aroramage |
Awwww, Parasect. You're
extraordinarily underwhelming on just about any card,
aren't you?
I almost feel bad for Parasect.
Cursed with Bug/Grass typing, his most notable feature
in the games being that he's the only Pokemon that can
take 5x damage thanks to a 4x weakness to Fire-typing
and having the Ability Dry Skin, Parasect has probably
only been noteworthy for being raised by that one
Trainer outside the Cerulean Cave where Mewtwo is and
for appearing in the Safari Zone.
Other than that...Parasect is
just...bad.
Over the course of many years in
the TCG, Parasect has always had low HP and low damage
outputs, with no attack to date going above 60 damage on
its own. Even X-Scissor does nothing for Parasect, being
a 2-for-30 strike that gets a 50/50 shot at doing an
extra 30 damage. So why take a look at Parasect today?
Why bother with looking at him?
Colorful Spores certainly seems
interesting enough...at first glance. For one Energy,
you can choose 3 of your Pokemon and attach to each of
them a different type of basic Energy. I suppose if
you're running anything non-mono-Typed, this could be
useful, but this sort of thing implies you're running at
least 3 different Types...which...I can't think of why
you'd do that.
...unless you're playing Simis...
Rating
Standard: 1/5 (he's...absurdly
niche, and the fact is you still need to attack with
him, which means you might as well hand your opponent a
Prize card)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (I mean, maybe,
MAYBE there's a good multityped deck out there, I dunno,
Vespiquen-Vengeance or maybe Night March...wait, no,
Night March is only Psychics and Joltik)
Limited: 2/5 (...I have NO idea)
Arora Notealus: Parasect continues
to be one of the worst guys out there, no matter where
you look. Even on Smogon, he's outclassed by a LOT of
Pokemon, and it's hard to really defend a Pokemon that's
got a competitive guide that only says bad things about
him.
...then you realize it's the
mushroom in control...
Next Time: WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ARE
YOU, HOOT HOOT, YOU EVOLVE FROM HOOTHOOT dang it I
couldn't make that fit...
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Otaku |
Welcome to another week of reviews, and appropriately
enough we open with an opener, Parasect (XY:
BREAKthrough 2/162)! Normally I try to avoid
stating such things right away, preferring to break
everything down and then hit you with my conclusions
after you’ve had a chance to draw your own but… I really
wanted to lead with that line.
So what does it mean to be a Grass-Type? In terms
of exploiting Weakness, Water-Types (especially in
Standard) have Grass Weakness; not all but a quick
Pokédedia
based search suggests around 40% of Water-Types are
Grass Weak in Expanded, and - as Lightning Weakness for
Water-Types has mostly vanished in newer sets - in
Standard it jumps to more like 70%. No Resistance
to worry about unless you mess with Unlimited play (and
we aren’t) though there are a few anti-Grass-Type cards
that don’t seem worth it in general, but perhaps if you
really needed to splash something into a deck because
Grass-Types are a problem, you’ve got cards like
Bouffalant (XY: Primal Clash 119/160) that
might actually be worth the effort (unlike a lot of
specific anti-Type cards). Grass-Type support is a
mixed bag, mostly because you’ve got the very
underwhelming given one major exception: Forest of
Giant Plants. This Stadium allows a Grass-Type
Pokémon to be Evolve immediately, even if it just
entered play and even if it is the very first turn of
the game. As Parasect is a Stage 1 that
could matter and given that I referred to it as an
“opener”... yes, yes it will.
Parasect
has 100 HP; besides attacks by less-than-complete
set-ups, this is just enough to annoy certain low damage
decks or attackers, Seismitoad-EX being a decent
example of the latter. Almost would prefer 10 less
as it would make Level Ball an option without
majorly affecting the odds of Parasect surviving,
but that is a nitpick. Fire Weakness has gotten
pretty dangerous lately, to the point even I finally
noticed. I’m used to Fire-Types unleashing massive
attacks that would score a OHKO even without Weakness,
but the most recent Fire-Type decks actually have
variable damage output and will either save resources or
be vulnerable to the less damaging attacks used for
their effect, reduced Energy requirement, or both.
Lack of Resistance is typical so we’ll move onto the
Retreat Cost of [CC]; this is low enough you’ll often be
able to afford paying it but high enough that it greatly
behooves you to find a way to lower the cost or bypass
manually retreating entirely.
Parasect
has two attacks, “Colorful Spores” and “X-Scissor”.
The former requires [C] and allows you to select three
of your Pokémon, then search your deck for and attach to
each of them… with the additional catch that each basic
Energy card must be a different Type. The Pokémon
Types don’t matter, only the Energy. For the
latter attack you need to provide [GC] to hit for 30
damage, plus you flip a coin and if “heads” do another
30. So either you hit for 60 or 30, which isn’t
abysmal but definitely isn’t good. This is likely
here simply so the card has some offensive capacity.
Still on “heads” X-Scissor hits just hard enough that a
Silver Bangle would yield 90 damage, so when
attacking into something Grass Weak like Seismitoad-EX
you can threaten a OHKO (even if you cannot actually
deliver).
Parasect
Evolves from Paras; if you are using Forest of
Giant Plants then you may try to immediately Evolve,
but if you are stuck as Paras your only option is
XY: BREAKthrough 1/162. It is a Basic,
Grass-Type Pokémon with 60 HP, Fire Weakness, no
Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], no Ancient Trait, no
Ability and a single attack (Blot) that requires [C] to
use and does 10 damage while healing 10 damage from
itself. There are no other versions of Paras
or Parasect available in either Expanded or
Standard play; these mark the return of either Pokémon
as both last appeared in HeartGold SoulSilver,
which officially released in North America back on
February 10th, 2010. That means it took almost six
years for these Pokémon to get another card and we
haven’t had a Paras or Parasect card legal
for Standard (and once it was added, Expanded) play
since September 1st, 2012.
So should you use this card? Probably not but it
has the exact things going for it that can lead to a
surprise use for a card that would normally seem like a
bad deal. As Colorful Spores is an attack and
requires Energy, you only net two Energy from using it
with the mixed blessing of them needing to be two Basic
Energy cards of different Types. I might not
consider it at all save Forest of Giant Plants
means a player going second can use Colorful Spores on
his or her first turn which is better than having to
wait until game Turn 3 or 4 (so a player’s second turn)
but not by much, plus to pull off the Turn 2 trick will
probably require running primarily or only Forest of
Giant Plants… which reduces the usefulness of
getting multiple different Basic Energy cards into play.
From there it will also depend on how comfortable you
are intentionally giving up a Prize; it can be quite
dangerous given the pace of the format but at the same
time, you can leave your opponent in a bad way as either
they leave Parasect out to accelerate more Energy
or they enable cards like Ace Trainer. I
normally would avoid something like Ace Trainer,
but when you either can KO one of your own Pokémon or
have something quite pressing for your opponent to KO?
That is when it warrants consideration.
In the end though, “consideration” is likely all
Parasect will warrant as well. Maybe with more
pending basic Energy support, maybe with something that
has an odd Energy combination and doesn’t already have
good Energy acceleration we’ll get some kooky deck where
Energy acceleration via attack with a Stage 1 makes
sense but probably not. Except of course in
Limited where this is a magnificent pull and must run
apart from +39 decks. Enjoy a decent attacker
(X-Scissor is much better here because HP scores are
much lower) unless you absolutely cannot afford room for
basic Grass Energy… in which case you still
run Parasect but for its primary use;
accelerating the exact basic Energy cards you need for
your often multi-typed Limited deck!
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
1.75/5
Limited:
4.75/5
Summary:
Parasect is closer to being worthwhile than its
score indicates. It is the kind of card you don’t
expect to work out because what it does (accelerating
Energy via attack, requiring you attach three different
kinds of basic Energy) is too slow and kind of
restrictive, but then something changes. A means
of speeding things up even more, an attacker is released
(or rediscovered) that has what was a clunky Energy cost
but after a Colorful Spores or two is now easy enough to
handle and suddenly, we’ve got a real deck. May
never happen, but I’d like to be on the lookout for it
nonetheless instead of being blindsided as has happened
before with similar cards.
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