aroramage |
NOCTOWL!!
He's pretty nice. Not a shiny one
like Ash's in the anime, but still, Noctowl has things
going for him. At the same time though, I do always wish
that Noctowl's regular design was actually the shiny
version and that the shiny would be something else, but
whatever, he's cool for a bird!
And now we get to talk about his
card!.......oh boyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!
Speed Dive, while awesome sounding,
is a 3-for-70 generic strike, and the day that I see a
vanilla attack that's worth running is the day I start
going competitive in Pokemon TCG...which I've not been
particularly competitive in it...ever, but that's not
the point! It's just the kind of attack that's plastered
onto a card to flesh it out - it's not good on Megas,
it's not good on regular EX, it's not good on Basics,
and it's not good on Noctowl, so MOVING ON!!
The highlight that makes Noctowl
"rare" - as in gives him the star that's printed on the
bottom-right of the card - is High Flight, which
is...eh? It's just 2-Energy for an attack that reveals
both players' hands and does 20 damage for each Item
card in them - not Supporters, Stadiums, Trainers in
general, Pokemon, or Energy cards, just Items. This
would include Tools at least, since those count as
Items, but...wouldn't most people be playing their
Items, not keeping them in hand?
I mean, I could understand holding
back on Tool cards - you wanna make sure they end up on
the right cards, after all, can't have Spirit Links on
Pokemon that makes no sense to have Spirit Link cards on
- but if it's just a plain old Item, aren't we just
playing it? Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about,
but I'd like to think that Items get played - you don't
hang onto Ultra Balls, you're only hanging onto Rare
Candies until you can evolve which usually oughta be
pretty fast, you're using up Battle Compressors to mill
the deck, that sort of thing! There aren't many Item
cards you'd hold onto for very long, so the idea is a
bit...silly.
But I suppose Noctowl's bound to
hit something if you just hold your entire deck in your
hand.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (I can see a little
bit of the appeal here, but competitively speaking? I
think Items get played as fast as they can)
Expanded: 2.5/5 (maybe comboing him
with Seismitoad-EX could work - force your opponent to
keep a hold on their Items, and then when they finally
KO Seismitoad-EX, you just revenge-kill them with
Noctowl)
Limited: 2/5 (here though...the
Item pool is small, and in turn the Items are meant for
quick-plays; you'd have to be focusing solely on Noctowl
to make him work)
Arora Notealus: I'm not necessarily
saying Noctowl's a bad card - he's a niche card with a
niche appeal. Still better than Parasect at least, but
you know, details.
Next Time: THE DARK BIRD RISES ONCE
MORE!!
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Otaku |
Noctowl
(XY: BREAKthrough 120/162) is our second card
this week. It is a Colorless-Type which means it
won’t ever hit for Weakness or run into Resistance, and
there is some decent Type support and
less-than-impressive anti-Colorless-Type cards out
there. All in all not a great Type but not a bad
one either. Being a Stage 1 is somewhat similar;
being a Basic is best but Stage 1 Pokémon is the
simplest of all the other Stages to get into play,
requiring only one other card (in this case, Hoothoot)
and waiting a turn to manually Evolve. If you
don’t want to wait, you can add another card to the mix
(Wally), which eliminates the wait and Evolve
into Noctowl from your deck but costs you your
Supporter for the turn. 90 HP is pretty easy for nearly
all decks to OHKO, though not all can do it neatly and
efficiently; this can be a bit more important than it
sounds should an opponent be forced to expend as much in
resources as would have been required for something
larger. Should it matter, 90 HP also keeps
Noctowl a Level Ball legal target. The
Lightning Weakness isn’t good, but with 90 HP it will be
an issue with particular attacks and not even particular
decks, because so many attacks are going to already take
the OHKO before Weakness. Noctowl has
Resistance! Huzzah! Fighting Resistance can
be handy, but on 90 HP mostly for throwing off damage
calculations. The Retreat Cost of [C] is easy to
pay and to recover from having paid most of the time,
though a free Retreat Cost would have been better (and I
feel appropriate).
Noctowl
lacks any Ancient Trait or Ability but does have two
attacks. For [CC] it can use “High Flight” to
force both players to reveal their hands, then does 20
damage times the total amount of Items in both player’s
hands. Focusing on Items is a mixed blessing;
decks tend to run a lot of them but that is because they
are so easy to quickly play. Catching a lot of
them in hand can be a bit tricky, unless of course you
have an Item blocking effect going. Though
unlikely, this card could hypothetically OHKO anything
in the game if hand sizes get large enough while Items
can’t be burned up. “Speed Dive” is the second attack
and it requires [CCC] to do 70 damage. This is not
good but it does hit just hard enough you might
legitimately use it as a back-up attack. Most of
the time though you’ll want to focus on High Flight as a
single Double Colorless Energy will cover its
entire cost and again, with the right back-up you can
score some nice, high damage output.
There are two Hoothoot to choose from when
running Noctowl: BW: Plasma Freeze 91/116,
only legal in Expanded, and XY: BREAKthrough
119/162. Both are 60 HP Basic Pokémon with
Lightning Weakness, Fighting Resistance, Retreat Cost
[C], no Ancient Trait, no Ability and just one
(different) attack on each of them. BW: Plasma
Freeze 91/116 can use “Dual Draw” at a cost of [C]
which forces both players to draw two cards. That
actually isn’t a bad trick; if you’re attacking with
Hoothoot you probably are in a bad way and could use
some more cards even if you’re also helping out your
opponent… and sometimes you might not be helping out
your opponent as the draw is mandatory; if your
opponent is low enough on cards this could actually let
you win via deck out! XY: BREAKthrough 119/162
needs [CC] to use “Proclaim the Night”. The name
is more impressive than the effect but once again, for
an Evolving Basic this is a pretty solid attack as it
blocks your opponent from playing Item cards from hand
during his or her next turn. Seismitoad-EX is in
no danger as “Quaking Punch” is still a far better deal,
but if you have reason to run Noctowl already,
this could be a solid lead in (even if running other
Item denying cards as a kind of back-up). Either
seems like a solid pick, not that you have a choice in
Standard anyway.
There is one other Noctowl you could run: BW:
Plasma Freeze 92/116, which we never reviewed before
so here’s a quick rundown. It is functionally
almost identical to today’s version, except with two
different attacks, though the first one still costs [CC]
and the second [CCC]. “Powerful Vision” does 10 damage
times the number of cards in your opponent’s hand which
might be adequate. I don’t know of a lot of tricks
to force your opponent into a large hand so once again
it would mostly be about locking things down and hoping
the hand size builds up due to being unable to use more
cards. Without some form of lock, the natural
pacing of the game would likely lead to a hand that (at
least during your opponent’s turn) is on the small side.
The big attack is “Fly”, which requires a coin flip:
“tails” means the attack does nothing, while “heads”
results in 50 damage to the opponent’s Active as well as
preventing all effects of attacks - including
damage - done to Noctowl (or rather “this
Pokémon”). The protection is unreliable - besides
flipping wrong there are ways to get around it - and the
damage yield is very poor for three Energy. The
effect doesn’t compensate doing absolutely nothing on
“tails”. In Expanded I am almost tempted to
include a single copy for Powerful Vision, in case your
opponent can keep his or her hand low on Items but it
probably makes more sense just to focus on your own hand
in those cases.
Officially released January 4, 2016 is Noctowl BREAK
(XY: Black Star Promos XY136). I actually
didn’t know this card would be released by the time we
actually got to Noctowl; perhaps it will get a
full review another day, but for now it still gets a
quickie. It remains a Colorless Pokémon, but
trades in being a Stage 1 (and benefitting from cards
like Training Center) for being a BREAK Evolution
(which currently doesn’t have any Stage specific
effects). A BREAK Evolution of a Stage 1 is
basically a Stage 2 without the perks of effects that
specifically reference Stage 2 Pokémon, so that is
actually a bad thing. It does mean an HP boost,
with Noctowl BREAK sporting 130 HP. 40 more HP
is a good thing, but not that impressive as it comes
with being a pseudo-Stage 2. The card adds no
Ancient Trait or Ability and will use everything else
from the underlying Noctowl, but it does add one
attack. “Night Scan” requires [CCC] to use forces your
opponent to reveal his or her hand; the attack then does
60 damage plus another 30 more for each Trainer found
there. This is clearly designed to work alongside
today’s Noctowl, though I am not completely sure
if it is worth the effort of investing one more turn and
two more cards (another Energy and Noctowl BREAK
itself) as the HP merely shifts from something like
“highly probable” OHKO to “probable” or “somewhat
probable” OHKO. With competitive decks often being
half to two-thirds Trainers and so many Trainers
other than Items having restrictions for using them,
that could be a nice, big hit when otherwise things are
going poorly.
Getting back to today’s subject, the most obvious use
for this Noctowl is with Vileplume (XY:
Ancient Origins 3/98). You’ll block your own
Items unless you include tricks around its Ability
(Irritating Pollen) but unlike normal that isn’t a waste
as all Items stuck in your hand also add to the damage
done. Forest of Giant Plants allows you to speed
Vileplume into play, so the main reason not to
try this is… you’re already running something better.
Over at
The Charizard Lounge
you can see the results for most of the City
Championships that have happened so far. Yes I
messed up as claimed a full eight weeks worth of
results in previous weeks’ CotDs even though this
weekend was the eighth and final week of City
Championships; an embarrassing slip up. For now we
still have the first six weeks of City Champions to
reference and Noctowl/Vileplume didn’t
make the top four of any event. It did manage a
single top eight finish, so there may be some hope.
The biggest thing going against it is that there is a
much more popular Vileplume variant using
Vespiquen (XY: Ancient Origins 10/98); I
don’t know if the two Stage 1 lines could play nice in a
deck that also has a Bench-sitting Stage 2 Pokémon, or
if it is even needed with a good enough Vespiquen
build.
I am uncertain if this card is better in either Standard
or Expanded or roughly the same. I would think
that N use might make the strategy less effective
in Expanded, but that’s just a hypothesis and not based
on observed results, let alone testing. In Limited
this is a solid pull, but not for not for High Flight as
your opponent will probably have few (if any) Items in
hand. Instead you’ll be happy for a Stage 1 that
can fit into nearly any deck thanks to its Colorless
Energy costs and deliver a solid 70-for-three with Speed
Dive. HP scores tend to be lower on average here
as well as damage output, so Speed Dive becomes better
due to the different environment.
Ratings
Standard:
2.5/5
Expanded:
2/5
Limited:
3.75/5
Summary:
Noctowl combos naturally with Item lock
strategies, but other attackers may crowd it out from a
place at the (competitive play) table even though it
almost feels like a deck being spoonfed to players.
It would only seem more blatant if the card had released
alongside Vileplume.
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