aroramage |
...hm...Moltres, eh? Seems like an
easy enough card to review, honestly. Maybe too easy...
Aw well, he's a 120 HP non-EX Basic
that gets a 1-for-20 vanilla Combustion attack and a
4-for-80 Flying Flare that lets you do 40 more damage at
the cost of dealing 20 damage to Moltres. At its best,
he's something that can take on a lot of Energy to deal
a punishing blow to anything weak to Fire. At its
worst...well, it's a collectible at the least.
There's probably a good reason
Moltres is uncommon.
...I uh...don't know what else to
say about this guy.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (decent finisher, I
suppose)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (...I'm not really
sure if you'd run him over anything else though)
Limited: 3/5 (...yeah...)
Arora Notealus:...I uh...guess that
was a review? Wanna just hear me sing something from
Sound of Music? Doe, a deer, a female deer, Re, a
drop of golden suuuun~
Next Time: OH GOOD IT'S TAKING OVER
MY ELECTRONICS AND BEING DECENT
|
Otaku |
Quick note:
By now both
Monday’s
and
Tuesday’s
CotDs should have finally gone up. The delay was
my fault.
Moltres
(XY: Fates Collide 9/124; XY: Black Star
Promos XY127) soars into our Thursday review.
This is a Fire Type, so it will hit nearly all Grass and
Metal Types for double damage thanks to Weakness, and
doesn’t have to worry about Resistance. There are
a few anti-Fire cards, and they end up acting like
Resistance, which is why they aren’t notable. Fire
Type support is hit or miss; Blacksmith is
amazing largely thanks to Battle Compressor and
VS Seeker, providing a quick double attachment of
basic Fire Energy from your discard pile. Scorched
Earth doesn’t work directly with Fire Types but
rather [R] Energy from hand (so basic Fire Energy)
in order to draw two cards; it also works with [F]
Energy as well. The indirect Fire Type support has
been growing with the likes of Delphox BREAK
since it attaches extra [R] Energy from the deck via
Ability, but we’ve had a lot of Pokémon like that, and
it has been years since they were truly competitive. Moltres
is a Basic Pokémon, the easiest Stage to put into play,
squeeze into your decks, and naturally working better
with many card effects. It is also the only Stage
you can use to open the game so you have to have one and
more Basics means a lower risk of a mulligan.
There are anti-Basic effects but also Basic Stage
support. So one real drawback versus a list of
awesome explains what you likely already knew; being a
Basic is the best.
120 HP is 20 shy of the maximum seen printed on Basic
Pokémon that are not Pokémon-EX. This is the high
end of “ambiguous” in terms of surviving a hit; 120 per
turn is enough to 2HKO most things in the format so
you’ll find a lot of decks can manage it, but at the
same time you’ll find decks that don’t quite hit that
hard, or need a complete setup to do so and so things
aren’t as bleak as they are for say a 90 HP Pokémon. Moltres
is Water Weak, which is going to matter; Water Types
aren’t known for being Energy efficient, so this allows
weaker hits to do the job. Commonly used Pokémon
like a Keldeo-EX, being run for “Rush In” and not
to attack, can still power up for a OHKO with a
Fighting Fury Belt, Muscle Band, or [W] (as
one of the three it needs to attack). At the same
time, this isn’t as bad as it could be, as Water isn’t
the most commonly splashed Type or used deck right now.
The Fighting Resistance is handy; 140 clears that
ambiguous threshold, so even though Fighting Types are
known for damage buffs and aren’t the most heavily used
Type, it still should matter at least a little.
Retreat Cost [C] is low enough to pay and recover from
having paid, so it’s pretty good.
Moltres
has no Ability but does have two attacks. For [R]
it can use “Combustion” to do 20 damage, which seems
adequate. For [RRCC] Moltres can use
“Flying Flare” to do 80 damage. This attack has an
optional effect; Flying Flare can do an extra 40 damage
if Moltres does 20 damage to itself. I
prefer a four Energy attack do at least 100, adjusted
depending on its effect (the better the effect, the
lower the base damage can be): between Blacksmith
and Double Colorless Energy, Moltres can
go from “zero” to Flying Flare in one turn. That
doesn’t seem too hard to power up (and also might make
Combustion kind of pointless), but even considering that
and the potential bonus damage for half as much done to
itself, Flying Flare seems underpowered. If it met
that 100 damage threshold and had the same effect, it
would be possible for buff Flying Flare enough to score
OHKOs against Basic Pokémon-EX (usually an important
threshold). It isn’t awful though, just a little
underpowered.
The only other Moltres is BW: Next Destinies
14/99 (re-released BW: Legendary Treasures
22/113), only legal for Expanded play. Also a Fire
Type Basic Pokémon with 120 HP, Water Weakness, Fighting
Resistance, no Ability, and two attacks. It has a
higher Retreat Cost at [CC], a higher first attack cost
of [RCC], and a slightly lower second attack cost of
[RCCC]. Said first attack is “Searing Flame” which
does 50 damage and inflicts Burn, while the second is
“Fire Blast” which does 90 plus requires you discard a
[R] Energy from Moltres itself. These
attacks were a overpriced back when this card was new
(and reviewed
here),
and I get to correct my older review by admitting that.
This is why I go so detailed, though as I can tell you
exactly what went wrong; I evaluated the card based on
damage-to-Energy ratios developed during the origina EX
series of expansions. Power creep in from the
DP-era sets had already rendered this inaccurate with
the Platinum-era and HGSS-era also having passed by that
time, it was completely obsolete. Don’t use this
card.
So should you use today’s Moltres? Only in
Limited play, where it is magnificent. While you
can run (and buff) this card in Standard and Expanded,
your efforts are better spent on other cards. In
Limited though it may not be a big enough Basic to build
a deck around, but unless you absolutely cannot make
room for some Fire Energy, you work this in
because everything about the card is better here.
Ratings
Standard:
1.75/5
Expanded:
1.25/5
Limited:
4/5
Summary:
Moltres isn’t as bad as my scores might make it
seem; remember it isn’t just how good a particular card
is, but its place in the format. Moltres is
underwhelming, don’t get me wrong, but it actually is
just a little more damage shy of being a solid Fire Type
attacker. It just so happens though that there
isn’t much demand for such a card right now (even for
non-Pokémon-EX), and if there was Entei (XY:
Ancient Origins 14/98) or Entei (XY:
Ancient Origins 15/98) just do it better.
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