aroramage |
Fairy Drop: it's a Fairy-based
Super Potion that's a slight bit weaker without
detaching Energy.
...I mean, what more is there to
say? If you run Fairy-Energy based decks, it can work
out as an alternative healing property, and in a very
specific Fairy-deck it can even add a lot to one's
damage, but outside of that, what else can you use Fairy
Drop for?
Limited healing, limited Energy
type to work with. It's meh at best, except in Fairy
decks where it's decent.
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (unless in a Fairy
deck where it's a 2/5)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (I mean, unless
it's that ONE Fairy deck)
Limited: 3/5 (then it's more like,
3/5, probably)
Arora Notealus: AND WHAT IS THAT
ONE FAIRY DECK YOU MAY ASK?
Next Time: LET'S FIND OUT!!
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Otaku |
Fairy Drop
(XY: Fates Collide 99/124) is the last Trainer
for us to review from XY: Fates Collide.
There were several others released, but they are either
Spirit Link cards or reprints. The former
aren’t really worth reviewing while the latter might be
worth a re-review eventually, but with a pending
rotation that probably works better later and not
sooner. Trainers play a huge role in your deck
even if you could theoretically build a legal deck
without them; said deck would just be really bad.
Items are the one kind of Trainer you can play as many
of in a turn as you wish, barring other card effects,
costs you can’t meet, etc. So they don’t have to
be overly powerful in order to be useful. Fairy Drop
allows you to heal 50 damage from a Pokémon with any [Y]
Energy attached. This draws a natural comparison
to Potion and Super Potion; the former
heals 30 damage from one Pokémon with no additional
requirements or restrictions while the latter heals 60
damage and then discards an Energy from one Pokémon (if
there is no Energy attached, you still heal 60).
Having a [Y] Energy attached could be all but a given,
impossible, or somewhere in between. Some decks
could be tweaked to make it more likely but some really
have no room for this mini-combo. Rainbow Energy
or similar cards can help as they will provide the [Y]
Energy required to be a legal Fairy Drop target.
Still the natural choice for this card is in a Fairy
deck and therein lies the rub.
The current top
Fairy deck is the one often referred to as Rainbow Road
or Rainbow Force, built around Xerneas (XY:
BREAKthrough 107/162). The thing is it is
barely a Fairy deck as the entire point is to have as
diverse a Bench as possible to fuel the damage for the
“Rainbow Force” attack on Xerneas. Healing
50 damage from it or an alternate attacker may be nice,
but finding room for it seems unlikely as the
you’ll want those slots for cards like Fighting Fury
Belt which up the max HP on Xerneas in the
first place. I’ve not run the deck though so
perhaps I am wrong. Though no longer a top deck, a
well known and established archetype (with multiple
variants) is the one built around Aromatisse (XY
93/146) and named after its Ability “Fairy Transfer”.
Being able to move around [Y] Energy would make it
almost impossible to whiff on the requirement for
Fairy Drop but now we have a different problem:
multiple superior healing options. Max Potion
removes all damage counters from one Pokémon at the cost
of discarding all Energy attached to said Pokémon, while
AZ is a Supporter that returns a Pokémon (but
nothing attached to it unless you count Stages of
Evolution) back to your hand. Their drawbacks are
easily bypassed in Energy Transfer decks, and if they
weren’t enough you also have Super Scoop Up
(which does bounce the Pokémon and all cards attached to
hand) or Super Potion as again, all drawbacks are
handled via Fairy Transfer.
Looking at what
healing tends to see successful competitive play in
general really makes it clear. Few if any current,
top decks use Potion or Super Potion
because we are at a point where you need to heal all
damage to really matter; damage output is such that
OHKOs and 2HKOs with plenty of overkill are the norm.
If you heal 50 damage with Fairy Drop and the
healing or change in HP doesn’t help trigger an effect,
then it has to change the turn count for KOs to actually
matter and right now, a one time healing of 50 damage
often doesn’t. Even where it does, another card is
competing for the same slot which again is why the more
generic healing cards aren’t being played. So this
card isn’t going to see much (if any) successful
competitive play in Expanded or Standard, though perhaps
it will have a chance post-rotation. In Limited it
will depend upon what you pull. There are 10 Fairy
Types in this set, with only two as non-Evolving Basics
and half (including those two) as Rare or better cards.
All but one look decent to great for Limited play
though, and even if you get none of those are
don’t think they are worth running, Fairy Garden
also would give you a reason to run a few basic Fairy
Energy cards to trigger its effect while meeting
Colorless Energy requirements. Fairy Drop is
included as a single in the Sky Guardian Theme Deck, and
while using it on the PTCGO I did find myself healing my
non-Fairy Types as or more often than my actual Fairy
Types with it.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
1.5/5
Limited:
3.25/5
Theme:
3.5/5
Summary:
Another card that is a bit too niche and perhaps a bit
too weak. The requirement to have a source of [Y]
Energy attached for Fairy Drop to heal 50 could
be made to work in a variety of decks, but it just isn’t
worth the effort in most to heal just 50 damage,
especially when so many attackers will score a OHKO (so
you never get a chance to heal) or a 2HKO with overkill
(to the point that the 50 didn’t make much or any
difference). Be nice if it did just a little more,
though perhaps there is something that can make use of
it.
That isn’t me being
coy; the card in question is being reviewed
tomorrow
but I haven’t really considered it so I’m just making an
allowance that it might find a home there.
I’m thinking “probably not” at this point though.
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