aroramage |
AND NOW FOR THE HEAVY ARTILLERY!!
...I mean, Octillery...cause that's
part of the name...see it's a portma-
So Octillery here is...well,
definitely NOT an offensive force of nature. I mean,
come on, Hug is a 3-for-40 - A 3-FOR-40?! No, I don't
care that it can keep the opponent's Pokemon from
retreating, there is NO REASON to settle for a 3-for-40
attack! Okay, a 2-for-30, that's fine, we've seen
Quaking Punch dominate a format, but 3-for-40 -
especially of (W)(W)(C) - is a BIG NOPE!!
Already Octillery is looking bad,
but don't lose faith! There is one positive to Octillery:
the Ability Abyssal Hand. With it, you can (once per
turn) draw cards until you have 5 cards in hand. Yep,
this is an instant refresh to your hand! Immediately, I
think of using Octillery with Archie's - empty your
hand, play Archie's, bring out Octillery and draw 5,
play out more of your hand, use Octillery to recover,
and then strike back - you could potentially get up to
10 cards in one turn this way, which is an entire 1/6th
of your deck!!
And since this is an Ability that
can activate on every turn, it can do wonders for any
deck that wants a big hand - and I'm not just talking
Water decks, although Primal Kyogre would appreciate
that. You can pretty much push for an Octillery/Archie's
combo in any deck! All you need is a single copy of each
to work - maybe a little Battle Compressor and VS Seeker
to get them into the discard pile and utilize them even
faster! Your opponents will tremble before your
CONSISTENT MIGHT!!
...though maybe running a Remoraid
for safety couldn't hurt.
Needless to say, Octillery is
useful for the draw power, and any deck that wants a
little more should consider having him around a little
bit.
Rating
Standard: 3.5/5 (draw power is a
great part of this game, and while he requires at least
one other card to be put into play, you can make it work
even more to your advantage!)
Expanded: 3.5/5 (nobody's gonna say
no to more draw power...save for...decks that don't have
room for it)
Limited: 4.5/5 (OF COURSE you wanna
run him!)
Arora Notealus: Octillery is a
silly Pokemon with a silly name, but he's still gonna be
reliable for ya!
Weekend Thought: Aside from ending
this week on a high note, what do you think of this
week's cards? Are coin flips a good balancing mechanic
to the game, or do they just hinder otherwise capable
competitive cards? Do you think one of these other
Pokemon deserves an EX sometime? I mean it makes sense
why Glalie got one, given the Mega mechanic, but maybe
there's another one that could use the EX love? Or maybe
you've got some other Pokemon in mind?
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Otaku |
We close this week with Octillery (XY:
BREAKthrough 33/162). Being a Water-Type is
pretty good; telling you upfront you’ll rarely (if ever)
want to attack with this card anyway and in fact will be
trying to hide it on your Bench, so the important part
is access to Archie’s Ace in the Hole and Dive
Ball. This is a Stage 1, so while it isn’t as
fast, easy, or space efficient as a Basic to get into
play it isn’t too hard. With Archie’s Ace in
the Hole, it can be as fast as a Basic to hit the
field, but that takes a lot of effort, possibly more
than Evolving manually (depends upon what your opponent
is doing). The 90 HP means it is a OHKO outside of
opponent’s with incomplete set-ups or relying on
something like Seismitoad-EX and its Quaking
Punch (an attack that is more about the effect than the
damage). The mixed blessing is that means the
Grass Weakness will seldom matter because this is
already likely in OHKO range. Lack of Resistance
is typical an only would have probably only mattered if
it was to something like Water, due to the
aforementioned Seismitoad-EX and… wait, video
game Water-Types are Resistant to (taking half
damage from) Water- and Ice-Type attacks, the two Types
that compose the TCG Water-Type? Guess the
designers don’t want Water Resistance back in the TCG.
The Retreat Cost of [CC] is functionally average, by
which I mean it is low enough you’ll often be able to
afford it (both up front and in terms of recovering from
the resource loss) but should try to avoid paying it
(either at all or at full price) if you can.
Octillery
has an Ability and an attack. I already stated
this card isn’t truly for attacking so I’m covering that
first just to get it out of the way. “Hug” has a fun
name and decent effect as it prevents the Defending
Pokémon from retreating during your opponent’s next turn
but it requires [WWC] to use and only hits for 40
damage. It is closer to useful than it looks
because what it needs to help it out, it has a method of
indirectly supplying: the Ability. “Abyssal Hand” (also
a nice name) allows you to draw until you have five
cards in hand. With the number of cards either
player can and often are using that will leave your hand
low, this should mean at least an extra card or two per
turn. How does this help the attack? Like I
said it doesn’t but if the Energy cost and/or damage on
Hug was just a bit better, you might be able to justify
a small attacker that strands the Active up front to
2HKO or 3HKO it while spamming Energy removal (and other
forms of disruption) at the opponent, with said cards
supplied through Abyssal Hand. Hug is not
up to snuff though, so only take that route if a
different attacker you are also running is
compatible with it.
Octillery
can enter play directly via Archie’s Ace in the Hole,
but if you decide to use core gameplay mechanics you’ll
need to Evolve from Remoraid, which means your
options are BW: Plasma Blast 18/101, XY:
BREAKthrough 31/162, and XY: BREAKthrough
32/162. All are Basic, Water-Type Pokémon with 60
HP, no Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], no Ancient Traits,
and no Abilities. BW: Plasma Blast 18/101 is
only legal for Expanded play, has a [L] Weakness and a
single attack (Bubble Beam) for [WW], which hits for 20
damage and if you get “heads” on a required coin flip
inflicts Paralysis on the opponent’s Active (“tails”
still means you do 20 damage, just no Special
Condition). XY: BREAKthrough 31/162 and XY:
BREAKthrough 32/162 both are Grass Weak with two
attacks which even follow the same price structure of
[C] for the first and [WC] for the second. XY:
BREAKthrough 31/162 has “Wild River” for its first
attack and has you switch itself with one of your
Benched Pokémon, while the second attack is “Water Gun”
for a vanilla 20 damage. XY: BREAKthrough 32/162
can use “Ion Pool” for its first attack to discard a
Stadium in play while it has the same attack (Water Gun)
to hit for 20. If you don’t decide to just use
Archie’s Ace in the Hole I would go with XY:
BREAKthrough 32/162 as discarding Stadium cards is
fairly useful right now, even though Remoraid
will probably be KOed. If you are just concerned
with survival, XY: BREAKthrough 31/162 is
probably the best bet, at least as long as your opponent
cannot force it back into the Active slot and you have
something else you are willing to (potentially)
sacrifice in its place.
There is one other Octillery as well, BW:
Plasma Blast 19/101. It has the same Typing,
HP and lack of Resistance as today’s Octillery
but with Lightning Weakness, a Retreat Cost of [C], no
Ancient Trait, no Ability but two attacks and it
is a Team Plasma Pokémon. It doesn’t do much with
its Team Plasma nature as its first attack
(Sharpshooting) requires [W] and its second (Bubble
Beam) requires [WW], so no taking advantage of
Colress Machine and Plasma Energy.
Sharpshooting simply does 30 damage to one of your
opponent’s Pokémon which isn’t too bad for a single
Energy but if you’re hitting the Bench you won’t
be able to take advantage of another key piece of Team
Plasma support, Deoxys-EX; its Ability “Power
Connect” is still used in some contemporary decks
(albeit leftovers from when Team Plasma dominated the
metagame) to boost the damage Team Plasma Pokémon do to
the Active Pokémon. Bubble Beam does what it did
for Remoraid only hitting for 40 damage instead
of 20. That wouldn’t be too terrible for a
supporting attack but Sharpshooting is also a supporting
attack; even together they aren’t enough to justify
using this card, even as a one-of alongside the other
Octillery.
Octillery
is has been showing up in decks since its release and
shows up in a decent amount of competitive decks in a
supporting role. As it only became legal for
organized play November 25, 2015 (if I remembered the
rules and did the math correctly), I lack the
information to determine if it is still rising in
popularity or has already peaked, but personally I
already went through the initial “That looks great!”,
“Wait, probably not…” and am in the “Maybe I
overestimated it at first glance and underestimated it
on the second look?” stage. Yeah that third stage
is a mouthful but otherwise accurately named.
Especially if your deck is using Archie’s Ace in the
Hole to get Octillery into play, you likely
already have a build that can shrink your own hand as
needed. Attach that to an otherwise solid deck and
you can pretty quickly get a solid enough draw off of
this card that your opponent now has a tough choice:
risk you overwhelming him or her with card advantage and
focus on your main attacker or burn a Lysandre
(of available!) to take out Octillery and hope
this doesn’t give you enough time with the resources
already on hand to set up another attacker or two so
that you don’t need Octillery anyway.
This isn’t a new situation for the TCG and I don’t have
to go back to “ancient” history for examples. Electrode
(BW: Plasma Freeze 33/116) has a similar Ability
(Magnetic Draw) that earned it a spot in a few
successful decklists. It was tried in more than a
few decks though and while the details are hazy, even
the decks where it experienced success either didn’t
become overly big or it was optional (Electrode-less
versions proved as good or better). More recently
we saw Slurpuff (XY: Phantom Forces
69/119) function as Ability based, Bench-sitting draw
power and sees a little successful competitive play,
though there is a bit of controversy about that
according to the notes on results of recent City
Championships you can find
here.
The vast majority of decks right now are using
Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring Skies 77/108,
106/108) for Ability-based draw power and it is still
the overall better options. While Shaymin-EX
can only use its Ability when you Bench it from your
hand, that is pretty easy to do right now. Reusing
it happens, though it requires other cards or attacking
with Shaymin-EX. By now most of us that
have access to Shaymin-EX know how to include
multiples and get some solid draw off of its “Setup”
Ability with certain decks proficient at spamming the
effect.
So can Octillery replace Shaymin-EX?
Another ambiguous answer: yes and no. If you can’t
get your hands on Shaymin-EX at all, then it may
be your best alternative but the cards are definitely
different enough that you cannot just swap one in for
the other and expect to do as well or better with the
alternative. Octillery specifically requires a
deck built to get it into play; I’ve seen some Evolving
into it from Remoraid but that has simply been on
the PTCGO. I don’t know if the people using it and
making top cut in City Championships are Evolving into
it as well as relying on Archie’s Ace in the Hole,
or just the latter. Maybe I’m way off and Evolving
normally (or with Wally) is the preferred method,
but what I usually see working on the PTCGO is
Archie’s Ace in the Hole using the usual Items (Acro
Bike, Battle Compressor, Trainers’ Mail,
Ultra Ball, and VS Seeker) to rip through
the deck and hand until you can use Archie’s Ace in
the Hole to get Octillery to the field.
Some decks already run all of that and thus probably
could sneak in an Octillery (maybe even two) and
at most have to run an extra Archie’s Ace in the Hole,
but most are not running all of those cards. Shaymin-EX
does work reasonably well with most of those, so
actually you could shift from an Octillery backed
built to a Shaymin-EX backed build without too
much adjusting… at least in terms of deck list.
The two cards still play differently even though both
are about supplementary draw power.
I also see people running the two together; Shaymin-EX
is there for when something goes wrong with Octillery
or just so you can have a single big turn.
Considering it is just a Basic that isn’t too
intimidating with only deck and Bench space issues
making it not the obvious choice for those with both
cards. Seems like some are even trying to mix
Octillery with Gallade (XY: BREAKthrough
84/162), which sounds rather harrowing. Still having
both a means of rearranging the top five cards of your
deck and a method to draw up to all five of those
cards could be quite useful. I assume someone is
at least testing Octillery alongside Swampert
(XY: Primal Clash 36/160); same basic premise
except Archie’s Ace in the Hole works for both,
but you don’t get to also use “Sensitive Blade” (the
attack on Gallade), which is part of why
Gallade has been doing well. Note that all of
these potential combo partners are also potential
rivals, just like Shaymin-EX.
Give Octillery a go in either Expanded or
Standard play, especially if you just can’t afford to
run Shaymin-EX. In Limited only skip
Octillery if you pull something like a solid Basic
Pokémon-EX to run as your only Pokémon (ensuring you
open with said Basic). Octillery will be quite
valuable in Limited play otherwise, but remember that
while draw power is more precious since it is so much
less common here, you won’t have the same tricks to thin
your hand and optimize Abyssal Hand.
Ratings
Standard:
3.5/5
Expanded:
3.5/5
Limited:
4.75/5
Summary:
Assuming everything else remained the same but
Octillery had arrived before Shaymin-EX, we’d
probably have had a period where every deck was giving
relying on Abyssal Hand. The above scores are
general; though you’ll need to build your deck to
accommodate Octillery in order to use it
properly, pretty much everything benefits from that
added draw power. It just doesn’t strike me as
being overall better than Shaymin-EX, because
simplicity (sadly) trumps reusability. Octillery
isn’t binder-fodder though; some decks can use it better
or just use both!
Since I didn’t even tell the rest of the crew, I’d
better mention that Octillery missed out tying
for 10th place in our XY: BREAKthrough Top 10 by
one point. If you recall,
9th
and
10th
place on that list were tied in voting points.
Really wish Octillery had made the list instead
of one of those two. Octillery actually did make
the individual Top 10 lists of both myself and aroramage
as our 10th place picks; we just had several
different cards further up that crowded it out!
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