aroramage |
You know it's not every day you
hear about a card that isn't an EX being one of the
headliners of a deck!...unless it's Vespiquen, Night
March, etc. or in today's case, Raikou!
Now I don't wanna hype up Raikou
too much, mostly cause to me...he's alright. 120 HP
isn't the absolute best for a Basic non-EX, but it's
pretty good, and looking over him again, I think it's
pretty obvious why he's gotten popular...aside from
hanging out with John Travolta and his crew of leather
jacket pompadour-brandishing bad boys.
And that's as close to a Grease
reference as you'll ever see me make.
Anywho, Thunder Lance is an attack
that you may recognize, just getting rebranded and
remodeled to fit with the thunder beast here. We've seen
a couple of attacks like this before, but the one that
comes to mind is Keldeo-EX's Secret Sword! In fact,
looking between the two...they're practically identical!
Both are 3-for-50 attacks charged with Colorless Energy
but that can deal 20 more damage for each additional
Energy matching their Type that's attached to them -
Water for Keldeo-EX and Electric for Raikou
respectively.
What's more, they've both come out
at times when a Stage 2 Pokemon of their Type can throw
down a bunch of Energy from the hand to power them up -
Blastoise and Magnezone! So in a way, Raikou looks to be
a cheaper weaker version of Keldeo-EX - but there is one
other part to look at with him, and that'd be his
Ability!
No, it's not like Rush-In, but it
does give Raikou at least some extra bulk. As long as
Raikou has any Electric Energy attached to himself,
Shining Body will reduce the damage he takes from
attacks by 20 after applying Weakness and Resistance.
This in turn gives him an effective 140 HP body to work
with, which is pretty good for a non-EX Basic! So now
he's a cheaper Keldeo-EX that's a little harder to KO
and who only offers up one Prize when getting KO'd as
opposed to 2.
Not to mention he can get around a
lot of stuff that would impede EX!
And that's about where the pluses
end. Raikou still has a lot to work for, since if he's
not hitting for Weakness he's gonna need a LOT of Energy
to KO most EX these days, let alone Megas. Assuming he's
charged up with 3 Electric Energies, he'll be dealing
110 damage, which is enough to 2HKO the Basic-EX but
just a bit shy of the majority of Mega-EX. Muscle Band
can off-set this a bit, but he's still looking to 2HKO
most offensive threats - aside from Vespiquen, Night
March, etc.
So that puts Raikou competitively
somewhere in the middle - not the greatest omnipotent
being, but not a bad idea to build a deck around. And
with Magnezone at his side, he may be a force to reckon
with!
...oh, and make sure you've got
Flash Energy around. Could save Raikou a turn against
Fighting decks!
Rating
Standard: 3.5/5 (I'd say he's got
enough support that he can make a sizable impact - like
the one he's made already - on the metagame)
Expanded: 4/5 (and here it gets
better with Eels!)
Limited: 4.5/5 (and of course here,
he's got the advantage of bulk and a strong offensive
attack)
Arora Notealus: Well, the way I see
it, he could be systematic...hydromatic...ultramatic!
Why couldn't he be GREASED LIGHTNING!!!
Next Time: Flopping around like an
electric fish!...wait what?
|
Otaku |
Raikou
(XY: BREAKthrough 55/162) is our second choice
for the week. Again a Lightning-Type, it can hit
some big names like Yveltal-EX for double damage
and only has to worry about Resistance on older (BW-era)
Fighting-Types. M Rayquaza-EX (XY: Roaring
Skies 61/108) is the one card currently legal that
has an anti-Lightning-Type effect, and that is just its
Ancient Trait reducing the damage Lightning-Types (as
well as Fire-, Grass- and Water-Types) do by 20. I
wasn’t going to repeat this fact but glancing at results
from City Championships, a lone deck using this card
managed to Top 8 so there you go. Explicit
Lightning-Type support is almost as anemic, with few
examples and none of them especially compelling, though
Lightning-Type Energy has some decent support
options like Magnezone (XY: BREAKthrough
54/162) or Eelektrik (BW: Noble Victories
40/101). I’d grumble about this being not enough
but just exploiting Lightning Weakness has been an
important thing over the last few years so maybe that is
enough.
Raikou
is a Basic Pokémon, so it is easy to fit into decks,
easy to put into play, enjoys a few bits of specific
Stage support and a natural synergy with many card
effects. The only own downside of being a Basic
Pokémon comes from certain effects that adversely affect
them, like Silent Lab. 120 HP is just 10 shy of
the max printed on Basic Pokémon (sans those with
additional mechanics like being a Pokémon-EX); it has a
decent chance of taking a hit, especially when your
opponent has an incomplete set-up. Fighting
Weakness is never a fun thing to have as the Type
currently specializes in fast, reliable attacks with
good damage relative to the Energy investment. Any
Resistance is appreciated; Metal isn’t the most common
attacking Type but when you encounter it, 120 HP is
likely to make it matter. Finishing off the bottom
of the card, the Retreat Cost of [C] is easy to afford,
both up front and recovering from the discard, plus
anything that lowers Retreat Costs zeroes it out.
Raikou
lacks an Ancient Trait but has one Ability (Shining
Body) and one attack (Thunder Lance). Shining Body
kicks in if Raikou has any source of [L] Energy
attached to it; while in effect it reduces the damage
Raikou takes by 20 after Weakness and
Resistance. Before would of course be better but
doing it at all is still handy, allowing Raikou
to often fake having 140 HP against single attacks, 160
against two attacks, etc. Thunder Lance repeats
the familiar trick of having an attack to do a set
amount of damage with a bonus for each Energy of a
specific Type attached. Aside from changing the
name and the damage being based on attached [L] Energy
(as opposed to [W]), this is “Secret Sword”, the attack
Keldeo-EX made famous, which means it hits the
same damage amounts for the same Energy (again, just
insert the correct Type). Apart from both being
Basic Pokémon, Keldeo-EX has different everything
than Raikou, but the attack itself is still
really good.
This is the only legal Raikou for both
Expanded and Standard, so let us just get down to how it
is used: this is the new Lightning-Type shocktrooper,
pun intended. The catch is that to be such a
thing, it needs to be powered up and quickly.
Unlike Keldeo-EX, it lacks an Ability that makes
it a valuable Bench-sitter, which it turn allowed it to
function as a splashable Water-Type attacker in a
variety of decks that otherwise would have not had room
for such a thing. Already named earlier, we have a
Magnezone to accelerate [L] Energy from hand and
Eelektrik to accelerate it from the discard pile
(not recommended in the same deck). The
Lightning-Type lacks a super-shortcut like the Fighting-
and Water-Types have for getting Evolutions into play,
with the risks of Evolution being a real concern for
anyone trying to make decks built around such cards high
functioning. Still it does appear to be happening
and Raikou is a natural attacker in such decks,
able to be built to OHKO levels if necessary, but as a
non-Pokémon-EX Raikou only giving up a single
Prize. This is a huge boon to it in the current
metagame. M Manectric-EX can also accelerate
basic Lightning Energy cards (along with any of
the other Basic Energy Types). I don’t think it
would be too effective as M Manectric-EX is
already a solid card for exploiting Lightning Weakness
and if you can’t dump a lot of [L] Energy onto Raikou
quickly, it isn’t scoring OHKOs without exploiting
Weakness. That’s pure speculation on my part as I
haven’t been playing as much these last few weeks and as
usual and even when I do, it is just on the PTCGO.
So Raikou definitely has a place in Expanded and
Standard, it just isn’t an overly prominent place right
now. In Limited play it is a good pull; even with
no Lightning Energy available it would still be a
great here due to its HP as both HP and damage output
tend to be lower in Limited. You only need a
single Lightning Energy on it to trigger the
Ability and get the damage output up, with two reaching
damage output that would be solid for Standard or
Expanded… but this is Limited. Let that sink in.
You might even be able to risk this in a +39 build,
where it is your only Pokémon in deck: the Ability will
likely soak all the damage your opponent can do for the
first turn or two and by then you’re scoring OHKOs
against whatever comes up front. Your opponent
could still build something on the Bench to try for a
OHKO or at least a solid 2HKO; you’d need to take all
four Prizes before then. XY: BREAKthrough has a
decent amount of Fighting-Types, with Raikou
fortunate that almost every fully Evolved Fighting-Type
is a rare (or better) card and the one exception -
Sandshrew (XY: BREAKthrough 75/162) and
Sandslash (XY: BREAKthrough 76/162) - has
Swift as its big attack (so Weakness won’t apply).
Ratings
Standard:
3.8/5
Expanded:
3.8/5
Limited:
4.75/5
Summary:
Raikou thankfully lacks its own personal Energy
acceleration, otherwise we’d be sick of it already.
While it might seem puny compared to some Pokémon-EX,
those are just that: two-Prize Pokémon with a few other
hang-ups. Raikou is just a regular Basic with
great attributes and two very good effects (one an
attack and the other an Ability). If the
Lightning-Type had its own equivalent of Archie’s Ace
in the Hole or Maxie’s Hidden Ball Trick,
again we would already be sick of Raikou.
Instead it does show up in competitive play, just not
often as part of the deck that wins the whole event.
I was actually so impressed with Raikou that I
had it as my sixth place pick for my final Top 15 cards
of XY: BREAKthrough. That was overrating
it, especially as it didn’t reinvigorate Eelektrik
decks and Magnezone didn’t suddenly become tops,
nor did I really expect them to. As no one else
had it on their lists, for the official Pojo Top 10, it
only managed a 13th place finish, and I’m actually not
too bummed about that. Again Raikou itself
is a good, solid card but the support for it isn’t
there… or rather is but is overwhelmed by so much else
seeming “too good”.
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