aroramage |
Welcome back to another week of
crazy shenanigans! This week is going to be pretty
interesting...I suppose. We start off with another BREAK
Evo in Golduck BREAK!
Who basically gives a BREAK
Evolution to a bunch of mediocre Stage 1s. Sorry,
Golduck, you're really cool and all, but it's true. At
least whatever Golduck you use will get the 140 HP score
from BREAK here. On top of that, they'll inherit a neat
Ability in the form of Hyper Transfer, letting you move
Energy around from one Pokemon to another during your
turn.
...yeahhhhh, it's a great Ability
on a not-so-great Pokemon. Don't get me wrong, Hyper
Transfer itself is great, but it's attached to a BREAK
Evo that in turn evolves from a Stage 1 that no one
uses. So already, we're looking at something that can't
be easily searched, and you can't really Archie's this
card into play, so already you know you're having to
settle for a little less to get more. That being said,
the biggest benefit to playing Golduck BREAK is having
that Ability around to move Energies off your main
Active Pokemon before they're KO'd to set up your next
attacker.
And that's not saying much about
this duck. Personally, among the BREAK Evos, I'd skip
this guy if only cause he's more trouble than he's worth
to get out. And trust me, he's very much WORTH it to get
out.
Rating
Standard: 2/5 (a powerful Ability
for sure, it's just unfortunate that it's on an
undersupported mechanic)
Expanded: 1.5/5 (maybe we'll see
more BREAK Evolution support in the future, and that'll
help Golduck's chances)
Limited: 3/5 (but for now...not so
good)
Arora Notealus: Golduck is still
going to be one of the many underappreciated greatest
single evolution Pokemon of all time - OF ALL TIME!! He
evolves from Psyduck of all things, HOW DOES PSYDUCK
BECOME THIS GUY!!
Next Time: Wait a sec...you look
familiar?
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Otaku |
As a reminder,
CotDs are written ahead of time and I’ve only been able
to glance at a few results from the first weekend of
State Championships. In this case, the fact that I
have seen any at all is because I remembered to edit
this review at the last minute.
We open this week
with Golduck BREAK (XY: BREAKpoint
18/122). As a BREAK Evolution for a Stage 1, it
will act as a kind of worse Stage 2 since it takes as
many resources as a Stage 2 but cannot tap Stage 2
support. It also cannot use a cheat like
Archie’s Ace in the Hole as without a Stage 1 card
under it, it is an incomplete card! Pretty
relevant given that this is a Water-Type and Archie’s
Ace in the Hole has been pretty key for their Stage
2 Pokémon. Other benefits of being a Water Type
are some solid Type support… well actually the
Water-Type overall has great direct and indirect Type
support however the best stuff is unlikely to
work with Golduck BREAK; I’ll mention Archie’s
Ace in the Hole for the third (and next-to-last)
time, but even using it as a shortcut it seems unlikely
you would have space for Blastoise (BW:
Boundaries Crossed 31/149; BW: Plasma Storm
137/135; BW: Plasma Blast 16/101). You’ll
still have options like Keldeo-EX and
Octillery (XY: BREAKthrough 33/162) as
options, but the remaining direct support like Rough
Seas or Dive Ball or Splash Energy
just aren’t as impressive. You can still hit
nearly all Fire-Types and a chunk of Fighting-Types for
double damage thanks to Weakness. The built in
drawbacks aren’t too bad either; Water Resistance is
only on most BW-era Grass-Types, but nothing more
recent, and while there are some anti-Water-Type cards,
they just are not particularly good.
Golduck BREAK
has 140 HP, enough to maybe survive a hit. I
really would have preferred more but that seems reserved
for BREAK Evolutions of Stage 2 Pokémon, and perhaps for
larger Stage 2 Pokémon that - as of yet - do not have a
BREAK Evolution. Trevenant BREAK gives me some
hope in that regard as it has 160 HP and is also the
BREAK Evolution of a Stage 1; the difference is the only
two Trevenant we have received so far have 110 HP
while the largest of our available Golduck is
100. Everything else about this card will have to
come from those Golduck, save the Ability “Hyper
Transfer”. This is interesting because it is an
Energy moving Ability, but instead of the usual
restriction of one Energy once per turn or to a
particular Type but as many as you want (just one at a
time), this one is moving one Energy at a time of any
Type, as many times per turn as often as you wish during
your turn. As usual it is also must be before you
attack and thankfully, it avoids any weird additional
restrictions (which have also popped up before, hence my
even mentioning it). Being restricted to Basic
Energy puts the kibosh on one of the more popular
tricks, where the Energy mover shuffles around Special
Energy like Rainbow Energy or Double Dragon
Energy that provides multiple Types.
Fortunately, Basic Energy has a solid bit of support
through various other cards, this could very well
compensate for the lack of that big trick.
Okay, so unless you
use Archie’s Ace in the Hole to put Golduck
into play directly, you’ll need to use a Psyduck.
We have three options, though the first two are Expanded
Only: BW: Boundaries Crossed 32/149; BW:
Boundaries Crossed 33/149 and XY: BREAKpoint
16/122. All three are Basic Water-Type Pokémon
with no Resistance, no Ability, no Ancient Trait and
just one attack. BW: Boundaries Crossed 32/149
has 60 HP, is Lightning Weak, and for [C] it can use
“Dazzle Dance” to flip a coin; “heads” Confuses the
opponent’s Active, “tails” does nothing. BW:
Boundaries Crossed 33/149 has 70 HP, is also
Lightning Weak but has a Retreat Cost of [CCC] while for
[W] its attack is “Firefighting” which allows you to
discard a [R] attached to the opponent’s Active. XY:
BREAKpoint 16/122 is back down to 60 HP, but is
Grass Weak while its attack is “Stampede”, which costs
[CC] and does 20 damage flat. No choice in
Standard, you have to use XY: BREAKpoint 16/122,
but unless you are worried about getting stuck due to
the Retreat Cost, go with BW: Boundaries Crossed
33/149 for its 70 HP and possible hijinks as you use
Firefighter to discard Special Energy like Double
Dragon Energy that provide [R] in addition to all
other Types.
Golduck
also gives us three options: BW: Boundaries Crossed
34/149, BW: Boundaries Crossed 35/149, and XY:
BREAKpoint 17/122. All three are Stage 1
Water-Type Pokémon with no Resistance, no Ability, no
Ancient Trait, and two attacks. BW: Boundaries
Crossed 34/149 has 80 HP, Lightning Weakness, a free
Retreat Cost, “Confuse Ray” for [C] (Confuses the
opponent’s Active) and “Water Gun” for [WC] (hits for 30
damage). We reviewed this one
here;
all four reviewers, myself included, gave it the minimum
one out of five and we were correct in doing so (even
with the free Retreat). BW: Boundaries Crossed
35/149 has 90 HP, Lightning Weakness, a free Retreat
Cost, “Amnesia” for [C] and “Aquafall” for [WW], which
require a bit more explanation than I want to squeeze
into parenthesis. Amnesia allows you to select one
of the attacks on the Defending Pokémon; the Defending
Pokémon cannot use that attack during your opponent’s
next turn unless it resets the effect. It also
does 20 damage, allowing for potential lock-until-KO
scenarios. Aquafall is not brilliant as it
requires you discard all Energy attached to Golduck
and only does 90 damage for the effort, but that isn’t
actually bad, just not overly good. This version
also got a
review and before
its set-mate. I didn’t manage to get one in for
it; I had hopes and probably would have overrated it a
bit, but baby_mario got it right. The card has
some nice bits but (especially when it didn’t have a
BREAK Evolution) it wasn’t enough.
XY: BREAKpoint
17/122 has 100 HP, Grass Weakness, Retreat Cost [C],
“Derail” for [W] (20 damage, discard a Special Energy
attached to your opponent’s Active) and “Hydro Splash”
for [WCC] (does 70 damage flat). This is your only
option for Standard. For Expanded, I would split
it with BW: Boundaries Crossed 35/149 so that
some of your Golduck BREAK have free Retreat
Costs and Amnesia, though Derail is also a good attack.
Both are situational though. Fortunately you ought
not to be attacking with Golduck BREAK anyway; as
the source of Energy transferring it is meant to sit on
your Bench. So what should you use as your
attacker? Not seeing any tournament results
(again, writing this before the first weekend of States
is even over), so I will just have to guess. Ho-Oh-EX
(BW: Dragons Exalted 22/124, 119/124) seems like
a candidate, with the main drawback being its deck with
Huntail (XY: Primal Clash 50/160) seems
better. Still with Fighting Fury Belt and
multiple Ho-Oh-EX going off in a single turn you
could have 200 HP attacker that is swinging away for 90+
damage. With up to nine Basic Energy attached (all
Types that currently have a Basic Energy card) and
Fighting Fury Belt you could swing for 210 damage.
If your opponent doesn’t score a OHKO, move the Energy
onto a secondary Ho-Oh-EX (hopefully one that
also has Fighting Fury Belt) and then use Max
Potion or a bounce effect to deal with any damage.
Probably better ideas out there, but that If you want
to trade HP for more damage and being worth only one
Prize, while you still need Ho-Oh-EX for Energy
acceleration you could use Arceus (XY: Black
Star Promos XY83) and its “Judgment Light” as your
attacker instead. It does 10+30 per different Type
of Basic Energy card attached to itself, so it can reach
280 damage before any Pokémon Tool bonuses.
In Standard, you
have to find other ways to accelerate Energy, but
Arceus is probably a good attacker to include.
You will need a different form of Energy acceleration,
probably Max Elixir, maybe Milotic (XY:
Flashfire 23/106), but you could still do it.
Again, this is just guesswork and hopefully you’ll
figure out something better, or at least how to do these
better. For Limited play if you can get the whole
thing out it should be handy; you won’t have the usual
healing tricks but moving around Energy can still be
useful as you might be able to retreat something before
it is KOed and save an Energy or two from it.
Mostly though it just makes this sets Golduck
into a stronger attacker by giving it an HP boost.
Ratings
Standard:
2.75/5
Expanded:
2.75/5
Limited:
3.75/5
Summary:
Golduck BREAK has potential, but then again
Aromatisse (XY 93/146) has been struggling to
do its thing and it is a Stage 1 and not a pseudo-Stage
1 BREAK Evolution.
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