aroramage |
Sorry about missing yesterday! No
big deal though, Kingdra-EX is basically another
Dragon-typed heavy-duty Energy-wielding Ba'al-busting
Pokemon!
...maybe I've been playing too much
Bravely Second.
Oh well, onto Grumpig!
Now Grumpig isn't particularly
notable for anything special. 100 HP, Stage 1, Psychic
Type, but neither of his attacks can take advantage of
Dimension Valley. That's a real shame, since they
could've been potentially better with it than without.
Not that Knock Back is going to have the opponent
trembling in their boots, being a 2-for-50 that forces a
Switch on your opponent's Active. It's just not that
good.
So what about Head Walking? Well
for 1 Energy, you get to call out a Pokemon to your
opponent's Bench and put 3 damage counters on it.
Normally, that's an extremely bad effect - even with an
extra 30 damage on it, most Pokemon aren't any less
threatening for it. Sure, it combos well with Alakazam-EX
and M Alakazam-EX, but you're still running a Stage 1 to
bring stuff back so that the bigger attacker, which
could put counters down anyway, can get rid of it.
So why the hype? Well, Grumpig's
Head Walking can do damage against one particular deck:
Night March. Its main attackers include Joltik, a 30 HP
Basic, and more recently Mew, who only has 50 HP to
begin with. The obvious maneuver is to bring back a
discarded Joltik onto the Bench and immediately KO it
with Grumpig for 1 Prize - pretty easy for 1 Energy, and
not many decks can say they can do that! But that's a
particularly niche usage for Grumpig that's only really
relevant because of where the meta is at, and even then
Grumpig is unlikely to see play because of it due to the
Energy restrictions alongside running it as a Stage 1
Evolutionary line.
If anything, Night March just
benefits in mirror matches for it, and they'd rather
just be powering up Night March. So off to the binder
with you, you silly dancing pig.
Rating
Standard: 1.5/5 (Grumpig has one
relative niche use, and that's about it)
Expanded:1.5/5 (there are so few
Pokemon that get KO'd at 30 HP nowadays, and even fewer
competitive Pokemon that get taken advantage of)
Limited: 2.5/5 (could Grumpig
become more relevant though? possibly, if there are M
Alakazam-EX variants successfully running it, but that's
about the most I'd expect)
Arora Notealus: Grumpig is still a
quirky Pokemon. I honestly had forgotten about him in a
period of time - come on, now, there's only 700 Pokemon
soon to be over 800 - and remembered him a few months
back as this strange enigma of sorts. Maybe there'll be
something in the next generation to give him relevance
again...either that, or at least he'll be related to
Spoink, the perpetually bouncing lest he dies Pokemon.
Next Time: Back to the Basics and
giving new form to old Pokemon!...well, not really old
Pokemon, it's really relatively new-eh, whatever...
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Otaku |
Today we take a look at
Grumpig
(XY: Fates Collide 31/124). To begin with,
I love the art; a Grumpig dancing around on stage, two
Exploud either singing or acting as speakers, and an
audience of both people and Pokémon, raising spoons to
reflect the stage lights (instead of lighters) to cheer
on Grumpig. I can’t tell you much from a technical
standpoint except - ignoring the fun of the image - it
still looks like a good quality illustration to me.
Hopefully this isn’t the highlight of the card, but then
again it does set the bar high in that one area.
Being a Psychic Type means Grumpig can exploit
Weakness typically found on a large chunk of the
Fighting and Psychic Types, but also has to deal with
Resistance on nearly all Darkness and Metal Type
Pokémon. Filtering that through the competitive
(and not just the actual) card pool you’re not running
into either as much as you might expect, and then we
have to consider that Weakness is far more damaging than
Resistance is protective. I am unaware of any
explicit Psychic Type counters beyond trying to exploit
Weakness against any specific Psychic Types giving you
problems, but as that does seem to be working reasonably
well and those Type specific counters tend to be trivial
for other Types, that isn’t a problem. There are a
few key pieces of exclusive Psychic Type support, with
most of them mattering at least a little to the general
Type. Peeking ahead though it won’t do Grumpig
much good apart from Mystery Energy.
Being a Stage 1
means Grumpig takes a little added effort to hit
the field; enough that it is at an obvious disadvantage
head-to-head against Basic Pokémon but not so much as to
make it impossible or even especially difficult to run.
It also puts its 100 HP into perspective; still low even
for a Basic, for a minimum two card investment it really
hurts to be a OHKO for so many decks, sometimes even
ones that normally cannot score a OHKO which brings us
to Weakness. Hitting Psychic Weakness isn’t that
impressive, but having it is actually pretty dangerous
due to things like Night March, Mew-EX in
general, and the original Mewtwo-EX (BW: Next
Destinies 54/99, 98/99; BW: Black Star Promos
BW45; BW: Legendary Treasures 54/113), but with
the low HP you might think it would not matter.
Then you get to the various Psychic Types like
Trevenant BREAK, usually BREAK Evolved from
Trevenant (XY 55/146); the “Tree Slam” attack
provided by the regular Trevenant suddenly scores
OHKOs while still smacking the Bench. The lack of
Resistance is typical and given the 100 HP even if some
had been present, would not have mattered much.
The Retreat Cost of [CC] is low enough you likely can
pay it if you must, but high enough you really want to
avoid doing just that; pack some alternatives to
retreating, either at full price or entirely.
Grumpig
has two attacks called “Head Walking” and “Knock Back”
that cost [P] and [PP] respectively. Head Walking
has the unusual effect of taking a Basic Pokémon from
your opponent’s discard pile and putting it onto your
opponent’s Bench with three damage counters on it. 30
HP Pokémon can be revived for a quick Prize, slightly
larger ones could be left as potential targets for
damage/damage counter spread the next turn, and anything
not immediately Knocked Out by the damage counters can
take up valuable Bench space. Not bad for a single
Energy attack, but not inherently great either.
Knock Back does 50 damage and then forces your opponent
to switch his or her Active with one of his or her
Benched Pokémon. This is underwhelming for [PP];
it isn’t a [CC] cost or [PC] or even [XX] where [X] is a
specific Energy Type that has easy Energy acceleration
for that Pokémon Type or Stage. Either the effect
or the damage output needs to be better, though I can
see that this was an attempt at creating a combo between
the two attacks; revive things for a bit, then start
bouncing them around until you build up to KOs. It
is just far too slow for competitive play.
Maybe there is
something in the related cards. Grumpig must
Evolve from Spoink, and we have BW: Boundaries
Crossed 59/149; XY 49/146 (also released as
XY: Trainer Kit Noivern Half Deck 1/30), and
XY: Fates Collide 30/124. All are Basic,
Psychic Type Pokémon with Psychic Weakness, no
Resistance, Retreat Cost [C], no Ancient Trait, no
Ability, and only one attack for [P]. All but
BW: Boundaries Crossed 59/149 are both Standard and
Expanded legal with 60 HP. BW: Boundaries Crossed
59/149 has just 50 HP and can only be used in Expanded
play; its attack is “Flail Around” and it has you flip
three coins good for 10 damage per “heads” (nothing for
each “tails”). XY 49/146 can use “Splash” to do
10 damage. XY: Fates Collide 30/124 has “Rocket
Jump” to do 30, but it is a “tails fails” attack; still
this is the best version to run. How about the
other Grumpig? There is BW: Boundaries
Crossed 60/149 and XY 50/146, which are very
similar to today’s Grumpig; so similar I’ll only
be commenting on the differences (apart from art, lore,
etc.). BW: Boundaries Crossed 60/149 has 10 more
HP, with its first attack being “Psybeam” for [PC] to do
30 and flip a coin. If “heads” the opponent’s
Active is Confused, if “tails” the attack still does 30
but nothing else. For [PCC] it can use
“Extrasensory” to do 60 damage, and if you and the other
player have the same amount of cards in hand, an
additional 60 (so 120 total). It is only legal in
Expanded but it isn’t worth playing there either.
XY
50/146 can use “Tricky Steps” for [PC] do 30 damage
while moving an Energy attached to the opponent’s Active
to one of his or her Benched Pokémon. For [PPC] it
has a beefier Psybeam, doing 60 with the same coin flip
for Confusion. It was reviewed
here and found
rather wanting; both attacks are too expensive for what
they do though Tricky Steps would almost be decent with
Dimension Valley. Looks like today’s
Grumpig isn’t getting any help from its lower Stage
or other versions. Is there any reason to play
XY: Fates Collide 31/124)? Only if you really
want to punish 30 HP Pokémon or insist on playing a
Grumpig, as it is probably the best of the three. Joltik
(XY: Phantom Forces 26/119) and Exeggcute
(BW: Plasma Freeze 4/116; BW: Plasma Blast
102/101) provide easy OHKOs for it, and it causes issues
for decks relying on Ho-Oh-EX (BW: Dragons
Exalted 22/124, 119/124), but Grumpig
is an easy OHKO back for any serious deck.
Forcibly reviving something whose presence in the
discard pile isn’t vital isn’t going to cut it,
especially against Night March. Using it against
small, supporting (and often played) Pokémon-EX like
Jirachi-EX or Shaymin-EX (XY: Roaring
Skies 77/108, 106/108) is tempting, but the effort
involved means a player may as well just run Target
Whistle and and other means of damaging the Bench.
In fact, that would go for the other cards I listed;
Head Walking is an attack already, so Target Whistle
and Landorus-EX with its “Hammerhead” attack or
Crobat (XY: Phantom Forces 33/119) and its
“Surprise Bite” Ability. Grumpig looks solid
(but still not great) for Limited play, mostly due to
reduced competition.
Ratings
Standard:
1.25/5
Expanded:
1.15/5
Limited:
3/5
Summary:
Grumpig has an interesting attack but we have an
Item to revive and plenty of aggressive attackers that
could then use Bench hits, spread, or Abilities to
secure a KO, and those aren’t already seeing a lot of
play. Generally speaking, doing something with an
Item, even as part of a combo, tends to be more
effective than doing it with an attack alone.
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