aroramage |
BEHOLD THE MIGHTIEST OF POKEMON IN
THEIR MOST ULTIMATE FORM, THE GREATEST OF THE PSYCHICS
FROM THE FIRST GENERATION, ALAKAZAM!!
...is what I'd say if that was the
case. Let me be perfectly honest, Alakazam-EX on his own
is a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE Pokemon-EX. You're not gonna be
playing him on his own - you HAVE to play his Mega
Evolution. And why is that exactly? Well it's really
very simple - Alakazam-EX was DESIGNED to support his
Mega Evolution.
Let's start with Suppression, his
attack. For 2 Energy, you put 3 damage counters on every
opposing Pokemon with Energy attached to them. Aside
from being an instant KO on small fry like Joltik,
Suppression does an okay amount of damage in the first
place. At the least, you're putting 30 damage on your
opponent's Active Pokemon, but what of their Bench? Are
you going to be hitting them? Cause if you're not,
you're only dealing 30 damage a turn on a single
Pokemon, and for 2 Energy that's not a good trade-off.
But what of his Ability? Well
Kinesis is going to be completely useless to you if you
don't run M Alakazam-EX, because it only activates when
you evolve Alakazam-EX into that M Alakazam-EX! On the
bright side, when you do Alakazam-EX hits your
opponent's Active with 2 damage counters and one of
their Benched Pokemon with 3 damage counters. It's nice
cause it sets up M Alakazam-EX to use Zen Force and deal
a fair amount of damage to the opponent easily. But for
Alakazam-EX? It does NOTHING.
Let's be honest here: Alakazam-EX's
only purpose is to set up M Alakazam-EX. On his own, his
Ability is useless, and his attack won't do a whole lot
of damage. Sure, over time it'll do a lot, but when it
takes you 4-6 turns to deal enough damage to KO stuff,
it's a sign that you're not gonna be the main attraction
of the deck. As support for M Alakazam-EX, he's great,
but otherwise, he's got the most niche potential.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (alongside M Alakazam-EX,
he's at least a 3/5, but on his own, he's not that
great)
Expanded: 2/5 (keep in mind that
he's designed to combo well with M Alakazam-EX more than
to be played on his own)
Limited: 3/5 (which is probably why
I'm ranking him lower than his Mega form)
Arora Notealus: Okay, Alakazam-EX
himself may not be amazing, but can we take a moment to
appreciate that secret artwork done by Mitsuhiro Arita?
Personally my favorite of the three!
Next Time: A DOUBLE TREAT OF MEGA
EVOLUTION SWEET!!
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Otaku |
Today we look at Alakazam-EX (XY: Fates
Collide 25/124, 117/124, 125/124). We
discussed it a little when we reviewed M Alakazam-EX
as our
10th place pick
for this set, but time to go all out (plus get an update
on M Alakazam-EX). Alakazam-EX is a
Psychic Type; most Psychic Types and many Fighting Types
are Psychic Weak, at least in terms of raw card counts
(several currently doing well are not). Psychic
Resistance is almost universal on Darkness and Metal
Types, but Resistance just isn’t as big of a deal as
Weakness. The Psychic Type has a decent amount of
explicit support (stuff that works only for the Psychic
Type) and if there are any equivalent counters, I’m not
finding them. There is a grey area because Psychic
Types don’t have a collective counter, but often face
individual ones; splashing an attacker that hits the
specific Weakness of a particular Psychic Type, or the
card that provides a counter-effect to their most useful
trick. The support actually mirrors this as there
are Psychic Type Pokémon best known for being used off
Type, but which work a little better in a Psychic Type
deck. All in all a good (but not great) Type.
Being a Pokémon-EX has not changed since yesterday;
extra Prize when KO’d, can’t use certain cards, get to
deal with anti-Pokémon-EX effects, better HP than
normal, often better effects than normal, and unless
you’re a Mega Evolution you’re a Basic instead of the
usual Stage of Evolution. Being a Basic is the
best Stage for the reasons I’ve also mentioned most days
this week: minimum space requirements, minimum time to
get into play, make your deck legal/reduce the risk of a
mulligan, a natural synergy with certain card effects,
and specific Stage support, with the only real drawback
being certain counters for being a Basic Pokémon.
Alakazam-EX
has 160 HP, which is just a bit low; most Basic
Pokémon-EX (whether they Mega Evolve or not) have 170 or
180 HP. There are a few with 190, a few with 160,
and a few extreme outliers like Wailord-EX and
its 250 HP or Jirachi-EX and its 90 HP. 160 is
more likely to survive an attack than not, but still it
is easier to OHKO than 170 HP. Weakness might be
when that is most obvious as 80 becomes a OHKO whereas
with 170 HP it takes 90 (which doubles into 180 so your
opponent has to overkill or fall short). Alakazam-EX
is Psychic Weak as is typical of video game Psychic
Types in the TCG (in the video games, Psychic resists
Psychic); Psychic Types in the TCG can be bruisers with
high damage output, but also tend towards effects
(including damage counter placement). Plenty of
the ones seeing successful competitive play can do
enough damage with at least one attack (and maybe a
Muscle Band), but I think it safer than say having
Fighting Weakness. Lack of Resistance is typical;
it would have been nice having one slightly safer
matchup but probably wouldn’t have made a huge
difference. The Retreat Cost of [CC] is low enough
you probably will be able to pay it if you must but
still high enough you’ll wish to avoid manually
retreating at full price. Should you take
advantage of Mystery Energy, a single copy will
zero out the entire cost.
Alakazam-EX
has an unusual Ability called “Kinesis”. Kinesis
specifically triggers between attempting to
Evolve into M Alakazam-EX from hand and the act
of Evolving actually resolving! This Ability
allows Alakazam-EX to contribute without risking
it being overpowered in its own right, so while the
mechanic might be a bit confusing in the end I think I
welcome this change. When triggered Kinesis places
two damage counters on your opponent’s Active and three
on one of his or her Benched Pokémon (your choice). Alakazam-EX
also has an attack for [PC], “Suppression”. I like
the cost already, as Dimension Valley can shave
that down to just [P]. The attack places three
damage counters on all your opponent’s Pokémon with
Energy attached. Not three per Energy, but a
simple binary condition: no Energy attached means no
damage counter placement, while any amount of
Energy means three damage counters. Separately,
Kinesis is pretty good unless you can’t Mega Evolve from
hand; it will rarely score KOs on its own (the Bench hit
actually is enough to take out the smallest Pokémon) but
can help bringing larger targets into range of more
traditional attacks. Suppression is usually quite
weak as mostly it means placing three damage counters on
your opponent’s Active, sometimes on another Pokémon.
Occasionally it's an amazing amount of spread, though.
The effects only somewhat play off each other; remember
you actually will have to use Suppression first unless
you use M Alakazam-EX with something like
Shrine of Hidden Memories or Celebi-EX.
So clearly we should review M Alakazam-EX, which
is also a Psychic Type with Psychic Weakness and no
Resistance. Being a Mega Evolution includes
everything from being a Pokémon-EX, except you end up as
a pseudo-Stage 1 instead of a Basic, with some
additional support and counters, plus dealing with the
Mega Evolution rule ending your turn unless you have
Alakazam Spirit Link handy. M Alakazam gets
a 50 point bump over Alakazam-EX, but the bad new
is that still leaves it with 210 HP, which is one of the
lowest scores you’ll see on a Mega Evolution (though not
the lowest). The good news is that 210 is still
high enough that most of the decks that can score a OHKO
against it can do so against just about everything, and
very few decks score such a hit rapidly, reliably, and
repeatedly. The Retreat Cost drops to [C] which is
better as it means you won’t have to depend as heavily
on alternate switching methods or Retreat Cost
reductions; you’ll often be able to afford a single
Energy (both up front and in the long run). For
that low [PC] Energy cost M Alakazam-EX can use
“Zen Force” to do 10 damage plus 30 more for each damage
counter already on the opponent’s Active. So it’s
slow and weak with support but just Mega Evolving should
turn it into a solid 90 damage, or rather two damage
counters from the Ability and 10+30+30 from the attack.
So what does this mean for running Alakazam-EX?
Again let me stress you should only use it with
M Alakazam-EX; you don’t have an alternate way to
play the Mega Evolution, but while some Evolving
Pokémon-EX have some potential on their own, Alakazam-EX
is almost totally useless solo. The two can be
quite formidable together, especially when combined with
other damage spread. The catch is that they aren’t
better than “the rest” when it comes to such decks.
In fact, the top decks do spread better or damage
better, and even when it comes to combining spread with
damage, they either do it better or add in another
component (like Item lock) that means it is okay they
can’t deliver a big hit to an already injured target.
It doesn’t make Alakazam-EX or M Alakazam-EX
bad; but it does leave them outclassed and waiting for
some new combo pieces to compensate, or most likely for
rotation. The exception is Limited play where they
shouldn’t be run solo but together Alakazam-EX
and M Alakazam-EX are a great combo, finishing
off injured Pokémon before retreating to let something
else take a few swings (and only giving up one Prize by
doing so). Of course, today we are scoring
Alakazam-EX, so it’s actually going to fare worse in
Limited play, since again you need M Alakazam-EX
or else you should avoid it.
Ratings
Standard:
2.75/5
Expanded:
2.75/5
Limited:
1.75/5
Summary:
Alakazam-EX really ought to have been reviewed
with M Alakazam-EX, but after having several
disastrous multi-card reviews in prior a prior Top 10,
we were avoiding it this last time. I want to give
Alakazam-EX a higher score because while I’m not
completely in love with how Kinesis works, it is a step
in the right direction to spread out the usefulness of
an Evolution line. Suppression is just far too
weak of an attack though; I don’t know why does not
place three damage counters per Energy attached to your
opponent’s Pokémon (all of them). Few decks keep a
lot of Energy in play on different targets, and those
that load up a single target usually won’t have enough
for Suppression to score a OHKO. As you can use a
different opener (or wouldn’t even have to attack with
it if you went first), that isn’t a huge wound for the
card.
As I kept stressing, this review is serving as an update
for M Alakazam-EX as well. The good news is
it has proven useful with Trevenant BREAK and
Trevenant (XY 55/146). It gives the
deck an effective “big” hitter that barely needs any
Energy. However using it that way breaks the lock,
and while it is still good for spreading extra damage
counters, moving what you have already in play with
Absol (XY: Roaring Skies 40/108) or just
focusing more on Trevenant and Trevenant BREAK
are what have been top cutting or winning at recent
National Championships. It has done well enough
that at least I don’t mind it taking 10th place; being
part of good (but not the best) build of a winning deck
as well as showing up in your own functional (but not
tournament winning) deck is acceptable for 10th place,
even if it isn’t thrilling.
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