aroramage |
Ever since they were first
introduced back in Next Destinies, Pokemon-EX have been
a dominant force in the game. It's almost guaranteed
that you'll lose if you're not running a Pokemon-EX,
with exceptions including Pokemon like Vespiquen and
Flareon with their vengeance-style attacks and the Night
March series, all of which revolve around more Pokemon
in your discard pile meaning more damage, but I digress
- the point is, most main attackers in a deck usually
have an EX in the title. And yes, that naturally
includes the new Megas.
Houndoom-EX is an example of one of
the EXs that is not an attacker.
Actually, he kinda reminds me of
Manectric-EX in a way - two very cheap attacks, both
dealing low damage...well, at least for Manectric-EX.
Unfortunately, Houndoom-EX is stuck with only 1 attack
that can do damage, and it's...okay. Starting off with
Melting Horn, it costs only 1 Energy but does no damage
and mills the top 2 cards of your opponent's deck.
That's not terrible, save for if you're facing the
aforementioned "Vengeance" decks, in which case...good
luck with that. Otherwise, it's a minimal milling effect
that only really works to maybe incentivize your
opponent to beat you faster before they run out of
cards.
That aside, Grand Flame is a
2-for-50 attempt at being a good Energy accelerator, but
really it's a bit lackluster. I mean, yeah, you're able
to power up some other Fire-type to dealing more damage,
but come on, 2-for-50? That's barely decent for an EX,
and no his Mega form shouldn't be an excuse to make him
worse, especially since this is his second attack that
should be actually stronger than his first attack, not
just something that does more damage with numbers!!
*phew* Sorry, just REALLY needed to
get that off my chest.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (you're only using
him for Grand Flame MAYBE or evolving him to M Houndoom-EX)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (at least he's got
an Energy accelerator...)
Limited: 3.5/5 (some Pokemon don't
even get that much)
Arora Notealus: Seems to me like
Houndoom-EX was a way of making Manectric-EX again but
making it weaker so it wasn't comparable, or at the very
least "different." Eh, you say "tomato," and I say,
"Goodbye."
Next Time: HEY SPEAKING OF M
HOUNDOOM-EX
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Otaku |
Today
we look at Houndoom-EX (XY: BREAKthrough
21/162; 153/162) as we continue our Fire flavored week.
Nothing has changed since I started: nearly all Grass-
and Metal-Types have Fire Weakness so unless Houndoom-EX
has a huge damage output or does no damage at all, that
comes in handy at least some of the time. Nothing
is Fire Resistant and if there is an anti-Fire-Type
effect in the current card pool, I missed it. Fire
support is underwhelming: Blacksmith is great and
has synergy with less direct support like Fiery Torch
or Scorched Earth (which work with basic Fire
Energy) but there isn’t the equivalent of Strong
Energy (already gave
my thoughts
on Burning Energy) in terms of quality and there
is no equivalent of Korrina, Maxie’s Hidden
Ball Trick or Focus Sash. Notice how
not all of those are insanely powerful cards; a quick
pokepedia.net
search didn’t show much for Fire Pokémon. For the
record I set the Format to “Expanded” and Text Search to
“ R Pokemon”; the space is necessary to prevent phrases
like “your Pokemon” or “her Pokemon” from registering.
Being a
Basic is still the best; minimum space in deck, minimum
space in play, minimum time to get into play, Stage
specific support (mostly in Expanded) and a natural
synergy with many card effects with the only drawback
being a lower HP cap (based on currently released cards)
than Evolutions, being unable to access cards
specifically meant for Evolutions and some anti-Basic
Pokémon effects. One of these is remedied by being
a Pokémon-EX as even Basic Pokémon-EX tend to have HP
scores in excess of a Stage 2 Pokémon. Speaking of
which Pokémon-EX have to deal with giving up an extra
Prize when KOed, dealing with certain Pokémon-EX
specific countermeasures (like Silver Bangle) and
being unable to access certain useful card effects (like
Silver Bangle… again). Besides having more
HP, Pokémon-EX are likely to have better attributes all
around and/or effects than a Pokémon would normally be
allowed, at least as a Basic and enables a Pokémon which
would normally be an Evolution to be a Basic instead, at
which point I think we just came full circle.
Moving
onto the actual HP score, Houndoom-EX has 170 HP,
the lower of the two typical scores for Basic Pokémon-EX
and quite serviceable; it isn’t guaranteed to survive a
hit but should be able to take one much of the time.
Water Weakness is an issue specifically because it runs
into certain cards like Regice (XY: Ancient
Origins 24/98) and Suicune (BW: Plasma
Blast 20/101) that would fall a little short of a
OHKO but now just need a Silver Bangle or
Muscle Band or even Hypnotoxic Laser with a
Virbank City Gym in play to score a OHKO, while
Seismitoad-EX even without boosting scores a 3HKO
instead of a 6HKO (and usually will be buffed to the
point it scores a 2HKO instead of a 3HKO). Lack of
Resistance is typical (and I’m running short on time) so
we’ll move onto the Retreat Cost of [CC]; this is low
enough you’ll often enough be able to both pay the
Energy and recover from having paid the Energy to
manually retreat but would be better off if you can
reduce the cost or avoid paying it altogether.
Houndoom-EX
has two attacks and they both have low costs: [R] for
“Melting Horn” and [RR] for “Grand Flame”. The
former discards the top two cards of your opponent’s
deck but does no damage while the latter scores 50
damage while attaching a [R] Energy from your discard
pile to one of your Benched Pokémon. These are
solid attacks, especially on a 170 HP Basic Pokémon-EX;
the damage output isn’t so hot but the effects can be
surprisingly good. I didn’t think so until I was proven
wrong by players building and doing well with decks that
focus on Houndoom-EX; not M Houndoom-EX
but Houndoom-EX itself. If you don’t
believe me, go check out recent-ish tournament
results
over at
The
Charizard Lounge
and you’ll see a few different, distinct Houndoom-EX
decks in addition to M Houndoom-EX in its own
deck.
Still,
let us cover M Houndoom-EX briefly (because it
will be
tomorrow’s CotD).
It is a Mega Evolution so it has all the ups (usually
even better attributes and effects than Basic
Pokémon-EX) and downs (turn ends upon mega Evolving,
anti-Mega Evolution cards), with Houndoom Spirit Link
to deal with that first and most critical drawback. M
Houndoom-EX is still a Fire-Type with Water
Weakness, no Resistance, no Ancient Trait and no Ability
but has 210 HP, a Retreat Cost of [C] and a single
attack (Inferno Fang), with said attack requiring [RR]
tp hit for 80 damage and the option of discarding all
Energy attached to M Houndoom-EX itself in order
to hit for 80+80 damage. 160 falls just a bit short of
OHKOing the typical Basic Pokémon-EX, but with the right
support a deck can clear that threshold. It just
isn’t as simple as “use Muscle Band” because you
really want to use Houndoom Spirit Link first.
Obviously if you want to use M Houndoom-EX, you
have to use Houndoom-EX, but like I said
has three other decks where it was listed as being the
focus, with M Houndoom-EX being listed as
something separate. Most of these decks seem to
focus on Melting Horn. If you actually read the
link I gave earlier, this is just me interpreting the
results presented there in light of what I have
encountered on the PTCGO or discussed on online with
other players. We have Houndoom-EX
partnering Bunnelby (XY: Primal Clash
121/160) for a mill deck; the idea is that Houndoom-EX
is just hard enough for the typical attacker to OHKO
that you can heal it and keep milling until you win.
I didn’t think much of this when I encountered it but it
might just be that I was frequently running decks that
had an edge; while this deck didn’t manage to win any of
the recent City Championships it managed to make the top
four 12 times spread out over eight weeks, with three
second place finishes among them. All at once
would have marked it as a fad, and 12 isn’t that much
considering the volume of tournaments involved, but that
tells you there is something there. The other
variants had much lower representation; the others were
with Crawdaunt (XY: Primal Clash 92/160)
like to work alongside the mill, Houndoom-EX on
its own (not sure if it was focused on mill or streaming
low amounts of damage) and M Houndoom-EX
versions.
If I
didn’t know about the tournament results, I’d assume
this was only a lead-in to M Houndoom-EX because
milling two cards doesn’t seem like much and neither
does scoring 50 for two, even when it includes a little
Energy acceleration for your Bench. This might be
a deck I need to try. For Limited play, it is a
big, Basic Pokémon-EX; it shouldn’t be too horrible to
find room for basic Fire Energy in your deck even
if nothing else uses it and it has just enough HP and
damage to try running it in a +39 deck (where it is the
only Basic Pokémon in your 40 card Limited deck).
You even have the option of attacking and setting
something else up or trying to mill an already likely
small deck into oblivion.
Ratings
Standard:
3.25/5
Expanded:
3/5
Limited:
4.75/5
Summary:
I still find it a bit surprising Houndoom-EX has
become the focus of a deck, but I am starting to
understand why. It isn’t the best mill card we
currently have… or is it? The choice between
something worth two Prizes but somewhat difficult to
OHKO versus something (Bunnelby) that discards
just as much for the same amount of Energy but that
still gets OHKO if the opponent can get off an attack
might leave the two as equals. In Expanded there
is more competition (in general) and more issues with
using a Houndoom-EX deck (Water Weakness is worse
here) and its variants (so is Fighting Weakness).
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