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We finish the week with Wobbuffet BREAK (XY:
Black Star Promo XY155). As a quick
disclaimer, Wobbuffet is my second favorite Pokémon (and
favorite of Gen II) so I am biased in its favor.
I’ll try not to let it color my review too much.
Wobbuffet BREAK
is a Psychic Type. With regards to exploiting
Weakness, a good chunk of the Fighting Type as well as
much of the Psychic Type are Psychic Weak; Resistance to
Psychic Types is almost universal on Darkness and Metal
Type Pokémon. The Psychic Type has a penchant for
attacks that don’t do plain damage, plus in the
competitive card pool some of the most commonly played
Psychic and Fighting Types are the ones that are not
Psychic Weak, so your mileage will definitely vary.
The Psychic Type has a decent amount of support; not as
much as some Types given they don’t have a (successful)
Evolved Bench-sitter or a Supporter dedicated to them,
but Dimension Valley is amazing due to shaving
[C] off their attack costs while Mystery Energy
is handy for reducing Retreat Costs by [CC]. There
are a few potent Psychic Type attackers used in just
about any deck, but they become even better on Type,
which is also good (either due to the expected Type
specific support, better access to [P] Energy, or both).
I can think of no specific anti-Psychic Type effects in
the current card pool; countering them usually works by
countering their specific purpose or exploiting
Weakness, instead of a one-size-fits-all beatstick.
A good start for Wobbuffet BREAK, I think.
As a BREAK Evolution, this card acts a lot like a Stage
1 Pokémon; it is about as easy (or hard) to play as you
get the usual turn wait to Evolve, need just one extra
card, and get to deal with all effects that apply to
general Evolutions (both the good and the bad). So
you can use Wally to speed Wobbuffet BREAK
into play and your opponent can use “Crystal Ray” from
Glaceon-EX to wall against damage from
Wobbuffet BREAK, but you cannot use something
like Training Center to gain +20 HP, whether they
BREAK Evolve from a Basic, a Stage 1, or a Stage 2.
If you wonder why I stress this, I could confuse you
with an older, similar game mechanic that worked the
opposite way, but I’ll just reference it vaguely instead
of going into details as a compromise. So our
pseudo-Stage 1 Pokémon has 140 HP; this is at that point
where surviving a hit seems a tiny bit more likely than
not. Plenty of decks will score a OHKO, and
a few decks will rarely managed it because they focus on
non-damaging attack effects, but the decks that fall in
between the extremes may whiff or at least require a
full set up to manage it. This time I will go into
detail because I often make this claim without fully
backing it up, so as an example we have Giratina-EX
(XY: Ancient Origins 57/98, 93/98) and its “Chaos
Wheel” attack. Even if it is part of a deck that
has another attacker capable of the OHKO, Chaos Wheel is
used for solid damage and keeping your opponent from
playing Pokémon Tool, Stadium, and Special Energy cards.
If it has Muscle Band and Giovanni’s Scheme
it can manage the OHKO, but most of the time it would
have just Muscle Band or Fighting Fury Belt.
Wobbuffet BREAK
has no Weakness, Resistance, or Retreat cost of its own;
we’ll cover the potential Wobbuffet you could use
separately and address them there. So we move onto
the card’s attack and it has a fun name that will either
please or haunt fans of the “Kirby” video game
franchise: “Right Back At You”. For [PC] you can
discard all Energy attached to Wobbuffet BREAK so
that during your opponent’s next turn, should the
opponent’s Pokémon attack and damage Wobbuffet BREAK,
Right Back At You will place damage counters on the
attacking Pokémon equal to the damage done to
Wobbuffet BREAK. Damage counters means
Weakness, Resistance, and various other effects won’t
apply, for better or worse. The attack also
states that it works even if Wobbuffet BREAK
would be KO’d. This is another attacker that seems
borderline adequate on its own; with 140 HP your
opponent has to be using a Pokémon-EX or bigger
Evolution to take out Wobbuffet BREAK if it wants
to avoid KOing itself as well. If you have a
Bench, your opponent can use an effect to change out
your Active, attack your Bench, or get rid of
Wobbuffet BREAK without doing damage to it.
Before we consider other cards, I’d say that makes this
attack maybe just a bit shy of being “adequate”; it does
something you might want it to do, but for a bit more
than you might want to pay and your opponent still has
ways around it.
So what Wobbuffet can we use? There are
three Expanded legal options, two of which are also
Standard legal: BW: Boundaries Crossed 58/149
(the Expanded only option), XY: Phantom Forces
36/119 (re-released as Generations RC11/RC32),
and XY: BREAKthrough 67/162. All three are
Basic, Psychic Type Pokémon with Psychic Weakness, no
Resistance, and no Ancient Trait. We already
covered being a Psychic Type; being a Basic is the best
and why playing something which Evolves from a Basic is
fairly functional. Lack of an Ancient Trait is not
a surprise; none of these come from the right expansion
for that to be a thing. Psychic Weakness is
dangerous, but with a slight twist; the Psychic Type has
some impressive brawlers who are used just to do damage,
but it also has some more technical cards that do damage
plus an effect. With Weakness to boost damage, it
just makes the former work more reliably and/or with
less time or cards, while the latter suddenly get to be
heavy hitters in addition those effects. Safer
than some of the other Weaknesses out there, but
definitely not safe. Lack of Resistance is a mixed
bag; -20 damage doesn’t mean much and given how Right
Back At You works, it could either help by forcing your
opponent to hit themselves twice or hurt by making sure
they don’t have as much overkill as they otherwise may
have.
BW: Boundaries Crossed
58/149 has 90 HP, a Retreat Cost of [CC] and a single
attack (Headbutt Bounce) that does 60 damage for [PPC].
We never reviewed this card and you can see why; it is
pretty much pure set filler. As you’ll soon see it
has the lowest HP score out of the three and even with
Dimension Valley has underwhelming damage output,
both in general and specifically for [PP]. I’ll
skip to XY: BREAKthrough 67/162 next and you can
see why: the HP jumps to 100 while the Retreat Cost
jumps to [CCC], so now our alternative Item search is
Heavy Ball instead of Level Ball. Its
first attack is “Mirror Barrier” which can prevent all
damage done by attacks from your opponent’s Pokémon
during your opponent’s next turn, all for [C] Energy and
a lucky coin flip (“tails” fails). That kind of
works with Wobbuffet BREAK as on a turn where you
couldn’t use Right Back At You or where it was just
better not to take the damage, say when you want
Wobbuffet BREAK to give up its HP against a more
important attacker. Unfortunately we see a
familiar [PPC] for flat damage, only this time it is
called “Rolling Tackle” and just does 50 damage.
This is another skip as well.
So now we come to XY: Phantom Forces 36/119,
which will survive rotation thanks to Generations
RC11/RC32. This Wobbuffet has 110 HP,
giving it slightly better odds of surviving to BREAK
Evolve. Its Retreat Cost is [CC] so while it can’t
use Heavy Ball or Heavy Boots, it can
still cover its entire Retreat Cost with the effect from
Mystery Energy. This Wobbuffet has
the Ability “Bide Barricade”: while it is your Active
the Abilities on anything that isn’t a Psychic Type
don’t work for either player, whether the Pokémon is in
the hand, on the field, or in the discard pile (and at
least currently nothing has an Ability which works in
the deck, Prizes, or Lost Zone). This is a great
Ability as many decks don’t just have a useful Ability
supporting them or a crucial Ability driving the deck
once they get going, but use something like Shaymin-EX
(XY: Roaring Skies 77/180, 106/108) and its “Set
Up” Ability for some or all of the deck’s… erm… set up.
This Wobbuffet also has an attack called “Psychic
Assault” that costs [PC] and does 10 damage plus another
10 per damage counter already on the opponent’s Active,
which is great against anything about half KO’d already
but poor otherwise. This Wobbuffet is
the Wobbuffet in the game right now, with
some decks using it as a disruptive opener while others
use it as a key part of a larger strategy. We
reviewed it
here
where it was a runner up for our Top 10 Cards of XY:
Phantom Forces list and it may have deserved to make
the list instead (that set has so many still important
cards).
Wobbuffet
(XY: Phantom Forces 36/119) is good enough to run
on its own. Wobbuffet BREAK could thus be used
simply to give XY: Phantom Forces 36/119 +30 HP.
If you really want to wall while stopping
Abilities, that may be a legitimate trick; you’ll still
have your Tool slot for the Pokémon this way, unlike if
you say just used Fighting Fury Belt on plain
Wobbuffet. If the deck has a source of [P]
Energy you can afford to discard, then Right Back At You
can actually be a worthwhile attack. Your opponent
may be struggling because you’ve shut down Abilities,
and so may not be able to get around Wobbuffet or
may actually need to specifically take out
Wobbuffet (and thus Wobbuffet BREAK); make
them pay for doing so. Your opponent may not need
Abilities in the first place, so this would keep
Wobbuffet (as Wobbuffet BREAK) from doing
nothing, though you are giving up at least one Energy
attachment. Dimension Valley is amazing as is so
often the case; for just [P] Right Back At You is good;
you could probably afford it turn after turn so your
opponent couldn’t try to wait it out, at least not
effectively. If something is already wounded
enough, Psychic Assault could be used to finish it off
instead.
That open Tool slot could be used for the typical Tool
choices, though as a BREAK Evolution Fighting Fury
Belt is off the table and Muscle Band won’t
help Right Back At You. Something to reduce damage
taken like Assault Vest or Hard Charm
might be counterproductive, but Bursting Balloon
fits well. Yes it discards itself at the end of
your opponent’s next turn, but if Wobbuffet BREAK
has no damage on it, your opponent will need to hit for
140 damage that Right Back At You will turn into 14
damage counters on them as well, and Bursting Balloon
then places six more damage counters, totalling 20
damage counters. 20 damage counters means either your
opponent is using something with an HP boost, protection
from effects, or a Mega Evolution to attack, or it’s
getting KO’d right back (Wailord-EX isn’t used as
an attacker). You also won’t always need combos to
do the job either; if the attack that hits Wobbuffet
BREAK results in overkill, Right Back At You still
gets to place all those damage counters. There are
also many non-Pokémon-EX attackers, often included
because of getting around problematic effects or the
need for a favorable Prize trade, and few are going to
have more than 140 HP. There is even the super
niche (and so probably unnecessary) versus Glaceon-EX
matchup. I mentioned earlier how Crystal Ray
protects against damage from the attacks of
Evolutions; if Wobbuffet BREAK is up front and
used Right Back At You, the damage counters Right Back
At You places aren’t stopped by Crystal Ray and if
Glaceon-EX does not use Crystal Ray then
there will be a gap in its protection.
Ratings
Standard:
3.35/5
Expanded:
3.35/5
Limited:
N/A
Summary:
I don’t have a specific deck for Wobbuffet BREAK,
but especially before Dimension Valley rotates, I
really want to try it out in Standard. I should
have time enough to get a few for Expanded play at
least. Wobbuffet BREAK looks like it has enough
potential to be worth it at least one deck, maybe a few,
that already use Wobbuffet (XY: Phantom Forces
36/119). If it were Limited legal, it would also
be a nice pull.
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