aroramage |
So, Chaos Tower is another of those
two-sided Stadium cards with different effects depending
on which player it's facing. Like Parallel City and
Reverse Valley before it, it has a certain niche
potential because of this, so let's see what it's all
about and what makes it appealing.
Chaos Tower's effects both relate
to preventing certain Status Conditions from being
inflicted on your Active Pokemon - this is pretty
important cause it can potentially do wonders for you
and prevent your opponent from doing their own moves,
but I'll explain a little later. The Blue Side will make
sure your Pokemon aren't Confused or Poisoned while the
Red Side will keep them from being afflicted by Sleep
and Paralysis. Oh, and if the conditions are on your
Pokemon to begin with, they get removed thanks to this
card!
So what does that mean? Well, on
the one hand, it can be a very niche tech card to
removing those Status Conditions from your Pokemon
depending on what you're going against. For instance,
the newer Darkrai-EX and Hypno will want to put your
Pokemon to Sleep, so having Chaos Tower with the Red
Side facing you will help protect you against that.
Alternatively, if you're up against a deck running
Ariados or in Expanded you're facing a lot of opposition
from HTL, you could pin the Blue Side to your half to
keep them from chipping away at your HP with it. In
fact, you could even use the Red Side to keep Darkrai-EX
from falling Asleep to Hypno on your Bench and end up
thrashing your opponent with his Dark Head attack!
The other deck that comes to mind
that benefits from this is Machamp-EX, as he can deal
more damage and remove his own Special Condition from
himself! Combined with Ariados and the Red Side, you can
keep on Poisoning your Machamp-EX and annihilating your
opponent with Steaming Mad - all while preventing them
from putting Machamp-EX to Sleep or Paralyzing him,
which would otherwise keep him from attacking!
Of course, whatever benefits you
reap, your opponent will reap benefits of their own, as
is the case with these dual-sided cards. You won't be
able to Poison or put to Sleep your opponent's Pokemon
if the appropriate side is facing them, so that can be a
pain to deal with if you're not set up right for it.
Course, given the way the card is, most of the time I'm
imagining you keep the Red Side facing you, unless
you're really worried about your opponent chipping your
Pokemon out and claiming a Prize for it.
Chaos Tower inspires different play
in different decks, but in the grand scheme of things,
it's not going to see play in a majority of decks.
Things like Night March and Trevenant don't bother with
Status Conditions and so won't really have need of Chaos
Tower in the first place. But for the decks I mentioned
- and heck, maybe even a couple other decks - Chaos
Tower can be used effectively to do what it does best:
cause some chaos!
Rating
Standard: 2.5/5 (it's good in
certain decks and not so great in others)
Expanded: 2.5/5 (but it certainly
has potential in what it can do)
Limited: 3/5 (there's no denying
that!)
Arora Notealus: So again, does the
potential a card has beat out its practical usage? Who
knows? At the least, Chaos Tower has interesting uses
that can be applied, and I'm sure there will be more
about to utilize with it!
Next Time: The great bird of fire
soars again!
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Otaku |
Chaos Tower
(XY: Fates Collide 94/124) is one of the three
Stadium cards from our latest set, and the only one that
is not a reprint (the other two are Fairy Garden
and Scorched Earth). It joins the slowly
growing ranks of Stadium cards that have a different
effect depending upon which way the card is facing; the
effect relevant to each player is the one that reads
rightside up. So what are those effects? If
you have the card so that its name is also rightside up,
then the effect is that your Pokémon cannot be Asleep or
Paralyzed (if already so afflicted, they are cured).
The effect for the other side of the card is that
player’s Pokémon cannot be Confused or Poison.
Notably this card does nothing about Burn, the fifth
Special Condition added in 2002 with the release of
first e-card expansion Expedition. I don’t
think any card has mentioned it in the XY-era. If
it is being retired, that might be a good thing; much
like we don’t have “Freeze” or “Flinch” as they are just
better represented by Paralysis in the TCG, we probably
don’t need two damage dealing effects. It might be
a bit confusing at first, but if we really need
lingering damage from fire flavored attacks, we can just
use Poison.
So is this useful? At first glance I thought it
seemed pretty bad; as players we pretty quickly learn
that Special Conditions are pretty easy to shake unless
paired up with control/disruption effects. A deck
generally enjoys them when they are a happy side effect
of something that was going to be run anyway, or perhaps
Poison because it can function like a damage buff, but
if they are a focus then they need something to help
them stick or need to be something you can spam in the
hopes of running your opponent out of answers like using
Switch to change a different attacker (or card
with a free Retreat Cost so you can just go back to your
original Active), Keldeo-EX plus Float Stone
for something similar, AZ to get rid of
everything attached to your Active, and of course
effects like that of Chaos Tower which can
prevent Special Conditions from happening in the first
place. The thing is that most cards that prevent
Special Conditions are one-sided, so you don’t have to
choose what you help your opponent’s avoid, and the
preferred options like Virizion-EX in Expanded
play protect against all Special Conditions, not just
two at a time. To select cards for the Top 10, I
actually went through the entire set list for
XY: Fates Collide assigning a grade (S, A, B, C, D,
and F in order of best to worst) and I gave Chaos
Tower an “F”.
I was wrong, but the question now is by how much? Chaos
Tower seems like it might be the new “neutral”
Stadium. That one you can just automatically plug
into a deck because you know you’re going to need
some Stadium, or else to rely heavily on another
card (Delinquent, Paint Roller, etc.) to
discard opposing Stadium cards. It is just because
Stadium cards are so important to key decks and still a
significant bonus for others. If your deck uses
no Special Conditions, then Chaos Tower can
only backfire if your opponent is using some of the few
cards that also afflict your opponent’s own Pokémon with
a Special Condition without actually wanting that to be
the end result. So pretty unlikely to backfire,
especially for the reason I wasn’t fond of Chaos
Tower in the first place; you only block two of five
(two of four in Standard) Special Conditions so just
make sure you only block what won’t help your opponent.
If your deck does use Special Conditions, you still
might be able to select the side that won’t hurt you.
Another trick comes because the rules of the game
prevent you from playing a Stadium from hand that has
the same name as the one already in play (this wasn’t
always the case and allowed you to abuse once-per-turn
effects). So imagine you’re running a deck that
wants to inflict Paralysis as part of a lock: if you run
Chaos Tower and play it right side up so that
your own Pokémon are protected from Paralysis and Sleep,
then an opponent running Chaos Tower to protect
his or her Pokémon from Special Conditions cannot play
another copy down to change the effect.
So any uses for Chaos Tower besides being a
general filler Stadium and trying to counter itself? Ariados
(XY: Ancient Origins 6/98) has the Ability
“Poison Nest” to Poison both players’ Active
non-Grass-Type Pokémon. Hypno (XY: BREAKpoint
51/122) can use its “Goodnight, Babies” Ability to leave
both players’ Active Pokémon to Sleep, regardless of
Typing. There were already answers for both, such
as All-Night Party, another Stadium that allows
you to remove Sleep from your Active and heal 30 damage
at the same time, but there is a hiccup with that.
There is even a combo built around it using Darkrai-EX
(XY: BREAKpoint 74/122, 118/122), as its “Dark
Head” attack does 80 damage base with another 80 damage
added if the opponent’s Active is Asleep, for 160 total.
If you score the OHKO it’s great, but if you whiff and
your opponent doesn’t wake up, then your opponent can
get rid of Sleep while healing 30 damage. Chaos
Tower of course avoids this problem, and provides
Darkrai-EX with protection against Paralysis as a
bonus. This doesn’t strike me as a huge problem;
the goal is for Dark Head to score OHKOs and in addition
to the built in damage buff you can tack on a Muscle
Band to bring nearly everything that is not a Mega
Evolution into OHKO range. The stuff that can
survive either has protection or will need additional
healing to survive a second hit from Dark Head. I
guess if you’re facing something like Jolteon-EX
that you need to whiff on its protective “Flash Ray”
attack so you can hit it for damage the next turn, this
would matter.
So that is how to use it in Standard. For Expanded
play, it actually ends up being a bit better; there are
more Stadiums to compete with as well as more counters
and more combo opportunities, but the big thing is this
acts as a counter for Hypnotoxic Laser, which is
still a reasonably common play. In Limited, this
is an important pull; use it to counter other Stadiums
while protecting yourself from whatever Special
Conditions you think your opponent will use most.
Just be careful as you’ll likely have a few cards of
your own slinging around Special Conditions.
Ratings
Standard:
2.25/5
Expanded:
2.75/5
Limited:
4/5
Summary:
Chaos Tower is a new Stadium that doesn’t seem
overly strong, but that is probably because it is meant
to be decent for general usage and a bit better in
specific decks. I would score it higher, but most
places I can think of to use it already have another
option, or even a better option. I get why
decks using All-Night Party + Hypno +
Darkrai-EX are worried about healing the opponent,
but as explained above this at best seems like a reason
you might run a single Chaos Tower in addition to
your copies of All-Night Party, for the rare
instance you have to worry about helping your opponent
shake Sleep while healing 30 damage.
If we extend the Pojo Top 10 for XY: Fates Collide
to a Top 20, then Chaos Tower slips in as the
19th place pick with seven voting points, tying with
Carbink (XY: Fates Collide 49/124).
This beats the 20th place pick by only one point, but
also only misses tying with the 16th and 17th place
picks by two points.
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