of Muscle
Band, it gives the Basic-EXs more survivability, and
that's pretty good in my book!
Rating
Standard: 4/5 (an extra 40 HP will
do wonders for you, and while it's not much, every 10
damage counts!)
Expanded: 4/5 (Muscle Band may
outclass this card in terms of damage, but even its
extra 20 can't push some attacks into Belt's +40 HP)
Limited: 5/5 (and there's no
question that this is undeniably useful here)
Arora Notealus: I can only imagine
this looking rather peculiar around some Pokemon's
waists. I mean, imagine this hanging around Giratina?
Might look neat. Around a Squirtle?...might look kinda
neat. And yet what about Rayquaza??...actually where
would you put it around Rayquaza...
Next Time: Our #1 saw this coming
already.
|
Otaku |
Our
second best card from XY: BREAKpoint is
Fighting Fury Belt (XY: BREAKpoint 99/122), a
Pokémon Tool that increases the HP of the Pokémon to
which it is attached by 40, as well as bumping up the
damage from its attacks by 10, but only for Basic
Pokémon. Pokémon Tools have their own support and
counter cards, for example Eco Arm allows you to
shuffle three of them from your discard pile back into
your deck, while Startling Megaphone discards all
Pokémon Tools from your opponent’s side of the field
(give or take other effects). Pokémon Tools are
also Items, which in turn are of course Trainer cards,
so all general Item and Trainer support/counters also
apply. Unless it has an effect that states
otherwise, a Pokémon may only have a single Pokémon Tool
attached at a time; this means all Tools compete with
each other, though the ones that discard themselves do
so to a lesser degree. It also means your amount
of Pokémon Tools in play is dictated by what and how
many Pokémon you have in play, even if your opponent’s
cards in no way restrict you.
Pokémon
Tools tend to wax and wane in potency, opposite (give or
take a step) of cards to counter Pokémon Tools.
The good news for Fighting Fury Belt is blended
in with the bad news: decks already tend to include
Pokémon Tools, but only those with specific strategies
are likely to run more than six, with two to four being
common and some decks running none at all. This is
good because it means Fighting Fury Belt doesn’t
have to create a new niche, but bad because that
existing niche is already occupied; Fighting Fury
Belt needs to be better than what is currently
available, or as good as it while being different enough
to warrant it winning out due to more than luck.
Prior to its release Assault Vest, Float Stone,
Life Essence, Muscle Band and Rock
Guard were reasonably high priority picks;
Assault Vest because it soaked 40 points of damage
per attack provided the attacker had a Special Energy
card attached, Float Stone because it zeroed out
Retreat Cards, Life Essence for decks that really
needed to manage the Prize count, Muscle Band for
almost any deck as +20 damage is likely to be useful and
Rock Guard mostly for control/stall decks, where
it could do the most good.
Fighting Fury Belt
blends the improved survival of cards like Assault
Vest with the damage boost of Muscle Band,
which is good. It isn’t always going to be better
than them (or some of the other options I listed), but
it has already proven by now that it can be a very
worthwhile card. Obviously if you need a lowered
Retreat Cost, reduced Prize loss, etc. it isn’t going to
replace what you currently use. Almost every card
wants to hit harder or have more HP, but one needs to
remember that not all boosts will actually prove
relevant. If you’re not dealing with a card that
needs protection from Pokémon Tool F cards or to trigger
a particular effect that needs a Pokémon Tool,
Fighting Fury Belt can still go to waste when
attached. If the damage boost doesn’t speed up
taking KOs or at least place some other burden on the
opponent, it isn’t actually helping you. If the
extra HP isn’t keeping the equipped Pokémon alive longer
or at least forcing your opponent to burn more resources
for the KO, that isn’t helping you either. Both
effects failing to matter seems unlikely, but sometimes
they will. Of course, this excludes non-Basic
Pokémon: they never can use the card except for
versions of Garbodor with Garbotoxin (are there
any other Tool triggered Abilities out there?).
Assault
Vest
is still better if you need to soak damage and know the
metagame isn’t going to shift too heavily to more
reliance on Basic Energy cards (for the record, I have
no idea if it will remain the same, shift that way or
change in yet some other manner). Assault Vest
prevents you from even taking 40 damage, while
Fighting Fury Belt simply gives you an extra 40 HP
to absorb 40 damage; a one time thing. Your
opponent may be able to discard Fighting Fury Belt
before it actually matters, and remember that unless you
can heal it a Pokémon being kept alive by Fighting
Fury Belt is effectively “on loan”: your opponent
already did enough damage to claim a OHKO and if they
use a Tool discarding effect they can claim it without
doing the full extra 40 damage. Still, the reason
I phrase it that way is because you are indeed retaining
use of something that you ought to have already lost.
Getting back to the head-to-head comparison though, if
soaking damage from attackers most likely to use Special
Energy cards is your goal, Assault Vest is the
better defense. If your Pokémon is not likely to
survive an extra attack from either card, then you
aren’t really improving your defense.
In
terms of offense, Muscle Band (and in Expanded,
sometimes Silver Bangle) are still better
options, but do pay attention to the numbers; if
Muscle Band doesn’t score a KO in at least one less
turn than Fighting Fury Belt would, you may as
well take just as long but have extra HP. For
better or worse it isn’t an easy call to make: most of
the time you’ll have some cases where the extra 10
damage is more important, while in others the HP will
actually matter more… not unlike how Silver Bangle
is still included in decks not attacking with Pokémon-EX
and that only (or at least more badly need) the extra
damage against Pokémon-EX instead of taking
slightly less reliable damage against everything.
A little confusing as I just referenced Expanded, but a
Standard deck that I believe is currently running
Assault Vest, Fighting Fury Belt and
Muscle Band is the one built around Entei
(XY: Ancient Origins 15/98). Like the other
two Tools, doubling up on Fighting Fury Belt is
amazing: an extra 80 HP while doing an extra 20 damage…
but at least a few matchups still call for Assault
Vest (because you need to repeatedly soak 40 to 80
damage) or Muscle Band (because you need a total
of +40 to hit key damage numbers).
Overall, this is a strong addition for Standard and
Expanded play, and it should come as no surprise it is
also a valuable pull for Limited as well.
Ratings
Standard:
4.5/5
Expanded:
4.4/5
Limited:
5/5
Summary:
Fighting Fury Belt provides a smaller offensive
buff in order to include a defensive one as well.
It provides twice as much of an HP boost as Giant
Cape, though that can work for any Stage, but many
attackers, this is the way to go, either run instead of
or in addition to any Muscle Band or Assault
Vest you were already including (the former being
far more common than the latter).
On my
personal Top 10 for this set, Fighting Fury Belt
was my number one pick! For our collective list,
it managed 23 voting points, actually missing first
place by five voting points. That must mean
tomorrow’s card is amazing, right? Well… I think
I’ll have some explaining to do then.
|
