aroramage |
Welcome to an electrifying week...er,
well, at least couple of days for BREAKThrough! First
off is today's card, the electrifying Raichu BREAK!!
As one might recall from our Top 10
list BREAK Evos - I know, it feels so long ago! - Raichu
BREAK can evolve from any Raichu card and gains the
various attacks, Weaknesses, Resistances, and Retreat
Cost of that Raichu card. So naturally, half of this
card is, in some sense, "missing" - or maybe more
appropriately "blank," seeing as it depends on what you
put it on top of.
So what does BREAK evolving a
Raichu do? Well it gives it 130 HP and what is pretty
much an all-or-nothing style of attack in Grand Bolt.
For only 3 Energy, Grand Bolt will deal a whopping 170
damage, which is enough on its own to KO most any small
Pokemon-EX and anything that's weak to Electric attacks!
The only caveat to that though is that you have to
discard all the Energy attached to Raichu BREAK.
And that's a pretty hefty setback.
Sure, we've got stuff like
Magnezone, who can fuel Raichu BREAK's attack with ease,
but getting rid of all that Energy constantly turn after
turn, in the long run, is going to suck you dry. So
Raichu BREAK is better off as a finisher of sorts,
someone to end the game as quick as possible in as few
moves as possible. Luckily, he's also got a nice pick of
options for BREAK evolvers, and I'm thinking the best
one to pair him up with is Raichu (XY), although the
Raichu included in this set isn't so bad either - Circle
Circuit's just a generally nicer attack, given how easy
it can be to mobilize your Bench.
So why didn't Raichu BREAK make it
to the Top 10 list? Well, the short of it is, he's a
risky gambit that needs the right timing to be played,
so if you do play him, play him wisely.
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (never mind that
he's effectively running as a Stage "2" for Raichus)
Expanded: 2.5/5 (just without the
advantages of a Stage "2" like Rare Candy - though Eels
here will make things work exponentially better for him)
Limited: 3.5/5 (Grand Bolt will
devastate anything here!...just...it's all in the
timing)
Arora Notealus: FEAR THE MIGHTY
GOLDEN RAICHU!!
Next Time: What's got four legs and
calls the lightning?
|
Otaku |
We
begin the week with Raichu BREAK (XY:
BREAKthrough 50/162). As the BREAK Evolution
of a Stage 1 Pokémon Raichu BREAK is like a Stage
2 Pokémon without the Stage 2 Pokémon support. I
do not believe any cards currently reference the BREAK
Stage but it can tap general Evolution support so long
as it does not specify a Stage: you can use Evosoda
or Wally to get out a BREAK Evolution, attack
through Intimidating Mane on Pyroar (XY:
Flashfire 20/106), etc. Just because it is
still relatively new I’m going to hammer down on the
point: while clearly not any of the other outlier Stages
(Restored, Mega, anything else I’ve forgotten), the
Evolution Stage Raichu BREAK is “BREAK”.
Apparently the designers wished to emphasize this as
well since it is also a part of the card’s name in
addition to being in the little Stage indicating portion
of the card’s upper left corner. So no, card card
effect that references being a Stage 1 like Flareon
(XY: Ancient Origins 13/98) won’t apply, nor will
an effect like the bonus damage “Powerful Friend” attack
on Miltank (XY: Flashfire 83/106) or the
HP bonuses for Stage 1 or Stage 2 Pokémon from
Training Center apply. Probably the big one
from a gameplay standpoint is that you can’t use Rare
Candy; at first I thought that it would be utterly
silly to want to do that as the BREAK Evolution only
replaces part of the information on the highest Stage of
Evolution, but I guess if we had a really good one it
wouldn’t matter if underneath it has the attacks and/or
Ability of an Evolving Basic, let alone the bottom
stats.
Raichu
BREAK
is a Lightning-Type, allowing it to hit many Pokémon but
no specific Type for Weakness: instead of having a
single Type that is always or at least nearly always
Lightning Weak, quite a few Types have a segment of
cards that are Lightning Weak. Some Water-Types
(nearly all BW-era) are Lightning Weak, but mostly it
corresponds to cards that belong to the video game
Flying-Type. The Flying-Type is mostly represented
through a chunk of the Colorless-Type, but it is spread
through out nine of the 11 total types (only the
Dragon-Type and Fairy-Type lack even a single Lightning
Weak example). Still this only matters when
something important is Lightning Weak and we’ve got
Lugia-EX (XY: Ancient Origins 68/98, 94/98),
M Rayquaza-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 76/108,
105/108), Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies
77/108, 106/108) and Yveltal-EX as some nice,
juicy two Prize examples where Lightning Weakness is a
wonderful thing. Lightning Resistance can be a
nuisance but only in Expanded, where a chunk of the
Fighting-Types from the BW-era sets will have it.
The only anti-Lightning-type card is… not really: M
Rayquaza-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 61/108), which
has an Ancient Trait that reduces the damage it takes
from four Types, one of which is Lightning.
Lightning-Type support includes Flash Energy if
you can afford to burn your Special Energy on negating
your own Weakness and… basically just Rough Seas
to have a Stadium that heals 30 damage from all of your
Lightning-Type Pokémon (shared with Water-Types… plus
your opponent if they run the either of those Types).
Raichu
BREAK
has a 130 HP which is… okay-ish? While more
durable than a regular Raichu it is on the
low-average side of Stage 2 Pokémon, which as stated is
what Raichu BREAK is the equivalent of in terms
of putting it into play. You’ll sometimes survive
a hit, and more often than things much smaller, but you
just barely fall outside of the kind-of-critical 120
damage threshold. Weakness, Resistance and Retreat
Cost are supplied by whatever Raichu you use, so
we are going to jump right to the one thing left on this
card: the attack “Grand Bolt”. It requires [LCC]
to use plus it forces you to discard all Energy attached
to “this Pokémon”, but the payoff is 170 damage in one
shot. Regardless of Weakness, that takes out a
large chunk of the format in one shot with various
options to boost that damage if you want it to be (or
fake being) a OHKO. It might have to be your final
shot from Raichu BREAK, but it is a good way to
go down swinging.
Pichu
is the lowest Stage in the Evolution line… or would be
if “baby Pokémon” were still a thing in any manner.
I favor just slowly phasing them in as regular Basics,
planning a gap so that you could turn something like
Pichu into a regular Basic, Pikachu into a
regular Stage 1, Raichu into a regular Stage 2…
but that just adds to the list of “possibly bad ideas
Otaku would implement if in charge”. There are no
Pichu in Expanded or Standard now anyway. Pikachu
on the other hand is plentiful. Pikachu has nine
distinct versions spread out among 15 releases… and we
didn’t even get all the promotional Pikachu that
Japan received. Most of these are so unimpressive,
even I’m gonna skip all of them except the one you
should be using: XY 42/146, also available as
McDonald’s 2014 Promo 5/12. It is a Basic,
Lightning-Type Pokémon with 60 HP, Fighting Weakness,
Metal Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], no Ancient Trait, no
Ability but two attacks: “Nuzzle” for [C] and “Quick
Attack” for [CC]. Nuzzle has you flip a coin and
if “heads” the opponent’s Active Pokémon is Paralyzed, a
decent way to try and keep an Active Pikachu
alive, though “tails” does nothing. Quick Attack
does 20 and also requires a coin flip, this time doing
10 more damage if it is “heads” (“tails” still means the
base 20 damage). If you really need to finish
something off, this might actually do it for a cost you
can manage when desperate. This is… adequate
compared to nearly all Evolving Basic Pokémon in the TCG
and is the best Pikachu we have right now: use
it!
So how
about that Raichu? Surprisingly with all
those Pikachu we only have five Raichu to
pick from among but once again there is one clear winner
(XY 43/146), however there might be an
okay runner-up to try out in the form of the newest
option (XY: BREAKthrough 49/162) so I’m going to
cover both of them… but resist my usual urge to do a
mini-write-up for all of them. Both the Raichu
we are bothering with are 90 HP Stage 1 Lightning-Types
with Fighting Weakness, Metal Resistance, no Retreat
Cost, no Ancient Trait, no Ability and two attacks. XY
43/146 can attack with “Circle Circuit” for [CC],
hitting for 20 damage times the number of your Benched
Pokémon, or with “Thunderbolt” for [LLC], hitting for
100 damage but also needing to discard all Energy
attached to itself. This card has actually been
reviewed… twice. The first was
March 5th, 2014 while the second was nearly a year later on
January 5th, 2015,
where it was an “Honorable Mention” for our Top 10 cards
of 14 list. I didn’t get to review it the first
time, while the second time I think I sold it a bit
short and even if I hadn’t, it is better now than ever
before thanks to the nature of the format and Sky
Field, as now Circle Circuit can shoot for OHKOs
without exploiting Weakness. Can the new card
on the block - XY: BREAKthrough 49/162 - compete
with that?
No, but
it does have a nifty trick with its first attack,
“Thunderclap Shot”, which hits all of your
opponent’s Pokémon-EX for 50 damage at a cost of [LC].
If there was a way to up the Bench damage by 10 while
also leaving your Pokémon Tool slot open so you could
equip Wide Lens we would have a brutal play for
those Benches full of Shaymin-EX. The
second attack “Electrosmash” sounds kind of cool but
it’s actually pretty vanilla: 70 damage with a coin flip
for a bonus 20 (“tails” still does the base 70) at a
cost of [LCC]. This seems easier to write off…
except that isn’t actually all that bad, especially when
attacking into Weakness. Not enough to run this
over XY 43/146 and its Circle Circuit, but this
attack doesn’t require a Bench full of Pokémon or
discarding all of your Energy, plus it is priced so that
it can use Double Colorless Energy, though since
the first attack is not that is almost a waste. 10 more
damage for Thunderclap Shot and changing its cost to
[CC] and you’d have to decide which Raichu to
focus upon (though you’d run both just in case).
Either the 10 more damage for Thunderclap Shot or
making it cost [CC] and I think I’d take a chance on
running it as a one-of alongside XY 43/146.
As is, still tempting but probably not worth it.
So
should you run Raichu BREAK with XY
43/146? If you have room for some basic
Lightning Energy cards in addition to all the other
stuff a Circle Circuit deck needs, then I think a copy
or two isn’t a bad call, but mostly as insurance for
when you can’t fill your Bench. If you are running
something like the Crobat (XY: Phantom Forces
33/119) line as well, this allows an incomplete Circle
Circuit set-up to not only still take a OHKO, but to
threaten everything currently legal with an effective
OHKO. Don’t expect it to be your go-to attacker,
though. Not sure if it holds up as well in
Expanded as Standard: a few extra problems/rivals versus
a few extra, useful cards seems close enough to call it
a wash. For Limited play Raichu BREAK is a
good pull because XY: BREAKthrough 49/162 is also
a good pull. If you save “Grand Bolt” as a
finisher, you won’t even need a tremendous amount of
basic Lightning Energy in the deck.
Ratings
Standard:
2.75/5
Expanded:
2.75/5
Limited:
4.5/5
Summary:
Raichu BREAK is a solid enough card, but that is
because it has a great card to BREAK Evolve from so it
might have a place as a TecH attacker in those decks.
Without that lead in, it would likely have no place at
all in competitive play, and that assumes it does work
as I have described.
|
